THE BUSINESS OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

If you're looking for a late-starting class this semester, I'll be starting my Business of Graphic Design class in early February. The class will be M/W, 9:30 am-11:30 am. Look for flyers announcing the class next week.

In other business news, my current issue of Graphic Design USA arrived this afternoon. When I grabbed it out of the mailbox, the first thing I noticed was the cover; great look and texture. When I opened to the first page beyond the double-page ShutterStock ad, I noticed the paper that was used for the interior of the mag was a bright white and also had a great matte texture.

Reading through the magazine, I read that the paper GD USA used to print the magazine is made by SMART Papers. One of the most interesting things about SMART is that all of its papers are chlorine free, and by the end of 2009, all of its papers will be produced using 100% cellulosic biomass (primarily tree, yard and wood waste). This will eliminate the use of fossil fuels in its paper manufacturing and enable all its papers to be designated fully carbon neutral. Definitely a paper company worth using and supporting.

Inside the magazine, there's a lot of great content, but what has stood out so far is the "Hot Skills for 2009" article. The three additional skill sets that remain in demand in this poor economic climate are:

Project Management
Average salaries for positions of Web project manager, traffic manager and traffic coordinator are expected to rise 5.8% in 2009. The individuals in these positions keep projects within budget and on track, making them a valuable asset to companies. Those who can manage print and Web production processes are worth even more money.

Hybrid Abilities
Designers with diverse and complementary skills are in great demand. A print designer who can build a Web site makes the designer worth more, and a copywriter who can design a newsletter can be worth more than just a copywriter. Multiple skill sets will be in big demand in the coming years.

Presentation Skills
Duarte Design, a local design firm whose main office is in Mountain View, has known this one for a long time; PowerPoint is an important and lucrative application to know in the business world. If you can learn PowerPoint, Keynote and Flash, you're making yourself worth even more to a company that develops presentations. Starting salaries for Presentation Specialists with up to three years of experience are expected to rise 5.6% in 2009.

For more information and a nicely designed Salary Market Guide from The Creative Group, call 1-888-846-1668 for their free brochure, or ask to see my copy I picked up at the MacWorld conference.

Check out Duarte Design's Web site and watch the video that shows the making of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth PowerPoint presentation.

Get a free subscription to Graphic Design USA.

-Daniel

FINDING A JOB

With the economy in dire straights and companies across design industries announcing freelance hiring freezes, this seems like a good time to offer up some valuable ways for our current and past students to find potential employment.

One of the questions students ask me on a regular basis is "How do I find a job in the design industry?"

This is always a great question, and I want to offer some links on where to look if you're one of our students who already has a portfolio and a bit of experience.

Indeed.com is a link that was just sent to me by John Avakian, Statewide Director of the Multimedia & Entertainment Initiative. Indeed.com is a great resource. Go to the site and type in "freelance design" or "freelance graphic"and "California" and take look at the large number of jobs (163) that pop up in the search results.

For local work, craigslist Chico is a great site to check on a regular basis. I check the site at least once a week, and often end up sending e-mails to students I think might be interested in specific postings.

Checking today, there are postings for: (School Portrait Photographer), (Wedding Photographer), (Apparel Graphic Designer), (Web Graphic Designer), (Sign Maker Assistant).

Below is a list of design and technology related job links:

Craigslist Chico: local jobs. Click California and then "art/media" to see recent jobs.

Creative Hotlist: Jobs for creative professionals and portfolio site.

Reel Exchange: A professional networking website connecting film and video professionals with clients and collaborators.

KROP: Creative and Tech jobs

Computer Love/Coroflot: Design and Tech jobs.

GURU: Providing/connecting freelancers for design projects

HOW design magazine: job bank and portfolio resources.

Indeed: Design jobs

While I'm listing job sites, I think it's also important to give some links for agencies (temp agencies) that hire temporary and full-time positions for the design industries:

Aquent: Check out the agencies video resources.

Big Creative: Freelance, Project-based, Permanent

Visuals: Freelance and direct-hire for creatives.

Artisan Creative: Finding jobs for top creative talent

The Creative Group: Marketing and advertising jobs

If you have any links for creative jobs that aren't listed here, send them our way.

-Daniel

ART IS WORK: MILTON GLASER

I recently purchased a great book featuring the work and writings of renowned designer and artist, Milton Glaser, titled "Art is Work". Glaser is known for his posters, illustrations and logos, such as the "I Love New York" logo that has become a recognizable icon for New York, and has been replicated around the world.

In the introduction to "Art is Work", Glaser discusses the defintion of Art:

"If one of the definitions we have concerning art is that it serves its public by reflecting and explaining the world at a particular moment in history, it is hard to believe that design does not serve in a similar way. …There seems to be much confusion about what we mean when we use the word art. I have a recommendation. We eliminate the word art and replace it with work and develop the following descriptions:

1. Work that goes beyond its functional intention and moves us in deep and mysterious ways we call great work.

2. Work that is conceived and executed with elegance and rigor we call good work.

3. Work that meets its intended need honestly and without pretense we call simply work.

4. Everything else, the sad and shoddy stuff of daily life, can come under the heading of bad work.

This simple change could eliminate anxiety for thousands of people who worry about whether they are artists or not, but this would not be its most significant consequence. More important, it could restore art to a central, useful activity in daily life – something for which we have been waiting for a very long while."

Glaser's words, not just within the Intro to the book, but also within the book's interview with Glaser, chapter lead-ins, the Role of the Poster, The Monet Project, and other chapters focusing on specific design and art elements, are well worth reading and offer up more insights into art and design. 

To watch Glaser speak personally about his work, Hillman Curtis has a great video of the designer speaking about Art as Work, in Curtis' Artist Series located on his Web site, hillmancurtis.com. You can also head on over to miltonglaser.com to see more of Glaser's work.

Not having gone through formal training in either art or design, I missed the educational challenges that many artists and designers I've spoken with had to endure; art instructors putting down designers and design programs because design wasn't "art", commercial art instructors forcing students to adhere to strict definitions of design, rather than allowing exploration within the media.

If you have stories to tell about your experiences in either direction, let me know and I'll share them with our readers.

-Daniel

STUDENT PROFILE 1: SHERI HAMILTON

We get a lot of great design students taking classes in our Digital Art & Design department here at Butte College. Every week I'm going to post profiles of current and past design students.

Our first Student Profile is Sheri Hamilton. 

At the age of 24, and after three and a half years, Sheri graduated with a Graphic Design and Multimedia degree from Butte in 2006.

Sheri was one of our top design students for the years she was at Butte. In 2004 and 2005, she won awards for design in the Digital Dialog juried art shows our department held in conjunction with the CSU Chico Design department. Sheri took Best in Typography for one of her type posters in 2006, beating out CSU Chico design students.

While attending Butte, and for a year or so after graduating, Sheri worked in Oroville California as a Digital Artist/Retoucher for the Creative Imaging Center . CIC's focus is photo-retouching Senior photos for yearbooks. Sheri also designed labels for packaging, produced business cards, and worked with large format printing services for CIC. Working in this fast-paced environment really helped to develop Sheri's Photoshop and Illustrator skills.

Sheri interned with a company in Oroville for a semester, and also as a paid contractor and intern for In Your Face for a semester. Currently, Sheri works for Improvement Direct, a local Chico start-up company that sells home improvement products through their Web site. Improvement Direct has become one of the top home improvement sites on the Internet, and it's a real opportunity to get hired by them.

Sheri's job position for the company is Graphic Designer. Her job responsibilities currently include Web banner design and print design. Always wanting to increase her skills and knowledge about design, Sheri is also teaching herself CSS so she can begin taking on additional design responsibilities such as working on Improvement Direct's article pages.

END QUESTION: Do you have any plans beyond working for Improvement Direct?

SHERI'S ANSWER: "World Domination" (with a :-)

STATS:

Sheri Hamilton

Age 26

Employed as a Graphic Designer

Portfolio Link

If you would like to be profiled on our blog, get in touch with me here. I'm always looking to re-connect with our students and promote them any way I can.

-Daniel

CRAIGSLIST JOBS AND DTG

Last week I was out at Butte designing and producing t-shirts for our Recruiting department's Campus Orientation students. Since last semester, Campus Graphics (our in-house design organization) has produced about 300 shirts for Butte College special projects. 

Last year our students also designed and produced over a hundred shirts through our MSP66A Super Graphics class and other design classes. This coming year, we plan on building our apparel and textile design curriculum through the purchase of new equipment and new classes. The research I've done into the Direct-to-Garment (DTG) industry, shows significant growth in the future, and I want our students to be ready and trained with the skills to enter this market.

I was just on Craigslist and saw that Fifth Sun has posted a job announcement for an "Apparel Graphic Designer (In house only) (Chico)". 

I've heard a lot of great things about Fifth Sun. The company sounds like a great place to work and a growing company that entered the industry at the perfect time to set themselves up as a leader in the t-shirt apparel industry. In an economy that is in a major downturn, getting a job with a local company such as this, with benefits, would be a great opportunity for the right person.

The job sounds like a great entry-level position. They require the experience listed below.

• Best candidate stays current with popular culture and current trends in fashion and music.

• Highly motivated and responsible persons only. No Slackers.

• The best candidate will be familiar popular Cable TV shows and maybe the gaming industry and be able to visualize how these can be transformed into graphics for apparel. Cleverness helps!

• Must be able to follow directions and be able to create graphics from studio design style guides or or other references. Must be detail oriented.

• You must be able to follow art direction well and take criticism even if it means several design revisions. This is important as we produce graphics not for ourselves, but for the masses.

• Must be able to work under pressure and meet deadlines while juggling multiple projects.

• 3 years minimum Adobe application experience such as Photoshop and Illustrator (we work in a mac environment) . Appropriate education may be substituted.

• Industry experience in retail or screenprinting a plus.

• Must have a keen eye for good design, color and typography

Note the requirements for the job. Must know and be proficient with Mac computers, Photoshop, Illustrator, and typography. These are what we tell our students on a regular basis. You must know typography to be a good designer. More on this later.

If you know someone who might fit this position, pass the word on to them to check out Craigslist.

-Daniel

Macworld review

Last week I attended the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This is reported to be the last conference that Apple will attend. I don't know if this is such a bad thing. Apple really didn't need to be at this conference as a vendor since there was nothing new to announce. I think it was the first time in years that I remember seeing empty slots at the Apple booths, where you could just walk up and play with one of their computers without waiting in line to see the coolest new toys. We'll see if the conference can continue without their namesake as part of the conference. I already received a survey about the 2010 expo asking for input to make the expo better. Apple had posters announcing the new 17" Apple laptops, but nothing special about this other than the size.

I saw a few items worth sharing:

1. I purchased a keyboard cover from KB Covers.. The company has some really great covers, and functional ones such as the Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Aperture, Pro Tools, foreign languages and Final Cut Pro covers. The cover I purchased is a Large Print cover with large white type on a black keyboard. No, I'm not so old that I need this one, but I wanted to show it to our Disabled Students' coordinators so they could see what's available for students. I had a student last semester who could really have used this cover.

2. Another item was the updated Delicious Monster scanning software. I have a bar code scanner for scanning in all of my design books (over 400 and still scanning), but this software uses the built-in iSight camera on Apple computers, and DM's drag and drop function for book covers and other items is great. I think what really sold me on it was the interface design for managing scanned content.

3. The final item that I left Macworld without (only because it doesn't ship until June), is the new 15" Modbook . If you haven't see this Apple laptop Cintiq-esque drawing tablet, then you need to head over to Axiotron and check it out, or look on Youtube and watch a few videos of them in action. I would have purchased one on the spot if they'd had them for sale.

Other than those items, not much more to speak about. I think the Apple iPod and iTouch and i-everything else has put a huge damper on Macworld in the past few years. Everywhere you turn there's someone selling an i-product of some sort, and it gets a little old having vendors ask if you've seen their latest product (yeah, about two vendors back on every isle of the conference). I got to where I was turning my badge around so they'd stop asking me by name how I was doing and if I'd seen their product.

Of course, with the MOMA bookstore just around the corner, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to see what design books they had on their shelves. I picked up a great book on branding: "What is Branding? (Essential Design Handbook)", a graphic design book that I'm thinking of using in our design program at Butte: "Graphic Design (The New Basics)", and a really great postcard design book:"POST CARD". Check out my reading list on LinkedIn for a list of new books I've purchased in the last month.

That's it for tonight. I'll leave you with a couple of links I found this weekend.

The Grid System: The Ultimate Resource in Grid Systems.

and

Booooooom (art, design, music, film)

-Daniel

SPRING 09 CLASSES AT BUTTE

We're less than a month away from the new semester and all of our classes are filling up fast. The classes with space still available are: 

DAY CLASSES

Digital Video (4 spaces left) - Dennis Wickes instructor

2D Flash Animation (3 spaces left) - Dan Seward instructor

Intro to Multimedia (2 spaces left) - Daniel Donnelly instructor

Super Graphics (12 spaces left) - Dylan Tellesen instructor

Art 32 Typography (1 space left) - Daniel Donnelly instructor

EVENING CLASSES

3D Modeling & Animation (9 spaces left) Jason Roberson instructor (welcome back!)

Digital Photography-Photoshop (5 spaces left) - Don Campbell instructor

If you've been considering taking a class or two in our design program here at Butte, you'd better act quick, by the time the first week of school comes around, there will be a dozen or more students trying to add classes, with no design classes available.

Back in the days when I attended Butte, around 1984/85, it was much easier to add a class than it is now. I don't remember ever signing up ahead of time for a class back then. I dropped in on a class and there was almost always space available. Times have changed quite a bit since then.

With the worsening economy, and the lack of jobs in many sectors, statistics are telling us that more students are going to be attending classes during the Spring and Fall 2009 semesters. I think the current figures are 10% more for Spring and 12% for the Fall.

When word gets out about our new Arts building and the extremely cool equipment and labs we'll be having in this new building, we can expect that the design program is going to become even more impacted.

Consider the new 3D Printer we'll be getting. Imagine being able to render a 3D toy or sculpture and then print a solid model from it that you can take away from the class. Or the 54" Textile Printer that will offer the ability to print on silk, nylon, polyester and about 15 other materials. Or how about the new Laser Cutter we'll be getting, new Adobe software, the lab of 21" Wacom Cintiq drawing monitors, or the brand new printmaking lab we'll have.

Who wouldn't want to take classes in our department. I can't wait to begin testing out all of these new pieces of equipment and seeing what students are capable of creating with them.

Now is a great time to begin taking classes at Butte in the Art and Design programs. The future is looking really good for our students and the skills they'll be able to obtain.

We're heading into an exciting new year for our departments and our programs. Join us by taking a few classes, and sign up EARLY!

Heading for MacWorld Conference tomorrow. I'll let you know what is was like when I return.

-Daniel

BECOME AN ADAD BLOGGER

I just received an e-mail from a current student, Sean Orozco, who said he would like to help with our blog. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I want a large group of students and faculty to become bloggers for ADAD. I am also hoping to begin adding other designers that I know as bloggers.

Students in our program are constantly looking at new sites, new technologies, and new software. I want this blog to be dynamic and current with all of these things, and more.

If you're a designer, design student, or faculty interested in contributing, write to me and let me know.

Thanks,

Daniel