Student Spotlight

Here are some projects students have turned in this week.

Typography class designed a 'type-only' poster for Vivaldi's Four Seasons performed by the NYC Philharmonic. Students could use color, shapes, lines and textures but were encouraged to let the typography be the graphic element in their designs. I saw a lot of great work and here are some of my favorites.


Bill Ross


Lynsey VanHarte

This is a packaging project for boxed water. Students were given a creative brief and came up with the name, the design and the text on their own.


Chad Ludwig

Resumé Tips

Don't wait until you're ready to graduate before you write your resumé. I'm including some links to articles to help your resumé reflect your abilities.

Resumé Do's and Dont's

Resumé Style File

Question: Should your resumé be creative to reflect your design style?
Leave a comment

Olympic Coke Designs

Coke has designed some pretty cool packaging to commemorate the Olympics. They are being sold as collector's items.

You Like?

Clue gets a design makeover

Has anyone out there NOT played Clue? Hasbro's beloved game has been around for 60 years but it just got a makeover thanks to Rob Daviau. According to Rob in an interview with NPR radio the new game takes place at a modern mansion — at a party of the rich and famous.

"The weapons have changed, the characters have bios and the mansion has new rooms, like a spa, a theater and a guesthouse. And the company added an element of suspense with a second deck of cards.

"The characters have changed, too. Miss Scarlet has a first name: Cassandra. Colonel Mustard left the military; he's a former football star. Victor Plum, formerly the professor who was always known as the smartest man in the room, became recast as a self-made video game designer — a dot-com billionaire."

Here is a look at the new packaging design as well as the old.






What do you think of the new design? Was it necessary to appeal to a new demographic?

Adobe Design Achievement Awards

We love Adobe! - we worship Adobe. Without Adobe software, we wouldn't have a job - or at least it would be a lot more difficult. Adobe is currently taking entries for the Adobe Design Achievement Awards or ADDA for short. It's open to students around the world.

Click here to see the current submissions and to learn more about the contest.

See if you like the animated interface with the page - I thought it was pretty confusing but that could just be me.

To see past winners - in a more static format
Click here

Student Spotlight

Students have the opportunity to show their design projects to their classmates but they don't get to see what other classes are doing. I am going to update this section every week with outstanding student work. Check back often to see what creative designs are being featured.




This is a project from Graphic Design 1 - students had to create a self portrait using only typographic characters. Designed by Nicole Wickstrom.



Austin Heath - Tea Packaging



Chad Hunter



Color Exploration - Michael Haygood

Global Graphic Design

So, I've put on some events in my day, albeit nothing even remotely close to the mammoth task of the Olympics, but events that need a lot of graphics. And graphics that you don't even think about until you are actually putting on some shindig. Just a partial list would include the usual suspects: an event logo, a website, brochures, direct mail pieces getting them to the event and then once they show up - signage, signs for every room, signs at the event center, schedule of daily events, name badges, book binders, kit covers, CDs, logos for venues, multimedia graphics for presenters, shirts and hats with logos, set design and so on. I know that putting on the Olympics here in Salt Lake took years of preparation and that graphic designers were flown in from all over the world, paid exceedingly well and got to work on one of the most creative opportunities of their career. And our little city did a great job if I do say myself.

But I digress. With my limited experience I have been watching the Beijing Olympics unfold with a sense of wonderment at all the eye-catching and well-thought out graphics. My students know that I love a story behind designs. If you can explain why you’ve made a creative decision, and back it up with research – you’re halfway home.

Link to Beijing explanation of Logo

And I always say when you design logos, make it a simple, vector image as you never know where the logo sill show up

And it's not just the main logo, but the icons for all of the sports. Again, sticking to the basic rules of logo design - lines with hard edges, no gradients, drop shadows or the like.
And that's just the logos and icons, not to mention the tickets, the name badges, the press passes, the fax sheets, the forms - all the minutiae that goes unnoticed but that a fellow graphic designer can appreciate. Maybe not all the glamorous pieces, like the full building posters in Salt Lake, or the Olympic torch itself but work that needs to be designed nonetheless. Hey, I'll take credit for any part of great design -how about you??

Happy Designing!!

What's with all the Rainbows?

The Beijing Olympics are all about rainbows? Why? What does it mean? Well, if you know anything about graphic design, you know that everything means something - or SHOULD have some relevance right? When you have the incredible budgets that China had to spend on design and branding - it will definitely tell a story.



Here are their icons, color-coded and with a symbolic meaning that is pretty interesting.


And speaking of logo design - London has faced major controversy over the design of their logo for the 2012 games. Critics say it's not worth the $800,000 they paid for the designs and the London newspaper even challenged the general public to see if they could design something better - for free no less. What do you think?





Click here to read the article in the London newspaper and see the other logo designs.

Dane Cook hates Graphic Design

At least on his poster - he slams the photoshop work, the art direction of the photo, the background he's shot on and the entire marketing campaign. 'Photoshopping' has officially become a verb.


Click here to see what he has to say about his poster...