A year and a half ago, I started teaching studio illustration. I decided to include a book component in which my students read assigned texts and each week, we have Tuesday Thinkeries, where we discuss what we’ve read. The conversations are broad and generally veer from the book, but always revolve around creative practice. This [...]
A list from Dieter Rams, in the documentary, Objectified, by Gary Hustwit.: 1. Good design should be innovative. 2. Good design should make a product useful. 3. Good design is aesthetic design. 4. Good design will make a product understandable. 5. Good design is honest. 6. Good design is unobtrusive. 7. Good design is long-lived. [...]
Many of our creative celebrities are teachers. Michael Beirut, for instance, is a senior critic at Yale. Jessica Helfand is too. Steve Heller is Co-Chair of the design program at the School of Visual Arts. Ellen Lupton is at MICA; Frank Chimero at Portland State University; swissmiss at Parsons. And many of our other celebs [...]
Summer, like the air in the autumn, always makes me nostalgic. For what, though, I’m not entirely sure. A few years back, I spent the summer in the Catskills at the Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts as an artist assistant and instructor. It was a beautiful time and every year, I miss those days. [...]
This week, I’ve been working to finish an essay. (Finish is not an accurate term. Is anything ever finished?) This particular piece has been bobbling around my mind for about a year and it will certainly go through some more revisions but I thought I’d share the process of its making. I’ve been thinking about [...]
This week, the 58th issue of Sonora Review, the oldest student-run literary journal in the country, is going to print. Sweet. As art director, it’s like I get to know the future. And so here, world, is a snapshot of the near future. Some cool things about this issue. First, the journal is being printed [...]
This week, I’m diving (slowly, hesitantly) into the world of mark-making. This summer, my older brother started a painting/carpentry company and asked me to design a logo for him. He wanted it to be clean, simple and a little pretty. Ok, I added the pretty but he agreed. Wanting the simplicity of Helvetica without Helvetica, [...]
It’s the middle of the summer and a requisite panic has begun to settle as I consider moving back to Tucson, the impossible-seeming completion of two MFAs and getting organized for my upcoming illustration class. Yesterday, a quote was brought to my attention: A student who stops learning was never a student at all. Which [...]
A few months ago, I made a shirt for an organization in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico involving a design and illustration of some brown pelicans, one of my favorite creatures. The other day, I received one of the shirts and thought I’d share the results here. The printing is beautifully crafted (by Graphique) and the [...]
Last Friday morning, I gathered with about 90 interested folks at the Celeste Bartos Theatre in New York to hear a talk by MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, Paola Antonelli. This was the latest Creative Morning, a concept/event developed by the energetic Tina Roth Eisenberg. You might know her as Swiss Miss. Street [...]