From Draplin Design Co.’s blog.

I ordered some Obama stickers a week or so back from Sticker Robot and they just came in. Designed in conjunction Shepherd Fairey of the Andre the Giant Has a Posse fame, they look pretty sweet in person.

They also have a few other Obama sticker varieties in stock, and the profit from all the sticker sales goes straight back into getting more stickers made and getting more visibility for Barack Obama presidential campaign.

A few weeks ago the University of Michigan School of Art & Design hosted the very impressive graphic design exhibition The Graphic Imperative, an exhibition covering posters for peace, social justice, and the environment from 1965-2005 from around the world. It was one of the first all-graphic design exhibitions I’ve been to, it was also the first shows I’ve been to where the theme wasn’t just art for art’s sake. It was a very powerful show indeed; each piece spoke to some very important world issue, everything from AIDS to tolerance to war.

Before the exhibition officially opened Elizabeth Resnick, co-curator and Associate Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, gave a little presentation introducing the exhibition.

The next day I went and sat in on a little early-morning coffee and bagels breakfast discussion with Elizabeth Resnick, two of my professors, a few grad students, and another undergrad. After the bagels had been eaten I had the chance to have a little portfolio review; I got some great feedback on my portfolio.

Pretty snazzy event overall!

I was asked recently to introduce Helvetica to an auditorium of folk at the University of Michigan Helvetica Screening (sponsored by UMMA, University of Michigan School of Art & Design, University of Michigan AIGA Student Group, and AIGA Detroit). I happily agreed and last night I made my way through a completely packed auditorium (the isles were full as well and people stood outside the doorways in the halls to watch) to introduce myself, the sponsors, Craig Steen the president of AIGA Detroit, and finally introduce the film itself to get things rolling.

The movie itself is amazing; it’s very well produced. The interviews are very interesting, insightful, and overall extremely funny. These interviewees are leaders in their fields and while they are all respected for their work, a lot of them have outrageously contrasting viewpoints as far as typography and “good design” goes. It certainly is a group of very opinionated designers. Seeing two renowned designers such as Massimo Vignelli (whom I just wrote about) and Erik Spiekermann get so worked up over this one little ubiquitous font is really interesting, though I think Spiekermann would win if they came to fisticuffs over the matter (being 16 years his junior).

After the film we facilitated discussion to a smaller audience on the opinions expressed in the movie and on the movie itself. Some interesting points and questions were raised.

For our first UM AIGA Student Group event it was an amazing turnout and super successful. This movie is definitely a must see, but good luck finding it at your local Blockbuster.

The other night I had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by legendary modernist designer Massimo Vignelli. It was very interesting to hear this guy who’s been in the industry for over 50 years now talk about all the projects he’s been involved with, from when he worked with Venini in Milan to his work with Bloomindales, the National Park Service, American Airlines, and The New York Subway System.

Massimo divided his lecture into groups of 5 years, and the beginning of each section he had a cute little black and white of his wife and himself. Massimo really injects a lot of humor into his stories; his pretty strong Italian accent and old-man behavior lend to some funny on-stage happenings.

Over the two hours of lecture I jotted down some things that Massimo had said here and there. Here are a few of the notes I took; things he said, advice, and a few random out-of-context sentences. It should be noted though that Massimo is an unapologetic, opinionated, modernist and some of the things he says definitely aren’t for everyone.

I see graphic design as the orginization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistant, pragmatically understandable, visually powerful, intellectually intelligent, and above all timeless.

Don’t trust market research, do what you want.

How can people judge design if [they don't know|it never existed before].

If you can’t find it, design it.

Have imagination, have courage, be fast.

If you listen to the manufacturer you’ll still be making mickey mouse trays.

Stay away from miserable design.

The grid is a lion, and you are the grid tamer. If you stay too long in the grid, the grid will eat you.

Look at my pants!

Luck is very important, you should be lucky.

Never work with middle management, work with the president. Middle management is afraid of losing their jobs.

Adding is stupid, subtracting is genius.

At the end of the lecture I stayed behind for a few minutes to have a short word with Kely Salchow, the AIGA Detroit Education Chair, and of course, Massimo. I had also brought along Massimo’s book, Vignelli: From A to Z, which I had a copy of in my library in the hopes that he’d be so nice as to autograph it, which he did.

Much of Generation Y has this idea in their heads that everything, from information to music, should be free. I attribute the propagation of this notion to an event from way back in 1999; the advent of Napster, which seeded the minds of so many with the ideology of that “Why should I pay for something I can get for free?” And to make a long story short, Napster got shutdown and a whole new breed of decentralized file sharing services sprouted up in it’s place.

Now, not only are people freely and quite liberally sharing music, they are also sharing pictures, movies, and software, which brings us to the topic of this article: software piracy has reached epidemic proportions particularly when it comes to “pro” applications such as Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator, Macromedia’s Flash, and Corel’s Painter. Now why are these few applications such hot items on the veritable software black market, you ask? Here are a few excuses from people that pirate software use to justify their actions:

1) “I just like to say I have it.”
2) “My friends thought my *whatever* looked cool, I guess that makes me a graphic designer so that means I should be using professional applications.”
3) “I’ll buy the program when it doesn’t cost a lot, until then, I’ll just download it.” This often goes along with excuse #2 and #3.

Most of these excuses stem from what I think are the main two reasons that people pirate: money (or lack thereof really) and the idea that pro apps somehow make them a better designer. Both of the previously stated points are pretty much moot because 1) there is an abundance of cheap and even free software out on the internet that is incredibly underestimated by the general populace, and 2) professional software does not make you a professional designer, in fact, it can make your designs look quite abominable (it seems a trend among novice to think that just because some particular software has all these wonderful features [read: filters] that they should employ every, single, hellacious, one of them). I guess what I’m trying to say here is that what software you use depends on your technical skill and intended use.

Now, back to the point about the copious amount of free and cheap software out there that’s fully capable of performing most of the same things professional level software does. First lets begin with the cheap(er) software and one of things things that most people overlook when searching for viable alternatives that don’t cost an arm and a leg; Educational versions of the “good stuff.” Yes, just about every major software company makes educational versions of their software for students and institutes, often at considerable discount. Adobe, Apple, Corel, and Macromedia offer such editions of their software. The only stipulation of using the educational version is that you cannot use the software for commercial purposes (ie. using the software to make money), but honestly, if you are planning to make a living using the software, paying full price isn’t that much to ask. Other than that, the educational versions are in no way crippled from the regular versions, everything is the same save for the license agreement.

Lastly, here is a short list of cheap, yet feature packed, alternatives for both image editing and web publishing software titles.

Image Editing
-Graphic Converter - Shareware - $30 (download) / $35 (CD)
-The GIMP - Open Source - Free
-Photoshop Elements - Retail - $90 (mac) / $100 (windows)

Web Publishing
-Freeway - Retail - $100 (express) / $250 (pro)
-BBEdit Lite - Freeware - Free
-SubEthaEdit - Shareware - Free (non commercial) / $35 (commercial)