On March 6th I introduced the well known Chip Kidd at our weekly Penny Stamps lecture held at the Michigan Theatre here in Ann Arbor. You may know Chip Kidd by one of the hundreds of book jacket designs he’s done over the years, heck, you probably have some of his work on your shelf or even on your nightstand. Perhaps you’ve even picked up one of his novels, The Cheese Monkies or The Learners.

Before the lecture began I introduced myself to Chip backstage, and chatted with him a little bit before going onstage. I was introduced to a packed crowd, there were probably twice as many people there than our usual weekly lectures. It really is true though, you really can’t see anything when your at the podium and in the spot light; just a bright light and a sea of black.

After introducing Chip to the audience I headed down to my seat and enjoyed one of the best lectures since Ellen Lupton last September, or 2×4 the February before that. It was great to see how he showed work that he did that clients turned down; most lecturers would never show how they failed. It was a pretty humorous lecture all-in-all, soon you should be able to grab the podcast through iTunes.

After the lecture I met backstage again with Chip, Chrisstina Hamiliton (the Director of Visitors’ Programs), and Art & Design professor Shaun Jackson. I managed to get my copy of The Learners signed by Chip before heading off to dinner.

We ended up having dinner at Pacific Rim, a pan-Asian restaurant. Our dinner party consisted of 4 A&D undergrads (myself included), a grad student, two A&D professors (Shaun Jackson, and Jill Greene), and of course, Chip Kidd. Dinner was pretty tasty. Conversation was a little awkward at first so I started asking some questions about his first book. After that, conversation seemed to flow pretty well. Dinner was tasty, as well as dessert.

Here we have A&D undergrad Jeremy Daly throughly interested in Chip Kidd’s melting face.

Dessert was an interesting affair. I was in the mood for something a little cold and sweet. The sorbet was the perfect fit, so I ordered it.

Immediately after I ordered Chip asks, “Now Alex, you are straight aren’t you?”

I was a little taken back by the question but I respond, “Well, yes.”

Chip then says, “Well the sorbet was a terrible decision. I’ve never seen a straight man order sorbet for dessert after dinner before.”

I get a little red in the face and laugh (as does the table) but I say back “What then, would you say is a more manly dessert.”

Chip thinks for a moment and then someone chimes in “The banana roll.”

The table laughs a little and Chip says “Oh yes, the banana roll does it for me!” Laughter continues and then dinner ends.

Quite the experience, definitely not my usual Thursday evening.

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!

Facebook, it’s pisses me off. It was nice back in 2005 when the feature list was short. But now?

I hated the integration of college Facebook and high school Facebook. I loathed the opening of Facebook to anyone with a valid email address. I abhorred the addition of all those third-party applications. And then all the requests from applications, that friends have added, to have me add the app as well. And now I’m getting spam from random people asking me to be their friend, people whom aren’t real quite akin to those spam friend requests on MySpace.

I haven’t tracked my time usage on Facebook but I’m sure most of my time would be devoted to denying requests, not actively posting on friends’ walls, sending messages, or browsing photos.

The harmony of the design I once lauded has been tainted by the introduction of those eyesore applications. Facebook used to be about communication, but now that part has seemed to take a backseat to lolcats, zombie attacks, superpoking, sending gifts, and stupid crap like that.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps I might remove all the frivolous information on my facebook, the “favorites”, the received gifts, photo albums, wall, etc, and just put up a generic message that says:

“I’m Alex. If you want to know about me or just want to say ‘Hi’ open up your email client and send me an email. I like emails from friendly people and I send emails back too!”

It’s not really Facebook’s fault I feel this way, it’s the fault of the general population that makes up the Facebook user base. I still think the company is pretty cool and the whole platform is quite an amazing piece of programming.

Self promotion is important, and as visual artists we need to get our work out there to solicit paying jobs, be it freelance contracts or full-time benefits-paid jobs. Here are a few of the ways I can think of right away to promote yourself and your work:

1. The Internet

Get yourself a website; a your-name.com website. Put your work up. Tell your friends. Work the blogosphere (forgive me for the term) to your advantage. Find some design blogs, read them, post comments, leave your address in the URL box when replying. Traffic isn’t going to come to you at first, you need to place some lines and gradually reel in traffic.

Pros: Everyone uses the internet, your potential audience is nearly limitless. Personal portfolio sites are great to make your work visible to people that might hire you.
Cons: The Internet is saturated with everyone’s work it’s hard to stand out from the crowd.

2. Pro-Bono Work

Do some work for a needy cause, or an organization in a tight spot. Don’t just do some pro-bono work because the person soliciting the work makes some random promises of more work to follow. Be careful not to get taken for a ride though.

Pros: Everyone wants something for free. You can really easily pick and choose your projects and who to work with (or not).
Cons: You don’t get paid. Exposure is based on how high-profile the client is. Pro-Bono jobs don’t usually have much of a budget at all so often you can’t used much fancy stuff (materials wise).

3. Competitions

There’s lots of creative competitions out there; everything from shirts to posters to mockups. Be wary of what you submit work to though, just sayin’ is all.

Pros: Crazy exposure + prizes!? What’s not to like.
Cons: You’re competing with everyone else for the top spot, which means your work needs to be that much more creative and awesome than everyone else’s. Know your rights when submitting work.

4. Be an Entrepreneur

Perhaps get some of your work printed up and sell it, not necessarily to make a big profit but just to get your work out in public (of course you don’t want to lose money). Start a business, a sole proprietorship (cheap and easy), and sell stuff online or in person.

Pros: You can turn self-promotion into money and potentially a side business for supplementing your income when your job/career workload is light.
Cons: You have to know how to do a bit of marketing (and self-promotion [now were getting recursive!]) already and how to work the hype-machine in your favor. Can be a bit costly to get things rolling.

5. Portfolio Magazines

Submit your work of online (or meat-life) magazines that are purely about up-and-coming artists work, usually centered around a theme. JPG Magazine is one dedicated to photography, ANTI by RevloverLover accepts all mediums, ROJO Magazine, and a few others (you can find a bunch at PDF-MAGS.COM).

Pros: Usually completely free. Great way to get your name out there.
Cons: There’s no money it in, but hey, self-promotion’s a bitch.