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Issue 9 |
July 26, 2020 |
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Hello friends,
I’m continuing to play with the format a little bit. Please keep the comments coming to let me know what you think. I appreciate you reading and sharing this newsletter with your friends.
I hope you’re all staying safe, healthy, and engaged.
Roger
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(ilovetypography.com)
Here’s an excellent history of African American print, covering writers, editors, printers, and publishers.
Freedom’s Journal was first published on March 16, 1827, just two weeks before New York State finally abolished slavery. Its co-editors, Russwurm and Cornish had founded the first Black newspaper, owned, edited, and published by African Americans. It was distributed throughout eleven states and was even sold in Europe.
Black newspapers could henceforth serve as a bulwark against a still rising tide of racist misrepresentations, racial stereotypes and unabashed white supremacy. In 1827, on the front page of the debut issue of the first Black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, Russwurm and Cornish made plain their motives:
‘We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly…’
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(eyeondesign.aiga.org)
For aspiring young designers, getting into your first professional experiences can be intimidating. And yes, there’s a lot that design schools don’t teach, that can only come from actually working in studios. Thankfully AIGA partnered with UT Austin to bring you this zine.
A collaboration between Eye on Design and students at UT Austin’s School of Design + Creative Technologies, What They Don’t Teach You in Design School: A Survival Guide to Life After Graduation will be your trustiest companion as you contemplate your next move. With sage advice from experts like Zipeng Zhu, Wael Morcos, Meg Lewis, Julian Glander, Karin Fong, and Bijan Berahimi, you won’t have to go it alone.
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(hbr.org)
Brainstorming can generate some good ideas when used appropriately. But how do we do this in the age of Covid-19? Art Markman, PhD:
When people are working remotely, it can be difficult to get everyone scheduled for meetings at the same time, particularly if people are spread across time zones. For brainstorming, though, this can be a blessing. Because you actually don’t need the group to be together to come up with the best ideas.
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(linkedin.com)
I usually despise unsolicited redesign exercises. Often the designer doesn’t have all the information, but most importantly, isn’t working with the actual client whose taste may be questionable. Like many car brands, BMW introduced a “flat” design a few months ago, with a transparent outer ring. As with all identity refreshes, there was some backlash. Copenhagen-based branding agency Brand Lane came up with a simple, yet brilliant solution:
It became obvious that BMW can benefit from redesigning the badge as a more balanced, consistent, timeless and minimalistic symbol (but not too simple to be still unique and unmistakably BMW). The solution was in the air: to remove the letters from the inside of the logo, but to keep the black ring at the same time separating it from the blue quadrants and the background.
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(uxdesign.cc)
How many times have you heard a colleague say to you, “Don’t you just click on a filter?” Well, a short one-minute video on Twitter showed a plugin that generated an app design in seconds, from a just few typed lines of English (not code). Welcome to AI-assisted product design. Before you freak out—especially since we shared a whole course on product design in our last issue—Jonathan Lee puts things into perspective:
At the end of the day, the means to value-adding experiences will always get quicker, faster and more efficient. But the empathic human, understanding the needs faced by everyday people, curating that experience in the first place, will always be relevant and depended upon to solve real-world challenges.
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One More Thing… |
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A favorite punching bag of overwrought logo redesigns is Pepsi’s from 2008. Enjoy this TikTok of someone going through it the first time.
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