a quote to start the week

People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It’s not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.
:: PAOLA ANTONELLI

me no paying for css editing

not now anyway. i’m feeling frugal. so, after many failed attempts, i finally got image padding by using inline coding. look down the page at my pathetic attempts to add padding with a matching background color. jeez. i can’t believe i’m confessing to such a crayon solution. i have no pride.

a dream come true…

aiga announced the speakers for the 2007 design conference in aspen. maira kalman…seriously…i had a small myocardial infarction. maira is on my list of people i’d most like to meet. now, i may get a chance. life is good.

oh, and my other favorite aiga’er with an m name…moira cullen is going to be there too. moira spoke at HOW last year and i enjoyed her mix of design and business. a winning combination for me.

what’s a girl to do?

a design dilemma: every year, or so it seems, neocon and how take place at the same time. this year one of my design heroes, tim brown of ideo, is at neocon. neocon is free and 3 hours away. how is in atlanta and i’ve been for the past two years. my brother lived in atlanta so i’ve been there. mudding the waters: aiga atlanta and how are teaming up for some fun.

decisions…decisions…it’s a great time to be a designer.

design and ethics?

when i was a young student designer the world of graphic design was not quite so shiny as it is now and definitely not well known. people didn’t know what a graphic designer was. telling a person you were a graphic design student garnered the same level of appreciation and understanding as telling them you were as philosophy student. but, i digress…when i was a student there was exactly one discussion of design ethics and it lasted about 10 minutes. now, i am willing to grant you that i was in a fledgling program that was toddling along toward finding it’s stride. that one discussion centered on whether or not you would design for tobacco companies or alcohol companies and what that design angst might be like. ten minutes of discussion in class and i continue to think about it 20 years later. as a person, and a designer, i try to stay in the plus column in questions of ethics. while discussing this with a philosophy professor i decided i didn’t know enough about the issue(s) and did a little googling. here’s an excerpt of one blog entry i found and, one that is relevant to a situation i currently find myself in. what do you think?

“Because I am not designer, the only encouragement I can offer here is that you ought to think about the third party to the proceedings, the who has not been invited to participate but who is more important than you or your client: The end user, the viewer, the consumer. The rest of us, in other words.”

:: read the rest at murketing

hello, pamela…

more from pamela barsky. pamela seems to have endless stores of good idea plus she blogs about her business and her life. i respect the realistic view. ask her about running a business and she’ll say it’s great but it’s really hard work and not half as romantic as you think it is…by “you” i mean me, of course.

more from mrs. vreeland…

JUNE 5, 1967
RE: FRECKLES

I am extremely disappointed that no one has taken the slightest interest in freckles on the models…

why didn’t i see this when i was 12 and distraught over my freckles? maturity brings not only acceptance but love of freckles. long live freckles.

thought for the day…

The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.
Diana Vreeland

get on over to pink navy for the dish on top design.

lighting to lust after…

i just got my new metropolis and in the back was an ad for these wood veneer shades from dformdesign. i’ve been lusting after the one called “saucer” for years but i couldn’t grab that image from the flash site. the one featured here is called spade. i fantasize about having one of these over my design. that, or the equally lusted after galbraith and paul. galbraith and paul may have a leg up though since i emailed them a couple of years ago and they replied. i like that in a company. plus, they send me really lovely samples. i really like that.

the great white…midwest

back in the office today after two days of working at home. here’s what it looks like from my back deck. i still had to walk down my hill to reach my car that was parked at the bottom. i’m hoping this is the last snow we see this year.