Design Briefs
Have a news item you’d like to share? Have you read a good book or blog lately? Would you like to see your work featured in Designer? How about an office or department profile? Your contributions and feedback are welcome. Let us know what you think. designer@ucda.com
UX Flowchart Cards for website structure planning
Great tool for professional website builders, web designers and developers. UX Flowchart Cards can be used as a starting point for your website planning.
Cards are packed in a small tuck box you can take anywhere with you. Create your own website structure by using 54 double-sided wireframe cards, take a photo and send it to your client or keep it for yourself.
Instagram: scrapping option to share feed posts to Stories?
With Instagram’s chronological setups long being a thing of the past, users have been boosting their posts to others’ line of vision by tapping on the ‘share’ icon and displaying them on their Stories.
Apparently, members have been complaining about the double-posting, so Instagram is aiming to make its experience less annoying by possibly cutting the ability to share posts to Stories. Some users have been receiving an alert from Instagram stating that it is testing “a change to sharing to Stories,” and that the sharing feature will be disabled for them during this experiment.
In 1773, a designer transformed the alphabet into architectural floor plans
An 18th Century German architect was well ahead of his time with the fascination about typography. In 1773, Johann David Steingruber, who was involved in the construction of over 100 buildings, published an entire book depicting the alphabet as majestic architecture. The book, Architectural Alphabet, featured illustrations by Steingruber that imagined the shapes of letters as floor plans of baroque palaces. Baroque architecture typically included oval antichambers, vaults and domes. This seems to be the sort of project designers of today would pour their hearts into. Likewise, it was a “labor of love” for the architect rather than something for work. Preview some examples of letters as buildings, and browse the full book at tinyurl.com/ucda-type-floorplans.
Source: designtaxi.com
Two new UCDA board of directors elected
Congratulations to Felisha Weaver and Brian Yohn who have been elected by the UCDA members to serve on the board of directors starting January 1, 2021.
Felisha Weaver
Director of Publications and Creative Services
MARCOMM, Arkansas Tech University
“I would love to be a greater part of an organization that makes such a difference to not only these designers, but also their institutions. As we grow in the profession, we also directly impact our institutions through areas such as alumni relations, prospective marketing, and donor relations.”
Brian Yohn
Assistant Director of Creative Services
Student Affairs Communications, Virginia Tech
“I’ve spent a majority of my career in higher education, and hope to continue to grow my career and skills through involvement in wonderful organizations like UCDA, and giving back to a community I have so much love and admiration for would mean the world to me.”
Adobe simplifies with asynchronous editing
Adobe is streamlining the process of working in teams on Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fresco projects during a time when working from home is the default.
The new Creative Cloud updates introduce an ‘Invite to Edit’ feature, which is a simple touch but could be a significant timesaver for creators working on shared documents. The option brings asynchronous co-editing to cloud documents, allowing users to send invitations to collaborators to work on files remotely, one at a time, from their desktops, iPads or iPhones (for Fresco).
To share a project for editing, your PSD or AI files will first have to be saved as cloud documents. The invite button can be found on the top right corner of the Creative Cloud apps; simply enter your teammate’s email address.
Aside from the ‘Invite to Edit’ function, Photoshop users can now enable ‘Preset Sync’, which carries presets—namely brushes, gradients, swatches, styles, shapes, and patterns—from one device to another desktop device logged into with the same Adobe ID.
Learn more about the new additions in the video below or in Adobe’s full blog post at tinyurl.com/ucda-collaboration.
Five things to think about when updating your logo
When it comes to brand recognition your logo is everything. It is the window into your identity. It represents your brand story, grabs your audience, and connects them to what you stand for, so you want to be sure your logo is delivering the right message. Does your logo effectively communicate the essence of your brand? If not, it may be time for a refresh. Here are five questions to ask yourself as you consider updating your logo:
- Does your logo reflect your brand’s current identity?
- Is your logo visually outdated?
- Is your logo too simple or too complicated?
- Do your logo colors communicate the personality of the brand?
- Is your logo versatile?
Read more at the blog post by Theo Fels, creative director of Feisty Brown at tinyurl.com/ucda-logo-design.
Source: GDUSA
CommCentered: higher ed marketing and design review
CommCentered is an immersive review of the best marketing and communications solutions coming from the higher education sector.
This non-profit project, created by RJ Thompson, is designed to be a multi-dimensional resource that features some of the best examples of marketing, design, and communications work being created in the higher education sector across the United States. The name refers to the ideal alignment of strategy, creative execution, and engagement that can be found in the many excellent examples of educational advertising.
We wish to celebrate the best work and all the talented creative teams who produce them. As an academically-focused research tool, CommCentered acts as an observational or longitudinal study of the work being created to advertise education.
Visit CommCentered’s website for more information or to submit your work: commcentered.org
Stroke of genius
“How much fun can you have with a brush in your hand?” Terry Smith—signwriter, hot rod owner, and passionate Jim Clark fan—smiles broadly before resuming the delicate drop shadow he’s applying to a sign in his workshop. Watching the letters come alive to his gold leaf enamel is truly humbling. Where I’d smudge the curves in a letter ‘O,’ he glides around them like his hero at the wheel of a Lotus 49. His consistency is remarkable; almost, but not quite, as though the letters were printed.
Read why car signwriting is making a comeback at tinyurl.com/ucda-car.
Source: Autocar.co.uk
The Book project
Destroying books has traditionally been seen as brutal, almost an inhumane act. Is it possible that instead, book destruction can be turned into beautiful and inspiring works of art?
Internationally known artist and award-winning photographer and graphic designer Julius Friedman’s The Book project was inspired by Gail Gilbert, the art librarian at the University of Louisville Library, when she gave him a bag of books she was discarding. She thought he could tear them up and make collages or an art project. Julius told her he was not a collage artist and, being a book designer, he could not tear them up. After months of them sitting in his basement and Gail saying, “Do something with them,” Julius made his first deconstruction and collage. Julius continued making them for fun and it grew into a body of work. “I looked at the book from its beginnings to the current and emerging world of the Kindle and other electronic tablets, intuitively keeping in mind the sacred word, censorship, holding an object, its tactile way, even the smell of a book, etc. That is how it began.”
Many of Julius’ works from The Book project were on display at the Smyrna Public Library during the month of February. The pieces are part of the UCDA Foundation’s Julius Friedman Collection. (Gift of the Julius Friedman Estate, Carol Friedman-Abrams, and the Julius Friedman Foundation).
The Book of Homelessness is the first graphic novel created by homeless people
London charity Accumulate has released an “honest, painful and revelatory” book telling the stories of 18 different people and their experiences of homelessness. The Book of Homelessness incorporates collages, illustrations, comics, poems and prose, all created as part of a three-month course organized by the charity.
Through workshops in everything from creative writing to drawing and sequencing, Accumulate aimed to allow people affected by homelessness to take control over telling their own stories, on their own terms. “When you are excluded and marginalised from society, control is taken away from you,” Accumulate founder Marice Cumber said.
The result is what Accumulate describes as “the world's first-ever graphic novel created by people affected by homelessness.”
Source: dezeen.com