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Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History

Princeton Architectural Press shines a spotlight on a group of fascinating and varied women whose work has shaped, shifted, and formed graphic design as we know it today in Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women Graphic Design, edited by Briar Levit.

From women printers in colonial America to Louise E. Jefferson—an interdisciplinary designer and calligrapher starting out in the Harlem Renaissance—to the unacknowledged drafters of Monotype’s Type Drawing Office to the revolutionary propagandists of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective in the 1970s and 80s, Baseline Shift introduces auteurs, advocates for social justice, and creators across the spectrum of the graphic design discipline. The illuminating essays in this collection are essential reading for designers and fans of design, as well as anyone with an interest in history’s unsung heroines.

papress.com/products/baseline-shift

Wireframe Decks

The UX Kits Wireframe Deck is a deck of cards for building website or app layouts, right on a desk. The deck allows you to take a break from the screen and experiment with different layouts in a hands-on activity. These cards are extremely helpful for the initial design process of your website or app. It is perfect for content strategy and planning anywhere with your teammates. 

Included in the deck are 130 square cards, each representing a common website or user interface element, with a low fidelity mockup on one side and a high fidelity design on the other. A high quality storage box and tab dividers help you organize your cards.

uxkits.com/products/wireframe-deck

Campbell’s soup updates iconic can

Campbell’s has made a major update to the design of its flagship soup cans for the first time since Andy Warhol put them on the wall of a gallery in the early 1960s. More than five decades on, the familiar red-and-white color palette is still present, but the logo has been updated with a modernized logo scripture, a collaboration between Campbell’s creative team and Turner Duckworth. Among other things, the shadow on the script logo has been eliminated and the fong, which was originally based on founder Joseph A. Campbell’s signature, slightly changed. The word “soup” is in a new font, too, along with a more pronounced C in the fleurs-de-lis and the retention of a slanted O in the word soup, both tributes to the lettering from the company’s original labels dating back to the turn of the 20th century.

Drew Stocker, design director at Turner Duckworth, explains: “The challenge here was to retain the ‘DNA’ of the original, while contemporizing it for new audiences. The final result, which was developed with typographer Ian Brignell, is ‘less fussy.’”

Source: gdusa.com

Rumor: New Instagram feature might let you customize your grid

Instagram is supposedly considering a new feature that will make it much easier for you to create a profile grid aesthetic.

Leaker Alessandro Paluzzi noticed that Instagram has been developing an “edit grid” feature that allows you to reorder the posts in your profile, rather than just let it show your posts in order of most recent.

The ability to customize the grid should be handy for users who like to do multi-post collages or for those who want to highlight an important post they’ve shared in the past. Artists, musicians, celebrities, and businesses alike would probably love the ability to customize their profile grid to suit their aesthetic or enhance their public image. But we can see regular users also enjoying the opportunity to showcase their best posts.

Of course, Instagram itself hasn’t confirmed whether it’s truly making a grid-reordering feature.

Source: www.pocket-lint.com

New UCDA Board of Directors members

Congratulations to the following for being elected by the UCDA membership to the Board of Directors. Their four-year term begins on January 1, 2022.

Elissa Chudzicki (left)
Senior Graphic Designer, Marketing Communications
University of Notre Dame

Vanessa French Harris (right)
Director of Visual Communications, Marketing
Meredith College

The UCDA staff and board welcome them both and are looking forward to working with them as we plan for 2022 and beyond.

Freelance illustration rates: The complete guide to pricing your work

Worried you’re not charging the right rates for illustration work? Well, you’re not alone. It’s no exaggeration to say there is an awful lot of confusion on this issue within the artist and illustrator community. Tom May offers this advice. On the one hand, we’ve all had clients who are determined to pay you as little as possible on the point of principle (or even nothing, in return for ‘exposure’). These clients put a chill down your spine, and you feel the instant need to walk away. And yet other companies seem generally decent, and you really want to work for them, but the pay they offer feels like they’re undervaluing your services.

However, negotiating your rates can be tricky when you don’t really know what the ‘right’ market rate would be. Here are some pointers on how to set your rates and where the right balance lies:

1. Charge for usage, not time
2. Finding the right figure
3. Know your worth
4. Calculate for revisions
5. Check other illustrators’ prices
6. Push up your rates over time

Learn about these tips at creativeboom.com/resources/freelance-illustration-rates

Source: Creative Boom