Quote of the day

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." ~Henry Ford

More Positive News

StarTribune, dateline Dec 29, 2008... "While 3M, Andersen Corp., Hutchinson Technology, Best Buy, Tenant, Graco, Pentair and other big-name Minnesota-based companies shed 7,000 workers since September, dozens of small Minnesota manufacturers are growing and hiring." These small companies are thriving because they tend to be innovative and offer customized services.
In the same Business section of the strib is an article about Creatis, a creative and marketing staffing and services company. They supply creative and marketing pros to work on- or off-site for a client. With 110 full-time graphics and other professional people on staff, their revenue is growing.
Think Positive!

Advertising budgets

Many companies approach a downturn in the economy by slashing their advertising budgets. Their thought process is "where can we cut something that's non-essential". A wise business will maintain their advertising to keep their products in front of the people. In an article in the StarTribune last week (about 12/18/2008) General Mills was seen increasing their advertising expenses. Sure their products are every day needs to begin with but they were introducing new items and maintaining the exposure of existing items. The result is that their revenues are not only keeping up with most other food suppliers but are actually increasing/growing.
More reason to believe that with intelligent leadership businesses can turn this economy around. It's not just up to the federal government to bail us out.

Web Design Resources: issue#1— Layout, Typography, and Graphics

Here is a list of a few nice resources to help web design look good. 

The focus will not be on scripting, but rather on aesthetics and graphic treatment. However, most of these sites due include source-code examples and downloadable files (icing on cake).

1. 



The Grid System: Layout Resource for print and web

This site contains a ton of:

• articles
• tools
• books
• templates for InDesign print-layouts, and Photoshop web-layouts (nice!!!)
• blogs (with info that is actually useful)
• and much more

the site also offers an RSS feed, which allows you to subscribe and keep up to date on the latest articles

2.



The 960 Grid System
This site is an outstanding web-design resource. They have established a grid structure that is very flexible based on an overall width of 960px.
Excellent visual aides and explanations, as well as source code (html and css), printable grid templates, and existing examples of web layouts for ideas/inspiration.

3.

Web Designer Wall

A wall of design ideas, web trends, and tutorials.

Some really neat visual tricks to "spice-up" the appearance of your web designs.

Notable articles include

• Typographic Contrast and Flow
• css decorative gallary
• gradient text effect
• css: the all-expandable box
• Best of CSS design 2008 showcase

...and much, much more.

This site also offers an RSS feed to subscribe to their posts.

***That's all for this post, I will add more useful web resources to future posts (i have a ton of 'em)

-mike chau

Graphic designers leveraging their skills for the Web

There was a good article this morning on creativepro about using your print design skill when working on Web projects. As you know this is a major part of our work.

The latest stats still say that all designers spend most of their time designing for print, even so-called Web designers. But the worlds are very different.

The real problem is that no one really talks about is the fact that repurposing is a myth. Print projects need to be rewritten for the Web and vice versa.

More news that the print industry is not dead:
From a StarTribune business section article published 12/08/2008, "Minneapolis publisher R. Craig Bednar bets he can grow his magazine business despite bleak ad forecast."
This local magazine publisher now owns 25 titles.
"Bednar is betting that he can grow Tiger Oak's revenue to $21 million in 2009, from about $17 million this year."
Let's support him and the publishing business and buy a magazine today. Anyone want a copy of Minnesota Bride?

Thanks to David Bergsland for finding this bit of good news for graphic designers everywhere.
http://members.whattheythink.com/home/wttnews081111.cfm#

"According to the Report

— In September 2008, 99% of ad agencies surveyed said that “printed materials (traditional)” was the top media channel they worked on with clients in the past six months; 40% expected their use of “printed materials” to grow by more than 10% in the next 12 months."

Print isn't dead -- in fact it is still dominant.

Welcome to the first Blog for the Interactive Media & Graphic Design program at Globe/MSB. My intention is to get instructors to post relevent news articles and items of interest for the benefit of our students and faculty. ~Earl Slack, Associate Dean