The new site for Medical Traning Associates is up at USFirstAid.com and is ready for visitors. Please take a look and see what I have been up to. There are a lot of great projects coming along for the fall and I am excited that I will have a lot to show on this web site.

I can’t show a picture yet, but I am very excited about having finished the design for a new identity/logo for the Massachusetts School Library Association. And it is no small change. They have even decided to change their name a little too, dropping “Media” from Massachusetts School Library Media Association. It is a mouthful!

But anyway, the new logo looks fantastic and will be unveiled at their show in November 2007.

The most interesting aspect of the process of developing this logo is that it was done by committee entirely via electronic methods. Email is not the best medium for brainstorming, but we had a great group of people and we managed to build consensus within our little digital group towards creating a design that everyone likes. I hope that the rest of the organization likes it too. I guess we will see in November.

Come back in November and it will be posted on this site!

Another new site is done! Well, almost done. Peter is still working on content, but with his new WordPress powered website, that part is a cinch.

If you would like a web site for yourself, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Meanwhile, click on over to Peter Wallace Illustration and check out the cool design. I thought it would make sense for an illustrator to go with a sketchbook type theme. Peter has designed the image for the header and the buttons himself.

It is my pleasure to announce the unveiling of VistaClaraProductions.com, a new web site designed for Derek Velez-Partridge, Principal of the fledgling company. The site consists of a custom theme made for WordPress. Derek and I are both excited and I am sure this site will really help him spread the word for his work.

I have a number of other projects in the works, including three more web sites. So stay tuned and watch MeadDesign grow!

Ok, this is a bit of a departure from design, but is loosely related. I went and saw the third X-Men movie last night and was terribly disappointed. In a discussion with my wife, I realized that what upset me was not only the poorly written story, but the overt sentimentality of it. She did not really know what I meant and I wasn’t sure how to explain.

I have given it some thought, and I now know what I mean, which is this: The movie relies on the viewer to bring his or her positive sentiments about the characters to the film. If someone had written that script without using any characters known from any other story it would never have been made into a movie. The situation is further worsened by the fact that the characters were not particularly true to themselves, as they had developed through the previous two movies (I won’t even compare them to the ones in the comic books).

Art demands truth. And some sort of revelation through truth. Sentimentality comes about because of laziness, and because it is genuinely difficult to be truthful. It doesn’t really matter if it is a movie like X-Men 3, or a cheesy painting of a lighthouse, or some fluffy music. If the work requires the viewer to bring his or her happy sentiments about the subject for the thing to have any value at all, then it is sentimental.

Sentimentality is less of an issue in design, I think because design is generally focused on accomplishing something specific, such as communicating a particular idea. There is no room for sentimentality.

I went and saw this amazing exhibition yesterday with some other members of the Yolo Designers Group, and it was just amazing. If you are in the Davis, California area before the end of June, it is worth checking out. It is at the University in the Design museum in Walker Hall.

There is tons to look at and what is truly wonderful about the show, is so much of it can be touched. There are books, magazines, cd’s, posters and all kinds of other stuff. The show is intended to focus on what designers have been doing since the dotcom bust. The changes in media and methods and how we think about media that have happened in the past few years, which is a lifetime to a designer.

There is a lot of grungy, skateboard culture influenced sort of work in the show. And the work shown has a decidedly anti-establishment / anti-war / ultra left-wing sentiment attached to it, but it does speak volumes about where we have been for he past few years from a particular point of view.

Currating this show must have been maddening. Not only because of the sheer quanity of stuff, but also the variety coupled with the small space to put it all in. They did an amazing job, and the materials promoting the show, such at the poster, and postcard were striking in their design as well. You can check out the web site for the show here

Finally, I have designed some new business cards. It seems ridiculous to not have my own business cards, but when one is busy doing work for other people, this is the kind of thing that slides. Also, doing design for yourself is hard! You are your own worst customer! But seriously, the best design comes from having a conversation with the client about their needs and purpose, and it is hard to have that conversation with your self, without feeling a little nutty.

This particular image was designed to go with this site. I am hoping that this
site becomes the center piece of my professional web sites. A place to bring people to show off my work and let them get a sense of what I do and how I do it.

The other side of the card includes more information but is a modification of the style. I think the layout of the text and the type is really sharp. It will be interesting to see what sort of impact these cards make on people. For printing, I am using an online company called Overnight Prints. I have not used them before, so it will be interesting to see how they come out. If they are good, I will add the link to my links!

Exciting! a new web site to add to my portfolio and a new friend to add to my list of clients! PasleyStudio.com is created mostly within Wordpress, a great content management tool for small to medium sized web sites. I designed a custom template specifically for Ray Pasley, and now it is up to him to add content to his web site.

One thing that is particularly exciting about this web site is the integration of a gallery tool called simpleviewer from AirTightInteractive. This particular tool is flash based but has a web interface for adding images and albums on the fly. The viewer loads images in a nice elegant, yet simple way. I really like it. Getting it to integrate into the site took some tinkering, but the results have made it worth while. I am sure I will be using that little beauty again!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, it looks like I have more web work coming down the pike. I might get to rework the ADAC web site in coming months. That would be a fun project.

I went today to the new Ikea store in West Sacramento. Ikea is the ultimate design store - even more than the very elegant Apple stores. It is no wonder that people are so drawn to it. The furniture is inexpensive, modern, and clean lined. You don’t get that big bulky look from it and it is designed to make an efficient use of space.

That is not to say there is nothing to complain about Ikea furniture - it is not all of the greatest quality, and styling is pretty limited. But the in store experience is just phenomenal. They put arrows on the floor to guide you through the store and you see their products on display in dozens of different ways. You see combinations of wooden tables, fabric covered sofas, rugs, lighting, appliances - everything. They put together whole living spaces, including kitchens and bathrooms, that sport their space saving efficiency beautifully. Some pieces are just so ingenious and creative, you can’t but help admire them. The rocking chair on the left is one example. Don’t know if I would want one in my house, but it is way cool anyway.

Their web site is not nearly as fun as their store, but you can get a sense of their products if there is no store near you.

I believe this will be a reccuring topic on this site, as it is at the core of what the site is about. So why not sink our teeth in. In a recent coversation with a friend and fellow designer we discussed the kind of work we are seening from other designers. There is of course tons of bad design. We all know that. We all see it every day. There is lots of stuff that is OK, and there is stuff that is supurb.

A lot of stuff that I see coming from young designers fresh out of school is very flashy, very slick and really cool. But is it supurb design? Some of it is, and some of it is not. I would not put much in the “bad design” category. These students have worked hard, and they have learned a lot.

However, it does seem to me that a lot of it is trying too hard to be “cool” at the expense of the design’s purpose or intent. To me, in design, form follows function. Great design is 99% about performing a function adequately. Get the idea across, get out of the way. Sometimes this is done best with type, sometimes an image works faster. Sometimes a combination of the two is most effective.

Here is an example:

This image is from Craig Frazier Studio. The website is filled with excellent design and can be found here: Craig Frazier Studio. In this example you get imediately what the poster is about from the visual. There is nothing confusing to stand in the way. There is a very clear message.

It is important to me, as a designer to keep the perspective of purpose at the forefront of my mind when designing. At the end of the day, I want my client to be happy with the result. I want the work to be effective. How it rates among other designers is important to me too, but less important.