Posts in Agencies

Over the last few months I (Shelby) have been working on a number of large updates to Designspiration. The first of these updates is the job board. The goal of the job board is to help creatives find career opportunities at great companies.

There were a number of challenging aspects of building this site addition, but the main one was how to handle mobile. It’s not something I’ve done a whole lot of and just to complicate things, a new grid needed to be developed for the updates to follow. The restructuring of the grid took just about as much time to figure out as it did to build the job board itself. I’ll follow up this post after the next updates to talk more about making Designspiration fast on mobile (hint, hint).

If you know an agency or company looking to hire, post a job or let them know about the job board. Also, follow the Designspiration jobs twitter @Dspnjobs for job updates.

Check it out: http://ds.pn/jobs

Why Design is a great video series by furniture company and all around design icon Herman Miller, which profiles some of it’s best designers:

At Herman Miller design is the language we use to ask questions and seek answers to the problems our customers face. The design process is a journey into the unknown—or as George Nelson once quipped, “I have never met a designer who was retained to keep things the same as they were.” Before we decide what we do and how we do it, we like to begin by asking the question “Why?” In Why Design, a new video series, we explore the world through the eyes of our designers, and share something of why we value their point of view.

Each Monday morning, from September 10th through October 29th, Herman Miller will launch a new designer profile at Why Design. The series includes:

9.10.12 – Yves Béhar – “Surfing Is Like Improvisational Jazz”
9.17.12 – Don Chadwick – “The Camera Becomes an Extension of Your Eyes”
9.24.12 – Ayse Birsel – “Your Life Is Your Most Important Project”
10.1.12 – Irving Harper – “Paper Is a Versatile Medium”
10.8.12 – Gianfranco Zaccai – “Great Food Should Be Like Great Design”
10.15.12 – Studio 7.5 – “Design by Its Nature Is Collaborative”
10.22.12 – Steve Frykholm – “It’s the Breaks That Allow My Mind to Refresh”
10.29.12 – Sam Hecht + Kim Colin – “We Need Contrast and Tension to Be Able to Create”

Classic branding and packaging design by Barcelona-based firm Marnich Associtates. The stuff for Noguera & Vintro is incredible. Interestingly enough — and despite that excellent branding — they’re apparently the “exclusive distributor of Hello Kitty in Spain”. Good thing you have this incredible, minimalist branding, because we all know Hello Kitty retailers and very concerned with modernist graphic design.

All joking aside, this seems like a very strange choice of branding considering the product / market. It also just plain looks weird on the site with all that garish Hello Kitty stuff going on in the middle. Do you think the client asked for this seemingly incongruous style of branding or was it foisted upon them by an overzealous design shop? Judging from a lot of the playful work on Marnich’s site, I’d bet on the former as I could see them treating this right. Odd.

Via Aisle One

Just about as good as it gets.

Quadradão via Grainedit

Philistine DSGN is a anti-art collective out of Brooklyn, NY that is run by Danny Scales. In my mind he finds the beauty in what most people might see as darkness but since i’ve known him I see it as pure care taking of what should be visually appealing and interesting during a time where a lot of darker looking design is so ordinary and without surprise in my mind.

I just got back from Portland tonight, I had a great time up there, thanks to everyone who made it out Friday for the show. I’ve always been impressed by Portland’s overall design sensibility, they have that very distinct kind of industrial aesthetic that is the hallmark of the Pacific Northwest. Portland based Parliament Design’s studio embodies that ethic to a tee. The reclaimed warehouse space has been meticulously crafted into a living, breathing workspace that oozes creativity. The really striking part is that most of the space was purpose-built for the studio from reclaimed materials and design relics. More pictures here.

I’ve never taken the aesthetics of my workspace very seriously, but seeing this makes me want to reconsider. I do envy pure design studios like this, it seems much easier to make a space look clean and minimal with just computers and graphic design tools. Trying to house my music and design studio in the same space has always posed a challenge, I end up feeling crowded by all the equipment and it’s hard to create a layout that’s both accessible and clean. Hopefully someday I can split them up, but until then I will have to look at pictures like these and be jealous.

How about you? How important do you feel the look and layout of your workspace is to your overall creativity and productivity? Sound off in the comments »

Awe inspiring work by French design collective Ill Studio. I really can’t get over the colors and texture in the Nike ad, absolutely incredible. From their About page:

The ill-studio is a French group of collaborators devoted to fine arts. Our goal is to bring ten individuals together, working in various artistic areas such as graphic design, photography, typography, illustration, video, motion design, etc.

The ill-studio is Léonard Vernhet, Thomas Subreville, Nicolas Malinowsky, Thierry Audurand, Sébastien Michelini, Pierre Dixsaut, Harold Urcun, Artus de Lavilléon, David Luraschi and Fred Mortagne.

Link