Chalkboard Calendar

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If you work in an agency, design studio or marketing department, you know how important it is to make deadlines as well as keep your creative juices flowing. Here’s a project that involves some do-it-yourself, and will enable you to keep track of appointments, meetings and deadlines in a unique way. And, if your office needs some sprucing up—this should do the trick.

Make your own chalkboard paint by following this recipe and how-to, and paint a chalkboard calendar on your office wall. You can create any color you want, and customize your calendar to suit your personal style. It’s a way to have some fun while getting organized—and you won’t be staring at a desk calendar with blocks too small to read your own writing in.

Happy crafting!

-Britni

AIGA Action Alert

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Below, is an e-mail I received from AIGA. For all designers out there, I hope you are as disgusted with this as I am. It’s these type people that trivialize our profession and belittle those who have dedicated their lives to design.

—Alex

ACTION ALERT: Check LogoGarden for identity work stolen from you

A website promoting access to “do-it-yourself logos for entrepreneurs” starting at $79 has copied logos and other images created by designers and displayed them as LogoGarden founder John Williams’s own work for sale, without the original designers’ permission.

Bill Gardner of Gardner Design, who found more than 200 of his own designs offered on the site, has documented Williams’s outrageous and unethical behavior on the blog Rock Paper Ink, including examples of the slight modifications of well-known logos like the identity for World Wildlife Fund and Time Warner Cable.

Williams has made slight modifications to many of the images, presumably in an attempt to avoid claims that he infringed on the original designers’ copyright rights, although these modifications are not enough to avoid liability for infringement of the creator’s rights in the underlying works. It may actually increase Williams’s liability by demonstrating his willful copyright infringement.

We believe the most powerful response we can make as a community is to demonstrate the profession’s outrage and the threat of clients’ legal action, if the rights to the design belong to the client. Several legal actions are already in process.

Your course of action, immediately:

  1. Check logogarden.com for your own work using the “try it free” button.
  2. If your creative work has been misappropriated, contact Williams (see below), contact your lawyer, contact your client and have your client contact his/her lawyer to make it clear that this is a violation of copyright law.
  3. If your work is on the site, contact Williams to make it clear that this represents illegal, unethical behavior; that it fails the basic test of decency, common sense or business acumen; and that it also exposes his customers to liabilities for copyright infringement.
  4. Send a copy of your correspondence to copyright@aiga.org.

Three possible addresses to use for your correspondence:

LogoGarden, LLC
1011 Centre Road, Suite 322
Wilmington, DE 19805

John Williams
230 Halmerton Drive
Franklin, TN 37069

Email: service@logogarden.com

This is an issue that affects us all and is such an egregious case of violating creative rights that we must take action.

Sincerely,

Richard Grefé
AIGA executive director

Coke Freestyle

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I stumbled across the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machine today and am so excited to try it out! First, I have to find one, because unfortunately, there aren’t any machines in my area. You can, however, go on Facebook and request that one be put in your area, so I just might have to do that.

The Freestyle machine is revolutionizing the way restaurants and shops provide soft drinks. With over 100 flavors and the touch screen option, you can customize your own drink. Data, such as top flavors will be sent back to Coca-Cola for  analysis.

Imagine, all of your favorite drinks and flavors in one place—the possibilities are endless. Read more about it!

Apache Music Video

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A friend of mine posted this on my Facebook earlier this week and I liked it so much I watched it probably four or five times in a row. I am so impressed at the way director Ned Wenlock and animator Rodney Selby were able to tell a story across vastly different landscapes on a revolving carousel. The elements and principles of design used to shift from scene to scene were implemented so well. It’s a joy to watch, as every turn brings a new landscape that comes to life with an incredible amount of detail. They created an amazingly full and deep landscape in a very unique and creative way.

Although I enjoy the song, I understand it may not appeal to everyone. If you find you don’t like it, turn down the volume and enjoy the beautiful animation.

-Alex

The Endless Search For Inspiration

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A friend of mine showed me an amazing website the other day, and I couldn’t
keep it to myself. The people of Designspiration.net describe it best,
“Designspiration provides a diverse selection of high quality,
user-submitted images as a means of sharing inspiration.”

-yeah that pretty much sums it up-however, the best part of Designspiration
isn’t just the things you find, it is how you use it.

Just start typing anywhere on the website—literally anywhere—you don’t
even need to be typing in a search box, and designspiration immediately
begins to refine your search. You can even create a search by selecting your
own custom color palette. Not looking for anything in particular? That’s
cool too. Designspiration makes it easy to browse image by image just by
pushing on the arrow keys of your keyboard.

Be careful though, it’s addicting. That’s the hardest part, if you’re asking
my opinion, is knowing when to stop looking and start creating…

Alex

Pinterest

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Whenever I’m browsing the web for blogs, trends, design ideas and DIY projects, I always happen to find really great stuff and then forget where I found it. I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly trying to retrace my cyber steps to find the last craft I wanted to try out.

So, when one of the designers here at Studiothink told me about Pinterest, I immediately fell in love.

Pinterest is essentially, in their own words, a Virtual Pinboard. It lets you pin and organize anything you find on the web. You can even organize your pinboards by theme, so you can create a collage of whatever theme you are obsessed with at the moment.

It’s great for designers and has proven useful for some of the designers here  because you can also browse other people’s pinboards for inspiration. The possibilities are endless.

Try Pinterest here!

-Britni