Badass Ideas

When I found out that I will be teaching two typography classes this summer at CDIA Boston University I got really excited and began to dive into some type research. In my intro to graphic design class I talk about the evolution of letters and we do a project that revolves around illuminated letters. Some of the students end up coming up with some really fun stuff.

Read on…

For a little under 3 years I worked on the US Army’s web team. The entire experience could be pages of blog posts in itself, I learned a lot about design, the web, our government, our military, friendship, talent and about life. We were responsible for the design and maintenance of Army.mil at the height of the Iraq war, and as a designer I found myself feeling pretty rejected by other designers and the design community.

Sure, maybe I was a little self conscious. When you are in design school you are programed to design for big brands and big ideas, but I would show people my portfolio full of army history sites and sites that featured guns and find myself having to defend the reasons I chose to design for our nation’s military. Despite the fact that I worked with  talented designers and developers  and the fact we were doing amazing design it went unnoticed and sometimes even scoffed at by other designers.

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Do you ever browse the web and find a hideous website featured in a web design gallery? I regularly ponder society’s perception of “Good Design” and what people consider beautiful, and it brings me back to my studies from college. If only I knew at the time that philosophy and postmodern minimalism would come back to haunt me as a designer.

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I had a wonderful time at SXSW this year and met tons of fantastic folks who came out to my presentation. Thanks to everyone who was there, I had a blast and I hope you all did too!

It’s no secret that I love typography, and this year I will be giving a talk at SXSW called “Get Stoked on Web Typography”. I love SXSW almost as much as I love letters, so it is a fantastic match!

If you have the chance to check it out stop by on Friday March 12th at 3:30 in Ballroom E  in the Austin Convention center. My talk is the second in line-up of three design related talks that are being moderated by Jason Beaird as part of the Design Workshop. Workshops are new at this year’s SXSW and were created as a solution to folks who have common interests having to truck all over the convention in order to see related materials. Cennydd Bowles will be talking about Beauty in Web design as the first of our 3 talks and Matthew Smith will be detailing the steps you need to take to go from Good to Great web design. I am humbled to be a part of this fantastic line-up and I hope to see you all there!

You can tell us you are going to be there on Facebook or sign into sitby.us (the best way to track your schedule via your iphone).

This is my 5th trip to South By and every year I have written a little bit about my experiences… check out previous posts here.