the studio education links

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Typography

Font Font

My favorite Type Foundary


Hoefler & Co

My other favorite Type Foundary

 

Emigre

My favorite Type Foundary, redux.

 

Veer

Because there are so many good Type Foundaries.

 

Typographica

Because there is just too much to keep track of.

 

Typophile

Because there is even more you need to keep track of.

 

My Fonts

Solid, all around Font site - good selection, nice, basic information on history and development of various fonts and has the terrific "What the Font?" feature. Try it out.

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Essential Design Sites

AIGA

THE Graphic Design organization. Join it.

 

Design Observer

The grandaddy of independent graphic design journalism. In many ways, it's still the best.

 

Imprint

The 900 pound baby from Print Magazine.

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Branding

Findings and Branding Guidelines for Macaroni Grill

A lovely overview of a combined Findings document with Branding Guidelines created by Superbig Creative.

 

Barbicon Brand Guide

A style guide for The Barbicon created by Edryd Sharp. Sharp's Issuu page has a number of branding guidelines that he's laid out - you can get a good sense of what goes into a strong style guide from his work.

 

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens

Another beautifully designed style guide.

 

Adobe Brand Guidelines

This is a standard corporate guidelines document. While not as lovely as the others, it has all the necessary componants that large, international companies are looking for.

 

*Santa* Brand Book

The perfect in-joke for graphic designers. I still laugh out loud at it.

 

Presentation

Hollo's PaperCraft

Terrific paper store in Brunswick

 

Xpedex Paper

Professional paper suppliers, they have an excellent selection of high quality production papers in stock, can order many things by the ream, and the staff is very knowledgable. A really important resource.

 

Jam Paper

Huge stationary store in New York. They have an astonishing selection of paper, envelopes, cards.... basically they carry all sorts of surfaces for designers to play with.

 

PaperHaus

This Seattle store has a stunning selection of portfolio and presentation cases, as well as bags, cases, and organizers. When you land that Art Director's job, this is where you'll go.

 

Cranky Pressman

Production letterpress, just over in Salem, Ohio. Beautiful. Expensive. Worth it.

 

Alpha Graphics

Quality digital printing. Alpha has wire binding, digital "varnishes" and other finishes, good prices on booklet production, and other services not covered by our in-house shop. And, if the output center at school is slammed, this is a great alternative.

 

Thwing Center Printing Services at Case

When the CIA output center is too busy (Spring Show, finals, etc), this should be your first stop. They are located nearby (Thwing), are affordable, and do a decent job of printing large plots.

 

DesignersToolbox.com

Need to know an envelope size? What about iPhone GUI elements? Need to find the difference between gate fold and panel fold? How about a little lorum ipsum? That, and more, is all here.


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Cool Things That Come Up In Class

DesCom - Vincent Meertens

Vincent Meertens is a brilliant designer from the Netherlands who showcases what a contemporary designer is: he designs print, codes, creates marks, etc,all of which has solid design thinking behind it. "Time Maps" are the thing everyone is talking about.

 

G4D - USTWO

Introduced by our French students (thank you!), this UK firm showcases what contemporary firms are doing and looking for. Download the pdf, and realize just how you need to be thinking about all this stuff.

 

BFA - The New Ecology of Things

This is the site that was built to work with the book I brought in the first day. You need the accompanying book and poster to get the full experience, but this site shows the possibilities of media experimentation that you can, and should, be pursuing.

 

BFA - Cake Bound Away

This has a neat little video showing the making of Bound Away, the book Cake made with Bandmade Books to benefit the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry.

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Great Poster References

AIGA Archives, Posters

This should lead directly into the Archives of award winning posters. Over 2200 examples of great posters.

 

Paula Scher Posters

This is a quick google image search on the grande damme of poster design, Paula Scher.


Great Swiss Design

This site has a great sampling of historic posters, for now, concentrate on The International Style. The link should go right there.




Web and Device Markup

W3C HTML5 Markup

HTML5 is about one, key thing. Symantic markup. Yes, this is land of the geeks, but at long last, the geeks are speaking english. Here is the place you can keep up on the latest code. This link takes you directly to markup, but take the time to explore the entire W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) site. This is where it all happens.


WhatWg

The WebHypertext Application Technology Working Group is an open source community sharing information on web standards and development. Keep the W3C and WhatWg easily available, and get to know both sites. They are invaluable.

 

Codecademy

Teach yourself code online. This is for the truly disciplined.

 

CSS Zen Garden

This site shows the power of CSS and what you can do with a successful skin.

 

Volkside

These are the people who created Wirify, the wireframe extension you can add to your browsers. They have other amazing tools as well - well worth checking out.


Adobe Digital Editions

Simulate eReaders on your desktop as you develop for all brands of devices.


Orchard UI Guidelines for Theme Authors

eBooks, etc. are all based in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This open source community project will help device designers stay in standards and create successful experiences.

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Information

Edward Tufte

It can be argued that this man created the field of Information Design. He certainly brought the field to prominance. Yes, it's been degraded into "Info Graphics" and far too many neophytes are trying to do it, but this is still the place to start. A statistician with a PhD in Political Science, he clarifies the need, purpose and impact of good information design better than anyone else.


Information is Beautiful

This site is from London (of course), Mecca for contemporary graphic design.


FastCo Design's InfoGraphic of the Day

Often good, sometimes brilliant, and occasionally silly, this site manages to find the best of that overworked term: Info Graphic.


Pericopic: Do Good With Data

One of the more fascinating of the information design firms out there.


Francesco Franchi

One of the leading information designers in the world.


Moritz Stefaner

One of the other leading information designers out there.


Info Esthetics

Another good reference to interesting pieces of data visualization. They often choose silly things (seating habits of MIT grad students), but they also have unusal examples to pay attention to (Representing long-distance SMS messages as paper planes).

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Research

Chicago Manual of Style Quick Guide

A quick reference for the most-used citations (books, ebooks, periodicals, websites, etc) in Chicago Style - one of the most common standards for citation of credit.


How To Write A Bibliography, MLA Style

The Modern Language Association is the other primary standard for citation (as a professional, you will be asked to use either MLA or Chicago, get comfortable with both). This outlines Bibliography.


Writing A Thesis Statement

UNCs handout on Thesis Statements. An excellent introduction.


How To Write A Hypothesis

This neat little site has a very good introduction to research and developing ideas. It's about science, but just substitue the word "design" for "science" and you'll be fine.

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Best Practices

Photoshop File Formats

This is the official Adobe Guide to all those options in the "Save As" drop-down menu.


Will It Print?

Though a bit dated (2009), this PDF from InDesign Magazine has a solid guide to cleaning up your files for print.


Adobe's Guide To PDFs For Printing

Adobe has tremendous resources all over it's website. Here's another one for sending your files to print.


When To Use Illustrator, Photoshop, and/or InDesign

This is a nice, concise guide to when to use each program for Best Practices.

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Design for Communication . BFA . Graphics for Design