Fly

Music/Film for Your Weekend: Do The Right Thing

June 30th marks the 25th anniversary of Do The Right Thing, and many events are happening in celebration of the groundbreaking film. A book giving behind-the-scenes visuals and tid-bits was released this month, there's a block party in Brooklyn celebrating the anniversary, and the block where the film was shot was just renamed Do The Right Thing Way. I appreciate the acknowledgement of this dynamic piece of work that has ignited and inspired me in so many ways.

This year I had the honor (again) to design the materials for the 2014 BlackStar Film Festival. Without even realizing that 2014 marks the 25th anniversary, I used the film's catalytic character, Radio Raheem, as a muse for this year's design.

The festival theme is music with an emphasis on how music and film can be used to educate and empower, and inspire change. For me, Do The Right Thing speaks to this, more specifically with the Radio Raheem character and his boombox blasting Public Enemy's "Fight the Power."

In addition to DTRT, activism, political/cultural/social justice, and propaganda posters were all themes that inspired the direction of the design for the festival.

I'm overjoyed that the inspiration for the festival materials pay homage to this phenomenal film during it's 25th anniversary.

Whether it's hitting up the block party in BK, watching the film, blasting "Fight the Power" or getting it in like Tina/Rosie Perez at a dance party, I hope you'll get to celebrate Do The Right Thing in some way this weekend.

For more information about the BlackStar Film Festival click here.

When Being a Designer/Artist Sucks

I love the work that I do. It is so great to see an idea in my mind and make it come to life with the tools I have at my fingertips. It's not easy work to make it happen, matter-of-fact it has taken me almost twenty years to develop these skills, and I have tons of experience and owe plenty of student loan money to prove it.

What absolutely sucks about this career path I've chosen is the lack of respect I experience regularly in regards to the use of the work I've created.

As an artist/designer I can tolerate having to constantly be on my toes to defend the validity of the work I do, but that doesn't bother me so much. I can talk anyone into the ground about why the arts and design disciplines are important. But what I absolutely can't tolerate is someone using or selling my work to promote their brand without permission.

In the last few years since I've launched I Love My Hair, I have written numerous cease and desist letters and have been emailed several links to people who have used The Only Regret illustration for t-shirts, logos, web site graphics, etc. without my knowledge let alone my permission. Which pisses me off. Why? Not because of money or damages, but because it's just absolutely wrong!

In some of these cases the owners of these brands have been duped and have paid money for something they genuinely thought was an original (at least I hope), therefore I cannot fault them. So it comes down to the "designer" who thinks it's ok to pull designs and use them as their own.

I can slightly see non-designers/artists doing this; some people just don't know or understand copyright-protected materials or that you just don't steal other people's work and claim it as your own. But fellow artists and designers? That is just unacceptable. This field is already tough and highly competitive. We know more than anyone how difficult it is to make it happen — must we shoot one another in the foot to get an extra buck?

With that said. Be careful. Whether you are hiring a designer or using images you've found you need to be absolutely sure it is an original. Do your own research, ask around, and make sure you're using a reputable source. Reach out to other clients of the designer you're working with; and make sure you totally understand the royalty use of any image source you use. Just because it's on the web doesn't mean it's free.

If you have any questions about using designs, illustration, or other imagery for your brand please feel free to email me. I'd be happy to share what I know. I believe the only way to stop this is for all of us to understand the laws and know that artists have rights, too.

My fellow comrades, have you experienced this? How did you handle it?

Speaking at the Museum of the African Diaspora

This Friday I will be speaking about my design career path with the Inneract Project at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. I'm really excited and hope that you will come out to say hi if you live in the area.

You can purchase tickets here.

Inneract Project & MoAD presents Designing in Color: Andrea Pippins
MOAD San Francisco
Friday, Oct. 4
5:30PM - 7:30PM

Your Design Portfolio

With the Pop & Fly Portfolio Review just a few days away I thought I'd share some tips with everyone on how to create a portfolio that shines.

In a recent post I talked about how important it is to present your portfolio in a way that really allows the work to stand out on it's own, and also reflects who you are as a designer. Your work can be amazing but in the wrong format or style you can give the wrong impression. To avoid any confusion here are a few tips for developing your design portfolio... {read on}

Black Studies in Art and Design Education

Parsons the New School for Design will host the first international conference on the state of black culture in art and design education this weekend. I really wish I could be there but hope that many of you will be able to attend and support this much needed dialog.

Black Studies in Art and Design Education:
Past Gains, Present Resistance, Future Challenges
MARCH 26-27, 2011
Parsons the New School for Design
Kellen Auditorium
66 Fifth Ave
NY, NY 10003

Click here for more information about the schedule and participants.

Design & Me: I Love My Hair

 
I'm excited to share that I will be launching my new shop to sell the artwork I've been posting about over the last few months. The brand is called I Love My Hair, a celebration of naturally coily hair through art and design. For Design & Me I wrote a little something about the project, read it here.

Design & Me: Squash Hunger

As I was leaving Whole Foods today I noticed a huge box by the door for a canned food collection. On the box was this image (pictured left) (along with the Philabundance logo) stuck to the side. I saw it and thought it was a cute and clever solution for a serious problem. I wondered though, was "squash" in parenthesis necessary? Would I have gotten it without someone pointing out to me that the squash graphic is representing the verb tense of squash? Did someone in the presentation meeting say to the designer, "People aren't gonna get it, you HAVE to put the word "squash" under the squash." Redundant?

I've been there before where the marketing department underestimates the intuition of everyday people. But then I wonder if us designers assume that everyone is going to get it. It's a constant battle, designers just want to be creative and brilliant (and of course get the message across successfully), where marketers just want to sell, or in this case make people understand that they should be helping others have a decent meal. Yes, it's a battle, but the two need each other tremendously. Marketing keeps designers' design functional, while we designers keep the marketers on their visually creative toes and push the bar so that we're not giving everyday people the same thing over and over. That right there is bad news for communicating a message, idea, brand, or product.

For all I know it could've been the designer who made the decision to explain the squash and beet graphic. Either way I thought it was an interesting interpretation without the typical imagery we see regarding hunger. Please visit Philabundance to learn more on how Philly is trying to "beet" hunger.

Fly on DesignWorkLife

I've been neglecting the graphic designer in me by not doing posts on design. Shame on me. So when I was invited to be a guest blogger on my favorite design blog I felt extremely honored and excited to get back into my design blogging. See who did this amazing work below and more on DesignWorkLife.

Design & Me: Early Beginnings

When I was four my mother bought me one of those Fisher Price doctor sets as inspiration for me to pursue a career in medicine. She thought if she introduced me to the field early on I would then gain interest in the industry of saving lives. Well, she knew that dream was lost when I proceeded to jam the toy syringe into her arm for our imaginary "routine exam." Had it been real, she — the patient, would have been seriously injured from the severe force of my injection. I would play with that set for a minute then abandon the toy stethoscope for my crayons and color for hours. Yes, it had been determined — I was not going to be a doctor.

Six years later I attempted to start my very own neighborhood newsletter for kids called Saturday Morning News. My friend's mom had this typewriter, which I obsessed over, and she would let me borrow it just so I could type little stories and letters. (Yes, I used a typewriter! This is aging me.) So I typed up the little "articles," created ads for my mom's then business and made Xerox copies at school (I was also VERY obsessed with the copy-machine). I had a newsletter and was very pleased to pass them out to my neighborhood friends for free, although it clearly stated on the upper right hand corner that it was 25¢. I only "published" two, but it was a good run :).

In the sixth grade I ran for class president. I won, but my favorite part of the whole experience was designing the posters for my campaign. Then in high-school I was all about writing stories and trying to design my own clothes. In every stage of my life I was experimenting with creative ways of expression through visual media. I was a designer and didn't even know.

Lately, my Design & Me posts have been very much about nostalgia and my early years of design. I think it's because I'm about to graduate and I'm thinking about all the things that lead me up to this point. From that disastrous injection to my love of crayons and obsessing over a typewriter it amazes me how who you are can develop so early and so effortlessly. Those things I did then are things I love now as an artist and designer. I mean, of course, my taste has evolved, but that foundation has been laid. Now it's just a matter of looking at all those things, evolving from them and executing.

Design & Me: Nostalgia + Alphabet Truck

As a child I used to spend my summers with my dad who lived in Indiana. He would pick me up by car and we would drive to Indiana for twelve hours straight. I remember so much from those trips (here's another post related to those drives). Among those memories were the logos on trucks. Ever see the Maersk logo? It was one of my favorites. I loved that blue, and the star in the center always intrigued me. I would count how many times I would see it on the road, probably not realizing I might've been counting the same truck. That was my first taste of graphic design. Is that why logos are my favorite things to design today?

This project, Alphabet Truck, from Eric Tabuchi is a collection of photographed trucks stamped with a letter logo, and each truck found on the highway makes up the alphabet. This captured me because it took me back to those drives. It's a unique project and I can't wait to see Eric complete the second round. See what letters he's missing here.

Alphabet Truck makes me think about how certain things stay with us, shapes us, and inspires us. Who knew that watching logos on trucks zoom by on my way to Indiana would become a nostalgic memory and possibly the reason why I now love logo design.

Design & Me: Thesis

Next week I will begin the end of my graduate design studies. It's my last semester and as a final semester grad student in the design program I have to come up with a project for my thesis class. I have complete creative freedom to do anything I want. ANYTHING I WANT! But what do I want? Crap. I have only a few days to come up with three separate ideas to propose and I have no idea what I want to do. Crap again.

So as you can see this post is only about me expressing my frustration towards this creative road-block. I want to come up with something innovative, beautiful, fabulous and fun. I'm thrilled yet absolutely clueless. Therefore, this installment of Design & Me has no real conclusion...

Design & Me: Art + History

A few months ago I had the lovely opportunity to be featured in the Creative Quarterly's Design New Talent Issue. I turned to this page and there I was. Although I am truly honored and grateful for the feature I couldn't help but feel saddened at what I saw. Do you see what I'm talking about?  Look closely.

 

I am the only brown face on the page, the only African-American featured.

Everyday in some form or fashion history is being made. As history unfolds, artists with pens, paintbrushes, cameras, and recorders are there ready to capture every moment. Without them, us, the past would not have a voice. Think about it, without Michaelangelo's paintings, Toulouse-Lautrec's prints or Erte's fashion illustrations we would not have a visual representation of the daily lives of the people who came before us. Surely now we have television and youtube to capture everything but there are so many ways to interpret one story (i.e. I love historical illustrations). And this leads me to my point. Without diversity in the fields of art the interpretations of our stories, our history, becomes very one-sided. This goes for the way it's depicted and who's doing the depicting.

We need all forms of art and we need every kind of person to be in those various areas recording our history. Whether it's behind the camera, easel, on the keyboard, in front of the computer or at a drafting table — it's purely mandatory. Through multiple perspectives we can get an accurate account of the world around us and also avoid mistakes like the controversial Vogue cover with Gisele Bündchen and Lebron James (I bet there wasn't anyone of color in that meeting to say, "hey this cover is way wrong").

So what does it take to make it happen? It's a question I always ponder over. I have some ideas, I guess it's just a matter of doing them. It's 2008. We have the very first African-American president, Edris Elba (so beautiful) is rumored to be the first African-American James Bond. All this is great but it has taken too long. We need more diversity in media production, design and fine arts ASAP!

Design & Me: Apocalypto

I am so easily distracted when I'm in a creative slump. I will let anything take my mind away from the designs I'm supposed to be working on. The other night was a perfect example of this, although I've seen Apocalypto a dozen times somehow I found myself sitting in front of the television watching it again. I tried to convince myself that I would sketch while I watched but if you've seen this movie you know that it's entirely impossible to take your eyes away from the screen. {{Read more here}}

Design & Me: What Do You Do?

Lately, I find more people understand what it means to be a graphic designer. Nowadays it's even trendy to say you're an art director, an animation designer, or a lettering artist. I've also noticed that you can find a graphic designer written into some movie or sitcom story-line because the general public now has an idea of what we do. This is great because when I go to family functions or networking events I don't have to go into a deep explanation about what a logo is and say, "you know, like the Nike symbol," and they blankly say, "Oh, I see," when they really don't.

It's so funny because although my parents support me in every way, I know they still don't understand what I do. And poor mom, she has a really hard time explaining my career of choice to our family members in Brazil. They have no idea what graphic design entails, so she just tells them I draw on the computer. Hilarious. {{Read more.}}

Design & Me: Show Off

I accidentally posted this the other day, I hadn't even proofread it so the previous version was raggedy with grammatical errors. Here it is, revised:

In my design career as both a student, a professional, a student again as well as a teacher (yes I'm teaching now) I've gotten so many words of advice from supervisors, professors and mentors and they all shared really great inspirations. But the best advice I got was from my professor when I was in undergrad when we were getting our portfolios together just before graduation. He told us seniors to get out there and show off our work, whether or not a company is looking for new talent make sure you try to meet with them anyway. It was a great way to practice interviewing skills as new designers entering the professional world, and also gives you more exposure. Yes anyone can see your wonderful work on the web but there's nothing like meeting with the person behind the work and seeing actual pieces in their book (yes, you should have some actual pieces in your portfolio). Then he would finish saying that by showing off our work to many companies, even if they are not hiring, you might impress them enough to refer you to a company who is hiring. {{Read more here.}}