Last week, San Jose graffiti artist David Choe graced Denver with his presence for the annual street art convention of the Terminal Kings. In his time in here, he gave us several public murals that you can find in the art district, specifically off of 13th and Champa.
What brings me to talk about Choe, besides my grandiose excitement that Denver’s art culture is rapidly growing in a tasteful fashion, is the hype surrounding the rumors and anticipation of Facebook’s stock going public and Choe’s relationship with Facebook that will soon bring him to residency in America’s top 1%. Read the rest of this entry »
Not to geek out with techie stuff, but this is really awesome.
Yesterday at the studio, a couple of us found ourselves distracted in a conversation about Mashable’s recent blog post on 3D printing– something that actually ties into one of our clients and their work at Render Plus Systems. This conversation eventually led to open mouths watching videos of 3D printers in action in anticipation for the year 2030.
The Pirate Bay recently opened a new category on their site– called “Physibles”– which consists of files that can be downloaded and materialized through 3D printing. Last week, TPB finally spoke about their mission on their blog, stating, “Today most data is born digitally. It’s not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don’t talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we’re physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well! We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects.” How cool is this? Read the rest of this entry »
After 5 years with Hero, our powerhouse illustrator, designer, and code-wizard Shaw Nielsen is hitting the road to pursue freelance projects. We wish him the absolute best of luck in all of his endeavors, knowing very well he’ll come nothing short of just that, the best. We know he’ll be doing nothing but the snazziest of things in his future work and can’t wait to see where the projects unfold. Though we’re sad for him to leave us, we can’t be more excited for Shaw, who has acquired a mighty client base that reaches to the UK and all the way down-under, to Aussieland.
“Today’s all-access mediascape has flattened out many areas of expertise, casting shadows of doubt upon the future of journalism, graphic design, book publishing, and other specialized practices.”-Ellen Lupton
In Richard Poynor’s article, “Read All That? You Must Be Kidding Me”, recently published on The Design Observer, he analyzes Cooper-Hewitt curator Ellen Lupton and her articulated essay on today’s design culture, entitled “Reading and Writing,” a featured text in Graphic Design: Now in Production (a current survey on American design culture) that questions the role of written work in relation to visual or graphic design. After much analysis, Poynor arrives at the conclusive statement that though not always read by everyone, long-form writing does still possess a great value in curating visual projects, and it’s absence would be an absolute “impoverishment.” Read the rest of this entry »
A great post from Jim Carroll, Chairman of BBH London, reminded me of one of my core beliefs—a designer’s most powerful tool is their empathy. In Jim’s post, I Feel For You, he reminded me that empathy also applies to the whole sphere of marketing and communications.
We, Hero Design, are an Inbound Marketing Agency. We work very hard to measure and qualify the results we produce for our clients. Everything we do has some type of analytic attached. We use those analytics to make decisions on what’s working, what needs improvement and what tactics should be killed. Even with all of this data-based clarity, I sometimes feel, in my gut, that we need to zig, even though the data shows a zag is the next logical step. My designerly self just can’t shake what my empathy is telling me.
I always rely on my empathy when concepting, designing and writing. If something doesn’t feel right, I try a different approach. Jim’s post reminds me not to leave my empathy, my feelings, out of the on-going marketing choices we make throughout a campaign. Even though the creative is done, empathy is still needed. We often try to analyze our way to success, but maybe we should feel our way instead.
A great site put together by James Mellers of THISMANSLIFE.COM solves a problem we’ve already run into, how to explain responsive design to your client.
“Resize your browser to reveal just a handful of the kind of devices you should expect web pages to be viewed on. Each device illustration is rendered using the same basic HTML which adapts its appearance to the changing viewport size, representing different devices accordingly. This is achieved using media queries to apply different CSS rules for different sizes. This experiment is intended to illustrate the basic premise of responsive web design and the power of CSS to tackle it.” Read the rest of this entry »
A pin-board to “pin” your “interests.” It’s as simple as that.
Getting your business on Pinterest, even if you aren’t selling a product that caters to the crafty people on Etsy, is something to think about if you are curious about new ways to share your business interests (more specifically, the curation interests of your staff) with others in your industry. Being a design firm, we’ve decided to get on Pinterest to share our work and inspirations. Read the rest of this entry »
Using data based on the links among 721 million Facebook users, recent information has presented that the once perceived “six degrees of separation” back in 1967–aka the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the United States– now actually weighs in today at 4.37. On the global scale, that number is only slightly higher at 4.74. No one can deny that Social Media is to thank for making the world even smaller while simultaneously expanding social connections and widening educational opportunities. Maybe you think Social Media is annoying and redundant, but we think that the science behind it is pretty cool. Online social behaviors say a lot about who we are as a species, and who knows, maybe in 2012 that 4.37 will be an even smaller number. We dare you to re-post and share this. Let’s see how far it goes.
Jeff Mason, Hero Design Studio’s Principal and Design Director,
talks about how he came to run
a design studio and how his business experience makes him
a better designer.
Making things and solving problems.
Like many in the creative industries, I’ve taken a winding path to land where I am today—the owner and director of a design studio. I started in music, then move to product design, graphic design, web design and finally, now, some combination of all.
In the current state of design and marketing, I find all my past experiences converging into a skill-set of creative communication. Gone are the mass media days of my youth. They’ve been replaced by connected conversations and branded experiences that rely on a designer’s empathy and a craft-person’s skill. Read the rest of this entry »
