Public Design Center

Rural Studio Next Week

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:57:33 -0700

The PDC will be lecturing and conducting a workshop at the Rural Studio on May 14th and 15th. Yikes, that's next week! The workshop will be on the subject of making books that contain the work of a single project. Our friend Mark Wise, who is an instructor at the Rural Studio, came 'round the PDC for a visit a short while ago and now we're gonna go and visit him and his gang over on his side of the state line (Mississippi / Alabama). We can't wait!

Frank Chimero

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:25:22 -0700

We ordered one print from Frank and he packed the shipping tube with tons of extra stuff for the Public Design Center! Wow!

www.flickr.com/photos/frank-sparrow/
www.frankchimero.com/
http://store.makemakemake.org/

Using Coda workshop

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:25:21 -0700

This week, the PDC had a great time giving a workshop about the application Coda. Coda is a rockin' web-building app from the indie app house Panic, the makers of the best FTP app in teh w0rld, Transmit. They graciously donated two licenses to our efforts. One for use in the Public Design Center and another which was awarded to a random workshop participant. Hooray for Panic!

We feel that Coda is a great fit for both those who are less-than-comfortable with their web skills and those who are ninja code masters. Take time to check it out, you'll like it:
http://www.panic.com/coda

Indexhibit

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:25:20 -0700

For our Indexhibit workshop this week, Vaska sent us rockin' posters. They're awesome!
indexhibit.org
tatiret.com

Library Catalog

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:08:41 -0700

PDC intern Brittany has been working hard to catalog and document every publication in the PDC Library. She's dutifully scanned in every barcode and, in many cases, typed in every bit of information by hand. A tedious task. Not only that, but she then photographed every publication as well. Not just the covers, but the most interesting spreads as well. We're impressed.

We're looking forward to organizing the information and photographs she's compiled and posting it online. Look for it in early summer.

Feltron 2007 Annual Report

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:47:19 -0700

The PDC library got its copy of the 2007 Feltron Annual Report.

If you've never encountered it, each year, Nicholas Felton produces a report of all of his personal activities such as number of tracks listened to, number of subway rides, and so forth. From that data, he produces beautiful infographics.

Proceed and Be Bold: Part Deux

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:47:54 -0700

We traveled to Gordo, Alabama last night to see our friend Amos Kennedy's new printing shop! New friend Laura Zinger was also there finishing up some filming for the documentary that she is making on him for Brown Finch Films. Peep the trailer: Proceed and Be Bold!!! Check out the some more photos of our trip HERE! We will be heading back to Gordo for Mule Day at the beginning of June!

Here Come our Clinics

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:10:11 -0700

We're excited to let you know that our print and web clinics are being launched. We'll get started on Monday April 14th with Pretty Much All You Need to Know About Adobe Illustrator, an introduction to Illustrator. It's been one of our most requested workshops thus far.

On Monday, April 21st, we'll be offering the workshop Using Coda. Coda, is a one-window web development application for OS X which is made by Panic, the same folks who produce our favorite FTP application, Transmit. They've graciously donated a license to be randomly given to one particpant in attendance at the Using Coda workshop. In addition, they've also donated a license to the Public Design Center. Hooray for the folks at Panic!

Check out the schedule for the month of April:

April 14th
Pretty Much All You Need to Know About Adobe Illustrator
An introduction to the unique aspects of Illustrator including paths, bezier curves, and the pathfinder palette.

April 16
How Much To Charge: A Workshop for Graphic Designers
Pricing can be one of the most challenging aspects of doing design work. This workshop will examine pricing models of freelance design and provide you with the tools to determine the appropriate amount to charge for your next project.

April 18
The Pathfinder Palette in Illustrator
Everyone has problems with Illustrator's pathfinder palette. You will be a pathfinder master after this clinic.

April 21
Using Coda
Mac users, learn to grow beautiful code with the one window web development application, Coda, at this workshop.

April 22
Indexhibit
Indexhibit is a web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound. It's perfect for anyone wanting to build a portfolio site. This clinic will cover the reasons why you might consider Indexhibit, how and where to install it, and of course how to customize it.

April 23
Your Monitor is Not Made of Paper
This session will examine the divide between screen color versus the printed result. We will focus on using the Pantone color matching system as well as ways to calibrate your monitor for color accuracy.

April 25
Color Correct Like a Pro
Good photography is 20% framing the shot and 80% image correction in the post-production. Come on down to this clinic and learn to color correct like a pro.

April 26
Molding and Casting
In the spirit of making things, local craftsman Bonn Camp will demonstrate the techniques used to carve and cast the custom moldings found in the PDC courtyard.

April 29th
CSS Layouts
This clinic will examine the techniques used to layout websites using only CSS methods. We will discuss floating, clearing, global resets, the box model, and browser rendering issues. You will come away from this session with plenty of templates from which to build your next project.

April 30
Hands-On Screenprinting
Get ink on your hands at our screenprinting workshop. Screenprinter exrtaordinare Will Bryant will lead this workshop. He will walk you through the whole process from screen exposure to printing. Each participant will have the opportunity to try their hand at printing.
Materials cost: $3.00

You can check out the rest of clinic schedule here: http://publicdesigncenter.org/workshops.php

Print

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:02:53 -0700

Will brought the newest issue of Print into the office this week. This is the 10-year anniversary of Print's New Visual Artists competition. Each year, the editors put the call out for recommendations of the most vibrant communication artists. They then distill down the recommendations they get until they've got the 20 movers and shakers that, well, move and shake them. In this issue, the editors have looked back amongst the 200 NVA's that they've selected over the past decade and extracted some interesting information. For example, of the age distribution of the 200 NVA's, the largest percentage, 59%, were 29 years of age in the year they were selected.

The location of the NVA's is broken down visually into From and Lives In. It was not surprising to see that the individuals have migrated from far-flung corners of the globe to live in a small selection of cities. NYC/Brooklyn is represented as the major destination.

Lastly, the NVA's alma matters are listed by frequency. The School of Visual Arts dominating the pack. I don't personally have an opinion about that except to say that the people I know who've passed through SVA are top notch. Following the 10-year data mining comes this years pack of New Visual Artists. Their work, for the tenth year in a row, is impressive. If you haven't looked at an issue of Print in a while, this would be a good one to pick up. Hope to see you on the list next year.

Fortune

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:53:33 -0700

We had lunch at the chinese restaurant this afternoon. This fortune greeted us as it was time to get back to work.

test test

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:08:10 -0700

test

PDX

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:09:06 -0700

We haven't posted on here in a bit, partially due to being a bit preoccupied with work, partially due to our big news (see below), partially due to blog laziness, and partially due to some hiccups encountered with this installation of MovableType (MT4). For a little while there, we were unable to even post to our own blog. It was a bit like Spinal Tap being lost below the stage of their own show. We've reinstalled and got it all back on track now. Anybody been having significant problems with MT4?

So, about that news: We'll be relocating to Portland, Oregon this summer!. Kate will join the Portland State University graphic design program and the PDC is thrilled to join the vibrant Portland community of designers, non-profits, and doers. We'll be posting more about this in the near future, but in the mean time we encourage you to contact us with any questions or comments. Onward!

Proceed and Be Bold

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:26:30 -0800

Our friend Amos is featured in an upcoming documentary by Laura Zinger and brown finch films. Amos is a letterpress printer in Alabama who often delights in typographically testing social boundaries. You can see his work here and read more about the film here.

Zine Library

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:01:33 -0800

There are three libraries here at the Center. They are open and available to the public. First, there's the PDC Reference Library, which is comprised of about 150 newish art and design books. Second, the PDC Materials Library is comprised of paper samples, binding examples, and anything that might be considered a printing substrate. We're just beginning to put that library together. And last, the PDC Zine Library is comprised of about 150 zines collected over the years. The majority are Kate's which is one reason she's been tapped as the curator of the Zine Library.

Today the Zine Library was inagurated with it's first official acquisition: The Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art Book by Jason Polan. It contains every piece of art that was visible to the public at the museum from January 19 to January 31, 2005. It is 50 pages and perfect bound. What we don't have is the Deluxe Edition which includes:

1) The Every Piece Of Art In The Museum Of Modern Art Book
2) Complimentary admission and guided tour, by Jason Polan, of The Museum Of Modern Art
3) A hotdog or pretzel right after your tour
4) Your favorite piece of art at the Museum Of Modern Art hand drawn for you

Mabye we'll go Deluxe on the next book.

Site Launch

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:30:04 -0800

We're excited to announce that we've launched our website at http://publicdesigncenter.org . For those of you that have been following along with our progress, you'll probably see some familiarity on the site. That's because we're working hard on our projects! However, one thing we've kept up our sleeve and we're happy to announce is The Center for Vernacular Typography. You can find out what that's all about at the new PDC site. publicdesigncenter.org

New Pile of Zines

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:01:17 -0800

Back in December, Kate's zines were in the show Limited Run: The Print and Zine Show. at Open Space Beacon in NYC. She bought a handful of fellow-exhibitors zines and they came in yesterday. They've been sitting on the PDC work tables and we've been looking through them, reading them, feeling their inky textures, and just basically nerding out over zines.

Although the whole lot is great, May Lay by Alex Lukas is my favorite. The cover photo is an anonymous block of residential towers in what could easily be an Asian city but is likely New York. The title is screenprinted over the photo in shiny-yet-transparent gold ink. The contents of the zine consist solely of interviews that took place in New York in the summer of 2006.

On of my favorite things about May Lay is the screenprinted tartan pattern on the inside cover.

Another zine that I liked from the pile is Young Bored and Restless also by Alex Lukas. The reds and blues of the screenprinted USA on the cover deserve a rating of "hell yeah."

These zines and more can be found at Open Space Beacon's store here and at CANTAB

Coudal Reception

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:26:48 -0800

The Public Design Center will be hosting a reception for Jim Coudal on Tuesday February 19th, 2008 at 8:30pm. The reception will follow Jim Coudal's presentation at in the Jury Room at Giles Hall on the campus of Mississippi State University earlier that evening.

The gathering will be held in the courtyard of the PDC and in our adjoining studio. Drinks and food will be provided. The event is open to the public. Please email us if you would like directions.

Mr. Coudal is the founder of Coudal Partners

Wooden Nickels

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:31:25 -0800

Our wooden nickels arrived this afternoon. They turned out great. They're smoother than they appear the photograph above.

We're providing an ongoing series of workshop clinics to the public on the subjects of print design and web development. We're trying to reach organizations in the most economically disadvantaged areas of Mississippi. These nickels are being handed out in those areas and act as a free pass to any workshop. They're a personal and tangible connection between the PDC and the person they're handed to. We use GIS to determine which areas in our local region are beneath the poverty line. We're able to narrow it down to the city block and specific points in the county (we're rural). In the coming weeks, we'll personally hand out 550 of these free invitations to our workshop clinics. The majority will go to the non profit organizations who serve these areas. The rest will go to small businesses, especially those owned by emerging members of the community.

A few of the clinics include:

- Sustainable Printing Options
- DIY Branding
- How Much Should We Be Paying For This Project? Print Pricing for Organizations
- Pretty Much All You Would Want to Know About Adobe InDesign
- Logo and Visual Identity Workshop
- 100 Secrets of Graphic Design
- Social Networking for the Organization

Each clinic is one hour. The cost is $15.00 per person (wooden nickels get in free). Attendees will come away from the clinics with ideas, resources, tips, and templates. They'll also discover more about our our non-profit design center and that it exists for the benefit of all. It's a series of events not to be missed!

Screenprinting Table

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:59:35 -0800

The table we were using to screenprint was pretty wimpy, so we built a bigger and better one. It's still an ad hoc table though. We grabbed the saw horses from Kate's studio, the surface is 3/4" MDF with a whiteboard sheet on top. (Does whiteboard material have a more official name?) This table and its materials are far too pristine. Let's get 'em messy, shall we? Okay!

Cabinet Issue no. 28

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:13:26 -0800

Issue no. 28 of Cabinet arrived at the PDC this week. Subject: Bones. It will take me a month to digest the whole of it, but these sections stand out from what I've read thus far:

Colors: Mauve

Shelley Jackson, who you might recognize from her work