The Good Design Book

Good Friday: Field Trip

Yesterday I took the office on a little field trip to the AIGA San Francisco galleries where Cause/Affect is on exhibit. With the fewer people and less booze it was much easier to really see, examine, read about and appreciate the work. We talked about the pieces we liked — and while all were good there were some that clearly moved us.

Today I’ve been going through our notes and reaching out to some of those designers to sending work for the book. I’ve also been going through hundreds of bookmarks from the past year, following up on amazing socially-engaged projects from around the globe. To give you a sense of the scope and variety of the work being considered, here are a few of the projects I been looking into today:

The Girl Effect. Awesome. Succinct. Effective.

EcoFont — a typeface designed to save ink and toner.

Affluenza — exploring the cultural impact of consumer values.

Hornall Anderson’s Work for Ripple Effect.

The British Heart Foundation.

Volume’s work for the California Academy of Sciences (and other projects).

Among many others.

All of these are examples of organizations harnessing the power of effective design to motivate giving, promote understanding, provoke dialogue, create community or simply question the status quo.

I’m looking forward to hearing and sharing their stories…

Good Friday: Design Presentation

Today we send off our design sketches to HOW. Technically we’re only supposed to show three prototypical spreads, and there is actually no requirement to show more than one option. We’re showing about six spreads each for two different directions. We explored a third direction also, but for reasons I’ve already discussed, we’re limiting it to two.

My preference is for option B (below). It allows the work to be shown bigger and the text to be more prominent. I also think it pushes the medium of book design a little harder than option A, but without marginalizing the content.

Continue reading…

Good Friday: Good Thursday

Thursday night’s Cause/Affect event (conceived and sponsored by AIGA San Francisco) drew do-gooders from all corners for a celebration of good design. Cause/Affect is a biannual design competition that celebrates design undertaken for the greater good. Two years ago we made a strong showing with winning entries in three categories, and contributed to the winning collaborative project Oprah has one. This year we took home an award for our Everything is OK poster in the politics category, while MINE™ designer Tim Belonax received judge’s recognition for his shirt for Rosa Loves (the Rosa Loves organization will be featured in the book). Friends of MINE™ Volume, MOD and Hybrid Design also took home honors, and Academy of Art University made an extraordinary showing, sweeping the student awards category.

Continue reading…

Good Friday: Designing the Book

This was a busy-ish week for the book. I spoke with two potential contributing writers both of whom I’m very excited about. I expect to announce a couple of our writers next week.

We had some welcome support from our friends at various blogs who have graciously helped spread the word about our request for submissions. Thanks especially to Steve and Stephanie at UnBeige, Armin Vit at Under Consideration, Dexigner, and our new friends at DESIGN 21. One of the most challenging parts of putting together a book like this is assembling a representative selection of compelling work. Of course we have our resources (and with them our prejudices), but getting the word out to new and interesting designers is essential to the diversity and relevance of the book. If you’re considering submitting work for consideration I encourage you to do it early. When I worked on my last book about 50% of the work came in just before the deadline. The other 50% came in just after.

Also this week, we took our first good hard look at some design options.

Continue reading…

Good Friday: HOW to get a book deal

This is the first of my regular Good Friday installments. Each week I’ll chronicle the progress and the process of writing and designing the book. Since this is the first post, I’ll have to play a little catch up.

In the summer of 2007, I spent a week in rural Alabama, advising to Project M. Walking down a quiet country road with Brian Collins one evening, we got to chatting about how transformative our time in Alabama had been.

Continue reading…