Last night at AIGA Charlotte’s Meet|Market event was the re|THINK poster exhibit. It was a poster competition for a way for designers to do their share to help save the earth. Posters were focused on inspiring the Carolinas to care more about their environment. There were many different styles, approaches, and ways to help the environment. It was hard to pick a favorite, but I like the picture of the tree with the thermostat the best; I think photography has a very strong power to make things seem real and true. You can view and purchase ($10 ea) all of the posters at rethinkposters.com.

I got inspiration from one of the posters, to put a bucket in the tub while I take a shower. It cuts down on half the amount of water I need to water my outdoor garden each day. I also like using my reusable bags to go to the grocery store, if I don’t have them on me and end up having to get plastic bags, I use them as my dog’s poop bags. I feel a little silly telling people I do these things, but doing small things not only helps the environment but it also makes you feel good, and hopefully it rubs off on others. What creative ways do you reduce, reuse, and recycle?

Some people may not see the point of helping the environment by reducing, reusing, and recycling, but I found two inspiring quotes:
“The choices we make as individuals are important, if only because I think humans work by example. What one person does, another will follow, and then we begin to see the numbers that will make a real difference.” Clare Harris, editor of New Consumer magazine.
“When the tipping point toward green shopping behavior is reached, when enough people change their behavior, then collectively we will make a difference.” CNN.com

My friend had a bet with someone that she couldn’t find a fast food logo that doesn’t have yellow or red. And we thought for sure Whitecastle was the winner, until I looked it up online, and found it has yellow. It almost makes me want to start up a chain and not have red and yellow, and then it would probably fail, because it wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention! ha

There are color theories that red and yellow are used to catch attention. So it makes sense that fast food chains want to catch our attention and stop to eat there. Red is used on stop, exit, and wrong way signs; yellow for danger and caution signs. Being dangerous colors, others might say they should warn us not to eat at fast food chains since they are dangerous to our health.

I found an interesting more in-depth article on red and yellow color theories on aiga.org.

411fit is a free website dedicated to providing tools and information needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle that will go live to students and faculty of UNCC near the end of August.

They wanted some banner ads to go in the website to advertise the 411fit features, UNCC benefits related to health/fitness, and a green tips section.

The 411fit web design is photography based, so I grabbed some free stock photos to work with. I wanted each section to have a distinct design while keeping a general theme and fit nicely with the existing web design. Since the 411fit and UNCC sections had logos, I thought it was appropriate to create a simple logo for green tips.

The Ph.D. Program in CCI wanted something to mail to other schools to advertise to other students. CCI has a bulletin board covered with posters from other schools advertising different programs, so I took a look there to see what other schools were doing. Most of them are badly designed with too much information and clutter. I noticed a couple had a “take-one” pad varying in sizes, which I thought was a good idea.

"take-one" pad

We would be mailing the Ph.D. brochure with the poster, so I knew they had to match. I wanted the “take-one” card to work like a business card; so I made it the smallest that the printer recommended, with the important information of the name, tag line, and website. That way students don’t have to write the information down, they can just take one, and hopefully they are more likely to visit the website.

Once the materials were ready, I worked on finding the top 250 national computer science universities and the top 200 international universities. I used USNews.com’s list of American’s Best Colleges 2008, and then had to go to each school’s website individually to find the department/school name and address. Talk about a long grueling process, but I got it done in a few days!

With very limited budget and supplies, and having to put 100 invitations and programs together by-hand, I was able to come up with a creative solution. I had to figure out how to visualize cybercrime, the main topic of the conference. I created a mini police crime folder with Staples’ ivory cover stock, and plain copy paper for the mini pieces of paper inside. I stapled the “News Media Release” over the longer sheet of conference speaker bios in the invitation, and the same for the program’s schedule and speaker bios. In the invitation I left the hand-drawn map (with directions on the backside) loose so you could take it with you.

Invitation with map

program

I chose the fonts Handwritten-Dakota and American Typewriter to make it look like an authentic police letter, I even added a case number from the date. If you notice the “Victims” are IP addresses to relate it to cybercrime.

Just like how I would start any design project, I did my research first. After getting engaged, I made sure to get my hands on some wedding magazines and checked out some inspiring websites like theknot.com. I started collecting images of things I liked. I had an on-going theme, I wanted everything to be personal by using photography.

My friend, Lydia Ko, volunteered to take engagement pictures for us, which I absolutely love. I wanted to use them somehow, and I had an idea in the back of my mind that I saw of using a photobooth for “save the dates”. So I made four of my favorite pictures into a strip like you would get out of a photobooth into a bookmark, on the back gave the date and location, and more information.

I didn’t want to send out the traditional plain thank you notes; everyone knows as soon as you read it, it goes on the fridge for awhile because you would feel badly throwing it away or just put it straight in the trash. I wanted to send out something that would make someone smile or think, “Wow, that was a cute idea, how clever” and actually want to hold on to it for awhile. I posed with the gifts I received from my bridal shower and added thought bubbles to make me look like a stupid bride that didn’t know how to do anything. I developed the photos and then printed out the back of the postcards on some index cards and glued them together. I thought it was a cute funny idea on a budget, and I had fun with it.

For my wedding gifts that I received for the wedding, I used a photo of my new husband and I on the back of our getaway vehicle that read “Just Married”, but I changed it to “Thank you”, although I could have left it.

No award this time, but it was well worth it! I participated in this year’s AIGA Student Portfolio Review. It was four hours of speed interviews and portfolio feedback. I wish I would have participated before, it was amazing getting tons valuable critiques on my portfolio. I got several compliments on my Mecklenburg Greenway ad campaign and my invitation for the Cybercrime conference. Even though I did not win, a few reviewers let me know I was a close runner-up. I would advise any graphic design student or recent graduate to make sure they participate next year!

View AIGA’s blog post

Of course I had to design everything I could for my wedding! I told my mom, it was like an art project for myself, I had to do it. I designed my wedding invitations, programs, keepsake book, table cards, and favors. I would have photographed my wedding if I could have too! I think I will have some people copying me in the near future.

Weddings take up so much more time an effort than I could have imagined. I made more work for myself than I needed to, but it just had to be perfect. I was working a full crazy week and then coming home, doing the same thing until I passed out, and trying to make time for visiting family. It was extremely exhausting.

I think I just put in the craziest work week ever. I had to get programs ready for two events. And it’s not just the design files I had to worry about being ready on time, it was waiting on content, and then having to print them out from our laser printer and cut them out using my poor little hand and X-acto, and then putting them together.

I made 150 - 2 page - programs for the Annual Awards Dinner and 300 – 14 page programs for the Visualization of the World Symposium. I wanted to put in overtime to make sure they were finished on time, but by 5:00pm I was ready to pass out, from putting all of my energy into them.

I got an award! Read my former professor’s speech:

The first award goes to one of the most persistent, hard working students we have seen in several years. Her over all excellent performance is particularly noteworthy because we remember her as one always open to criticism - yet never satisfied to only do what is ‘expected’ - but to go beyond.

She listens carefully (usually with a smile- or even a laugh). Internalizes comments, addresses whatever weakness there might be - and finds a determined ‘way of her own’ to explore the challenge - and to ultimately solve the problem in a smart and effective way.

So in recognition of her fine creative work and leadership in the graphic design concentration - and her current successful move to the professional field here on campus - We honor Amy Bendig (now Henty) for a job well done. Congratulations.

Eldred Hudson, Associate Professor