Highlights from Practically Designed

April 29, 2011-Today’s program was all about design and guest speaker John LeMasney, Manager of Educational Technology Training and Outreach at Princeton University, explained and discussed a diversity of topics from emotion, intention, inspiration,  and much more related to design.

PRESENTATION SLIDES:

The session began with a  conversation covering how people may critique your work and the common tools used for desktop publishing such as Microsoft, etc.  Participants then shared their own backgrounds and knowledge of different design projects.  During this conversation, attendees where asked to consider:

• What is your brand and what three words describe it?
• What do people go to you to ask? What are they coming to you for and what do you want them to come to for?

In the context of libraries, we considered the question: why do people come to your library; to your space–what attracts them?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Open Source Design Resources:

• Scribus (www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus)
• Gimp (www.gimp.org)
• Inkscape (www.inkscape.org)
• Google Picasa (www.picasa.google.com)

Other Sites of Interest:

• MorgueFile (www.morguefile.com)
• Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com)
• Vi.Sualize.Us (http://vi.sualize.us)
• FFFFound (http://ffffound.com)

Texts:

• Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler
• Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities by David Airey

For more information, please visit John LeMasney’s website at: http://johnwlemasney.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/lilrc-graphic-design-best-practices.