The NO!SPEC Campaign

This poster has been donated by Von Glitschka to the No!Spec Campaign

Okay, so here's the Bread Crumb trail that led me to finding this yesterday. I signed up Design Float after browsing through the Social Media Directory for Designers, then found this article: 5 Ways To Break Your Design Habits - Just for Fun on Spyre Mag. I spotted this small banner in the side bar and followed the link:

Here's what I found on the No!Spec website

The NO!SPEC campaign: Serves as a vehicle to unite those who support the notion that spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client.

Our mission: To educate the public about speculative, or 'spec' work.

Our target: Those who use creative services, as well as creative professionals (designers, photographers, illustrators, typographers, writers and those in marketing, branding and advertising).

What you can do: Read NO!SPEC's Protocols. Place a "NO!SPEC" logo on your site. Sign the NO!SPEC petition. Distribute the "NO!SPEC" posters. Contact us with your thoughts, comments, articles and insights.

Requirements: The only requirement for participation is putting the appropriate value on your profession.

This poster has been donated by Jeff Andrews to the No!Spec Campaign

This is a really important initiative and it needs our support. We didn't realise that things like this happened until we began working in the industry. It's really shocking but moreover it's a disgusting practice which is being self-perpetuated by both misguided designers and so-called 'clients.' It makes us angry that people out there who do this don't value our work, or even realise the sheer work that is involved in the creative process.

Speculative work definitely DOES NOT include doing unpaid work for charities (this type of project has great ethical and moral value), or 'freebies for fun' for your mates. Obviously, its your choice which projects you focus your energies on, but be careful that you consider all your options thoroughly before you agree to do unpaid work (check all the T&Cs before entering design competitions too!). Just look before you leap ;)

How many of the designers reading this post have heard any of the following?

This poster has been donated by Rob Gough to the No!Spec Campaign

Also, be sure to have a look at this article by Mark Rushworth. He mentions QBN.com in the first paragraph (hence yesterday's blog about World Toilet Day - What can I say? Wave something shiny at me and I'll get distracted ... a bit like a magpie!) but goes on to describe a recent case where the company Aquent 'a talent agency for designers and marketers' put an advertisement up on the 99designs for a 'contest' to design a new website for them, with a 'prize' of 500 dollars for the 'winner.' Unbelievable!

Aquent Vs the Design Industry

Keep yourself informed of Creative Industry News by checking out websites like Design Float and QBN.

"Design Float is a social media site dedicated to the design industry. Design Float aims to collect and organize design-related content from across the web while letting the community float the best articles to the top pages of their categories and sink the most irrelevant one’s to the bottom." Design Float

World Toilet Day

I found this article today on QBN - Design Industry News & Discussion. At first I thought it was a joke about crazy toilet designs, but its actually about something much more serious. It's a day to celebrate toilets and raise awareness of the global sanitation crisis.

"The WTO (World Toilet Organization) is committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide. An estimated 2.6 BILLION and - including 980 million children- don't have access to basic sanitation." Wendy Cohen

The Economy Is In The Can; And It is WORLD TOILET DAY

NOVEMBER 19, 2008- World Toilet Day
Theme: We Deserve Better
5 Ways YOU Can Help

World Toilet Organization (WTO) stands up for the 3 "WE (s)" in the theme "We Deserve Better".

• WE: Toilets deserve better social status. WTO has been striving to elevate the status of toilets to make them a status symbol and an object of desire. WTO speaks on behalf of toilets "WE DESERVE BETTER SOCIAL STATUS".

• WE: The second WE are the toilet cleaners. WTO aims to professionalize the sanitation and restroom industry and to upgrade the skill sets of the restroom cleaners. WTO speaks on behalf of the toilet cleaners "WE DESERVE BETTER PAY, RESPECT AND PROSPECTS".

• WE: WTO speaks on behalf of 2.5 billion toilet-less people, "WE DESERVE BETTER PLACE TO DEFECATE, A TOILET".

This information can be found also at our Get Involved Link

© Fountain 1917 Marcel Duchamp

5 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR WORLD TOILET DAY:

1. JOIN the cause on Facebook: Toilets for the Poor
2. BLOG about the cause 19th November, and write an article about why we all deserve better.
3. PROMOTE November 19th, 2008 by putting your instant messenger or Facebook status as : TODAY IS WORLD TOILET DAY :) http://www.worldtoilet.org/.

4. CREATE an event in your school or city. Add your event for World Toilet Day and email nora@worldtoilet.org to inform us that you have prepared your own event to spread the importance of why toilets are important, and we all deserve better sanitation. (Other events can also be viewed on our Get Involved link)
5. SHARE this information with others by "cutting and pasting" this message to all those who you feel deserve better or believe in our cause.

** Lastly if you can't do any of these, but you have 5 USD (dollars) to spare, then DONATE to http://www.worldtoilet.org/donateform.asp

Thank you for your time in spreading the word!
Sincerely,
The World Toilet Organization Team
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Toilet Art Exhibition, 2008

"Professional artists and art students from renowned schools in Singapore, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and La Salle are painting 100 toilet seat covers which will be exhibited on 19th to 21st of November at the 2nd level of Scape and series of exhibits planned until first quarter of 2009. Each toilet seat converted into a piece of art will convey message on toilet and sanitation." World Toilet Organisation - Get Involved

© Uta Brauser Source: Fish with Braids

© Isotope Source: Madame Blavatsky Overdrive

© Isotope Comics Comic Rockstars Toilet Seat Museum

© Tony Harris

© Alé Garza

© Alex Pardee

This last artist, Alex Pardee has an incredible portfolio called Eyesuck Ink and his Blog is pretty cool too.

Kooji Creative's Blog has Gone Multilingual

It dawned on us today how important it is for people to be able to understand us. Not only by explaining our thoughts and ideas in a straight forward (non designer jargon) way, but through language itself. The 'Designer Client' relationship is always something that needs to be handled carefully, but this is especially so if you don't share the same language. Our Polish clients from Fundacja Między Nami (The Among Us Foundation) have been very understanding of this fact. Marzena Bochenek, the Vice-President of FMN, is our primary contact and fortunately for us is multilingual. This is a skill I really admire and I hope that one day I'll be able to talk to her in her own language.

Until that time though, I thought that this Google Gadget would help us to break down the language barriers. We have several friends who speak many other languages aswell including: German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish too (plus my Dentist is Romanian :D).

We've added the Google Translate My Page Gadget to our blog and we recommend you do the same. Check it out :)

Image taken from The Internet Movie Database from the film 'The King and I'

The actor Yul Brynner was multilingual and could communicate in several languages including French, Russian and English. He truly was a King.

Is Your Web Truly World-Wide?

UPDATE:

Google Translate adds 10 new languages...

There's a new version of the Google Translate My Page Gadget ! It's been updated to include many other target languages to translate from. The older one above, is customisable (this new one doesn't seem to be) but there are less target languages to choose from. The decision is yours :) 18/11/08

Fundacja Między Nami Aktualności

In other words: 'The Among Us Foundation News and Current Events' Blog has gone live!

We first visited Fundacja Między Nami in 2007 as part of the International Volunteering project 'Leeds Met Poland.' For two weeks, along with a team of volunteers and staff, we worked with adults who have physical and learning disabilities. During our stay we took part in various indoor and outdoor workshops including ceramics and painting. We even had the opportunity to help put an exhibition together to celebrate the work of ‘Stash’ one of the artists from Matki Teresy z Kalcutty (Mother Teresa of Calcutta) - A day centre in the city of Lublin which is closely involved with FMN. It was an incredibly rewarding experience.

When the opportunity arose to give them something back, to help them in their creative endeavours and to raise an awareness of their pioneering work we both leapt at the chance. We felt that this could be best accomplished by integrating this project with the final year of my BSc and in parallel through our branding and promotions company, Kooji Creative.

http://fmnlublin.blogspot.com/

After the preliminary version of the FMN website was produced as part of my degree, we have since been in the process of completing the full version. This blog will be used by the Fundacja Między Nami to promote their events and to keep readers updated with their news. It links directly from their main website.

Many thanks go once again to Blogger for providing such a great service. Particularly for offering their service in several languages, including Polish.

Dziękuję Blogger!

Roots of Creativity

I was just tucking in to some Sunday soup today (it's the same soup for every other day but on a Sunday instead) and spotted this new post for Jacob Cass at Just Creative Design.

image taken from: Brian Yerkes

"I want to get your feedback on Just Creative Design and as an added incentive I am offering a prize to one lucky random winner!" Jacob Cass.

He's a nice chap Jacob and so we thought we'd help out (it was the possibility of free book goodliness that finally swung it for us though ;) ). Anyway, here was our feedback, including our category rankings and suggestions for improvement:

(1) Creativity (with a name like Kooji Creative, it had to be our No 1 really didn’t it?)

(2) Inspiration (It’s one of our main reasons for browsing the web)

Image © Tablefy

Tablefy Water Lantern

(3) Tutorials/ Knowledge Transfer (Lifelong Learning is a priority for us)

(4) The Online Design Community (Networking with other creatives is incredibly powerful)

(5) Giveaways & Competitions (Let’s be honest if we hadn’t spotted this post with a freebie book we wouldn’t have been as inclined to post feedback :D )

(6) Anything Programming related (Don’t get me wrong, without programming our stuff wouldn’t work, but we’re more interested in the design/ the front-end - CSS, XHTML, SEO, - all these things are important, but we prefer to focus on the design side)

Image © Yasny Chan

Labyrinth


FEEDBACK - This is a wonderful resource Jacob, and it’s where we began our search for online design info (we found you through your free ebook). There are links that branch out across a network of designers, blogs and social media sites - it’s fantastic.

It’d be great if you could add more visuals and interactivity to your website (flash is good for this and it’s less confining). People tend to skim read and images are read faster than words. Video content would be a great addition - Maybe something showing how you work?

One last point - Digital art is incredible and a superb result of today’s creative technologies - but it’s important to remember that it’s still just one of many tools available to us, and that we must always acknowledge how it all began: with a pencil, with paint and a canvas or a stick on a cave wall. Maybe a post about the Roots of Creativity would be beneficial for all?

Thanks for JCD :D

Katherine and Johnny

------

image taken from: http://www.myspace.com/seaorchids

So that was our feedback for JCD - which ended up being a being a full blown epic novel instead of just a children's fairytale (a bit like Lord The Rings eh? Okay, maybe not :P)

We'd really like your opinions on this. Do you think it's important to acknowledge your creative roots? Do you care about where creativity all began? Is the computer your only tool as a creative or do you like using traditional mediums aswell?

Patience is a Virtue

I've been fascinated recently with RSS Feeds and have been adding lots of design resources, magazines and blogs to our Google Reader (Many thanks to Calvin Lee from Mayhem Studios who recommended this reader). There's so much high quality material out there, that its hard at times to choose what to look at first.

Anyway, despite this bombardment of inspiration I managed to pause for a second and take a look at a blog written by a great guy I met a while ago now, called David Parrish. David has a brilliant blog called T-Shirts and Suits with lots of information for people who run creative businesses. I was drawn to this post about viral marketing and this video in particular, by BLU:



MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

This must have been produced by a painstakingly patient person. Not only is the artwork spreading across a huge amount of space, but its being drawn and redrawn countless times. Imagine creating something beautiful and then redrawing over it to produce yet another beautiful piece of artwork. Its a wonderful example of stop motion animation combined with some top-notch graffiti.

I found BLU's Blog and, after looking through some wonderful photos of the team at work, began looking through their blogroll list and found a link to ekosystem: a street-art & non-hip-hop-graffiti gallery. Here I found a section with links to blogs by this community of artists and this one, BO130, yet another fantastic artist had posted this video:



I Met The Walrus

Animated Short :5 min 10 sec
Written, Directed & Animated by: JOSH RASKIN
Produced by: JERRY LEVITAN
Pen Illustration by: JAMES BRAITHWAITE
Computer Illustration by: ALEX KURINA
Starring: JOHN LENNON and JERRY LEVITAN
For more Info: http://www.imetthewalrus.com/

We've just seen this video last September at The Smalls during The London Design Festival. It's a superb video and another great example of patience. The video was made 38 years after the audio was recorded. Take a look :)

Beanie There Done That

To celebrate my Dad's birthday each year I insist on designing something wacky for his card and this year I decided the theme would also be based on his love of flying. With this card I wanted to illustrate how he could progress from the paramotor to the 'next' level. Of course there is a 'Calvin & Hobbes' reference in there too since he's always been a big fan ;)

Happy Birthday Dad!!!!!

Designer Pill to Cure What Ails Ya!

Its important to remember that education doesn't end with school and that really it's an ongoing process that you shouldn't let slip. It's easy to say we know everything there is to know about a subject when really if we're being honest we don't. Johnny and I have been keeping up to date with our design skills by tracking down relevant tutorials on the net. Here's something I made earlier with a great tutorial I found through Arbenting.

Arbenting - The Act of Being Creative
Arbenting is a design blog written by Robert and Angie Bowen providing resources , freebies, tutorials and more to the design and development communities.

Arbenting have put together an Adobe Tutorial Series and we've started with Illustrator as its one of our most favourite programs:

30 Tutorials That Will Teach You Illustrator

This link in particular caught my eye about how to create a 3D Pill.

So remember you can never know too much, and you should never say you're a know it all, because no one is!

Yarn Spinning

Jason Dainter from Leeds Inventure, a local society for entrepreneurs, got in touch recently to let us know about an upcoming event, High Spirits:

"Inventure is teaming up with the amazing people at Yarn Spinners Tours to bring you a spooky evening of dark and macabre tales of Victorian Leeds. A ghost bus will be pulling up at the Town Hall and inviting on board 25 lucky people for a tour of the cities most creepy hotspots, and afterwards we'll be ending up in the Reform Bar for a drink or two to calm your nerves (you're going to need it!)."

Here I am posing with our Ghostly Guides, Brandsby Carloff is to my left. Check out the ghostly, eerily spooky Ghost Bus ;) WoooOooo

We were some of the lucky few who were taken round Leeds and regailed with spooky stories from our hosts. It was a really fun night out and great to be able to catch up with our fellow Inventurers. We even managed to end up taking away an inflatable Bat at the end of the night, which was... unexpected.

Keep a look out for a brand new schedule of FREE events for 2009 from Leeds Inventure :)

"We hold free events aimed at all people who share a passion for business. We're quite different to your average networking events, as all our events are informal, open to all, completely free and most importantly are FUN!" Jason Dainter, Leeds Inventure.