I caught a glimpse of this post in my Facebook news feed, the Brehm Center identity I developed being used exactly as it should be to promote a new course in NYC. In context with texture, yet making a bold statement. Great work Nate and the Brehm team! That makes a designer proud!

More about the Brehm NYC certificate program here. Looks like an amazing track of culture and theology courses, if that’s your thing! And check out the amazing site by 180 by design while you’re there. Chuck and his team are superstars!

One of my favorite design blogs, Core 77, highlighted these delightful children’s book illustrations from none other than design great Saul Bass. I can’t stop thinking about his great sense of scale, shapes, color – how perfectly he handles them to delight little ones (and big ones too!). So many children’s books these days don’t interact the text and illustrations to further the tale as Bass does here. What a delight!

For more pages, background and Steven Heller’s take on them (hint: he’s a fan), see the core 77 article here.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up for Edward Tufte’s one day course: Presenting Data and Information. My Dad (retired civil engineer) has always raved about him and the course. Safoura Rafeizadeh (leader of Boston’s AIGA reading group, and design professor at BU) regretted going. With opinions of people I respect on each side – I was curious to see what he’s about.

Over all, I enjoyed the day. It’s obvious Tufte is not a designer. He has an eye and fine appreciation for design, but he doesn’t present or write like one. While he loves Gill sans which endears him to my designer heart – his web page is a mess of information challenging to navigate. I’ve never heard the term “graphical design” before. But he’s a professor emeritus at Yale, so he must have somethings to say, right?

The day was 10am to 4pm, with an hour for lunch. He’s done this course thousands of times all over the US, and at this point its production is a well oiled machine. No technical difficulties, no pauses. He didn’t miss a beat.

Would have been nice:

• More examples of current design.

Takeaways:

• Check out the design of established publications in the relevant field. For science related info graphics – how do the top scientific journals design their data?
• Renewed passion to cut back on visual PowerPoint visual clutter at work
• All four books!