Within the last week Paragon has had the privilege of going to 2 student portfolio reviews. The first at the annual Jacksonville AIGA review, and the second last Friday at Georgia Southern. First of all, I was generally impressed with the quality of work I saw. The kind of impressed that makes you want to review your own book. As always, there was a wide spectrum so each case warranted a different approach, but I found there were a few pieces of advice that kept reoccurring:

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Thanks to Bruce Nussbaum for this link to some TED conference videos. I’ve been listening and watching these all morning. I found of particular interest the talks given by Alex Steffen (amazing design solutions to the sustainability issues like a straw that filters water as you drink through it), Jeff Bezos (suggesting a new analogy of the future of the web), Paul Bennett (a great lesson for interaction architects of really putting yourself in the place of the “end-user”).

added at 1:00pm
I just finishing watching this one from Al Seckel about optical illusions and messing with the way the brain’s wired. Great visual play for designers.

Below are the 2 I found the most jaw-dropping from a sustainable innovation standpoint:

More proof that a show about Graphic Design would be watchable.
Here’s some video that I found on a business vlog about an event called Cut& Paste where Designers go head-to-head in 15 minute rounds.

I’ve found 2 great outlets for wearable art via brdcast and COLOURlovers. (COLOURlovers, by the way is up for a Webby award so make your voice count and vote for them!.. they didn’t pay me to say that… they don’t even know who I am).
Anyway, both T-shirt sites not just sell other people’s work but allow you to submit your work for the clothing enjoyment of others.

For the socially-conscious among us there’s designgive where proceeds from the sale of the T-shirts are donated to a charity of your choice.

For the more light-hearted there’s threadless
My favorites are the type tees like:

Honk if you are about to run me over.
Purple is the new Blue and Red
and This is the oldest I’ve Ever been
buy fast cause a lot of them are sold out already.

Still trying to parse the myriad of concepts thrown out at the DJ Spooky lecture ( and inspired by the great diagrams of David Armano) I started to scribble. I was trying to tie together the thoughts Paul presented with some of the stuff I’ve been reading about the “Conversation Economy”. The following diagram is what I came up with along with the help of the rest of Paragon and our friendly neighborhood futurist Frank Spencer.

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Like Susan said, we recently went to a DJ Spooky lecture. Although it’ll take more than this simple post (and this simple mind) to digest the volume of information he dropped that night, I thought he brought up a bunch of interesting and relevant thoughts about the convergence (or collision) of the individual and the corporate, art and artifact, content and context. I’ll try and condense it all as much as possible but he was deep and I might get lost somewhere in the middle here.

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I’m encouraged whenever I hear of new initiatives to tackle the sustainability issue, and am especially proud that fellow designers are not wanting to be left behind. I just saw this on Graphic Design forum about a new initiative helping Designers make a difference by adjusting our practices.
It’s called Design can Change and if you’ve ever thought that all we do is make the world prettier then I’d recommend giving this site a read.

Kudos to smashLab for spearheading this.

Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid gave a fantastic lecture last night at SCAD, titled Rhythm Science after his book by the same name. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was definitely not prepared to be THAT inspired and intellectually stimulated.

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We just found out that our lil’ muse header was deemed Creative Design worthy by David Airey himself in his inaugural Creative Design Awards.
To say we’re deeply honored is an understatement. Thanks David!

Definitely check out his other Awardees:

But also take a browse through David’s Archives and portfolio. He’s a keen eye and intelligent take on this design world we share.

Phil got this email from a friend of his about an underwater restaurant in the Maldives.

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