Photo by Sean McCormick
In response to ADCMW interest last year when the Washington Post redesigned its magazine, our own John Foster interviewed WaPo’s Features Design Director, Janet Michaud. Thanks to Janet for taking time to candidly respond to questions from members of the DC creative community, and for giving us all some insight on how WaPo is continuing to evolve its brand.
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Photo by Pat Padua
I should tell you up-front that this is not a Snowmageddon story or a tale of Washington’s winter woes of 2010. No, it’s nothing like that. In fact, the story starts about five years ago when DC winters produced a few dustings of snow each year, and the stretch of non-federal holidays from President’s Day to Memorial Day was what we feared most in the mid-winter months before the approaching Spring. And, come to think of it, it hasn’t got much to do with the weather at all.
It’s about connections. And, of course, I am referring to the Butterfly Effect; a metaphor encapsulating the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely, that small differences in the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce— Wait a second. There’s an easier way…
Just as the story in the film “Juno” “all started with a chair,” this one quite literally started with a pair of earmuffs. No, nobody got pregnant. But I did get a job — for a while.
Featured Illustrator: Chris Bishop
I’m sure you’ve noticed, but it’s a new year. A shiny new decade even. Publications love this sort of thing as we can hem and haw about the past ad nauseum. But we at FullBleed officially relinquish this power and put it into your hands. Tell us about your decade! We asked the following question to three randomly selected ADCMW members:
What are you doing now that is different than what you were doing ten years ago?
It’s resolution time, friends, and whether you’re a chronic breaker or never maker, 2010 is a whole new ball game. I realize that we’re 3 weeks in to the new decade but it’s never too late to make your annual vow to self improve.
All too often we make resolutions in order to change a life style or habit that is considered socially unacceptable. There’s the go-to resolution of quitting smoking, something my husband and I did on New Years in 2007 only to go back to smoking in October the very same year. Or working out more, which often ends up in an expensive yearly gym membership that you only go to in the first month.
I make a resolution every year. Some I’ve kept, some I’ve almost entirely blown off. Though statistics show that only 40-45% of people make New Year’s resolutions and 46% of those same people actually keep them, people who do make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their life goals than people who don’t. Think about it.
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For Mort Cohen (http://www.mortoons.com), what started as some childhood doodles blossomed into a part-time career as a cartoonist. To kick off the New Year, we asked Mort to tell the story of how he turned his passion into a lifelong profession.
As a kid, I followed newspaper comics religiously. Additionally, I enjoyed magazines that contained cartoons—I still do. During these formative years, my favorite cartoonists included the great Al Capp, Rube Goldberg, Virgil Partch, and Milton Caniff, among a host of others. You may or may not be familiar with these names, but I assure you that each was an accomplished artist in addition to being a great cartoonist. With them as my guide, I doodled copiously through high school and college, which explains why I graduated magma cum average.
Photo courtesy Sean McCormick
Russell Heimlich is a lefty. And an only child. And he knows a thing or two about computers.
“My parents really wanted me to be good at computers, so there has been a computer in our house for as long as I can remember. My first computer was a Commodore 64; my parents wrote DOS commands so I could play games,” he said. “As we upgraded computers I learned more and more about them. My dad worked for the government, and he once took me in so I could use Gopher, a pre-Internet computer network.”
In Part I of Marketing for Designers, ADCMW’s own long-time member Deane Nettles shares how he has learned to leverage the web as a foundation toward promoting his creative work. Stay tuned for Part II, which will include his recommendations on how he has used social media tools to build upon his website and email marketing efforts.
Let’s presume that there is an inside world and an outside world. The inside world is your studio where you live, and the outside world is where your clients live. If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve built up a client base. Those clients recommend you to other people, and there is this buzz in the outside world … which provides you with new business.
But, to build buzz in the online world, where do you even start? Here’s the answer: with a website.
Wisconsin-native Jen Fose admits to being the black sheep of her large, mid-western family. Of her 25 cousins, she’s the only one who “stayed the somewhat uncertain course of a creative professional.”
Now, the 25-year-old is living in DC and working with the Creative Studio team at Ogilvy; not necessarily your black sheep of design leaders in the industry.
“My family members have all selected very practical career pathways and have become either accountants or engineers,” she said, acknowledging that she’s always received widespread support from her family for her creative pursuits. “I’ve proven that you can make a living doing something a bit less conventional.”
Featured Illustrator: Christa Smith
Fall is a great time for meditation and reflection on what went well this past year. For this month’s “Three” our selected ADCMW members share with us: “What was your favorite project ever?”
This is the first feature in a series on the DC-area fashion and merchandising scene.
Running Sharp Shirter in the DC community is awesome! The greater metropolitan area is constantly throwing events for local businesses to show off their stuff. I’ve noticed a real growth in the grass-roots movement over the past few years, and now’s the perfect time to be in the scene getting your work noticed.
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