A Look Back: Steven Heller on Designs for Obama

With the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in full swing in the United States, I thought it would be good to take a look back at the ground­break­ing graphic design dur­ing the 2008 Obama cam­paign. And who bet­ter to break it down that the great­est critic and cham­pion of Graphic Design, Steven Heller?

Pro­duced by Peter Cam­burn & Craig Schlanser for AIGA Philadelphia

Poster Design Workshop

I found this poster design work­shop pre­sented by Ward Andrew from Draw­back­ward Design on YouTube today. It’s pretty good if you can get past the crummy audio, but the con­tent is fan­tas­tic! Andrew shares his thought process on the prin­ci­ples of good poster design. Also be aware,  the lessons in this video are inter­ac­tive so have paper, pen­cil or Pho­to­Shop ready!

My favorite part of the work­shop is when Andrew dis­cusses the idea of “plussing.” As a fan of Dis­ney­land, I had read how Walt Dis­ney used this as his guid­ing prin­ci­ple when build­ing his park or pro­duc­ing his ani­ma­tions. As it turns out, it is also the secret to the suc­cess of any design try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate an idea in an art­ful way. I love how Andrew clev­erly describes it:

(plussing) is lay­er­ing cool upon cool on top of cool.”

Yep, that sums it up nicely!

Design Something Everyday Day 2: Retro Rupert

Day two and here is  a retro styled poster for Rupert Bone­ham, a con­tes­tant on the CBS real­ity show Sur­vivor: Pearl Islands, Sur­vivor All Stars & the upcom­ing Sur­vivor Heroes vs Villains.

Tools: Adobe Illus­tra­tor, Pho­to­Shop, Wacom Tablet.

Link: Rupert’s Kids, Sur­vivor Con­tes­tant Rupert Boneham’s non-profit group to help at risk youth. A wor­thy cause.