Design Opportunity

This volunteer job lead comes from Catherine Guyot. GoodwillIndustries has a design opportunity for a volunteer student to helpwith their October: "Glitter Gala".AIS Fashion Design students are involved with the event.Please contact:Tammy McKenzie Sr. Designer/Brand Manager Seattle Goodwill - Est.1923(206) 860-5739 www.seattlegoodwill.org

Poster design by Ross Patton!
Visit www.turnstylestudio.com for details on Turnstyle!

AIGA Design Social 7/31

Thursday, July 31/ 6 - 8pm
Viceroy Bar
Belltown

The design community is growing and AIGA Seattle would like to invite you to come out, share ideas, passions, excitement, and meet new friends. It's not just about graphic design anymore; designers of all fields are invited as AIGA Seattle is expanding our circle. Everyone welcome!

Please join us, Thursday, July 31, from 6-8 pm, at the Viceroy Bar in Belltown. So walk up to that hip, square, cool, nerdy, designer, artist, creative, business person buy them a drink and talk shop!

Turnstyle!!!!!!!!

A presentation from Turnstyle will take place Wednesday, August 6th. at the normal meeting time (4:15pm). You should be there. These folks are awesome. Check out their work here: turnstylestudio.com

Font Humor

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show
Connecting Two Cities through Graphic Design
Historic exhibit brings contemporary graphic design from Tehran to the U.S. for the first time

July 15, 2008 (Seattle, Wash.)—The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show unites Americans and Iranians with poster art; this show is the first time that the U.S. has hosted an exhibition with Tehran designers. The exhibit, curated by graphic designers Daniel R. Smith of Seattle and Iman Raad of Tehran, debuts at Bumbershoot ®, Seattle’s Music and Arts Festival during Labor Day weekend at the Seattle Center. A list of confirmed artists is on the last page.

“[This show] is a true visual discourse between the two cities, far apart, at different corners of the Globe...” Raad says. “We'll make every effort to keep the show unaffected by current frigid political settings, without pretending that our two countries are tightly knit, as either case may strip this dialogue of its freshness and appeal.”

The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show includes 50 posters from Seattle and Tehran that represent the thriving graphic arts communities of these two disparate cities. From silkscreen to off-set and digital prints, the posters share cultural themes such as music, film, theater and contemporary art.

“This exhibit is a valuable step in showing members of each other’s larger communities how we truly think and feel,” says Smith. “It humanizes the other side and demonstrates not simply a willingness to reach out to one another, but a concrete example of how to do so.”

Shortly after its Bumbershoot debut, The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show Remix will open at Design Commission, a graphic design firm and gallery located at the Tashiro Kaplan building in Pioneer Square. Visit www.seattletehran.com for more information on this event.

Post-revolutionary designers
Most of the Tehran designers were born in 1979, or later, and grew up knowing only a post-revolutionary Iran. The artists range from Tehran University Professor Reza Abedini, a powerful figure in contemporary Iranian graphic design, to younger talents born since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, such as the female design duo Soha Shirvani and Reyhaneh Sheikhbahaei.

These Iranian designers’ posters are paired with the work of contemporary Seattle designers, such as Cornish College Professor Robynne Raye of Modern Dog, Coby Schultz and Barry Ament of the Ames Bros and many more.

“Their design work is quite different from anything being produced in the States, at least on the surface,” Smith says.

The Road to Tehran Began in Havana
The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show is the second poster show linking Seattle poster art with another city; The Seattle-Havana Poster Show premiered last year at Bumbershoot ® and opened last April in Havana, where the show is permanently residing.

It was in Cuba when Smith thought of engaging with the graphic design community of Iran.

“It was so easy for me to get into Cuba, meet graphic designers, and set up a collaborative poster show,” Smith says. “I needed a bigger challenge. I wanted to go somewhere more difficult, so I thought about Iran.”

Smith travelled to Tehran with the Fellowship of Reconciliation group and connected with several graphic designers about producing The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show. He received a great response to the idea of the show from a group of loosely associated designers, many of whom were recent graduates of Tehran University.

“Contrary to what we might assume, the Iranians were not just excited to meet Amercians; they were hungry for an on-going connection, a real dialogue. The greater challenge of traveling to Iran resulted in a better, even timelier exhibit,” Smith says.

The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show will be available in person in Seattle on Labor Day weekend, or online at www.seattletehran.com.

About the Curators
The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show is a collaborative effort between two curators/graphic designers, Seattle's Daniel R. Smith and Tehran's Iman Raad. Their goal is to expose the general public in both cities to each other's design work and communities; ultimately humanizing each side in a time of extremely high tensions.

Daniel R. Smith is a Seattle-based artist and designer. He organized The Seattle-Havana Poster Show for Bumbershoot 2007 in Seattle and later opened in 2008 at el Centro Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales in Havana, Cuba. In addition, he designed Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher's "Learning to Love You More" exhibition for Bumbershoot 2007. Smith graduated from the University of Washington in 1994 with a BFA in Graphic Design and a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts. He has worked as a graphic designer and art director for several Seattle firms including NBBJ Architecture, Starbucks Coffee, Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, GiftCertificates.com and Realogics. National design awards include selection for The American Center for Design’s 19th Annual 100 Show, and first place in the American Association of Museum’s Design Competition, poster category, 2004. His fine artwork has been shown locally at the Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA), Linda Farris Gallery, and Bellevue Art Museum. His work has been chosen for inclusion in Seattle City Light’s public art collection and Experience Music Project’s permanent collection.

For more information:
www.creativehotlist.com/dsmith

Iman Raad is an accomplished designer, critic and design curator. He specializes in magazine work as Editor-in-chief of Rang magazine and editorial member of Manzar Magazine. Raad has organized numerous design events and exhibitions in Iran, including “Valse of Words” graphic show in Tehran; “Common Language” in both Mashad and Nishabour; “Persian Type and Typography” (lecturer: Reza Abedini), Mashad; “Research on Graphic Design in Iran” conference in Mashad. His work has been exhibited extensively in Iran and in 2007 he served on the pre-selection jury for the ninth Contemporary Graphic Design Biennial of Iran. His work has been shown in the Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Canada, Spain and Taiwan and published in numerous books and periodicals including Area 2 (Phaidon) and Young Asian Graphic Designers (DAAB). He has won the IGDS Diploma of the 9th Tehran International Poster Biennial in 2007.

For more information:
www.imanraad.com

The Seattle-Tehran Poster Show is made possible with the support of Bumbershoot ®, Design Commission, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Vérité Coffee, Cupcake Royale, American Poster Institute, AIGA Seattle and AIGA XCD.

Relevant Web Sites
www.seattletehran.com
www.bumbershoot.org
www.designcommission.com
http://xcd.aiga.org
www.aigaseattle.org
www.seattlehavana.com
www.rezaabedini.com

Cool wHip........

Just got back from grocery run. I saw the new Cool Whip in a can and love the fact that their cap is in the shape of a dollop of the tasty goodness contained inside. It's nice package design. And of course after seeing it I could not get the following scene from Family Guy out of my head:

Apologies for taking so long....

It has been a while since the last post. We went on break, while the rest of the design world moved on I actually got a vacation. We are back, so I will be trying to post regularly again. Not sure if you have heard, but Steven Heller has an email newsletter through print that's pretty cool. You can sign up for it at http://blog.printmag.com/dailyheller/ or just visit that site everyday.

Cheers,
DG