Lex Leifheit » Design

Listening In

Lex — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:53:06 +0000

A friend suggested I update my blog. I’ve been tweaking my news consumption and checking out some new websites recently. For example …

News
Has anyone else out there tried news.me yet? I like it for two reasons:

1) I follow lots of people on social media to keep abreast of arts trends, innovation and reports. What they are reading is often of greater interest than their 140-character re-cap.

2) Usually, I wake up at 6:00am to have coffee and read things. If it were the old days, I’d have a newspaper. A lot of the arts reading is scholarly, statistical stuff that doesn’t lend itself to 5-minute consumption on an iphone during a work break.

News.me is a paid service, which will turn some people off. I really don’t care. Most of what I learn from news.me is arts-industry news. It’s continuing education and if you look at it that way 99 cents is a good deal.

I also like everyblock for hyper-local news about the area where I work (western SoMa) and live (Noe/Bernal).

Websites
I discovered the Andy Warhol Foundation Warhol Initiative Convening website las week and love it. Normally, I don’t have strong feelings about other arts websites … in fact, I’ve been looking at political websites lately to get ideas about enrollment and to seek out innovation.

There are lots of smart, elegant details in the Warhol site, such as: contact info in the upper right; search engine at the top of the page; blog scroll at the bottom of the page; Project Connect; and a nifty map. It’s clearly designed for a convening.

Many arts websites look cool, but few carry it through to attention to detail: navigation, structure, embodiment of one’s mission. I’m married to a designer and that stuff is daily conversation in our household so it was a breath of fresh air to see a great new arts site.

Another feed added to my rss reader is Summer of Smart, a collaboration between Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, the San Francisco Department of Technology, and many others. I’m a sucker for anything remotely smart that connects arts participation with community-building. Bonus points for political engagement. Summer of Smart has all of this and more. For example, this video of our SF mayoral candidates answering the question “What does open government mean to you?”

Doing It Right: Chapter Three on Project Management

Lex — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:04:53 +0000

I stumbled upon this fantastic article by Chapter Three‘s Creative Director Nica Lorber, How To Run A Creative Design Process For A Big Project. The guidelines are common sense for anyone with a little experience, but the “deliverables” and the “tools of the trade” make this article worth reading. It is tailored to Drupal and web design, but could be applied to any number of creative design projects.

Space is the Place

Lex — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:34:39 +0000

New York Magazine recently wrote about Jason Goodman and and Jeremy Lovitt’s growing empire of space-related arts businesses. Impressive! But what really struck me was the smartness of the web design. It is surprisingly rare that you can visit the homepage of an arts organization and really “get” what they do in 60 seconds. More often, you “get” way too much info, and the organization hasn’t figured out exactly what they want from a web presence. These guys gave it some thought, and it works.

Art Agenda: Design for Democracy

Lex — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:13:23 +0000

Interview with Jane Rainwater of Andover, CT about her winning designs in “My Yard Our Message.” Check out the top 50 (according to a general election) and choose one for your own yard.

Interview excerpted from The Art Agenda. Broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on August 7, 2008.

Like the new design? →

Lex — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:07:08 +0000

Props due to the amazing Dan McKinley. Who also designed a new book.

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Art Agenda: Frederick & Eliot Noyes

Lex — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:35:04 +0000

Interview with Frederick Noyes, son of architect and design pioneer Eliot Noyes, the first director of Industrial Design at the Museum of Modern Art.

Eliot Noyes is credited with changing the role of design and architecture in corporate America. He is the subject of a book by Gordon Bruce, who will be appearing with Frederick at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum on Sunday.

Interview excerpted from The Art Agenda. Originally broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on May 8, 2008.

Art Agenda: Andrew Blauvelt

Lex — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:00:49 +0000

Walker Art Center design director Andrew Blauvelt discusses the art exhibition Some Assembly Required, which was was shown at the Walker Art Center as well as the Yale Center for Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut. This excerpt was broadcast January 9, 2007 on 88.1 WESUfm, Middletown. In it, Blauvelt discusses the prefab movement, the process of curating, and the importance of mission integrity to small organizations.

Andrew Blauvelt on designing marketing materials:
“If you’re a small organization and you know what your mission is, then that mission needs to be communicated at every level. You really don’t have the luxury of missing something. You only have so many shows, you only have so many communications vehicles that you use.”
… At the Walker, we’re interested in innovative art, you know, innovation contains risk. If you’re not willing to fail, then it’s not really innovative.”