In times of political and social upheaval, protest art emerges as a powerful voice of resistance. From Design Is Play's anti-Trump posters to Hong Kong's protest art and Shepard Fairey's "We the People" series, I explore how modern agitprop channels frustration into compelling visual statements against authoritarianism and injustice.
As a design student in the 1990s, I never questioned why all our celebrated design heroes were white men. Today, with Black designers making up only 3% of the industry, it's time to examine how we teach design history and create meaningful representation in our field.
In the wake of Twitter finally fact-checking Trump's tweets and growing protests over George Floyd's murder, tech companies are being forced to confront their role in enabling harmful content. As designers, we're not just passive observers in this system - we help shape the digital world that billions of people interact with every day.
As a designer, I've always been fascinated by how Comic-Con creates such passionate brand loyalty. By examining the core elements of storytelling - from worldbuilding to character development - we can apply these same principles to create more compelling brands and products. Here's what I learned from studying one of pop culture's biggest phenomena.
How I transformed raw data about car-buying patterns into an elegant, circular infographic that tells a compelling story. Starting with a simple Excel chart, I created a sophisticated visualization that reveals the best times to buy a car—by day, month, and vehicle type.
When tasked with creating an infographic about exotic car company ownership, what started as a simple timeline evolved into something much more ambitious. Through deep research into automotive history and exploration of various visualization techniques, I developed a detailed 24" x 36" radial timeline poster that tells the complex story of luxury automotive brands and their changing corporate parents over the past century.
In a memorable scene from Mad Men, Peggy Olson delivers a masterclass in creative direction that resonates deeply with my own views on design and ideation.
As tablets and smartphones become our primary computing devices, the line between work and personal life continues to blur. For designers and marketers, ignoring this shift toward mobile-first content consumption isn't just shortsighted—it's potentially fatal.
When Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, print publishers rushed to create digital editions of their magazines, hoping to recapture lost readership. But simply replicating print magazines in digital form missed the point - tablets offered new possibilities for how we consume and interact with content. As both a designer and iPad user, I saw an opportunity to rethink how we could better serve specific audiences with their content needs.
As creatives, we can't produce our best work when we're constantly running at full speed. Here's why we need to make time for inspiration—and why companies should encourage it.