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All I’m hearing is that black and white are “it” for decor. It’s a little too stark for my own personal tastes, but I’ve noticed a quirky little lighting trend harking all the way back to the 50s and 60s coming into vogue again. It makes sense, seeing that mid century furniture is all the rage (and dear as SIN!), but the stark white plastic almost demands blacks and greys to compliment – it shall have none of that fussy colour business thank you very much!

Left – Artichoke pendant light shade from Louis Poulson.
Right – Norm 69 light shade by Simon Karkov.

I think I like the modern interpretations of the white pendant light shade much better – for starters they’re much more reminiscent of floral shapes, albeit highly stylised. They’re also much more accessible. The Artichoke pendant lighting is around $4,000, but you can buy a Knappa pendant light shade for around $40! It’s much softer and made from plastic too.

Knappa Klover from Ikea

Knappa Tulipan from Ikea

Midsummer light shade by Tord Boontje

Even better, is Tord Boontje’s light treatment – made from single sheets of cut paper that have that real handmade aesthetic. I’m in love, and I want one right now! These are even more floral, but still white so you can have your whole white trend as well as your cake (and eat it too!)

So, there are a few ways to soften the starkness of a white decor – but if you’re like me you’ll probably end up throwing a few cans of highly saturated colour at the walls just to feel comfortable!

I would never have picked Adobe to go backwards, and by backwards I mean to follow any crappy trend. Especially the Web 2.0 nightmare inflicting itself all over the internet right now – you’d expect Adobe to take heed of the doomsayers of the bubble logo trend!

My co-worker and I joke about Web 2.0, threatening to rebrand one of our major clients with the current Web 2.0 flavour of super slick sans serifs, bubbles and aqua patinas. But it remains in the cosmos of nerdy design “in jokes” – we’d never present it as a viable branding or identity solution because it is too faddish and ephemeral for any kind of product with all the hallmarks of consistency, tradition and relevance.

Unfortunately, the impression the Photoshop family brand presents is that the product is faddish and dismissive of all the other really awesome and cool things you can do with Photoshop’s tools. Of course, this isn’t the logo for Photoshop CS3, but Photoshop’s whole family – CS3, Elements, Photo Album and Lightroom.

I think this will be cause for even more whinging from Adobe users, since many hated the concept for CS3’s “periodic table of elements” icons. I actually think the icons are successful, and that the theory behind them is solid.

The most important thing for all the discerning designers to remember is that Adobe are not marketing and branding experts – they’re programmers, and they continue to set the benchmark for graphic design, desktop publishing and illustration software. We’re all still going to use their products, and people are going to be creating and following fads with this very software for years to come!!

The Good Design Salve!

I love flickr’s identity, and I love that they’ve given the brand’s mark scope for including it in community – for example in yesterday’s flickr logo for Talk Like a Pirate Day. I even love that all throughout their alpha, beta, delta etc phases they let people know what the status was in the logo. It’s Web 2.0 – but relevant and human.

Props, snaps and well played guys.

This is a really unsexy topic for me to blog about, but I wanted to draw attention to the issue of RSI in the graphic design profession. It’s an injury that is very real in the workplace, but it doesn’t get much press. Usually sufferers pass it off as “just part of the job”, but I’d be interested to find out the actual percentage of people who suffer RSI and the percentage of those people who take days off or “just work through it”.

Moreover, OSHA’s sound advice to “vary activities” and “take frequent breaks” doesn’t acknowledge the reality that many jobs, such as graphic design, programming, and word processing, require nonstop computer use.
Deborah Quilter

Generally, I just try to work through it, but this typically results in a pretty bad spasm or episode, meaning I am forced to take a day off work to have a break from sitting on my butt all day making tiny and precise gestures with my right hand. Even typing this entry is giving my wrist a break, and I’m always amazed that a sedentary job like graphic design results in such debilitating injury.

At work I use a Wacom Graphire graphics tablet. To be honest, I thought this would be the solution to all of my pointing related problems (sore neck, sore shoulders, burning wrist, restricted movement in my fingers), but after two months of use I can’t say its any better than the optical mouse I had before. I do love using a tablet and stylus, it has sped up my work flow quite a bit, however I can’t feel any benefits in terms of my RSI, which I’m really disappointed about.

So I’ve done a little bit of research and gathered some cool ideas for combating RSI. I’ll pick a few to road-test over the next few months and track their effectiveness.
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