Outsourcing design

Charlotte Observer is taking a bunch of its ad design overseas, as it kills 25 of 41 jobs and outsources design work abroad.
Think it'll have any effect on quality? Positive or negative?

Exporting pdf files from Illustrator

Is anyone else having any trouble exporting to a pdf file from Illustrator 3? I'm not even getting it as an option. And I can't do the print-pdf thing either apparently. Any ideas?

Color resource

Just got this link from a friend. A tres cool tool to pick coordinating colors. It defaults to mono but check out the contrast, triad, etc., to see nifty combos.

A year in Iraq

This is an Op-Chart from the New York Times titled "A year in Iraq" and published on Jan. 6, 2008. With data provided by the American and Iraqi governments and news media organizations (the independent Coalition Casualty Count in particular), the designers created a visual display for the "type and location of each attack responsible for the 2,592 recorded deaths among American and other coalition troops, Iraqi security forces and members of the peshmerga militias controlled by the Kurdish government."

I found the chart interesting because it illustrates a gruesome and serious subject in a very aesthetically pleasing manner. I'm not sure if the color choices were quite appropriate. I also felt it could have used more contrasting graphics to represent which type of soldier died. Overall the designer's successfully portrayed the war's enormous death toll in a less conventional way.

Something to think about.

Here's the link to the chart (where you can actually read it) and the accompanying story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/opinion/06chart.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=graphic+design&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Design Resources

I thought it might be handy to have a specific thread for us to post useful design resources that we want to share. Here's a link to the stock photography site that I like best:

http://www.istockphoto.com

Elle Magazine blooper?

Elle Magazine (inside cover) January 08

Is it just me, or does it look like Victoria Beckham's armpit points out, away from her body, unnaturally? It's no surprise to me that fashion magazines edit, trim, and airbrush their models, but this mistake makes that fact glaringly obvious. Unless only the back of her dress is white, I'm surprised this was printed...

Unconventional Website

I came across this Website on a design blog - it's for a book written by a performing artist and writer.  It goes against everything that you think of when you think Website, and I think it's pretty cute and funny - maybe less is more?  Keep scrolling using the pink arrows at the bottom of the page!

http://www.noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Her other main website is also an interesting mix of art, writing, and design - it's an art project that asks people to complete tasks/assignments and then submit their own interpretation of the task through signs, drawings, photos, and text. It's a different kind of "interactive" feature than I've ever seen. You should check it out:

http://learningtoloveyoumore.com/hello/index.php

Logo Trends

One of my co-workers at University Communications, the PR office for the university, posted this link on our internal blog the other day, and I thought it was an interesting look at what trends exist in logo design as well as what types of companies share similar logos.

http://logolounge.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=540

above all things ... ethics

Let's roll, people. It doesn't matter if you're old world or new world, decision-making matters. Check out this new case of "what in the world were they thinking?" in Golfweek magazine. It's the kind of thing that costs designers jobs. But it has far more than pragmatic implications.
What are designers' responsibilities? What kinds of process problems might have led to this debacle? If you were the youngest person in that shop and saw the cover mockup, would you have said anything?