Congrats to the InShow 16 winners

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InShow is AIGA South Carolina’s annual design competition and pulls together the best work from around South Carolina. This year, I only entered one thing into the competition as Sketchbook B and wasn’t shocked when it didn’t win…

As I looked at the incredible collection of work, I was surprised to find Sketchbook B included as a credit on one of the winning entries. My friend Marius included Sketchbook B as a “typeface design” credit on his Unwantables Package Design that used Valdes Poster Sans, the typeface that we developed together. The piece was even selected as a special judges award. So congrats to Marius and thanks for including Sketchbook B on the entry. 

I encourage you visit the InShow site and look at the winning entries. There was some amazing work “in” this year. Check out Marius’s amazing (and massive) collection of work at Zoo Valdes. And remember that you can download Valdes Poster Sans for free here at Sketchbook B.

 

Mini Review of Outliers

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I was first introduced to Malcom Gladwell at AIGA’s GAIN conference last October in New York. Gladwell talked about his research and his soon-to-be-released book, Outliers. (He also talked a lot about Fleetwood Mac.) AIGA has a video of the presentation archived on their site.

Outliers is essentially a study of how people succeed. The first half of the book is focused more on individuals and the second half discusses institutional success. The most quoted content from the book is the idea that expert proficiency requires 10,000 hours of experience. The reason people succeed is that they are placed in situations or environments where they can get the 10,000 hours faster than their peers.

Gladwell makes some interesting conclusions about how to adapt some of these concepts to help children succeed in school. Some of the data and conclusions seem to be directly tied to some of the proposals coming from new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

From a design side, I think you can take from it a reassurance that becoming a good designer (or creative of any kind for that matter) takes time and repetition. And perhaps most importantly, it requires an environment that allows that creativity to be nurtured and embraced.