new website

I now officially own audreycampbell.com. As you can see, I didn’t put a link to it, mainly since there isn’t anything to see yet. I’m thrilled to have this link though. It should be interesting. And since I am just practicing working on the web, here is my practice.

Wish List

First of all, I would like to interview a Portfolio Center student that is getting ready to graduate. This will be my lead in to interviewing one of the people on this list. These are people I want to interview possibly. These are all jumbled in my notes, so please remember they are at random. They would all be awesome to interview.

Eric Strohl, ideo.com

Marc English, Marc English Design

Tim Gleason, Yes Design Group

Paul B. Drohan, D5ive

Brandon Herring, 17 Feet

Kit Hinrichs, Pentagram

R. Kikuo Johnson, seabread.com

Kate & Camilla, Photographers, kateandcamilla.com

Chip Kidd, Random House

Doug Rucker, The Richards Group

Armin Vit, Pentagram

Jason Munn, The Small Stakes

Wonderfactory for Martha

The Wonderfactory redesigned Martha’s new site. After clicking through a bit, I felt that they had a great portfolio. You might find some other great sites through their work, or find a designer that you really appreciate. I feel that their site alone is inspiration, so visit it.

Martha’s expertice

Martha Stewart recently showed a huge redesign to their website, reflecting the clean, crisp design of the brand, with colors that give Martha her feminine side. The site had not been redesigned for five years, although the magazine and television communication of the brand have sky rocketed. This site redesign was well worth it, and with the percentage of women online, which is under served of Martha’s “how-to” information.

Recently, in a class conversation, we discussed how Martha Stewart, though extremely feminine, has brought her brand the feminine look without adding all the frills. Her brand is simple and appealing to the modern woman, making how-to projects attractive to working women who don’t want to be branded by the “betty homemaker” label, but simply want to try something new. Martha’s color pallate brings the fresh, new modern woman her simple, “no hassle” feminine branding that she needs. And her site incorporates that branding strongly, as well as providing her consumers with great information within a click of the button, making it more readily available for the modern woman.

1.0 is the loneliest number

The way that Tim O’Reilly discusses the battle between web 1.0 and web 2.0 simply seems like a battle betweeen corporations, and who is going to win the big corporate merger. In one corner, we have the old, unchanging, uncapable to handle technology called web 1.0. In the other corner, we have the tech savvy, geek from high school with tons of new, fast capabilities, and tons of cool features called web 2.o. So, eventually when web 2.0 infects the entire web, they can have their big corporate merger, getting everyone on the same system. But in that time, the tech geeks of the world would have thought of something better, which will keep the common people always trying to keep up.

But the web isn’t about a large corporation. What web 2.0 clearly shows, is that the web is about people, and making a connection with other people half way around the world through your computer, or having an impact on your world by speaking your voice in a blog. These new systems are what keeps us connected to eachother, and what web 2.0 is all about.

But what will be next? I think the big challenge is finding more ways in which people can connect. We can already video-conference each other, but what can the web do next to keep us tech geeks ready for the next step?

Falling hurts from a higher point

“The products and services that get talked about are the ones that are worth talking about.” –Seth Godin, Small is the New Big

So should your next challenge be boring or remarkable? “If I am criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable losses? If the only side effect from criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you’ll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable and great for you career. Feeling bad wears off.” (Godin 53).

And once you have taken the remarkable path, you have to ask yourself how to create something that the critics with criticize. “When 3M launches a sequel to the Post-it, or Microsoft unveils a new service, our expectations are set very high indeed. This is partially due to all of the hype: Hype attracts criticism the way that politicians attract lobbyist.”

I feel like I have quoted Seth a lot tonight, but it is simply because I have found a lot of inspiration and hope in what he has had to say about criticism. To hear true criticism is to walk up to your worst enemy and get their opinion. Although friends would tell you their opinion, they might sugar-coat it, or restrain themselves in order to spare your feelings. And I would like to think that I don’t have enemies out there, but if you were to come across someone that doesn’t appreciate your work, to listen to that criticism and try to take something away from it is better than to only listen to the praise. I would like more criticism in my life. It is the only way we become better.

comforting others

Our speaker today started out by asking us to fill out cards, stating who we were and what we did. Seth Godin notes in his book “Small Is The New Big” asks the big question of what you are? “Does clinging to an occupation make you better at it?” And when we try to classify us into these titles, does that really bring us happiness?

When trying to explain to my family and friends what exactly I am doing here in Atlanta, it’s not easy for them to understand. They need everything to fit into some category to make sense. But right now, we get to hide behind the title student. It’s easier to explain that.

But what about when we get out there and start our first real job? Job descriptions written by corporate honchos today make every job title specific to one end alone. But do we have to stick to completing the same tasks and objectives everyday? And do these job descriptions tie our hands to not going beyond what is expected of us and what are job entails?

Too often it feels like we just do the tasks we are assigned and nothing more. The people that go beyond expectations are often seen as overachievers, which we all are to an extent. Any Portfolio Center student has to be in order to have the drive to be here. Most of us already have a college degree, and could have found some job right out of college, but we are seeking to do something more, to find some more fulfillment in our lives, to have a job that we love, and not just something to pay the bills.

And with all of this, we hope that our future job titles will bring us a certain amount of sucess in our lives. But how is success measured? Do we let other people determine that for us? I feel sometimes that we are looking outside for other opinions to determine if we are happy or not, or wheter we have been successful or not. Is success measured by others?

Seth Godin states that, “The end result is that it’s essentially impossible to become successful or well-off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else.” But if we let others measure our success, then what are we really taking away from our job that will enrich our lives for the future.

site of the night

Nau is a clothing company that specializes in outdoor appareal with the intentions of combining ‘beauty, performance, and the use of sustainable materials.’ But what attracted me to this site was the overall design. With a combination of great photography, motion graphics, and systematic grid system that these other elements seem to float upon, this site well-represents its product.

Please visit and enjoy.

Obama Rally @ GT on Saturday morning

I can’t wait to go to this. I’ve never been a part of a political rally before. It’s in the Yellow Jacket Park of the Georgia Tech Campus.
Here’s a short article clipping if you would like to read about it.

Seven

Motion graphics in theater was defined by Kyle Cooper. His was his work with the movie “Seven” set a new stage of creativity and ingenuity. We had the chance to meet him yesterday, and I could have sat there for five hours watching his working and listening to him speak about it. What enraptured me the most was his central argument that even though we have all of this great technology to easily render and create these motion graphics, that these tools are great if they are carried out with a strong concept. Kyle argued that most of what he does is still hand made, then taken to the computer to finalize. His central argument is that the computer is just a tool by which you create them, and that he doesn’t like to rely too much upon that tool to do the creating for him.