National Student Show & Conference

Which art student are you?

2009-06-19T07:11:00.000-07:00

Illustrated from the observations of Chuck Dillon- teacher at the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia. Over his 10 year teaching career he's compiled a list of about 20 different art student types. I think we can all relate to a few.

See the full list of artsy students on Chuck's blog.

HOW conference next week!

2009-06-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

We will be at the HOW conference next week promoting our Rough magazine, as well as the 6th Annual National Student Show & Conference! if you plan to attend in Austin next week- please look for our booth in the resource center and come by to grab a free issue of Rough, and get info about next year's show!

10 Principles That Will Make Your Work Better

2009-04-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

10 Principles That Might Make Your Work Better or May Make It Worse Written by: Frank Chimero

(read the Full Article)
1. Be honest.
Be honest to your audience. An open path of communication is built upon trust. This idea is relevant to every other form of communication, and I think it applies to visual communication. Honesty isn’t just about audience. Be honest to yourself as well. Do the things you’re passionate about. Avoid the things that you hate, if you can.

2. Consistent voice is more important than consistent style.
Voice is about what you say. It’s content. Style is about what you’re wearing. It’s aesthetics. The prior informs the latter, not the other way around. Clothes don’t make the man. They don’t make your work either.

3. Does it have heart?
If it does, make it. If it doesn’t, why spend the time on something that doesn’t have spirit?

4. Have modest expectations.
Spend a lot of time choosing that one thing that a piece of design or an illustration should try to do. Then, work your ass off trying to figure out the absolute best way to do that one thing.

5. Don’t be scared of your tools.
Use them, don’t fear them. For instance, while sketching, I recommend using cheap paper. If the paper’s cheap, you won’t feel bad documenting your bad ideas. Getting the first, awful ideas out of the way is crucial: very rarely does any one hit it out of the park on the first try. If I had a sketchbook filled with nice, expensive paper, I’d feel obligated to make the first idea I sketched brilliant. That pressure would paralyze me. Tools should be enablers, not disablers. If something is more intrusive or intimidating than it is useful, get rid of it. It’s not a tool, it’s a toy. Or worse, a creative boogie man that you’re inviting through your front door.

6. Embrace the subconscious.
In the studio, I have a sofa for naps with a couple pillows. The pillow is kind of comfortable, but mostly not. Just soft enough to relax you. But, just stiff enough to keep you from falling fully asleep. Right before you fall fully asleep, your brain is making all sorts of connections between all of the unrelated thoughts in your brain. There’s no filter from your conscious mind saying “This makes sense. This other idea doesn’t.” Without that filter, you can consider more possibilities. So, grab something to write with, fill your head to the brim with research and what you already know. Then, take an almost-nap and get ready to document the ideas that find you.

7. Edit.
Delete unimportant things. Even if you love them. If it isn’t spectacular, it gets cut. Kill your darlings. Be a cold-blooded killer. Ruthless. Delete. Refine. Improve.

8. Being too comfortable is dangerous.
Most creatures die in their sleep. Keep moving, or get eaten. The only things you should be absolutely comfortable with in your creative process are your tools.

9. There is nothing keeping you from doing the sort of work that you wish.
What do you want? It’s a hard, yet crucial question. We all do creative work to get happy. It’s why we let it beat us up, and it’s why we keep crawling back to it. Figure out precisely what you want, and realize that if no one will pay you to make it, you can still make it for yourself. And you still win, because you’re happy.

10. Execute.
An idea on the page is worth 100x more than an idea in the mind. You can only judge and be judged by work that’s executed. Eventually, we all realize that most of the ideas that look great in our mind look dumb once they’re real. But, at least you now know.

Creative Seed

2009-04-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a little Monday morning creative inspiration for y'all. A beautiful animation following the adventures of a singular apple seed. The project was funded by Adobe on behalf of CS4, produced by Nexus, and directed by John Kelly.

The Seed

The Seed from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Make sure to watch the Making Of video showing the creative team working on the project.

Making Of: The Seed

Making of 'The Seed' from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Wisdom from Debbie Millman

2009-04-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

If you weren't around to see Debbie Millman's keynote at the 3rd Annual Student Show & Conference you may want to make up for it by reading some of her words of wisdom on branding over at thedieline.com

Also keep a lookout for her new book, "Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design" set to release in October 2009.

Best Motion

2009-04-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

Mickey Hester
Black Swan Type
Fort Hays State University

Best Logo

2009-04-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Eric Weidner
Planet Shoes
University of the Incarnate Word

Best Illustration

2009-04-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

Zach Hale
Miami Frank
UNT

Best Magazine Covers/Spreads

2009-04-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Krzmarzick
Mixed Messages
South Dakota State University

Best Brchure/ Catalog

2009-04-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Manda Maloney
Egyptian Type
Texas State University

Best Annual report

2009-04-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

Barrett Fry
Fields of Discovery
UNT

Best Interactive

2009-04-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

HIlary Combs
Long's Horseradish
Texas State University

Getting Better

2009-04-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

Reading this post by Frank Chimero on the Thinking for a Living blog will probably be the most useful 5 minutes of your day. To everyone who got to participate in The Practice Sessions breakout session at the conference, I'm jealous!

{If you go to every last one of those links, I'll be oh so happy}

Best Print Ad

2009-04-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

Sean Lenard & David Fox
UHAUL- Move More
UNT

Pest Photography

2009-04-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

Melissa Adams
Texas Christian University

Best Group Project

2009-04-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Ben Krantz & Amy Honeycutt
Ask.com
Portfolio Center

Best Public Service Advertising

2009-04-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

Jason Perez
NoButts.org
UNT

Best Posters

2009-04-15T06:11:00.001-07:00

Megan Dowdy
Design DISSENT Posters
Truman State University

Best Book Covers/ Spread

2009-04-13T08:57:00.001-07:00

William Engles
CRASH
Rutgers University

Best Misc. Design

2009-04-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

A.R. Jacques
ReCAST Dominoes
Fort Hays State University

Best Packaging

2009-04-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Patrick Snodgrass
Pyrex
UNT

Best Letterhead

2009-04-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Christina Griffis
Sprouts Letterhead
Texas A&M Commerce

Best Total Campaign

2009-04-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

Sean Leonard (Art Direction) and Dave Fox (copy)
UHAUL- Move. More.
UNT

Golden Apple Award

2009-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

Each year students have the opportunity to nominate one outstanding College, University or Art School professor will be honored with the distinguished Golden Apple Award. Congratulations Jim Watson,
Oklahoma State University

Best School

2009-04-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

This years Best School award goes to:

The award for best school is based on the school with the best quality of work, not quantity of work that was accepted in to the show.
Congratulations UNT!

Pictures!

2009-04-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

I know I saw a lot of you running around with your cameras over the conference weekend... please be sure to share them with everyone by adding them to our flickr gallery.

Best of Show!

2009-04-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Megan Dowdy- Truman State University

Megan's work on the Unwanted poster series was commended by all of our judges for her original photography, copy writing, and exceptional art direction.

Kudos Megan, your posters were unanimously picked to represent this year's Best of Show award.

What a weekend!

2009-04-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

The 5th Annual National Student Show & Conference has come and gone in the blink of an eye! Here are just a few out takes from the weekend. If you were there and we did not get a chance to interview you- please share your favorite part about the conference below.

Show Preview

2009-03-20T06:47:00.001-07:00

Friday night Party

2009-03-17T16:51:00.001-07:00

Message to rookies

2009-03-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

A few great tips for anyone looking to advance their career.
Check out the full article here.

Show Preview

2009-03-17T06:42:00.001-07:00

Show Preview

2009-03-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

What The Font?

2009-03-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Because of great new apps like this WhatTheFont app for iPhone it's going to make it hard for us to pick interesting characters for students to identify in our font guessing game this year...
But don't think we're going to go easy on you all. Brush up on your knowledge of Accent, Decent, Dingbats and Serifs. We're going to have many more fun prizes this year for our open guessing games like Name that Font, and Name that Logo.

Show Preview

2009-03-12T08:03:00.001-07:00

Show Preview

2009-03-12T06:45:00.001-07:00

Student "Show" preview

2009-03-11T09:02:00.001-07:00

Just a little preview of this year's accepted entries, check back for more posting soon.
The full show will be presented at the conference when the Student Show Gallery opens on April 3rd.

Judging weekend Pics

2009-03-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

Our judges vote anonymously by dropping coins into the cups. At the end of each round the volunteers tally the votes to determine each category's winner, and in the case of a tie the entries are set out for the judges to debate the best of category.

Accepted Entries

2009-03-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

We just posted the list of accepted entries on the official NSS&C site. Go look, hurry!

My How You've Grown

2009-03-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

See what these students are saying about last years National Student Show & Conference.

Book your hotel

2009-03-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

This year's conference will be held at the Renaissance Dallas-Richardson Hotel Book your hotel soon, rooms are filling up fast!

Keep checking back here on the blog for updates about fun stuff going on in the city during the conference weekend.

Conference Updates

2009-03-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

We're currently finalizing the speakers and breakout sessions for the Conference and will be posting information on the official National Student Show & Conference website very soon. Thanks to everyone for checking in, we'll let you know when we post anything new to the site. We're super excited about this year's speakers and know you will be too!

Nice touch

2009-02-25T21:22:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned before- how your entries are wrapped up for judging weekend does not affect how they will be judged whatsoever- but we absolutely love it when we get to open pretty packages like this one.

Thanks Andrea, Best of Luck in the show!

Don't cut me

2009-02-25T21:16:00.000-08:00

Xacto blades in packages are NOT appreciated....
Be careful when packing!

Nice Package

2009-02-20T18:57:00.000-08:00

The entries are rolling in! Only a few days left till the Feb. 25th deadline- hope your package makes it on time! While the envelope your mail you entries in does not affect the judging whatsoever, here are a few packages that we appreciated.

Meet your Judges

2009-02-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

We have quite the impressive lineup for this years student show judging weekend:Felix Sockwell- designer & illustrator, FelixSockwell INC.
Miguel Caballero- copywriter & ACD at DDB/LA
Carolyn Keer- art director, Anthropologie
Rex Peteet- Founding partner, principal designer, Sibley/ Peteet Design
Scott Harben- photographer/ Creative Director

Wake up your Brain

2009-02-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

We are excited to welcome Stefan Mumaw as our opening keynote speaker this year. For those of you who have attended the conference in previously, this presentation is going to be a little different...
To kick off the creative weekend Stefan is going to wake up our left brain with a few creative exercises modeled after his book "Caffeine for the Creative Mind"

Get your entries in!

2009-02-01T18:10:00.000-08:00

The time has come- print your best work, tend to your xacto wounds and mail your entries in pronto!
The deadline has been extended to February 25th.

Please mail your entries to:

ReelFX,
Attn: Wendy Teague
301 N Crowdus St., Dallas, TX 75226

Mark your calendars!

2009-01-02T18:02:00.000-08:00

This years conference will be Conference April 2-4 2009
at the Dallas-Richardson Renaissance Hotel.