You might have seen this up yesterday until I took it down and replaced it with the video. Still wanted to have this one up though. Today I'm at an Adobe conference learning lots of cool new things.  Maybe it will lead to some great new ideas. Hopefully one of these days I have one of those ideas, and it makes me a very happy man (rich would be good too, but I can settle with just happy).

These are some photos of Conran & Partners that I found on Noisy Descent Graphics awhile back.

I really enjoyed the blue with the knock out, see through type. Plus the first one really speaks to me, might be why I used it on my very first post in the blog. Nothing like really driving a point home...

Not a bad idea to surround yourself with words of inspiration. Although I do despise those vinyl words on a wall in the home decorating trend like "eat" and "family", I wonder if I should play around with the vinyl cutter and see what I could do with my office here. I still have the giant visualize from my senior show waiting for a place. Might just help my office to look better if I just cleaned my desk.

The first Student Spotlight at TLB is going to be featuring Andrew Le. He is currently a student at Mississippi State University and will be graduating this Winter with a BFA in Graphic Design.  

The first piece of his work that grabbed my attention were his Casual Reports at the top. They grabbed my eye since it reminded me of Feltron's Annual reports, and what would you know, that is where Andrew's inspiration came from. Great minds do think alike. I think he did a great job working on his own reports and the typography, colors, and charting all came together really nicely. This really makes me want to take my own try and monitoring every piece of my life for awhile.

The other two images jumped out at me from his work. The first is a business system for 925, a furniture manufacture and the other image is of some really cool type inspired wood boxes that he is working on. I found the wood boxes on his Flickr page and if I have a workshop someday would love to attempt something like this. It would be great to have them up on a wall as an art piece but then be able to open them up and store things inside them.

So that is just a quick look at Andrew Le, make sure to check out the rest of his portfolio and work on his website, andrewle.com.

I agree with Leo on this, however, I also feel that also staying creative is the secret of creative people. 

I had this discussion at work today and how it is very important for me to stay creative outside of work, or I don't want to be creative at all. This could be just going out and shooting a few photos, doodling in a random sketch book, or whipping out the block printing stuff for a quick 1 hour print session. Anything and everything. It all counts. It often affects my entire mood as well.

Creativity keeps me happy.

So I ask you... What is your great secret as a creative person?

I found these posters by Stefano Joker Lionetti on Behance (although I don't remember exactly how I found them...). There isn't a lot of other information on them, but they just really stand out to me.

They are typographic posters, and from what I can tell (from the last one at least) they outline and show different typographic rules and principles. There are 5 different posters in all.

The different extreme weights of the typefaces from the ultra thin to the ultra heavy in combination of the large area os white space really make these posters stand out. Add in the color palette, the strong diagonal composition,  and the copy on a strict grid and you've got a great poster. Doesn't hurt that they also have great sayings on them. YES WE KERN!

This is one of my favorite quotes from a great designer. It's a portion from a larger quote, but it really just lays it all out there. It often comes up in my head when given a blank slate to work with since that is when it seems true to me the most. "Just do some great design" could be one of the hardest statements to fulfill. 

There are only 26 letters in the alphabet, why do we make it so hard for them to look so good?

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So this is my new blog that is going to be a bit of a recording of what I see on a daily basis. A journal of design, culture, ideas, and inspiration.

A little about me. My name is Josh, I'm a designer in the midwest, and I'm absolutely smitten with design. We'll get a little more in depth about me later on.