Greetings from Sensical Design, Washington’s best publication design firm, where, as usual, we’ve been negligent about sending this newsletter. This is our first communication since September, because we’ve just been having too much fun. What could be more fun than baseball, parties, and small children? Read on...
We’re approaching the end of our fourth and final year on the AIGA DC board of directors. Since last June we’ve been vice president, which has been a great experience. Rolling off the board will give me more time to focus on a national initiative, the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design, for which we will be heading up a team doing outreach and coordination with chapters. But in the meantime, we have a number of interesting and exciting events coming up this spring, including a sustainable design expo, Design Unbound, on Earth Day.
Now on to a few design projects from the last six months. The National Association of REALTORS community outreach department wanted to do a special promotion for an event at their national conference. Their goal was to encourage younger members to get involved in their local associations and encourage diversity in their leadership. They asked us and our editorial partner, Magnificent Publications, to create a presence at the event that would highlight those young professionals who have taken on an active role in the association. We created the table tents and “pochettes” (little pillow-shaped packets) shown at right, as well as a slide show that played during the event. Packed inside the pochettes were NAR business card holders. “By focusing on table tents, posters and other collateral materials that highlighted well known young professionals in our industry,” said Kyle Lambert-London, NAR Manager, Community Outreach Education, “we drew other young up-and-coming members to get involved in various aspects of our association. We enjoy working with Sensical Design and appreciate the creativity they bring to all of our projects.”
For CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, we designed a book on the rather dry subject of data mining for academic fundraising. The book contained approximately 50 graphs and 25 text tables, so it was a fairly complex assignment. But the title, Baseball, Fundraising, and the 80/20 Rule, allowed us to have a bit of fun with the cover. The final design, at left, uses an old scorecard (Cubs 3, Reds 2) as a background element that suggests both baseball and data. According to CASE Director of Books Publishing Lori Woehrle, “We love Dan’s creative cover treatment for our recent book on statistics. (Talk about a challenging assignment!) It cleverly plays off the book’s title with just the right balance of fun and sobriety, which matches the tone of the text exactly. When this statistics book hits #1 on Amazon, it will be Dan’s cover that took it there.”
Finally, on a little bit of a different tack, we created a booklet as a holiday gift for our family. Liz’s niece, Olivia, like many three-year-olds, is constantly saying funny things. Liz had been writing them down over the last year or so, and for the holiday we decided to create a book that gathered them for posterity. Liz’s talented sister, Leslie Prunty, contributed a set of beautiful illustrations, and we had the booklet digitally printed just in time for Christmas. At right are the cover and one of the interior pages.
That’s the latest from here. What’s new with you? We’d love to hear from you. Visit our Web site if you haven’t, and please send an email if you have any projects you need help with, or just to say hello.
Dan Kohan