Last week at the Metro Center station I saw Virginia Tourism’s new ad campaign, Live Passionately – Virginia is for the Lovers. It’s a great campaign with stunning photos that really grab your attention. The campaign focuses less about a vacation and more about the lifestyle you will have choosing to visit Virginia by living out your passions from wine, music, heritage, and other experiences that make Virginia one of the top destinations in the country.

Read more about the campaing and see the other print ads here.

Last night I went to see Stanley Hainsworth speak at the Corcoran. Before founding Tether, he worked as an in-house designer at Nike (for 12 years), Lego (for 4 years), and Starbucks (for 4 years.) His lecture focused on 10 things he has learned the past 20 years:

1. Design can be a leader in creating emotional connections with consumers.

For each client he has, he created a case study that has images of textures that inspire him taken from nature and fashion. He doesn’t look at other designers’ work when creating his own because it creates more of the same thing, rather than something new and original. (Essentially, look at design resources to know what’s going on, but don’t use them as inspiration.)

2. Design is not decoration. Every pixel and period should have a purpose.

While working in-house at Nike he created a (badass) video about the founder to educate the employees where Nike’s brand. Also, when starting with a new client, he asks key questions to create a brand book to better understand the client. Questions like who are you? What is your voice? describe your brand like you would a person (i.e., don’t just say authentic, use real words.)

3. A client is not the enemy. They need to be gently led to the solution.

When he first started working at Starbucks, he thought the photos of the food were cold and had no human qualities (like a McDonald’s food shot.) He decided to take the food photos like you would see in real life, creating a human connection. And then I got hungry after looking at the tasty baked goods.

4. I’m a designer and …

To be a good designer you need to be a good marketer.

5. The more I understand about business the better designer I will be.

Learn as much as possible about your brand.

6. If it’s not fun, it’s not being done right.

7. Designers are the most strategic thinkers I know.

8. In-House life versus agency life—not so different.

9. Somehow I missed this point, oops.

10. Our profession is redefining itself and I couldn’t be more excited.

Who are we as designers?

The other night night I attended Pentagram’s launch party for DJ Stout’s new book, Pentagram Papers 39: Signs. Signs is a collection of homeless signs, compiled by Joe Ely, and is accompanied with portraits of Austin homeless men, women, and children, taken by Michael O’Brien. The launch party raised $5,000 for Mobile Loaves & Fishes. It was great seeing Pentagram’s studio, meeting Carla Rogers (one of DJ’s designers), and seeing how design can create awareness for the greater good.

After 5 days of sensory overload at my first SXSWi, I am finally catching up with work and posting my thoughts on the whirlwind experience. Overall, I thought the conference was a great a chance to learn a ton of new things and meet some pretty amazing people. Few key bullet points:

• Limitations [in web typography] lead  to creativity
• David Carson: “[Spec work] devalues the value of designers in a horrific way.”
• The key to participation [on the web] is to connect with users emotionally
• Twitter vs. News: Twitter acts as a fast-moving pointer to the news; the original, in-depth info is still needed for understanding
• How you ask questions [on your website] determines the answers you get
• Gary Hustwit: “[Objectified] was a film I wanted to see that didn’t exist—like Helvetica.”
• Design thinking focuses on making solutions through experimentation, iteration until the solution emerges
• Chris Anderson (Editor and Chief of WIRED): “If you don’t make your product free—piracy will do it for you.”
• Chris Anderson on abridgers: “Daddy is a writer—this guy is an eraser.”
• Embrace your inner geek

Mike Rohde has an amazing flickr set of his sketchnotes from SXSWi that are both typographically gorgeous and super useful. Austin Kleon also has a great sketchnote set that has some beautiful illustrations.

After the amazing graphics from the Beijing Olympics, it is quite disappointing to hear that the London Olympic graphics will be created by design studios that are being selected at random from a questionnaire. For being one of the most high profile creative projects in the UK, it sounds like there will be questionable results. Read more here.