Design Citizens

If you can’t believe that we finally decided to take down the silly static JPEG that we called our “website” for approximately 4 months then, well… you better believe it!

Check it out: http://www.citizen-creative.com

This fresh and shiny website is actually a Woo Theme, AKA a premium WordPress theme built on a solid code framework which has been fine tuned over time. A Woo Themed website works perfectly for us at this time as we can easily control the theme options and multiple theme styles and it took us less than a week to get up and running.

Eventually, we’ll fully design a custom site for Citizen Creative, but for now our little Woo Theme will do. Check it out and send us your thoughts!

Graphic Design Study of the Snowflake by Andrei D. Robu.

(Via: Swissmiss)

You may have noticed a few changes here at Design Citizens over the last few days. There’s a good reason for that!

Our studio, FOX Graphics, has been steadily evolving over the last couple of years. We’ve had awesome opportunities to work with great clients and we’ve enjoyed every minute of it! To acknowledge and celebrate how far we’ve come, we have changed our name from FOX Graphics to Citizen Creative.

The new name better represents who we are and the services we offer. We still do all varieties of graphic design of course, but the real value is that each piece we design for each client is part of that client’s cohesive brand. We don’t just do graphics, we build and develop brands. (Hence the “Creative” part.) Our clients come to us for thoughtful, appropriate and results-driven design, not production work. They understand that no matter how small a particular piece may be, it is still communicating volumes about who they are, and they trust us with their message. Because of this, we felt that “Graphics” was no longer a good fit for us.

Even though the name “FOX” is no longer a part of our name, we are still very much a part of FOX Architects! It’s simply difficult to explain to potential clients why they should hire an ‘architecture’ firm for brand strategy and graphic design. (Luckily FOX is no ordinary architecture firm!) The name “Citizen” represents our allegiance to gorgeous, thoughtful design. (It’s also very extensible; keep an eye out for our newest campaign, the Citizen’s Arrest, coming soon!)

We’re so excited about our upcoming adventures as Citizen Creative, and as always, we’re so thankful to all of our wonderful clients for giving us the opportunity to do what we love! Please feel free to call us any time on the new Citizen hotline: 703-663-2406, or email us at tellusaboutyou@citizen-creative.com. (Don’t worry, our FOX email addresses still work too.) You can also visit us at www.citizen-creative.com.

Elizabeth Gilbert has genius, but she’d never go along with “being” a genius. It’s the natural way people thought about creativity and genius in the Western Culture before humans were at the center of the universe and began to refer to themselves as “a genius.” This is her TED talk. I found it funny, personal and surprisingly moving and hope you do too.

If you recognize these logos then read about the highly-acclaimed designer, Tom Geismar.

I’m fairly certain that Michael Osborn has a heart made of pure gold. He has an obsession with design, a true-love for it that keeps him designing round-the-clock for some amazing charitable organizations.

Photo by: Joe Carabeo, Astray Productions

This is a picture of Michael Osborn and I moments after I met him for the first time. It was a unseasonably warm and sunny Sunday evening on November 15, 2009, at a special meet-and-greet gathering held by AIGA DC for the AIGA DC Design Continuum Scholarship Fund Circle donors. Michael was invited to join our social gathering and share some of his work from 1 Heart Press. Among Michael’s many passions is the fine art of letterpress printing. His love for finely set typography and skillful printing required more and more dedication and strict diligence, so in 1991 he decided to open his own letterpress printing shop in San Francisco. Since then he’s been letterpress printing anything from fine books to wedding invitations.

By day Michael is President and Creative Director of the San Francisco-based graphic design firm, MOD/Michael Osborne Design, Inc. Established in 1981, the firm’s work in corporate/brand identity, package design, and print collateral has been recognized by many organizations, and publications and is on display in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, and the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

With Michael there’s always love, or a heart, something he’s become well-known for in his design work. There are many different kinds of hearts in his body of work, but the majority have been created for projects at Joey’s Corner.

In 2004, Michael Osborne created a non-profit 501(c)3 organization called Joey’s Corner, a studio dedicated to providing pro-bono strategic creative services to non-profit groups focusing on healthcare, children’s and social well-being issues. The studio was founded to honor the life of Michael’s deceased son, Joseph Michael Osborne, 1980-2004. Joey’s Corner operates on donations, fund-raising events, and whenever possible, projects may be underwritten by a sponsor or by the non-profit client itself.

Joey’s Corner is the first heart in a series of Michael’s many hearts:

Next he created Valentines Day cards for sale with the proceeds going to Joey’s Corner.

Then Ethel Kessler, Art Director for Stamps, called up Michael and asked him to design Love Stamps for the USPS.

All of a sudden, there were Hearts in San Francisco. Hearts were all over the city, actually and most were designed and constructed by Michael himself.

Then there is Heart to Heart, an orgainzation founded to save babies by teaching doctors abroad the art and science of open-heart surgery for children.

There’s a heart in yoga, The Art of Yoga Project. This organization’s mission is to lead teen girls in the California juvenile justice system toward accountability to self, others and community by providing practical tools to effect behavioral change.

I’ll conclude with one final heart, his work for the Alzheimer’s Association’s Memory Walk.

Michael Osborne came to Washington, DC to give a presentation to the local AIGA Chapter on the work he’s produced at Joey’s Corner. His presentation moved the audience. A dozen plus people came up to me after the presentation to thank me for inviting Michael to our chapter. A few even marked this as one of their top 3 AIGA DC events, ever. I just couldn’t be happier.

Thank you Michael for coming to DC, but mostly for your boundless ability to inspire and delight designers and change organizations so their messages are finally heard.

This fun little article about the appropriate and accurate use of different typefaces appeared in the NY Times yesterday. The basic premise is that the more you love typography, the more annoying it is to see poorly-set type or outright mistakes. (I guess it’s the same with grammar lovers - my own father once cringed audibly in the middle of a church service when the pastor used the nonword “irregardless.”)

I guess the difference is that more people overlook poorly-executed typography than poor speech - usually when I point out icky type I just get eye rolls and no one is outraged except me. So it was nice to read that there are others - even non-designers - who share my sensitivity. I even learned something new - apparently in the movie “Titanic” the numbers on the gauges of the ship are set in Helvetica. I had never noticed that (though it’s probably been 10 years since I’ve seen “Titanic” in its entirety.) Helvetica, of course, was not introduced until 1957, making it the type equivalent of having Elvis Presley sing the ship down as it sank.

Note - the photo above is from Chris Beesley who also wrote a post on his blog about bad type.

Thanks to Maggie for the link!

Via Design Observer - a great article about Aline and Eero Saarinen’s partnership, told through letters recently digitized by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. Their story has all the makings of a great movie - fabulous characters, art and scandal. I could spend days reading through their archive if I didn’t have all this work to do…

Courtesy of bonfx.

There once was a trendy typesetter
Who thought “less is more is more better”
“I’ll sit here and scratch
at my tiny soul patch,
Until my design is one letter.”

A week ago AIGA DC hosted a film screening of Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight, a film by Arthouse Films and directed by first time filmmaker, Wendy Keys.



I first heard of Milton Glaser when I was in college, but he was never as big as Lester Beall for some reason. At RIT, we had a design archive which included the work of Lester Beall, Paul Rand, Will Burtin, Saul Bass, Alexey Brodovitch and of course my all-time favorite, Cipe Pineles. There are so many historical figures in graphic design that have really paved the way for where design is today, it’s very hard to focus on just one.

Of living historical design figures, Milton Glaser represents graphic design. Among all of the things he’s famous for, in my mind Milton is I ♥ NY, which was part of a campaign to bring tourism to New York State, not just New York City. Milton always describes the logo as part of his campaign to bring “love” back to the streets of NYC in the late 1970s. He never would have guessed how far his little mark would go and did this work pro bono. Now, I ♥ NY is everywhere. It repesents other cities, it’s on key chains and coffee mugs and it was also recreated less than a month after September 11, 2001 when the logo became especially prominent.



Overall, the film’s content artfully personifies Milton Glaser, capturing his immense warmth, humanity and the boundless depth of his intelligence and creativity. The film took over five years to complete, by first time filmmaker, Wendy Keys who is a former student of Milton Glaser. The cinematography is very basic, shot with an ordinary video recorder and edited by Wendy herself. At first I thought it felt like a student project. The lines are fuzzy, the colors are not vibrant, and I thought it lacked luster, but as the film progressed I was less interested in the film quality and found myself submersed in Milton. I felt like I was right there next to him, learning about his life and being inspired by his way of life.

If you’re a graphic designer, you know Milton Glaser. If you’re not a graphic designer, you probably don’t know Milton Glaser. That’s the great thing about this film, it’s one that everyone (designer or not) can enjoy. It’s a film you absolutely should not miss.