“A Student’s Guide to Web Design is an effort to better equip design students after graduation with an inviting community that encourages collaboration and the sharing of ideas.

College can be a wonderful opportunity for those fortunate to attend and tends to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. College provides many invaluable resources such as friends and mentors for the rest of your life, but there simply isn’t enough being provided for graduates in the form of real-life skills that can be applied to the design world; that’s where we come in.

This campaign isn’t just about helping web design students cope with their dissatisfaction, it is about elevating design education at the post-secondary level. As a recent graduate myself, I found a serious gap between the education I was receiving and the current web design industry. I took my concerns to my classmates and other students online and discovered the same feeling towards the information that was being presented in the classroom. Many students felt the same frustrations; they felt unprepared to enter the workforce after graduation both character-wise and competence-wise.

By helping to fund our project, we are preparing, supporting and encouraging design students to love what they do so they become not only contributing members of the design community, but well-rounded individuals after graduation. Our blog will provide students with the ability to connect with others through shared experiences and grow together on their journey towards graduation.“

All of the funds collected during this process will go directly to helping with the cost of maintenance and hosting of the website, any marketing and advertising campaigns and material fees such as books, magazine and paid online learning tools that will help us keep up with the latest and most current information.

My mission is providing students with high quality content, resources and materials as a way of giving back to the design community. I care deeply about the information I’ll be providing through the website and am passionate about helping students reach their potential.

If you can contribute, it is greatly appreciated. Please click here to donate. If you can’t contribute financially, please share the word with others through Twitter. Thank you.

Dear Photograph is a lovely blog where people submit photographs of old photos taken over the original. Browsing through the pictures, my mind started wondering how these nostalgic photos have a connection to design.

Our job as designers is to build meaningful associations and connections between people. Designers achieve experiences of emotional feeling that have a lasting effect; an experience full of purpose and meaning.

Many of the captions under the photos express feelings of lost happiness, hardship and failed love – all emotions that everyone has experienced at some point in their life. The connection between memory and experiences is like a node on a branch on a tree. When our mind loses a connection, these memories and feelings are forgotten and sometimes fade completely. When someone is exposed to an action that requires them to rekindle these memories, the node is re-connected and becomes meaningful.

Design will resonate with people on different levels because of past occurrences and the intensity of these memories. Although we could never facilitate all the possible reactions to a design, we can become more aware of how we respond to certain situations of nostalgia.

I hope you appreciate the pictures below. Not only do the photographs look interesting at first glance, but the meaning behind the photo makes it beautiful.

As the New Year marks the passage of time, so do my childhood memories in my parent’s home. They will be selling their house and the memories will fade to black and white, but they will always be kept, safely wrapped with love, in my heart.

New Year’s resolutions and 30 years gone by…what was that little boy inside of me thinking about so long ago? I hope I never quit chasing that little boy’s dreams. It’s what matters most.

Definition of your message and purpose
I merely feel like I’m dipping my toes into the ever growing ocean of the design community. It’s overwhelming to being to even fathom my options, opportunities I’ve seized and burned and where it will all take me in the future. The future right now seems like a dark and scary black hole – I’m about to be sucked in regardless of whether I’m ready or not. My definition of myself as a designer is somewhat uncertain and blurry, feeling lost within the voices and thoughts of others who are more seasoned and experienced. Characterizing your message takes time, hard work and patience.

Putting yourself in uncomfortable situations
My advice for students just starting out like me, is to do things that make you uncomfortable. That sweaty palm, light-headed, butterflies in your stomach type of uncomfortable. Whether this be even something as simple as talking to your first client on the phone or going to a job interview, do it. You won’t be able to avoid these later on in your career, so start getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. I still get nervous when I talk to clients for the first time, but over time these uncertainties will subside. My internship this past summer was a perfect example. I was thrown into meetings, handling multiple clients and new work environments that would of made me weak at the knees a year ago. Looking back, I would not of had it any other way because it forced me to experience these situations first hand.

Keep things simple and be happy with your work, clients, friends and family and life and just keep going.

Related note: Meagan Fisher just posted a wonderful interview about fear, awkwardness and public speaking. Take a listen here.

Deda.me

Pepper Plane

Cabedge

Fruute

Lovely typography throughout the site.

TDH Creative

Beautiful colours and visual imagery. Very moving photography on the homepage, as well.

Type Everything

A wonderful collection of typography from around the web.

Free Man Brand

Minimalism at it’s finest. Excellent use of grids and typography.

Momentus Project

“A collaborative project in which a select group of designers, illustrators, and artists create visual interpretations of the most defining moments in United States history as a way of informing others of our proud, yet sometimes troubled and forgotten past.” Created by Evan Stremke.