Light Rail

I'm starting to think about packing my bags for Minneapolis and head north, way north for me. I'm checking out the weather (highs in the mid-60s perhaps even 70, lows in the high 40s, far better than last December!) and I'm remembering my trip back to the airport on light rail.

On the way in, I took the Super Shuttle, which was OK but took a long time to get to the hotel and so on the way back, we decided to try the light rail.

Light rail is such a bargain! For around $2, you can get from the airport (btw, love the cute blonde family on the home page!) down close to the hotel, then you can easily walk. You can even walk mostly inside, if need be, because of all the bridges and such that connect buildings. That was a wonderful thing in the cold weather as well. It was about one block over and two blocks down, not any longer than any airport concourse walking trip, so extremely do-able.

Once there, buying tickets from the kiosk was also a snap.

The part that was NOT a snap was competing for room on the train with all the Vikings and Bengals fans. See, there was a playoff game the weekend we were there. Every restaurant was crowded with fans all weekend long. And the trains ... well they looked like they'd been stuffed with purple and gold cloth. We waited in the 16 degree weather for a train to be less full and finally, after we skipped the first two trains, the conductor said "YOU BETTER GET ON THIS TRAIN." So Winston and I took our suitcases, shoved them through the doorway and snuck on. Two stops later, we had the train to ourselves, which took us directly into the airport.

Fortunately for all of us, the Vikings have a bye week! So, one of my very few Minneapolis tips: take the light rail!

See all of you at the end of the week! Lots of surprises and fun and of course, lots of networking and learning to be had. Can't wait! My favorite time of year: UCDA time!

The Big Picture 5.0: Doing More with Less Means Being More Imaginative and Less Static

Another note from the UCDA "buzz" team....

For many of us, we are the only design/communications professional in the entire unit, office, department, etc. Even if you're part of a design/communications/publications/web team, there are only a few of you, and there are many more jobs than you can count. This requires you be efficient. Creative. Innovative. Effective. All that.

With that (and you) in mind, each year UCDA puts together their annual Design Conference to Inspire us. Educate us. Train us. Motivate us. Equip us.

This year is no different. What with the demands of designing for and communicating via integrated marketing campaigns, social media, and video, I know that without UCDA I would still be driving 35-mph in the new Web 5.0 world. (Yes, as of May 20, 2009, according to PR LEAP, Web 5.0 has begun.) And HTML5? It's already here.

This year's breakout sessions bring you the gamut of how to design multi-touch, coherent communications campaigns. Finding ways to do things more efficiently and spread the message across multiple platforms won't be a mystery when you have the right tools and tips. Check out what who can learn from this year...

Designing for WordPress
Mike Richwalsky, John Carroll

No Country for Old Marketing Methods...
Sini Stjernsward Ross, Sexton Strategic

Connecting with Coherence: Three Satellites Point the Way
Rick Bailey, Richard Harrison Bailey/The Agency

Getting Started with XML
James J. Maivald, XML for Designers (His book is a must-have! Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML)

Thinking Dynamic-ly? Know your P's, Q's (and your XML's ...)
Chris Edwards, Quark

Technobabble or Technobrillance: 21st Century Digital Strategies for Higher Education
Fritz McDonald, Stamats

Until October then, it's shoulder to grindstone. See you in Minneapolis!

sarah

Bidding war

The Silent Auction is always a good time at the conference. The bidding war that goes on until 10:15 on Tuesday can get really intense! If you're looking for oddities or hand-crafted items, you will find a wide array of items at the auction.

So what should you bring as a contribution? Just about anything works! We've seen everything from leather wallets and Pantone necklaces and hooked rugs and beaded jewelry to tshirts and books and letterpress cards and odd knick knacks. You name it, someone has contributed it to the auction. In fact, the auction grows throughout the conference as people go out and buy things to contribute.

My contribution is always knitted. In the past, I've made unusual hats. This year, it's the texting gloves! (Sorry guys, I made 'em pink.) We met in Minneapolis in December last year, and boy this Southern girl was cold. COLD. One morning, it was negative 3. Like, below zero cold. I wear gloves when it's 40 degrees outside! So I furiously made a pair of texting gloves to survive the visit and I made another pair when I returned, just for the auction. Some lucky soul will win the bid here, and hopefully the bids will be good to raise some money.

And you're raising money for a great cause! Our very own UCDA Foundation uses the monies raised for scholarships and sponsoring programs or other special projects that we share with members. So in the end, you're really helping yourself keep programming affordable, or even available to several lucky designers a year who might not otherwise be able to attend.

What will you bring or send in for the auction this year?

Prepare for Minneapolis

Hey y'all! (Do they say that in Minneapolis?) I finally downloaded my conference attendee information from the Home Office. (If you didn't get one, let them know.) And if you haven't registered, you still can! Lots of fun and networking and oh yeah, great sessions that will help you connect your design skills to the tools you'll need in the future. (And yeah it includes print!)

In the PDF, there was a nice little list of 40 must do activities in Minneapolis, which reminded me that had been posted ... way way back before anyone was thinking "what will I do when I'm at the conference?" Oh sure, you could search for it, but I thought I'd make it easy for you.

AND ... coming or not ... participate in our silent auction. What is the silent auction? It benefits the UCDA Foundation, which it turn uses it for special projects and scholarships and programs and so in the end it benefits you as well. I'll blog more on that later, so I can include a picture of this year's donation. Last year, I made a fish hat, since we were in Seattle. This year, something a little more practical. I had thought about making a Mary Tyler Moore tam, but I went with something more useful. Tune in tomorrow!

Beginnings

This past week, I've been immersed in the UCDA history with a little project I've been doing. Interesting history, to be certain. We were started because Lee Kline, from Illinois State, decided it was time we had something for university designers, as there just wasn't anything out there for us at that time. I won't repeat the rest of the history, which you can read here.

Boy, the early days must have been something. They had impressive programming at these events, to be certain, (Milton Glaser? Saul Bass? Margo Chase?) but even more so than the programming, it is clear that the chance to get together was vital. When you talk to Lee, and you can this year, he'll tell you it was an opportunity to drink beer and commiserate. Someone who attended those early days told me "It was kind of their Woodstock every year." It's clear as you go through the old letters and pictures that deep, important friendships were made, and are still made, through UCDA. I meet so many of you that work in offices as the sole designer. Especially for you, UCDA can give you colleagues. I see it on the listserv (really? 40+ messages of road songs, people?) and on Twitter all the time. You support each other and that's what we're supposed to be all about.

To me, the heart of this organization is summed up in this membership brochure from 1977. Here's the intro: "You say the publications editor in your department thinks design is something you cut out of a clip art book? That the dean considers $300 for 5,000 copies of a full color three-panel brochure "absolutely outrageous" and suggests you use the mimeo machine in the future? That your budget's been cut back so far you're having your department secretary fill old magic markers with food coloring you bought with your own money? And that your last request for a creative project was to have the college catalog (with a return reply card) reprinted on the inside of a matchbook flap? Well, take heart friend. The University and College Designers Association is here.

"We can't do much about the publications editor's attitude, the dean's tightfistedness, your budget problems, or the never-ending series of ridiculous publication design request you'll get.

"But we can get you together with other designers from across the country who've already faced -- and handled -- problems like your, and who can tell you how they've coped. With designers who've had their share of successes and failures and would like to share success formulas, and the funny failure stories, with you."

If that doesn't sum up, 33 years later, who we are trying to be, I don't know what does.

The other thing that hit me as I sifted through the more than 1,000 names of speakers over the past 40 years, is the caliber of the speakers. To add to Milton, Saul and Margo, there are other impressive names that jumped out at me, including: Charles Spencer Anderson, Steven Heller, Didi Katoni (the very first speaker I ever heard at a UCDA event), Annie Leibowitz, our good friends Brenda Foster and Domenica Genovese from GCF, D.J. Stout (twice). And right next to those names, more than a few of our own: John Krider (Washington University), McRay Magleby (Brigham Young), Amy Charron (Oregon State), Bob Winward (currently Utah State), Tom Hope (Univ. of Central Florida) and Amanda Fetterly (Univ of British Columbia). It's a wonderful meld, isn't it? A mix of the well-known commercial world along with our peers, teaching each other what we've learned.

So as the conference nears, I am excited to see all of you: from our founding members Lee Kline and Bud Deihl, to our very newest members. And I'm just as excited to see Matt Banbrough from Utah Valley University as I am the NBA in-house events team.

Nice spread!

Have you been swimming in class notes and page counts? Searching for just the right cover shot? Trying to figure out how on earth to get your beautiful print magazine onto the web?

As the Creative Director of Marketing at Utah Valley University and the Art Director of the UVU Magazine, Matt Bambrough has been there. As he tells it, "We have a very talented team and have a lot of creative people that contribute to the final project. I work directly with the editor and all of the designers, photographers, and illustrators. I love doing editorial design, it is one of the favorite things about my job, and I am continually trying to make things better. It is always changing and evolving."



Matt has also proven he's pretty talented. He's the recipient of several UCDA Design Competition Awards. Last year alone he won Awards of Excellence for both Recruitment/Other, Magazine-Complete Unit, and Magazine-Editorial Spread.

When I asked him about presenting at this year's conference, Matt was instantly interested. They completed a redesign in 2008, and they're implementing a new approach to moving the magazine online. It sounds like there's always something interesting going on. As Matt puts it, "It is always changing and evolving and hopefully getting better."

So if you're looking for a relevant, useful case study of a successful higher ed magazine, you need to be in Minneapolis this October! Learn more about the conference and see what other breakouts will interest you: http://ucda.com/breakoutsessions10.lasso

And be sure to check out Matt and his team's award-winning work with the UVU magazine.