Or, more likely, it can be explained via the second interesting number: 28%. That’s the number of people that reported that they’ve calculated their hourly rate via an actual formula. The rest appeared to either ‘guess randomly’ or based it on the rest of the folks out there (which is a bad idea when a majority seem to guess randomly).

This is scary. Graphic Design is a business, and, ultimately, while we all may want to change the world, we’re really doing it to make a living. And if we ever hope to change the world via graphic design, we better stay in business long enough to do it.

Many years ago, I volunteered for the AIGA’s Portfolio One-on-One event as one of the event planners. During the actual event where students got to ask a panel of professional designers questions (a group of people I either knew personally, or had great respect for), we ended up with the inevitable nervous lull as the students ran out of questions. I figured I’d help things move along by tossing out a question about salaries. I was immediately rebuffed by the panel for being so uncouth as to mention things like ‘getting paid’ as being a concern that recent grads should be worried about.

Which was a bit of a shock.

Ultimately, there seems to be a huge gap in design education these days. I don’t recall having one single business class requirement. Which is a bit ironic, as graphic design, for the most part, is about serving business.

So, if you are a new graduate, or even a long term professional that just hasn’t gotten around to it…be SURE to site down for a half hour with a cup of coffee and run the numbers to find your hourly rate. Until you do so, you really have no idea if you’re making living at it. ;o)

Judah Frangipane has worked in the web industry for the last 12 years. During that time he worked at Roxio and Parsons and is currently employed at Yellow Book. He’s been using and teaching Flash for the last five years. Judah’s worked on some Flash projects that you can see here http://www.drumbeatinsight.com

Saviz Artang has worked in technology for about 12 years. The first five
years were at Intel Corp. in CA and the rest at Thomson Corp in Eagan, MN
where he is currently holding a technology manager position. Saviz has been involved with Flash for the past two years making a toddler PC game. You can see his work at: http://artangco.com

Saviz and Judah are hoping to draw some big numbers for their first meeting as leaders on Wednesday, April 18th. They’re going to have Dustin Tauer from Easel Training demonstrating some of the exciting new features in CS3 including new features of Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3 and After Effects CS3. He’ll focus on work flows between applications within the new Creative Suite.

After the presentation they’ll have a copy of CS3 for people to play around with.

(Note: there will be armed guards protecting the CS3 cds.)

As always, free pizza, beer and pop will be provided.

Also, They are taking requests for demonstration of any features or products. Feel free to post you requests to the FlashMN Yahoo Group.

If you managed to miss this somehow:

http://www.adobe.com/creativelicense/

Go ahead and Preorder today, but I don’t think they’ve made any promises about when it will actually arrive yet. I’d hope it will show up before Flashbelt.

They have gone as far as telling me my plan to upgrade a copy of Flash 5 that I bought off a guy for $40 on Craigslist and planned to upgrade to Flash CS3 will not work.

Personally I’m most intrigued by a new flash feature that attempts to make the designer to developer workflow easier by allowing us to export tweened animation in Flash as Actionscript code…

This often seems to happen for me when looking at print design again. I often wonder if we will ever get print designers on board. Last week Daniel Eatock gave a talk.

It was fresh for a change. Daniel Eatock is not necessarily a interactive designer. And i’ll say the first 6 minutes feel a bit staged to appear cutting edge, but the more I listened I appreciated the moto. Essentially a focus on fun and function, a reaction to the abundance of slick, overly produced work out there.

A few projects stripped away the excess of interactive design. His site is a good example.

In the end he recited a list of “no’s”. Amongst them “no flash”. As usual there were muffled murmurs. “no flash?” people whispered under their breath. Apparently the last hour didn’t stick… I can only hope that we as designers can remember that there is more than just aesthetics to design. I have to say thanks to Daniel. We need to be reminded once and a while that design is more than a visceral reaction. That concept and interaction can carry the weight of a message just as much as color and form.

http://www.met2006.org/

Sounds like a Fun Free event.

I rarely hear much from the SIGGRAPH chapter here in the cities, but this sounds like they are active. I’d be interested to see what type of work falls into such a broad ”Computer Graphics” category. I assume it’s mostly 3D, but I’d bet there are a few suprises.

I got the info on the Guest Speaker:

Lane Raicher has worked developing animation programing for 26 years, he has managed to sell  7 series that have reached broadcast.  He will talk about some of his experiences and his commitment to live in MN and work nationally.

One last note: It looks like the head of UW-Stout’s Multimedia Design Degree is currently the Secretary of MN SIGGRAPH.

This exhibition focuses on the design and planning of culture and civilization. It is very powerful in its message and it raises many questions about how we view and interact with space and how we live in our world.

When I saw this show in September, I thought out loud, “I always wondered why no one is designing anything really useful. I guess I was wrong.”

A few highlights and observations I made of the show:

1. In one particular room, I loved the overwhelming graphic quality of words/phrases covering every inch of the walls. I didn’t feel the need to read everything. In fact, I took away an appreciation of all the text for its graphic quality and design. Its placement at the beginning of the show is also foreshadowing. It set up a mindset that even in chaos there is order.

2. I enjoyed the interactivity of sound incorporated into the show. In another room, there were boxes suspended from the ceiling that stopped about 8 or 9 feet from the floor. When you walk under one, it starts an audio recording. I loved this simply for the fact that it was information available to me when I asked for it. I hate walking halfway into videos in museums. This presentation solved that problem.

3. The final room of the show includes a series of 2 sides to an argument. For example, one issue talked about designing better food to provide more food worldwide. Each issue has 2 large plexiglass boxes. One is labeled “Yes” and one is labeled “No.” In the middle is a stack of yellow pieces of paper the size of Post-it notes. Viewers are invited to answer the question: “Do you agree?” to each issue by putting a piece of the yellow paper into either the Yes or No box. It’s visually interesting to be surrounded by stark white walls and see 2 clear boxes filled with yellow pieces of paper. In a way, you feel like you’re taking part in the massive change.

4. This show changed my opinion of all the building of condos that is currently happening in Minneapolis and everywhere else. I realized it’s a good thing that it’s happening. By condensing our living space and leaving open spaces for the environment, we can leave a positive imprint on our world.
Check it out. It’s very relevant to today.

Chuck Close as an artist has quite a bit to give our community. He works from photographs he has taken of large heads of people that he knows.These photos include many of himself. In fact, that is what the exhibition is about. Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967-2005.

He recreates these heads in endless mediums and at different levels of abstraction. He uses the same source material to create endless variations in multiple manifestations. He said something about this in the talk that resonated strongly with me about how we need to do our work. He said, ‘the process will set you free.’

He is creative within his constraints. In fact, the constraints allow the creation to flow out. That seems like a key message for interactive practicioners. The process can set us free.

I encountered this at my last job when I first started with the company. A process was defined that allowed us to approach work in a repeatable manner. Parts were already defined for us so we were free to fill in the blanks regarding the specific needs of the specific work. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel around what we were going to do just as Chuck Close didn’t reinvent the wheel as to what he was going to create. Source material.

He said something else that I found to be most relevant for us. If you wait around for inspiration it might never come. Just get to work is the message he conveyed.

This may have existed before, but you can find lectures webcast at channel.walker.org.

The museum is a showcase of Ray Johnson’s collection of some 14,000 20th-century Russian realist painting. Johnson received a massive a mount of exposure when The Smithsonian recently featured his collection, thus triggering a move to a new location in the Twin Cities–a converted Spanish-style church at Interstate 35W and Diamond Lake Road in Minneapolis (a work of art in its own right). Grand opening on Monday.