a) Choose an animal skin

b ) Send your choice animal skin request to SuburbanHides.com

c) We make your custom creature printed hoodies, t-shirts, and jackets. (Remember that this includes scales, fur, turtle shells, feathers and exoskeletons.) We will feature some of the popular choices, but we are open to requests.

d) Giving the money back. This aid will celebrate natures patterns, while building awareness for the preservation of our wildlife. The money raised from the clothing will go to local animal shelters and wildlife preservation organizations. The materials in making the clothing will all be natures buddies.

e) We all want a turtle shell hoodie, don’t we?

2 Idea.

Teenagers aren’t that far gone.

Lets give them an alternative to the trashy programming that seems to be just about everywhere.

a.) Content elasticity b) For short attention spans c) Entertaining d) Educational e) For teenagers

Making learning as trendy as MTV, but as legit as the Discovery Channel. The website will draw from a conglomeration of websites, like TED Talks, Live Science, and with the help of Google Online Documentaries, will draw up some of the top rated documentaries navigated for the purpose of this site. All of this may sound boring, but with some serious engaging and interactive design, maybe we can lure them in. I really do believe that people are wanting more out of their television programming, the problem is that industries only spend money on easy and popular things to televise. With the free information trade that is the internet, it will provide the perfect venue for the teen demographic. In addition, the website will be operated by their peers just so that a certain trust will be engrained within the metastructure.

Graphic Design is headed from print to web. More and more this digital medium is permeating design and graphic designers are being expected to be, first and for most, rubber bands when it comes to technology, with a magical, second nature sense of design. Programs are raining down onto the graphic designer and are being pressured to thoroughly understand and implement multiple disciplines. Up until now, a designers’ responsibility was to learn how to harness the respected theories of typography and composition, “Type and image”, and print work typically showcased their designs. But presently, designers are being consumed by a whole other demand. That is the demand for interactivity in design.   After reading Steven Heller’s’ articles in Chapter Two: “Media and Methods” from his book, “Becoming a Digital Designer: A Guide to Careers in web/ video/ broadcast/ game + Animation Design”, I became even more keenly aware of how uncontrollable the demand has become for inbred designers.

Heller’s, “Being Digitally Indispensable” did not bring me much hope about a respect for individualizing these two disciplines. The article articulates how there should be a seamless transition between being a savvy, problem solver in the face of technology and its potential ill temper, while still retaining your design integrity in order to not be mistaken for the floor technician. Those are two tremendous responsibilities! It is wonderful to be an ambitious jack-of-all-trades; but to begin to realize that this has become the new standard is utterly overwhelming. “Being digitally multiskilled and software fluent is the best way to be so knighted. The next is to become the troubleshooter- in-charge, who, with an expansive knowledge of hard- and software, can solve the wide range of problems fellow workers will encounter.” Only two paragraphs below this, Heller goes on to suggest his advice on how not to be discredited as a designer, “The answer is to establish yourself, first and foremost, as an indispensable designer. Whatever the extent of your hard- and software know-how, you must exhibit an even greater finely tuned aesthetic, as well as ability to conceptually compose type or image in whatever medium is your particular specialty.” (p 89) This means in order to be successful in the design spectrum, an individual must be homogenized into one well oiled machine.

I believe that the expectations are skyrocketing and all we can do is try to keep up. I suppose that print will not ultimately completely fade away, we will still have a place for it in certain markets, I am simply concluding that the Internet will over shadow print more and more over the upcoming years. But for now, we are dwelling in a liminal stage. Print is still defiantly with us and web is emerging; so people that are studying to become print designers now need to buckle down and learn what the next guy knows, or they will be left behind. One of the most true to life examples of this enormous transition, for me, comes in the form of job hunting and internship hunting. When I click onto me my most reliable job searching sites, Creative Hotlist, AIGA, Entertainment Careers, etc., all that I end up finding is, “ Some”, sometimes even, “Strong knowledge of HTML, knowledge of such programs as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Quark, In Design, Flash, etc…” under a graphic design listing. Expectations for Web and design principles interlaced, this is when I truly begin to understand that the Graphic design career has taken on a new identity. Design is taking its final steps in becoming predominantly web based. And the multi-disciplined designer is indispensable.

Schools need to now begin this transition, as well. Core classes in technology need to be vital prerequisites for the student majoring in Design principles, just like the core classes we all had to take in Color Theory, Three Dimensional, and Two Dimensional foundations. In order to understand the programs and transcend their habit of becoming obsolete, students need to practice troubleshooting with the tools and programs of their time, so that they will own a familiarity with the software and hardware, which will later translate into the knowledge needed to interpret the programs that will proceed. We cannot just learn from textbooks how to be indispensable; it will be first hand experience that will ensure our adaptability into worlds of technology.

In the future, students will not have to struggle as hard to become technology gurus, because they will have been engulfed by its presents throughout their upbringing. Those technology adaptability skills will be acquired throughout their lives, simply because they will be children of the digital age, but for now, current designers and studying designers will have to fast-forward and expect change and learn to embrace it. This is how designers will truly learn how to utilize technology and make it work for them.