In honour of International Women’s Day yesterday, I wanted to write a post on a few of the women designers that have impacted my practice. I remember during my final year of undergrad (in 2000) being asked by my professor to name some female designers that we admired and, very ashamedly, drawing an almost complete blank (not that I was that aware of design culture or history in general at the time).

I asked my portfolio class this same question last night and was happy to see them fare better than me, but not by very much… So as always, there’s work to be done, and I’ll start with a (very) select list of women who’s works have directly guided my own.

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A few days late, but I thought it would be a nice idea to mark the end of what ironically always feels like the longest (and darkest) month here in Montreal with a long and chunky post filled with inspirational images selected from all my various feeds. Hope you enjoy the collection, and if there’s a modicum of interest, maybe I’ll make this into a regular feature.

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The latest redesign of the design content site Thinking for a Living is turning web paradigms onto their side. With mobile standards in mind, an intuitive and simplified navigation, alongside a very refined approach to web typography, I have a feeling that this site could really change how we design for the web. Built with XHTML/CSS and jQuery, the site is delivered through Wordpress but feels nothing like it…

It’s a site I’ve often visited for their quality content and design coverage, which is generally more in-depth and better written than most design “blogs” out there (yours truly included). Now it’s even easier on the eyes and provides a really fluid reading experience. Way to go guys. Hopefully this thoughtful, holistic, and detail-oriented approach to design serving content catches on.

Read about the redesign in the first issue here.

god, I love remix culture… I love hip hop… I love NY

remember, you heard it here first! (maybe)

more (official) info here.

Lawrence Weiner

Three of my favourite videos from Hillman Curtis‘ Artist Series. Beautifully shot and composed, they’re worth revisiting time and again when in need of motivation, inspiration and simple wisdom.

Stefan Sagmeister (@ Deitch Projects) and Milton Glaser after the jump.

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Amazing (political/cultural) poster work by designer Vincent Perrottet. His work is emblematic of the “french tradition” as it were, falling somewhere in between Ne pas plier and M/M Paris.

Purely positive inspiration from Eric Smith and friends.

It’s a bit shocking to me, given my ambivalent relationship with facebook, but one of my all-time graphic design heroes, Martin Venezky of Appetite Engineers, has decided to use a facebook page as portfolio. And given the amount of work they’re posting, and the level of detail they’re showcasing with each piece, it works surprisingly well.

Facebook reticence (and bad image compression) aside, the photo gallery is really worth checking out. Many of the works featured are completely new to me, and they’re some of the most innovative and striking designs I’ve seen in a long time.