Agena Agogo

Here’s a compilation of 40 well-designed blogs according to Sixrevisions.com. Some of these are excellent for their content as well. (Fubiz is a favorite of mine).

While I can’t stand over-the-top advertising and the saturation of public places with adverts, I do acknowledge that it does keep talented artists fed and clothed. In my opinion, good advertising — strong emphasis on good — is more art and delight than product pimp. Of course, my opinion means nothing. In any case, let me whore out this one great piece of advertising promoting SHS Teen Clothes. It’s funny and well shot. (Hello Kitty’s skull is freaky cute.)

   

Trauma Informed Care

Originally uploaded by Lance Agena

Here’s a graphic I created for a new mental health initiative in Hawaii.

Watch the book trailer for the creative pop-up book ABC3D by Marion Bataille (Roaring Brook, 2008).

This is next draft of the 2009 Conference Brochure I posted earlier. There was some concern on the first draft that the meaning of the single hand could be mistaken as “stop!” and not as it was intended. Note taken. I went through several alternative designs and settled with hands again, this time in a outreaching gesture as though to grasp each other. I also took the time to warp the words according to the curves of each hand, which turned out pretty well.

I was dreading the design of this brochure since I first heard the topic: mental health forensics. It’s such a dry topic for one thing, and another, the obvious imagery had to be avoided at all costs: handcuffs, jail cell bars, jumpsuit orange, and so forth. The conference is about providing help to people with mental illnesses who would otherwise be imprisoned.

It took a while, but I finally came up with the symbol of the hand. It’s a bit generic, but only as it needs to be. Most people in law need to take an oath and those testifying in court need to swear in. A hand in the position of swearing an oath seemed like the perfect visual for the main conference theme of “Responsibility and Recovery.”

The hand on the cover may be viewed as a palm facing outward during a swearing-in process or as a palm downward on a book to swear by. The hand also serves as a reminder for those in positions of power that the human touch is essential in what they do.

I’m pleased with the design and look forward to designing the rest of the brochure.

This is one of the rare freelance projects I took on just because I like the people in the organization. This is the PhD program and policy manual for the University of Hawai‘i School of Social Work. 

I went with bees as a visual because of their “social” nature, and all the social workers I know are incredibly busy and dedicated to the people they serve. The flowers, of course, represent those they serve. (Yes, it’s cornball. What do you want?)

The difficulty of this project was finding visuals to use. Ordinarily, I might have considered using the school’s building or some feature of the architecture, but that wasn’t an option. When meeting with the program director, I had a private tour of the most awful university building I’ve ever seen: Henke Hall. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there were cats living in the ceiling. ‘Nuff said.

Anyways… bees. They turned out to be a good visual, worked as a symbol, and the social work committee loved it. That’s all that matters.

Task Group Orientation Presentation (right-click to save to desktop)

This is a slideshow presentation I created on a complex and very dry topic. In an ideal world, I would follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule for slideshow presentations because it’s simple and effective. Essentially, his rule states that every presentation should have no more than 10 slides, lasts for 20 minutes, and use at least 30 pt fonts. If everyone followed this rule, audiences all over the nation would find themselves alert and informed. Shocking.

I tried my best to follow Kawasaki’s rule and many other rules for this particular project, but unfortunately, this was not my presentation. I was tailoring it for a team who would take turns on certain slides and of course,  not everyone prepares as well as they should. 

The less prepared your presenter, the more slides and the more text you’ll find in their slideshow.

So for your consideration, here is what I came up with in the end. This is the slideshow minus 11 text-heavy slides because I wanted to keep the file small and spare you minutes of your precious time. Click the movie or use the right arrow on your keyboard to advance.

For more on the perfect presentation, 43 Folders has a great article on the topic.

All too often, a designer will have projects assigned to him or her on a whim of a manager. This is such a project. This was done in a couple of hours, and while it passes my standards for design, I still consider it uninspired.

As designers we can’t make everything a work of beauty when deadlines loom and when frankly, the audience couldn’t care less (this report is going to a small handful of federal administrators).

To maintain sanity, we as designers need to choose the lilies we gild.