I’m always on the lookout for typography, and my recent trip to Seattle was no exception. Below are some that caught my eye and provided a bit of design inspiration. I would love to be able to use the elements from #2 in a design, where bright red, sharp angles contrast with curvy white arches, or #7, where swirls complement the free formation of the letters.

(left to right, top to bottom) 1. Space Needle @ Seattle Center, 2. Space Center Arena, 3. Parking on the waterfront, 4. Belltown, 5. Space Needle observation deck, 6. Photosynthesis step of a community garden, 7. Wall decoration in Pensione Nichols, 8. Mosaic of a poem by Chief Seattle, 9. Ampersand at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Another recent source of inspiration has been the making of Charmingwall, a process that illustrator Julia Rothman of the design company Also shares, from brainstorming to animating drawings to the final product. The detail in their work is simply amazing. Feel free to share what’s been inspiring you lately in the comments.

Just out of curiosity, I just did a quick job search on LSJ.com using the keyword “communication.”  Here is what I found:

Graphic Services Manager for Dart Container

Web Designer for Dart Container

Marketing Specialist for The Christman Company

Communications Editor for Accident Fund

These are perfect jobs for professional writers and I really encourage any recent grads to apply for these positions. I was pleasantly surprised to see a good number of positions listed on just one source, and I am sure with a little web scouring, more could easily be found.

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Name: John Phillips
Title: User Interface Designer/Developer
Website/Blog: www.tridea-design.com and www.jwphill3.com
Location: Royal Oak, Michigan

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated from Michigan State in 2005 with a degree in Professional writing, where I gained a strong understanding of web usability, designing/writing for the web, and project management. After graduating, I worked Marketing & Creative Services in the University Relations department of MSU. There I was a lead designer on many large scale web initiatives including the MSU and Admissions sites.

Tell us about your current job.
Right now I currently have two jobs: my full time job is working at Campbell-Ewald as a user interface engineer. I work on a team with other developers planning/building and maintaining our marketing sites for the clients of CE. In the evenings I run my own web design/development company, Tridea Design, with two colleagues from MSU: Andrew Sautler and Tyler Smeltekop.
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I was catching up with my Google Reader today when I saw a post from Design*Sponge about custom engraving for your tech products. I was amazed at the possibilities with engraving, but unfortunately I’m not the type of person who can make up my mind when it comes to permanent designs. Luckily there’s another option (and luckily I didn’t know enough to jump on the engraving bandwagon a month ago).

Unique Skins offers design-your-own vinyl faceplates for laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, and game consoles. They are a fairly inexpensive and creative way to advertise your online portfolio, blog, business, etc., plus you can change your mind (and your tech faceplate) as many times as you want.

I gave it a whirl and enjoyed seeing how beyondwords would look on my Mac. Pretty slick, and a great conversation starter!

Name: Stephanie Pendrys
Title: Depends on the time of day and where I am. Marketing
Writer/Assistant to Program Director/Varsity Track and Field Coach/Mildly Obsessed Runner
Website/Blog: I’m on Twitter and MySpace, and do some blogging for work. I don’t write as much as I would like or probably need to. Sometimes I forget that I toiled in all those creative writing workshops in college.
Location: Upstate New York

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
Bachelor of Arts Degree: History and English with Creative Writing Emphasis from Albion College

Master of Mass Communications (Integrated Marketing Track) from University of South Carolina

Tell us about your current job.
At the moment, I am employed by the YMCA of the Greater Tri-Valley. I spend half my time as an assistant coach/assistant to the Program Director. The other half is spent as a Marketing Writer for the YCCA (YMCA Center for the Creative Arts). I’m also a varsity track and field coach and assistant basketball coach for the Special Olympics.

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I was listening to NPR on the way to work yesterday when I caught them talking about Starbucks. Seeing as how I am a fan of coffee and also heading to Seattle next week, my ears perked up, no pun intended.

The story was about how Starbucks is struggling and how in the past, they came out of rough times thanks to the strength of their brand. But there are doubts that their brand will be able to help them out this time around, as in their quest to become bigger and “better” as quickly as possible has led to a watering down of their brand (and their coffee, but I digress).

Just think about it: you see the Starbucks logo staring at you in the bookstore, in the gas station, in the grocery store, in the airport. And while convenience can be really great for some things, in Starbucks’ case it is only hurting their original quest to sell a really good cup of coffee. People are turning to independent coffee shops or McDonald’s to get their coffee fix, often at a lower price.

So what does this have to do with professional writing? In my line of work, we are all about the brand and protecting the strength of the brand, from using corporate font faces, standardized logo placement, color guidelines, and more. I think this is common practice across organizations, creating the corporate identity and sticking to it.

But shouldn’t we also be thinking about our own professional identity? Read the rest of this entry »

Name: Joe Sak
Title: Senior Web Developer, Artemis Solutions Group
Website/Blog: http://www.joesak.com
Location: East Lansing, MI

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated from Michigan State University in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media. In school, I worked for the Eli Broad College of Business in Computer Tech Support and Web Site editing. After school, I was hired full time at Artemis Solutions Group as a web developer and have held that position for nearly 3 years.

Tell us about your current job.
Currently, I am primarily responsible for the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code that must be written in order to turn our designs into web sites. I am also responsible for client interaction, communication, and management. Some of my other talents involve Search Engine Optimization, Usability research & testing, User Experience design, prototyping web applications, content integration, and post-go-live web support.

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I’m a nerd. A serious nerd. I’m so nerdy I will stay up past midnight on a Friday working on a web site.

I recently attempted to [re]design my online portfolio. 

My last semester of graduate school I spent an entire semester developing, organizing, and synthesizing  to articulate a professional identity and design a web space to present my work from the last three years. I was pleased and proud of the result. That was then.

Despite the long hours and tremendous thought I put into the portfolio, somehow that representation of my work was no longer accurate or adequate for my current professional needs. I’ve been in the workforce for two years now and the way that I think about my work has changed.  

About the time I started to realize all of this (a year or so into my job) I took down my online portfolio. I was embarrassed of the pink and grey color scheme and the table-based web design — certainly this was not the way I wanted to represent myself. At that time I was not ready to invest the amount of work needed to make the changes. So for at least a year, I had no web presence at all. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is the first in a series featuring designers, editors, and writers telling us about their work and professional interests. Many thanks to all the professionals who have already agreed to be featured on beyondwords!

Name: Vishal Iyer
Title: Sr User Interface Designer (I prefer Interaction Designer though)
Website/Blog: http://www.vishaliyer.com/
Location: New York/Washington D.C.

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I did my undergrad in Computer Science, then switched over to Design in grad school. Go Spartans!

Tell us about your current job.
I work for AOL in the eCommerce division. The design team works as an internal agency and I work on their Shopping, Autos and Travel websites among others.

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As part of our ongoing professional development, we thought it’d be helpful to hear from professional writers, editors, and designers in the field about the work they do.

This is the inspiration behind our “In the Workplace” series, where featured professionals will share with us how they create and communicate in their job, what resources they use, what tips they have for other professionals, and much more.

The first in the series will be up later this weekend, so be sure to check it out. We’re looking forward to what we feel will be an exciting series, and a huge thank you in advance to all of our featured professionals for sharing with us!