Man, What a May!

Photo: Design Love Fest / Dress Your Tech 

Man, what a May!

This month, I'm excited to share a few big announcements with you:

1

Joe and I have been taken on to do some major design and brand storytelling work with The Heads of State, a three-man design studio whose achievements to date include: designing the cover art for Iron & Wine's 2011 album, "Kiss Each Other Clean", national tour posters for Wilco, live art installations for Nike, and features in The New Republic and New York Times — and those are just the highlights. I originally heard of Jason and Dusty through Ryan and Tina at The Great Discontent, the online publication for the creative community that I interviewed for On Branding earlier this year. It's an honor to call everyone mentioned a friend and a colleague, and we're over the moon excited to get started telling this story on behalf of one of America's oldest and most prestigious institutions. More on that, and our new business (ad)venture as it unfolds...

2

My friend Chase, support lead at Basecamp (formerly 37 Signals), is just plain awesome. Aside from Support Ops, he's started The Dispatch.FM, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories of people who've started something big, hairy, and ambitious. I'm so excited to talk about how On Branding was born, and the year we've had so far.

3

This month, I'll be sitting down with Kyle Steed, illustrator extraordinaire, and Kathleen Shannon, brand strategist and designer at Braid Creative, to talk about branding, creative struggles and triumphs, and our shared love of Circles Conference. The amazing team at Circles is sponsoring these episodes, and we'll be turning the podcasts we do with each guest into long-form blog posts accompanied with gorgeous images. In the meantime, visit Circles' brand new blog.

4

Speaking of On Branding, we've sponsored two editions of Brand New x Weekly, the roundup of top articles seen on Brand New. Brand New is a design critique blog run by Under Consideration, a publishing and branding house that does kick ass work. We loved being a part of this, and introducing ourselves to the creative community around the world.

5

I'm so excited to welcome General Assembly to Atlanta! I contacted General Assembly last year, through a shared Emory connection, and while they weren't looking to expand at the time, they've since scoped out our fair city and are setting up shop as we speak. I've got high hopes to add "instructor" to my list of life experiences... :)

6

Joe and I have been wanderlusting the past few weeks, thinking about what our next adventure will be. I've been following the many great articles on pedestrian advocacy and biking in Los Angeles, through my friend Alissa Walker of Gizmodo, also an On Branding alum. L.A. looks like such a colorful, busy, just-plain-cool city that I'm dying to explore. Oh, and the sun isn't a detractor, either. We're hoping to visit L.A. sometime this summer, to spend time with my friend Erin from college and perhaps roadtrip down Highway 1. I can smell the saltwater air now...

7

Last but not least, I have to go to the dentist soon, and I'm not really excited abotu that -__-

I hope your almost-summer months are off to a great start! What've you got cooking, friends?

Until next time,

Amanda