Make Your Email More Professional

I recently received an e-mail (and twitter follow) from CannotbeFound, a brand new collective of designers – for designers, who want to give some exposure to “the little guys”. The idea is brilliant and was inspired by London based collective Not In who say:

We just do it to provide a showcase for creatives and their work that you might not see elsewhere.

I think it’s great that CannotbeFound have brought this idea to Scotland and I hope it becomes a great success. The e-mail was invitation to contribute to the blog myself and I noticed that they had attached an Address Book contact card.

This is the first time I have seen (noticed) this and I thought it was a really smart little thing to do. Your email contacts can simply add the card to their address book and hey presto!

• It saves them the bother of making up a card for you (which they might not otherwise have done)
• It allows you to make it more comprehensive (you can add your logo or a photo as well as website address)
• It will help them remember you in the future
• It makes e-mailing you in the future a lot easier (they just type in your name and address book syncs to mac mail)

Here is the one that I made up:

If you have a mac and would like to know how do it yourself just follow these steps:

1. Open up ‘Address Book’
2. File > New Card (⌘N)
3. Type in your name/company name and your contact details
4. Tick ‘company’ if appropriate (this will switch your name around, making your business name the heading)
5. OPTIONAL: Click the bolder text with the arrows then click ‘custom’ to make your own field (i.e website address)
6. Double click on the greyed out silhouette to insert a profile image
7. Click choose to select an image on your computer OR click on the camera to take one if you have a webcam
8. Hit esc to come out of edit mode and save your card
9. Find your card in the ‘Names’ panel or search for it on Address book
10. Left click on it and click “ExportvCard…”
11. Choose a place to save it to and click save
12. Yey! thats you done
13. Now, next time you write an e-mail to someone new just send it as an attachment.

Glasgow 912 – HND Graphic Design

I visited the City of Glasgow College (formally the Glasgow Metropolitan) show a couple of weeks ago (sorry for late post) and had a look round this years graduates work. I enjoyed looking round the graphics studios in particular because I was in their shoes last year! All of the HND Graphic Design students have their own websites which are featured on the Glasgow 912 Showcase.

It was also a chance for me to finally meet Craig Morrison and Marina Munro who i’ve been tweeting for the last few months. They will both be joining me up at DJCAD in September as they earned themselves a place in second year. Was great to have a chat with them and looking forward to seeing more of them around the graphics corridor next term!

Here is a photo of Craig’s exhibition:

Here is a photo I snapped of Marina’s exhibition:

Craig and Marina, along with some of their classmates have set up a very accomplished collective blog (Evolution and Us) that is well worth a nosy round. They have added some very exciting things to it including a ’guest blogger‘ category which will feature special posts from industry contributers. This is a brilliant idea and I am looking forward to reading the posts. A good way of keeping up to date with the blog is by adding it on twitter: @evolutionandus

It was also nice for me to see Chris Rankin’s work as he was in my class during the first year of my HND (the HNC). I really liked his paper project which I was able to have a quick flick through as it was sitting out on display:

It was great to see everyones work and catch up with my old tutors. I heard that many of the students have been approached by industry professionals in a view to employment. Some have also been accepted to Glasgow School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art as well as Duncan of Jordanstone. This goes to show how valuable a college course can be, especially the City of Glasgow one. Hopefully it will start to get the recognition it deserves for producing very good Graphic Design students.

1920′s Posters

My laptops having a rather overdue spring clean this week – I found these lovely 1920′s posters in one of my ‘inspiration’ folders.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.