And education comes in last..

I was reading an article this morning about housing’s share of the average household budget, which included the graph above. What struck me wasn’t the yawning gap between food and housing costs in 1945 [although it's safe to say that was something to do with the war;] what stood out is that today, we spend more on healthcare than anything else and education has remained consistently last in household spending over the decades.

That could explain a lot.

The Ponytail Chronicles: Volume 2

A bit of hard-earned wisdom: there is no downtime when going ponytail.

You’ve got to eat, drink, sleep follicle extension. It barely leaves time for the day job. Namely, internet abuse. Seriously, call out the parental controls. The siren song of the marginally diverting is killing me. As an adherent to the gulag school of the creative process [stare at blank page, think, struggle, sweat, repeat] the web is a sly parasite. Lets see, today I watched YouTube covers of the Bon Iver catalog, checked useless early round results from Flushing Meadows, and watched a slide show on shipping container architecture. In other words, I hate myself. And, worse still, hate imagining some net-evangelist media guy turning virtual cartwheels on my account. Fortunately, tomorrow is tomorrow. I will focus and write till my fingers seize and blood trickles from the ear lobes. In fact, the very thought of the new me makes me want to go Bret Michael’s bandana on my increasingly outlaw mane. Tell me, search engine, do you feel lucky?

Note to clients: Not to worry, all browsing lands billing-free in that timesheet safe haven called “skill development”. That, plus, I’m never, ever going to do it again forever.

[Jim Carey is a CD at NORTH]

NORTH from a teenager’s point of view

By Remy Murfitt, NORTH’s summer intern

Remy

My experience working at NORTH this summer was unlike anything I have ever done, especially considering the fact that it was my first job. I’d say that coming into this job I really had no clue what to expect. I knew that my job would consist of doing anything that needed to be done, but I didn’t know what that meant in terms of working at an advertising/branding agency.

My first impression of NORTH and everyone that works there was that they all seemed to be smart and talented individuals with a personal strength in one area or another (design, marketing, writing, etc.). Yet when the team members of NORTH put their heads together and work as a collective, their individual strengths blend together and allow them to accomplish things that some only dream about.
Read more

Redesigning the US bank note

Not every tactile item that we use everyday requires a redesign, but the US bank note may be one of them. What’s nice about this particular redesign project is that Dowling Duncan’s designers took note of how we handle bank notes – “we realized people tend to handle and deal with money vertically rather than horizontally.” So they are addressing usability too..

The folks at the London-based graphic design studio, Dowling Duncan, have submitted a design concept to a competition being run by New York designer Richard Smith. Smith says that he hopes the Dollar ReDe$ign Project will bring about change for everyone and that he ‘wants to rebrand the US Dollar, rebuild financial confidence and revive our failing economy.’

Below, Dowling Duncan’s designers share their process:
Read more