CSA Designer Sessions

A weekly exercise at Carbone Smolan Agency on running a design workshop.

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#sketches from last night's #drawingnight hosted at @carbonesmolan by @kencarbone #fineart #lifedrawing #model

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We kicked off this week with #artforlunch with @kencarbone. In addition to viewing the history of portraiture we shared our own self portraits with the group #nycdesign #self #portraiture #fineart #chuckclose

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#chambros part deux featuring @danielirizarry @jasonpermenter @jeremymiller @jaimepatinocalvo @helenddear #designers #chambrayallday #nycdesign

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Scifi and Design With Clay

For this particular Session Clay build a very good case for how Scifi and Scifi movies in particular have paved the way to actual innovations in the fields of engineering, technology, user experience and interaction in web to new areas in robotics and space traveling.

At the end of the session we got in groups and envision an app that could be control through the use of human senses.

Before video conferencing was invented this was an idea

Before the iPhone was created this was envision

Before the iPad was created this was envision

As we keep pushing boundaries of technology and the hardware that technology is housed in, we are also breaking grounds in combining this technology with human biology.

The Workshop: Create an app and answer these questions along the way

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Collaging away with Meghan

This Edition of designers session was brought to you by our former intern Meghan who has a passion for creating collages and wanted to share some of that passion with us. Each one of the participants created a collage that evolved as other people added more items to the existing composition.

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Skillshare with Daniel: The Basics of designing a typeface

Daniel took a course in type design at the Cooper Union and he gave us a quick overview of what he learned. He also shared with us the tool that type designers use to create beautiful and functional type families—plus we had time to draw up our own typeface!

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Pillar Poems with Paul

We worked along side Paul to create a couple of poems that express the essence of CSA pillars and values

The outcome of the excercise.

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CSA Guac Wars

For Cinco de Mayo, CSA decided to have a contest to see who could make the best Guacamole and salsa in the entire office! the winners got a gift card to Chipotle and a chance to hit a piñata.

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Designer Taboo with Steve

Steve decided to create a new game called Designer Taboo. This new game combines the game Taboo with design knowledge, the trick is to be able to describe a word to your team without using certain words... And you have to do it in less than a minute.

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The @washingtonpost reports on this years #graduates and how the #federal government should address #debt. Illustration by @tomatoamato.

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Big thanks to the @nationalacademymuseum for our curator led tour of the #self exhibit we branded with them. #fatcsa #fineart #fifthave #museum #portraiture #clientwork

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Egg execs tied to the salmonella breakout in 2010 face jail time reports @time. Design by @tomatoamato

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Our debate on #burgers as #sandwiches extends wall to wall. Any thoughts on this? #design #debate #categorization #semantics

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Today at lunch, Executive Creative Director Justin Peters recapped his recent #workshop with #designstudents at #uarts on #nonprofit #branding.

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Perfection and Glitch Art with Max

Perfectionism is innately part of design. Our designer Max outlined how the obsession with perfection can work against us. Examples such as the post it note emphasize that sometimes our best work is found through our mistakes. 

Post It’s originally were considered “mistakes.”

Divvied into groups, teams collaborated with Glitch Art.

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Blue/Black vs. White/Gold: Perception Studies with Dimitri

From government conspiracies and color perceptions this designer session covered a lot of ground. Jumping off of the internet firestorm “the dress” inspired the take away from the session was perception is informed equally by biology and personal experience. Reactions to surrounds and our peer group together inform how we see the world.

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Yoga For The Creative Mind With Sarah L.

Sarah Lowndes works at CSA as a project manager, but wears many hats. Also an avid traveller and yoga instructor, she planned a Designer Session around her yoga instruction, a welcome end to our work week.

This yoga session emphasized creative chakras and how to align them with our physical body and mind.