Did you know Museum of Contemporary Craft is 75 years old—and it’s the oldest craft institution focused on modern and contemporary craft in the country? This place is awesome. I’ve been a few times, and each has been revelatory.

sketchXchange is a program of WeMake that invites illustrators to share their sketchbooks. Illustrators are at their most vulnerable, perhaps, showing off their process from concept to possible incompletion. The talks are insightful, informative, inspiring and participatory—the night caps off with a litteral sketch exchange wherein presenters and audience members alike draw in each other’s sketch books.

Below are sneak peaks at sketchXchanges with Mary Kate McDevitt and Mike King. Next up: Lloyd Winter.

* I can’t wait until the design world adopts rs (Designspeakr, Show and Tellr, sketchXchangr).

If you ever get the opportunity to visit the Tanner Goods workshop, do.

While you probably don’t have enough money to create your own Super PAC, you do have an opportunity to have your opinion counted. It’s called voting. And AIGA is a big supporter of this form of expression.

AIGA’s Get Out the Vote campaign invites designers to create nonpartisan posters and videos that inspire the American public to participate in the electoral process and vote in the 2012 general election.

Get Out the Vote, an AIGA Design for Democracy initiative, enables designers to engage in the public arena by contributing to a coordinated voter mobilization campaign. By motivating eligible citizens to register and turn out on election day, Get Out the Vote fulfills an ongoing AIGA objective of demonstrating the value of design to the public, public officials and business by providing a clear call to action for an activity that is important to everyone.

Submit your design by June 1, 2012. Visit AIGA National for all the details on how to participate.

Below: You Complete Us. by Gaelyn Mangrum, AIGA San Francisco, 2008

1. Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.
2. Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.
3. Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral.
4. Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough.
5. Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know.
6. Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world.
7. Try not to work for stupid people or you’ll soon become one of them.
8. Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them.
9. The Golden Rule actually works. Do good.
10. If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career.

Her process was long and tedious. Ellis was meticulous with the details, but kept the illustrations whimsical. And I could relate to the frustration—the agony and the ecstasy but mostly the agony, as she puts it—of churning out one rejected almost-right idea after another.

Just a peek at Ellis’ process:

We (Colin and I and our editor, Donna Bray) wanted the cover of Wildwood to be a lot of things: classic-looking, epic-looking, sophisticated but also endearing to kids, funny, scary, mysterious. It was a tall order and, as a consequence, the cover design went through a crazy number of revisions.  Twenty-four in all. I’m including a lot of them here to give a sense of the sometimes grueling, sometimes revelatory, editorial process.

Also: Looks like the second book in the trilogy—Under Wildwood—and its art was just announced yesterday.

Below are a list of the six challenges (and the teams that worked to solve them) with corresponding video presentations of proposed creative solutions. My notes are below each video.

1. Local schools must be supported by the community if they are to be successful. How can our neighborhoods, and institutions in them like businesses, work better to support youth, their educational outcomes and opportunities?

The Office of Mayor Sam Adams: Cary Clarke, Arts and Culture Policy Director; Lisa Libby, Planning and Sustainability Director; Kali Ladd, Education and Youth Policy Director
Wieden + Kennedy: Nick Barham, Eugenie Frerichs, Bernadette Spear, Seth Weisfield, Igor Clark, Patrick Nistler, Jamie Ostrov, Joseph Limauro, Matt Brown

Key stat: 85% of Portlanders don’t have children of school age. Eighty-five percent! How are our schools going to succeed if only 15% of us care about them? And there’s so much on the line—it’s estimated every percentage point increase in the Portland area’s college graduation rate is equal to $1.6 billion in revenue for the area. If the school system isn’t working, we all get a little poorer.

I love the succinct call to action: donate a coat, a can, a book, an hour, a grand. Even more, I love the idea of asking the abundance of creatives to “rep their hood.” Portlanders take a lot of pride in Portland—and their respective neighborhoods. Why not use the schools as neighborhood hubs around which to rally? (Do you even know the name of the nearest high school in your neighborhood? I know mine. Go, Generals!)

2. Today one of every two adults in Multnomah County is overweight or obese. The way we build our cities is part of the problem. How might we re-think our public spaces to promote public health and more active lifestyles?

Department of Planning, City of Portland: Eric Engstrom, Principal Planner
Official Mfg. Co.: Mathew Foster, Jeremy Pelley, Fritz Mesenbrink

Half of Multnomah County is overweight. Half. 

The idea to add an extra variable to your public transit trip planner—the Exercise More option—is simple and brilliant. Sitting idle at the nearest bus stop is boring. Take your daily constitutional to a stop a half-mile or mile away and enjoy what Portland’s sunny skies have to offer.

3. A reduction of the amount of meat and dairy in local diets could have a profound impact on the city’s environmental footprint. How do we get the residents of Portland to consume less meat?

Sustainable Food Policy and Programs, City of Portland: Steve Cohen, Manager
Ideas for Cities from Ziba: Carl Alviani, Ryan Coulter, Steve Lee

Simply, less meat is more healthy. Of course, it’s difficult to combat the 50+ years of meat industry campaigns telling us otherwise. So Ziba proposes not just a campaign, but some actual tools to dial your diet to a healthier setting.

My favorite part of this proposal is the community eating—or Greener Gatherings. When your partner or friend or family is eating better, you will be more inclined to do so as well. Plus, eating with others is awesome.

4. Local businesses are hesitant to set up shop in some areas located outside of Portland’s city center. How do we help nurture a stronger, more competitive business climate in Lents Town Center?

Portland Development Commission: Kevin Cronin, Senior Program Manager? and Shawn Ulman, Public Affairs Manager
Team ADX: Building a Community of Thinkers and Makers: Eric Black, Kelley Roy, Greg Simons, Sean Barrow, Simon Yuen, Sarah Thilman, Tyesha Snow, Iain Thatcher, Max Miller

Speaking of high schools and neighborhood nuclei, ADX’s plan is to repurpose the closed Marshall High School as a community hub in Lents. ADX already has a summer camp for kids in the works, plus initiatives to become a business incubator and training center (à la their central southeast headquarters) and to host an outdoor music festival.

Woody Guthrie’s old stomping grounds already have a nice campaign, too: I’m already here! and, for those of us who aren’t, I will be there! See you in Lents.

5. Portland is known worldwide as a bike town; yet we have stalled when it comes to infrastructure. How might we create a major new bikeway that helps make bicycling as visible, safe, convenient, and pleasant for as many people as possible?

Bike Portland: Jonathan Maus, Founder
THINK.urban: Jason King, Allison Duncan, Katrina Johnston

While Portland may be tops in the US when it comes to bike friendliness, it’s far from world class. Safety and connectedness are at the top of every bicyclist’s priority list.

So… build a bike highway system whose arteries are within one mile of every residence that links up the five quadrants. And have a physical buffer and wider riding lanes. And call it Link. The main thing? Make bicycling the same priority as other existing forms of transit: driving, walking, bus and light rail. If, mentally, each form of transportation is the same priority, bicycling infrastructure in Portland stands a chance to be world class.

6. Local farmers are reporting that they are working more markets yet making less money. How do we increase access to fresh locally grown food while ensuring profitability for our region’s farmers?

Portland Farmers Market: Trudy Toliver, Executive Director
?Sincerely Interested: Nicole Lavelle, Sarah Baugh, Justin Flood

Vegetation billboards? Roving farmers markets? Destination gala nighttime markets? Artist greenhouses? Yes, please!

Whew. If you’ve got anymore good ideas, fill up the comment section or drop a line to Alissa Walker.

Also, Paul Searle did an amazing job on all this video and editing. Thanks, Paul! 

FORTPORT: Complete this thought. Dear students:

Steve Sandstrom: This is a profession about commerce. I often tell students that my job is to make rich people richer. I use creativity and talent as a means to solve business problems. What this job isn’t is art. At times it can be artful. And it can certainly reach exceptionally high aesthetic values that can be compared to art. It can also achieve cultural relevance and influence.

You might consider courses in business and marketing as well as courses in intellectual property rights. I’d be much better off if I had.

Find out more about the presentation on the event page.

Poster design by Allison Berg, art direction by Lloyd Winter

Draplin is a font of creativity and wisdom and f-bombs. Watch as he waxes poetic the official presentation The DDC 50-Point Plan to Ruin Yer Career.

You should watch the entire video. But if you only have time for an instant sugar high of design inspiration, there’s a pretty boss reel of all the work Draplin has done set to Zeppelin starting around the 10:50 mark.

What are the hottest upcoming trends in the creative industries? And which skills do you need to navigate them in the years ahead? To find out, last summer The Creative Group interviewed leading creative thinkers and conducted a survey in partnership with the American Advertising Federation. The results of that research are compiled in the guide The Creative Team of the Future.

(via AIGA National)