natalia ilyin

I'll be on a panel at the JumpStart event sponsored by AIGA Seattle.
It's going to be held at Cornish College. It's about getting started in design.
More detail at www.AIGA.org.

This is the first time I've been to an AIGA Seattle Chapter event, and I'm looking forward to it. Sean Bolan, Director of Education for AIGA here, is so on top of the details that I know it will be a really worthwhile evening.

Now. Where is that book I promised for the raffle?

The other day I was sitting in a meeting with my brand analysis hat on, listening to Pam, my business partner, present a plan for brand alignment to a very bright client. I like listening to Pam’s presentations because her mind works so differently from mine. I always learn something. This time, though, my attention was distracted by a person sitting near me. The thinning, spikey hair with the lightened tips. The slim, rectangular glasses. The worked-out, aging body clothed in the latest techno-wear from REI, chosen to give a sense of health and youth where health and youth are ebbing. Behold: The Branding Hack. (more…)

I'm snowbound on a small island. In New York this snow would have been plowed and dumped in the river by lunchtime on the day it fell, and nary a reservation at Nobu cancelled. Not here. No, here in the land of the hearty Northwesterner, land of anorak and parka, land of flannel and technical fabric, we have buses sliding down slight inclines. We have cars without snowtires trying to make it up hills, the drivers' faces cartoons of surprise at sliding backward. (more…)