Libby Levi | Blog

Moleskine no. 17 (at Red Hat Tower)

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:18:27 -0400

Moleskine no. 17 (at Red Hat Tower)

Here, HBR, let me translate for you.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:23:00 -0400

This article from the Harvard Business Review has been making the rounds on twitter lately, as designers and other “creatives” rightly take offense to it’s demeaning tone and off-base “tips” on managing creative employees. I thought I’d take the opportunity to translate their 7 rules into actual advice that won’t send designers (and employees in general) running from your team:

HBR: Spoil them and let them fail.
TRANSLATION: Give employees a safe environment for creative risk-taking.

HBR: Surround them by semi-boring people.
TRANSLATION: Create collaborative, multidisciplinary teams to tackle hard problems.

HBR: Only involve them in meaningful work.
TRANSLATION: Make sure teams understand the company’s strategy and goals and how their projects fit in.

HBR: Don’t pressure them.
TRANSLATION: Create a flexible work environment that lets employees work in ways that they find most creative and productive.

HBR: Pay them poorly.
TRANSLATION: There’s nothing good here. Pay all employees what they’re worth, creative or otherwise.

HBR: Surprise them.
TRANSLATION: see #4.

HBR: Make them feel important.
TRANSLATION: Show them that you and the company value their contributions.

Sketchnotes from the March AIGA Raleigh Community meeting. (at...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:52:14 -0500

Sketchnotes from the March AIGA Raleigh Community meeting. (at New Kind)

Translating the standard creative brief.

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:03:59 -0500

Translating the standard creative brief.

I made a couple of new additions to my collection of clip art...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:53:17 -0500

I made a couple of new additions to my collection of clip art and source books at Reader’s Corner today—one of medieval tiles, the other of pre-columbian circle motifs.

Here’s a couple of my favorites—a tile with a very clever repeat (that’s one tile making the entire pattern), and some “unidentified flowers”.

I like this little guy a lot. #meetingdoodles

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:06:13 -0500

I like this little guy a lot. #meetingdoodles

Holiday cards are ready! The cards I started a couple weeks ago...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:06:58 -0500

Holiday cards are ready! The cards I started a couple weeks ago arrived over the weekend and are all set for the holiday craft fairs.

I’ve illustrated all four by hand, colored in photoshop, and had them printed by Moo. I’ll probably put a few sets in the Dull Roar Shop after this week’s fair, if you’re interested!

Monster horde waiting to become Christmas presents…

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 00:20:08 -0500

Monster horde waiting to become Christmas presents…

Holiday card sneak peak

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 16:38:36 -0500

Holiday card sneak peak

I designed this little guy for opensource.com way back in 2010....

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:38:00 -0400

I designed this little guy for opensource.com way back in 2010. It popped up again today thanks to some love from ffffound, I Love Charts, and Laughing Squid.

I’m reblogging it here so I can keep track of all the notes!

What do you get when you give a life-sized fiberglass cow to the...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:51:43 -0400

What do you get when you give a life-sized fiberglass cow to the creative team at an open source software company?

A cow-laboration, of course.

The cow is for CowParade 2012, a public art project to benefit the North Carolina Children’s Hospital. We’ve been collecting (and drawing) cows for a few weeks, and are almost ready to start applying them to our big model cow. So far we have 70+ fantastic submissions from employees, community members, and friends. You can see them all on flickr.

Do you want to contribute a cow to our cow-laboration? We’d love to have it. Details about submitting your own can be found on opensource.com.

In a few months Red Hat is moving to new digs in downtown...

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:22:00 -0400

In a few months Red Hat is moving to new digs in downtown Raleigh. The renovation of the new space involves setting aside casual meeting space with wall-sized illustrations created in collaboration with the opensource.com team.

I’ve been working on several of these in the past few months, so I thought I’d share a couple of my favorites. These, of course, have been re-cropped so that they can be used as editorial illustration on the opensource.com site (so not wall-sized, at least not yet!).

Sketchbook | Last week I had the opportunity to attend the...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:43:30 -0400

Sketchbook | Last week I had the opportunity to attend the InHOWse Managers Conference in Boston. I’ll be posting my notes from some of my favorite sessions over the next week or so.

First up, Grant McCracken. Grant is an MIT anthropologist and author of several books focusing on the intersection of design, ethnography, and culture. At HOW, he discussed how creative people can use their intuitive knowledge of culture to help the corporations they work for respond to our rapidly changing world.

Sketchnotes from an excellent talk Julie Beeler and Michael...

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 21:33:00 -0400

Sketchnotes from an excellent talk Julie Beeler and Michael Pittman of Second Story gave last night for AIGA Raleigh.

My Instagram snap of my notebook got a huge response, so I thought I’d post a proper scanned version that can actually be read.

Update: AIGA Raleigh featured my sketchnotes in the writeup of the talk. Neat!

Monotype print of a robot who’s just made a huge...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:42:42 -0400

Monotype print of a robot who’s just made a huge mistake.

One color on Arches paper, printed at Pullen Arts Center.

Monotype, besides being a type foundry, is a printing method that involves removing color from an inked plate. Unlike other printing methods, you get only one print (hence the name). Despite being a terribly inefficient process, it’s pretty fun and I’m charmed by the soft-edged effect it produces.

Linoleum block print of my dog, Millie. One color on...

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 11:32:00 -0400

Linoleum block print of my dog, Millie.

One color on “cement green” French paper, printed at Pullen Arts Center.

In March, I spent a week learning to screenprint at Penland...

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:20:37 -0400

In March, I spent a week learning to screenprint at Penland School of Crafts. This is my second print: A series of hand-drawn type studies in the form of a little conversation.

The films for each screen were created by hand, using rubylith, opaquing pens, and a xerox machine. I used four screens and produced a signed edition of 35 uncut sheets. 12 additional sheets with minor defects were cut to postcard size and printed with mailing indicia on the back.

Red Hat’s flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux,...

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:31:02 -0400

Red Hat’s flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, turned 10 this week. To help celebrate, our video team (ok, mostly Brett Abramsky) put together a mini-doc that does a great job summing up what exactly Red Hat does—harnessing the power of community-built open source software and making it the stable, reliable platform that big companies (and the internet) rely on.

(Oh, and the sweet design at 0:45? I made that.)

Small army. (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:34:00 -0400

Small army. (Taken with instagram)

Working on one last AIGA poster… (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:38:17 -0400

Working on one last AIGA poster… (Taken with instagram)