Last year I taught my first Branding class at the Academy of Art University here in San Francisco. I've been teaching Design for a few years now, but mostly Typography and fundamental Graphic Design classes. This was my first Branding class, and something I had been looking forward to teaching ever since working at design agency Moving Brands.

A few years ago, a male-led design team was working on a brief for a major athletic apparel company. When the team presented its work to the client, the reaction was honest: the work was too clinical and serious. Perhaps female designers would help take the work in a different direction?

Greyer Grays Instagram blew away the design world by redoing their app in black and white. It was as if we had never seen those two colors paired together in our entire lives. This year it's all about grays getting greyer. A recent scientific survey we just published shows some compelling statistics: Look at that.

Mark Simonson is a prolific graphic designer, illustrator, and typographer whose innate artistic talents date all the way back to his early childhood. While his college education and subsequent career initially focused on commercial art, he took an interest in type design during a college lettering course in the mid 1970s.

A few bite-sized learnings from the first day of Interaction 17 in NYC - with topics ranging from Virtual Reality, to Design Ethics, all the way to US politics. Interaction 17 is one of the biggest UX conferences in the world.