I considered many different topics for the accompanying blog post—super brands, Super Bowl advertising and super designers were just a few. The idea of super designers stuck with me. What would a “superdesigner” look like? What would her powers be?

Since we are searching for a new junior-level graphic designer, we decided to draft a description based on the super-attributes we are looking for. If you think you’ve got them, or if you know someone who does, give us a ring on our bat phone. Or actually, just send us a portfolio.

Future Superdesigner
Here’s what we are looking for in a junior level graphic designer, with 0-3 years of experience.

Superskills
Like some sort of cerebral ShamWow, your amazing brain has already absorbed tomes of design and communications knowledge and continues to soak up more. You have a super solid grasp of design principals from basic form and layout to color theory and advanced typography, and you use your superskills to rescue helpless projects in distress.

X-ray vision
You can see around corners, through 50-page research documents, and straight into people’s souls, pulling out keen insights that resonate with clients and their customers.

Magi-management
Perhaps you have eleven arms. Perhaps you dart like a hummingbird. Perhaps you have a computer-like brain. But, somehow, you are able to effortlessly juggle projects and ensure that photographers, printers, and other outside vendors live up to our standards of quality.

Mutant healing
You have adamantium bones and rapidly-regenerating skin. You feel the sting of criticism but are never destroyed by it. Instead, you take it to heart, heal quickly, and come back stronger.

Ability to bend time
You will do anything to meet a deadline. You put in the extra hours when needed, and have the ability to elongate days and weeks with the sheer force of your will.

Hypnotic powers
Not only do you produce great work, you know how to sell it. Your charmed tongue is adept at speaking the creative language in such a way that clients and creative directors (and maybe a professor or two) can’t help but fall under your spell.

Atomic energy
You might not be faster than a speeding bullet, but you have some sort of crazy internal furnace that just won’t quit. Maybe you are calm on the outside, but inside you are a nuclear junkyard spacedog fighting over a meaty bone. The mouse fell off the wheel and a cheetah with rocket skates jumped on. That sort of thing.

Does this sound like you? Contact us and come join our league of extraordinary creatives.

THE CHOKE DESIGN COMPANY 2012 UGLY COLOR FORECAST

Chris

I recently went skateboarding after a three-year hiatus. Needless to say, I spent a good deal of time on the ground and went home with a giant hipper (a bruise on my hip). Over the next few weeks I watched a splendid array of color form on my stiff and swollen hip—my inspiration for this year’s color picks.

Purpura

Biliverdin Bice

Coagulated Canary

Molly

As a tribute to my maiden name, my forecast for this year is inspired by everyone’s favorite color—the color of passion—brown.

Logistics Brown

Taco Meat Brown

Brellow (brownish-yellow)

Evan

This year I draw my inspiration from distant memories of Dresser family road trips in our treasured Toyota Tercel wagon. The perplexing boxy shape that could only have been inspired by a toddler’s crude crayon drawing of a car. The nauseating chemical smell of the brown vinyl seats that stuck to your legs and left patterned imprints on the backs of your knees. A weakly creamy exterior that exuded a particular sense of quiet suburban despair. Those gaudy green exit signs that drifted tantalizingly by as our tiny bladders threatened to burst. I can still feel the anemic four-cylinder shudder and whine as it crept up the hill to Crest Road and I pried my drooling face off the window, happy to be home again.

Tercel Yellow

Regular Brown

Highway Sign Green

For one thing, many people find writing or drawing with a pencil to be mentally stimulating. But beyond that, this exercise forces the designer to look at the very basics of design—shape, size and layout. It keeps designers from getting caught up in “What typeface should I use?” or “What will the color palette be?” These are important considerations, but they come later.

When creating concepts, drawing little pictures ironically helps you see the big picture. The act of quickly sketching broad, scaled-down designs lets you focus on idea generation rather than the nitty gritty. It lets you fail quickly and sift through all of the bad ideas to find the gems.

If you’re like Michael Bierut, you may even amass a collection of 85 notebooks full of sketches from the past 26 years. You might go back to a project’s thumbnails five years later and discover an awesome idea that never got used. Or, you might just end up with some really cool wrapping paper.

Graphic designers are accustomed to being asked to “make it bigger.” At Choke Design Company, however, we always start by making it smaller.

Choke Design Company, having had a flurry of nuptial celebrations of our own in the last six months, knows a lot about traditional and not-so-traditional wedding elements. Chris and Molly, the principal and office manager here at Choke, got married in June of this year. Chris and Molly stuck with a few of the basic traditions of a wedding, like exchanging rings and cutting the cake together. But they opted to do photos before the ceremony so that they could spend more time with their friends and family, who were invited to enjoy the libations before, during, and after the wedding. Chris and Molly also embraced a music theme for their wedding, starting out by sending posters as save the dates, invitations that were designed to be tickets, and passing out screen printed t-shirts as favors. The crowning glory of their music-themed craft projects was making flowers out of guitar pics for all of the centerpieces at the reception. They were even featured on Hi-Fi Weddings for their clever record store engagement photos. Link: http://hifiweddings.com/2011/09/29/chris-mollys-music-trade/

I got married just a few weeks ago in October. I always knew my wedding would likely be non-traditional, but that fact was cemented when my fiancée, Scott, and I booked a Maryland barn as our venue and began jokingly calling the wedding the “Hoedown of Love.” We decided to keep the easy, no-brainer traditions like “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” As a designer, I knew that I would go the traditional route of sending paper invitations—letterpress printed invitations, no less—even though sending out an Evite would have been much nicer for our wedding budget. I felt as though I’d have to revoke my designer card if I didn’t tackle the challenge of designing my own invitations, and I might as well do something beautiful. For Scott and I, that’s about where the traditions ended. Scott saw the dress when it was purchased (Bad luck? Says who?), we saw each other before the wedding in order to get the photos out of the way, and Scott had two groomswomen in addition to his two groomsmen. Instead of serving filet mignon and chicken, we hired a caterer who cooked wood fired pizzas on the back of his 1950s Ford pickup. We also nixed the garter and bouquet toss. After all, we really didn’t want to have Grandpa see Scott going up my dress in search of a garter with his teeth because his hands were tied behind his back. No thanks. Worse yet, what if Grandma caught the garter and one of the groomsmen had to place it on her upper thigh? Yes. That was a tradition we happily ignored.

Perhaps something old, something new is the best approach to wedding traditions—mixing it up makes for more fun. What traditions have you (or would you) keep or give the old heave-ho?

So, armed with my first Panasonic tape recorder (similar to the one pictured here), I began making mix tapes. Using a microphone borrowed from my dad’s reel-to-reel, I’d tape songs from my record player, interviews with my friends and neighbors, the sound of dogs barking, lines from movies or television shows and sometimes even snippets of me singing.

Once the rough tape was made, I would covertly edit it on my parents’ double tape deck stereo (from which I was officially banned) using a set of giant headphones. Afterwards, I would carefully wipe away my smudged fingerprints from the shiny silver buttons. Then of course, it was duplicate and distribute. But not before writing the track listing and creating a cover using marker, pencil, scissors and glue.

In the years before the internet and Facebook, this was how we shared music and ideas with friends. It was my first exposure to publishing and graphic design. I had no idea then that it would eventually become my passion and profession.

Times change. Technology advances. But good ideas survive and adapt. And so, with that in mind, we give you our Monthly Mix Tape.

Needless to say, we’ve matured quickly. We’ve grown, shrunk, and grown again. We’ve hired some fantastic talent and partnered with great new clients. And so, we are developing a new brand that—as any good brand should—will grow with us.

Rebranding is a long and arduous process. Really, it’s a process that should never end. There once may have been a time where a brand was developed, strategy was planned and everything was put into a binder that ruled a company’s communication like a dictator. Those times are over. Forever. The environment of every company’s marketplace is changing daily, if not faster, and the need to adapt is critical.

And so, we are creating a brand core that is focused on communication. This core of thoughts and conversations will fuel the growth and evolution of the people, partners, and projects that are Choke Design Company. It will nurture risk taking, encourage creativity, and above all else, incubate ideas.