One of the best pieces I can recall seeing on how to hire a graphic designer, by someone not in the design industry. She’s got some really good advice.

Some of the tips include help picking the right designer.

Make sure that the designer has experience in the medium that you plan to use — a designer who has a lot of great web experience won’t necessarily be good at designing packaging for a print project.

One of the most important qualifications is that the designer has either done work in a format similar to yours or solved design challenges similar to yours.

As well as how to work with a designer.

Be specific. You don’t necessarily have to have a creative vision of the final product, but you do need to be able to describe what you would like to accomplish through the design.

Yurko Gutsulyak has designed one of the most fun calendars, if you’re a fan of the pyrotechnics.

[via OK Great]

No joke, they’re really made out of oak. This card is so good, I wouldn’t throw it out even if I didn’t like them. And that’s the true test.

This is an award that doesn’t get nearly enough press and I’d actually never heard of before today. What a great idea though, to encourage and reward clients for contracting excellent designers, empowering and enabling them to do great work, and staying far enough away from the project as to not completely muck it up. This year’s award went to UK culinary sensation, Jamie Oliver.

[via GraphicHug]

I have many loves as well. And one of them just happens to be Ben Weeks’ Ben Weeks Has Many Loves poster.

I always wish I still had access to a screen-printing studio whenever I come across great posters like these.

They don’t have the complexity or visual detail of one of Tufte‘s posters, but they’re still very well done and reasonably priced. I may have to add one to my collection.

[via GraphicHug]

A brochure like this would be way more useful than that package of junk with the phone numbers of State Senators and coupons for Lowes and Bed Bath & Beyond when you get from the post office when change addresses, but doesn’t actually arrive at your new address until after you’ve already gone to Lowes and Bed Bath & Beyond.

[Via Information Aesthetics]

I would love to have a cool title like Paper Engineer. But since that will never happen, I’ll settle for fawning over the work of Marshall Alexander, a true paper engineer. Marshall makes “one-piece papertoys” and even gives some away for free on his website as downloadable PDFs.

[Via Jon Hicks]

A collection of popular, order influential and notorious typefaces by Camdon Wilde organized into periodic table form.

[via FPO]