While a lot of colleges and universities – for better or worse – focus more on the artistic aspects of design in their curriculums, Kwantlen Polytechnic University takes a different – more practical – approach. The Graphic Design for Marketing program is a 4-year, full-time, Bachelor’s Degree program offered at the University’s Richmond, BC campus.

The program takes students through a well-rounded array of classes that allows them to get their feet wet in various disciplines of design – interactive, packaging design, branding and identity – while also studying marketing and business-related subjects, giving them an education that’s applicable in real world business situations.

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Hark, designers! The day has FINALLY come when we’re no longer limited to the confines of Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, Helvetica and Georgia on our web sites. Yes,  you heard me right! We can now choose nearly ANY typeface we want for our sites, with a little preparation. First, you need to convert your fonts into several different web formats, so that the viewer’s browser of choice will be able to read the selected font. Next, you have to embed it in your site’s CSS and call it wherever you want it to appear.

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Once again, the lovely folks at CreativePro.com have gathered some juicy, free goodies for those of us who can’t get enough of all things Photoshop. This collection includes a great variety of textures and one of our favorite recent finds, the GuideGuide add-on for Photoshop. Gone are the days of having to manually create guides and margins in your PSD. A few clicks and it’s done! Hallelujah!

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Once in a while, you come across someone who takes an old technique and blends it with modern technology to come up with something entirely unique. Such is the case with Evelin Kasikov’s CMYK cross-stitch embroidery. Using traditional CMYK printing screen angles, she creates “printed” images with embroidery thread by cross-stitching the image. Wow! Very cool!

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It’s not often that you come across a designer whose work is so consistently gorgeous. How does one find the time to develop a concept so thoroughly? In this particular example, Kelli Anderson designed a wedding invitation that contains a flexidisc record with an original song by the spouses-to-be and the invite folds into a makeshift record player. Brilliant!

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A fellow designer turned us on to this gem of a site, published by the US Postal Service. It offers a free subscription to Deliver Magazine’s digital edition and a host of tips, case studies and other goodies related to direct mail marketing and design. Check out the February 2011 issue for a treat of a project where a cardboard mailer doubles as a makeshift phonograph that plays an included 45rpm record that tells the history of the company. Wowie zowie!

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Are you a fan of WordPress? Us, too! We came across the We Love WP site and quite enjoyed frolicking around in their gallery of sites built using WordPress. The nicest thing is that to qualify for inclusion, a site has to be custom-designed or a drastically-altered pre-built theme, so you get a nice variety of sites instead of a zillion blog-looking sites that are all nearly identical. You can even submit your own WordPress sites for inclusion in the gallery. All in all, a very cool site to check out.

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Project Thirty-Three has compiled a nice set of vintage album covers that are designed with simple geometric shapes like circles and dots. An interesting bit of inspiration for designers who appreciate record sleeve art.

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Are you a graphic designer? Do you know the difference between a font and a typeface? Do your eyes light up when conversations turn to ems, kerning, and baseline grids? If you answered yes to these questions, then The Typography Manual for the iPhone and iPod Touch is for you!

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Mashable has put together a list of 10 must-follow web design bloggers. The list incorporates blogs that focus on tutorials or creative techniques, CSS tricks of the trade, logos and typography and a lot of other topics of interest to designers of all stripes.

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