Positive, forward-thinking ideas, uplifting style, true professionalism = Suzanne Sease. It’s always hard to define what is “good”. It takes an open mind, a skill for listening and identifying the milestones, and a willingness to be truthful even when it hurts. Suzanne stands within all the creative worlds at once, new school, old school, post-school, enabling her to tell it like it is…

Adria Petty’s works (music videos, commercials, films, docs) are time machines; within them time modulates between soothingly smooth and hurriedly intricate. Her techniques, the contrast and color of her lighting, and the snazzy immediacy that pushes the momentum is akin to watching time-lapse projector films of stars exploding.

In a recent All Things Considered Au Contraire opinion piece on NPR, the freelance writer Lionel Beehner focuses being Green discussion on the age old structure of rich vs. poor. Using the holidays as his cloak he complains about marketers and the luxury class using Green to satisfy their charitable conscious. Ho ho hum. In our era of rich complexity this point of reference…

Caspar Newbolt’s Version Industries makes nice-looking stuff; web sites, print design, motion graphics, etc. I’m tempted to call their work “slick”, but its more complex, I want to say post-post-modern, but what’s in a name. Maybe it’s the subtle layers to their work, or sometimes not-so-subtle. Pizzazz? Panache? But with great craft. Can a design be both reckless and well-crafted?

Michael Doret is the forever quiet storm, an innovator whose career works have influenced generations of designs. Born of the era of design giants, a 1960’s Cooper Union graduate with roots in Brooklyn, he’s part of a golden age that continues to produce great works in the face of great competition.