Do you side with the left, the right, or somewhere in between?

More examples on the Antrepo blog, via the ever-helpful Blairo.

Is it fun? Does it have some swagger?
In this article by Zak Stone, Chattanooga, Tennessee is betting on just that.
The utilitarian type around the city is being replaced with a custom typeface, adding to the city’s brand.

Do you think your city would benefit from strengthening it’s brand?

Comic Sans is installed more on PCs. Why so serious Linux & Mac? That’s just one of the many things we discovered while looking into the creative history of typography aka fonts. They play a huge part in branding and logos. They bring us the words in the stories we read. They add personality to a message. … and with CreativeMarket.com, our new marketplace for beautiful design content like fonts launching soon, we wanted to bring the typographic history, usage & character to life. Get your typographic love on!

P.S. How many different font faces can you name off the top of your head?

Design with love by Meghan Robichaud

Written by  Darius A Monsef IV

Tom’s Hardware has a great write up and explanation of SOPA. Please call or write your senators and representatives today and tell them you reject this bill, and we need to keep the internet uncensored.
If it passes, we can kiss sites like facebook, twitter, linked in, youtube and a host of others good bye.
Read it here.
Here is another great, short read to further explain what the bill does.

Then please, call or write your senators and representatives and tell them you want to keep the internet open, uncensored and to oppose this bill.

Well, I think that’s getting a little lame. So I’m going to step it up, and pick my color scheme of the year.

I can already see this across all kinds of applications. Car ads, food lables, web design, etc etc.
It can be daring and bold or subtle and elegant and great for all seasons.

Color being one of the strongest communication devices for a design, various combinations of these, choice of fonts, and shapes can really alter the voice of this combination. I’ll give some examples in the next post.

For designers: To download the Adobe .ase swatch file, click here to go to my Adobe Kuler (Color) page and make sure check out some other inspiring color themes.

(You’ll need and adobe id)

I realize most people don’t look at fast food packaging in that much detail. I mean, I design packaging, and I don’t even look at it. But these are so interestingly active. The sense of motion in each piece makes me wanna run down and get a Whopper and run back home in hopes of burning off a few hundred of the 1500 calories.
Either way, great work.

I was working on a blog about these nifty lil gadgets that pick up and store colors until a bigger issue, I felt, took precedence. Crowdsourcing. These crowd sourcing sites, pay a designer a minimal amount for a generic logo or illustration and resell them to business owners, usually small business owners.

“Crowdsourcing websites do not serve small businesses. There is no oversight on whether the graphics created by participants are in fact original; there are countless examples of small businesses being slapped with copyright violation because they unwittingly purchased a plagiarized logo. The crowdsourcing sites’ terms and conditions absolve them from any legal responsibility. It’s a no-win for everyone participating.” – Graphic Artists Guild (visit their website here)

It happens all to often.  A business owner finds a company outsourcing logos for a couple hundred dollars, buys it and  later gets a cease and desist letter from the designer that actually designed the logo. Not  only is the business owner out of a logo, but out of the money they paid for it, on top of now, having to get a new logo and change the branding that goes along with it.
Pay a little extra, get a good logo designed  that emphasizes your values and business by a good designer that will meet, talk to and work with you and make sure they give you exactly what you want. You won’t be sorry and stuck with a bewildered sense of irony or ethics.

For my designer friends

Again, all to often, we come across sites offering to sell your work. But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. 30 designers submit their designs for a particular project, the business selects the one they like best and everyone gets paid for their hard work and intellectual property. Right?
WRONG!
The one that gets selected gets paid. This is called ‘Spec work’ and it completely devalues what we do.
More often than not, the designs that don’t get picked, get sold to a logo outsourcing company, and everyone is getting paid for the designer’s hard work, but the designer.
No matter what field you’re in, someone else getting paid for your work is flat out unethical.

I don’t get into political statements, but I find this so absurd.
A few months after the White House released it’s plan to protect intellectual property rights, on October 6th , 2011 they announced a contest. This is an excerpt from the Graphic Artists Guild’s website.

“the Obama For America re-election campaign announced a design contest titled “Art Works; A poster contest to support American jobs.” The alleged purpose of this poster is to motivate people to support the President’s American Jobs Act. The “prize” for the winning poster designer is a framed print of the poster, signed by the President.

Additionally, the contest rules state that all artists who submit work to the contest grant the Obama For America campaign an unrestricted unpaid irrevocable license to use ALL of the submissions, not just the winning entry, and the campaign nowhere promises to credit the “winning” artist when his/her work is used.”

The irony isn’t lost on us: A crowdsourced contest is soliciting free work (spec work) from American artists for the purpose of promoting legislation to create jobs.
I especially loved the fact that the prize, was your own work that you no longer have any rights to and didn’t get paid for….to help promote a jobs bill.

Oh the Irony!

They really aren’t that hard to create, technically speaking. Aesthetically, they are a little tougher.
if a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture with motion, is a million.

I spent an early afternoon wandering around my home town collecting images. By late afternoon I was in my coffee shop hangout , other wise known as “the office” piecing this together.

I made this one this afternoon in downtown of my home town.

A little experimentation should great results.  My mind reels of the application of this to design, specifically to be used in epubs. What do you think? Want to see more?

Art Nouveau

I think part of why I love this movement so much was that it was a rebellion against the stiff sensibilities of Victorianism AND it was the first style to be incorporated onto packaging to make the product packaging look more appealing.

Notice the lack of government warnings?

The free, flowing, organic lines, soft colors, and tall figures. This era not only commercialized design, but it gave rise to one of the most influential careers ever.

The Illustrator

Since photography was barely born, what had to be pictured, had to be drawn and painted by hand. Not only did it give room for ideas, but some creative interpretation. The illustrator had the ability to mold perception.

In essence, create a brand.

The Nouveau style has been so enduring, I think because of it’s flexibility.

Maybe Ironman III should have been set in the Steampunk era of the 1890′s.

We came back to a similar style in the 1960′s with the psychedelic artwork, but I never really found it that appealing. There’s a great article about the transition from the flamboyant, natural and organic lines of Nouveau to the geometric, vibrant Deco movement here.

What Nouveau birth was a whole different critter.

The Art Deco period

in the late 20′s through the 1940′s. I love the simplified, clean lines and  dramatic angles. Notice you’re looking up at everything? It was a refining modernistic approach of the old gothic styles of exaggerated spires and towers stretching to heaven.

It was a modern approach that even made its way into architecture. A great great grandson to old gothic styles of exaggerated angles, spires and towers stretching to heaven. Refined lines, simplified shapes.

Prague / Czech Republic

Rockefeller Center – NY / USA

What’s the dang point?

This is what you are waiting for huh? Where I finally get to my point?

Well, its simple really. What did I say the Nouveau movement of the late 19th century was? A rebellion again stiff sensibilities of Victorianism. Which then went back into clean lines of the Deco period of the 1930s through 50′s, which then went into the “far out” psychedelic art of the 1960′s and 70′s, which then went into geometric hard lines of the 80′s and 90′s, into the grungy and free lines of the 2000′s.

Now, in the last couple years we’re starting to see a shift back into this clean, sharp trend prominent on new mobile devices and web sites.
What about Me? Well, I try to stay ahead of the game.

Ive seen a slew…that’s right, an entire slew of logos lately, that if they strip the 3, 4 even 5 colors out of it, the shading, the highlights, the lighting effects, the texture effects, etc etc….you wind up with a hot mess and have lost the entire purpose of the branding.

A good designer does not believe that if they add more effects in design, it will become attractive. But the reality is otherwise. Adding too many elements to a design makes it complicated and messy to look at. They often neglect the power and significance of simplicity. Instead of making intricate and difficult to comprehend designs, designers must prefer simple concept that the target audience will easily remember.

However, I will say, in some instances, when a company has already built 40 years of brand equity into their brand, changing it for the over simplified look was a screaming disaster. *cough*seattles best*cough*