Archive for the 'Design' Category
Graphic Design Poster Competition
A few weeks ago Belgian graphic designer extraordinaire, Veerle Pieters, launched a creative design competition on her blog.
The basic concept of the contest was to come up with something creative or witty that visualizes the question ‘What is Graphic Design?‘
Contestants were asked to post their entries on Flickr and she select the winners. So far 456 photos have been posted! These make more very interesting visual stimulation.
If you think that going through 456 photos is daunting, then check out Veerle’s latest post. She’s created a nice series of posters that grabbed her attention. This series is absolutely stunning. I’m looking forward to hearing which one of these is the winner.
Miracle product solves design problems
If you’re unhappy with your current website or your latest brochure, why not try the Make My Logo Bigger Cream. Who says design takes skill and creativity? Pshaw!
Thanks to Karole for sending the link.
Let the music inspire you
Back in the old days of vinyl and 45s, people used to look at record albums for inspiration. CD covers just don’t seem to be as exciting, but the music industry as always been at the forefront of design. The folks at Tutorial Blog have put together a list of 30 music websites which are just beautiful to look at. If this is the look your after, you’re bound to find inspiration here.
Dont’ think that what you are seeing is what everyone else is seeing
One of the most difficult things about building websites is getting it to look the same on all browsers. This task can be very challenging and frustrating. Before trying to achieve the impossible and making your website look great on every browser, you may want to look at your audience and your stats. Looking at stats is a great way to narrow down your list of browsers that you should support. If you haven’t done it already take a look at Google Analytics or Mint and start collecting statistics.
Creative Culture & Success in Business
Adaptive Path (a user experience design firm in San Francisco) has a wealth of articles on their site which, as a designer, I find interesting. Many articles are of interest to a broader business audience – such as this interview with Chris Conley.
Conley notes Pixar as a great example of creative business success which “basically create[s] a new billion dollar franchise every four years or so”. Truly an amazing track record. He discusses what makes them so successful, which boils down more or less to:
- strongly adhering to a higher purpose - in Pixar’s case “To create great stories”. Fabulous storytelling is more important than fancy computer graphics. Mission and focus is paramount.
- dynamic leadership & a talented team - every project is led by a director-producer pair that brings complementary strengths to the table and is responsible for the project’s outcome in different ways. Their team is made up of artists and technologists that can make their work better through critique. A strong team is diverse and challenges each other.
- a highly iterative and tangible process - experimenting and sketching begins on day one. There is no waiting for mounds of research or scripts holding back the creative process. The great story they’ll tell gets figured out along the way. You needn’t have it all figured out from the start, get out there and do something.
Finally, Conley says
If corporations were to adopt these principles, behaviors, and values in their innovation-oriented work, they would be orders of magnitude more successful.
There are some good ideas in that list which resonate with me. What do you think?
Finally the perfect web design showcase!
When designing websites there are always a few components that are more difficult to design. Navigation, icons, call to action items, forms and headlines come to mind. When setting up blogs, headlines, comment forms and the entry metadata is often just straight from the design template. Looking at different websites and blogs is a great way to be inspired but finding the right site takes a lot of time and effort. After reading Smashing Magazine article today, I came across Elements of Design, the alternative web design showcase. This wonderful resource is the design showcase of Christian Watson. Instead of displaying great looking websites, he provides us with snippets such as great icons, headlines, pull quotes, calendars, search boxes and even code display. I’m bookmarking this site right now and subscribing to their RSS feed!
Queenstown, New Zealand Hotel Unzips Eye-opening New Loo
It’s great to get design inspiration from a variety of sources. Via Patricia Gray’s blog I discovered this great article about a new washroom at the Queenstown’s newest hotel, Sofitel Queenstown. The concept is sure to raise a few eyebrows and make a few men laugh.
