Smashing Magazine posted a series of March-inspired wallpapers/calendars today, so I thought I’d put one together to give away here. Enjoy the lame visual pun and 84 Rock! font. I, for one, cannot wait to embrace the sweet Spring after the winter we’ve had in Pittsburgh. Everyone have a great weekend!
Yesterday, Jeff Hamada of BOOOOOOOM! posted a call to designers and artists to alter a magazine using only “traditional means.” (He urged everyone to step away from the computer and use pencils, markers, paint, etc. to create a new piece of art from a commercial layout.) Above is my contribution, constructed from a copy of Maxim magazine, a sharpie and my X-Acto. I had a blast doing this.
Filed under: Inspiration | Tags: design, design o'blog, illustration, Inspiration, interview, von glitschka
"El Diablo" ~Von Glitschka
Last week, The Design O’Blog posted a “10 questions with…” interview with illustrator/designer Von Glitschka. Read the article here and check out Von’s site Vonster.com for some really inspiring illustrations, logos, icons and more. The “and more” here encompassing downloadable .pdf designer “kick me” signs (ex. I <3 comic sans).
Filed under: Ad Campaign | Tags: Ad Campaign, beef, food photography, layout, texture
source: http://gcalvin.com
While perusing Golf Magazine (I can pretty much occupy myself with any magazine since I tend to only focus on the ads anyway) this morning I stumbled across the “Land of Beef” ad campaign, launched in 2008 by the Beef Checkoff Program. The campaign features some delightful food beef photography and the overall concept straddles the edge of absolute ridiculousnes with it’s “Powerful Beefscapes.” All in all my take is that this is fabulous; the concept is way “outside of the box” but it works and it’s executed beautifully.
source: http://www.indianabeef.org
source: http://www.vegilicio.us
source: http://popwatch.ew.com
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: brading, collaborate, cultivate, differentiate, identity, innovate, logo, neumeier, the brand gap, validate
For anyone who’s followed this blog for it’s short but fruitful life, it’s apparent that I’m a huge proponent of Marty Neumeier’s book The Brand Gap. “Read this book before your competitors do,” urges Tom Kelley of Ideo on the book’s back cover. I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Kelley. The Brand Gap is an incredibly valuable resource to anyone involved in business at any level to better understand branding. For those who think a brand is simply a wordmark or icon, this book sheds light onto the depth with which we as designers put into identity development. For those who are “in the know” about building brands, the article succintly and clearly lays out the pertinent info that must be taken into consideration before any branding endeavor. My advice: if you haven’t read it, you are legitimately missing out. Plus, you can read it easily in a single sitting and if you take nothing else away from this read, (which I sincerely doubt you could) the layout is absolutely great.
Additionally, suplemental information to the book is available via a numerous stock of pdfs at http://www.newriders.com.
Filed under: Key Commands | Tags: brand essence, brand meaning, branding, design, design elements, font, form, key command, logo, spacial relationships, typography
In concluding my series of key command posts, I thought I would wrap up the exercise with some thoughts on what I took away from this project. I think there were three main design concepts that arose throughout the execution of this daily design project.
1) This exercise reinforced the value of form in design. The UPS, Kinko’s, and Delta logos especially operated as tools for me to examine the form elements that encompass a design piece (in this case, logos). Examining an existing logo and breaking it down into its basic shapes in order to recreate it was a valuable exercise. Additionally, throughout this process I was continually examining spacial relations in logo development in regards to how to integrate text and image to create a meaningful and powerful brand icon.
2) Another point that I arrived at was the overall importance of good typography versus just choosing a suitable font. In the case of the Nissan logo, I was able to download the Nissan font package (thanks to the rabid fans of the brand) and with minimal adjustments to kerning and letter spacing, duplicate the logotype. However, for the rest of these it was not so easy. Especially in the case of the U-Haul and Elmer’s logos, the thrust of work I put in was to match the typography without the actual logotype at my disposal. I was able to ape all of them pretty well I think by determining key characteristics (from the obvious serif vs.sans, to more complex issues like kerning, x-height, stem width, etc.), finding base fonts that match those characteristics, and then further modifying the type as needed to more seamlessly recreate the logotype. Ultimately the lesson we take away is one we already knew: typography goes infinitely beyond font choice.
3) A third point learned from this project which one might think I had in mind beforehand, but really came to light through executing this was the ability we must have as designers to distill a brand to its essence. That’s essentially what this whole thing was about and ultimately what I love about branding. When I talk to clients I always use the analogy that Nike doesn’t sell shoes, they sell sports. In the same vein, Disney doesn’t sell movies or amusement park tickets or plush characters, they sell the magic of youth. The potential exists to spend pages upon pages writing about brand essence, lifestyle branding, the effects of brands on popular culture and so forth, but that is for another time and venue. Ultimately, on this subject, what we take away is that UPS means packages rather than shipping and delta means flight rather than meaning airline. It’s these concepts rather than products that speak to what branding is and what any given brand means. “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It’s not what you say it is, it’s what THEY say it is.” ~Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertisements, girls, illustration, pinup, reference, vintage, women
Why I Became an Artist from Print Magazine features a short, funny article about the art trade as well as a huge Flickr pool of vintage ads featuring illustrated women. Really great, classic stuff.
I found it via Quipsologies.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: delta, design, experiment, InDesign, key command, Key Commands, logo, parody, preflight
Preflight
Here we are at Day 7, signaling one week’s worth of key commands. I opted to take advantage of the 2007 Delta rebrand to convey Preflight and used this for reference. Hope you’ve enjoyed these, tomorrow I’ll be rounding up what I learned from this experiment.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Gerry Keppel sent me the following joke:
So this font walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Hey! We don’t serve your type here.”
So Comic Sans walks into a design firm and a junior designer says, “Hey, we don’t use your type here.”
To which the Creative Director replies, “And do you know why we don’t use Comic Sans?”
The junior designer shrugs and says, “I dunno, ’cause it sucks.”
A lengthy debate on typography follows.
Comic Sans Cafe
ban comic sans
