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: 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
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
Filed under: Design Resources | Tags: design, envelopes, kinko's, mailers, postcards, print, production
As an in-house designer for a well-diversified construction company, I am afforded the opportunity to essentially divide my time among four different clients (our four companies). Each, of course, having a (sometimes marginally, sometimes wholly) different audience and thus having different marketing needs.
Recently, I’ve done quite a bit of work for our real estate division, which often means producing mailers or postcards to target potential tenants. As is the case with any client, budget is always a concern. As a department, we in marketing often toe the line between in-house production and sending any particular piece to our printer, with quantity and cost almost always operating as the deciding factors.
Generally, postcards go to the printer because you can get a high-quality digital print run of postcards done at a very reasonable rate (often even at small quantities). However, short-run, market-specific mailers and brochures usually fall in the in-house production category, for which I rely on two great resources.
- Kinko’s – obviously, and for numerous reasons. (And yeah I know it’s “FedEx Office” now, but I’m a colloquialist.)
- Envelopemall.com – Ridiculously large selection of envelopes available in an enormous variety of colors, textures, folds and sizes. (How about a kiwi colored translucent mini open end 2.25″ x 3.75″?) All of their envelopes are available in minimum quantity of 100 and fall in the range of about $10 – $20 per hundred, with price breaks starting at orders of 4 packs or more. The turn around time is super quick as well. They offer printing services too, up to 2 PMS colors per side and minimum quantity of 500, which I have yet to utilize, but that’s yet another feature that’s good to know they have.
So check out envelopemall.com. This is a great resource for the production end of mailers because they offer near limitless style, color and size options at an affordable rate with the potential for printing and a great turnaround time.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I recently submitted a logo I did to LogoGala, a relatively new logo design inspiration site. They decided to include it in their gallery. See it here. I highly recommend adding their master feed to your RSS – what’s better than fresh, creative logos in your reader daily?
The logo I submitted was for Believe in Nothing, a Pittsburgh based t-shirt company that just got up and running in the Fall of 2008. They have some provocative ideas and some really nicely illustrated shirt concepts. Maybe I’ll have to write a creative process post for the logo somewhere down the line.
