On the eve of his departure from Google, Douglas Bowman of StopDesign wrote a short essay about the life of a design professional at the web entity that prides itself on the absence of design. Its really intriguing to get a glimpse of life as a designer inside Google and nice to know I'm not missing anything.
[Basin White bath and beauty products packaging found on Lovely Package]
Color me unobservant but somehow I missed finding Lovely Package on my own. Its a gorgeous blog, a bounty of package design, page-after-page of pretty. Go forth, enjoy.
[A diagram showing how a planet in space and Pepsi has a gravitational pull.]
P+P have been wondering what was the Pepsi rebrand team was thinking since we wrote a post a couple of months ago. Searching around the blogosphere, we found a supposed pdf that explained the science behind the rebrand. Unfortunately, it seems that you need a doctorate in genetics, geometry and art history to wade through the rebranding jargon. Check it our for yourself and let us know if you crack the code.
[Via Ad Lab.]
From CreativeTechs Twitter feed:Helpful rhyme for masking in Photoshop:
"Black Conceals, White Reveals."
Great designer-centric humor tees from Wire & Twine. Needless to say, this particular shirt is my favorite. Although honestly, I fear a Hobo planet.
One of the most magical childhood favorites has been turned into a film with the help of such luminaries as Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers, Tom Hanks and Forest Whitacker.
House Industries' blog Show and Tell recently published a story about a former collaborator, Allen Mercer. What completely clotted my brain was the image of the corporate logo for the Build-A-Bear store. Color me entirely unobservant on this one. I know I've seen one of these stores in the past but I clearly must be trying to avert my eyes because I had never actually made the connection that the logo was made from House Industries' face Funhouse, based on work Allen Mercer had created.
My observations are completely beside the point of the original post at Show and Tell which is a thoughtful tribute to a former House member.
Justin Gignac challenged the theory that package design wasn't important by attempting to create an appealing package for "something that absolutely nobody in their right mind would ever want to buy.” Garbage.
I think Gignac proved his point with his New York City Garbage cubes which have sold for upwards of $100 and he has sold over 1000 of his artfully arranged cubes of selected trash.
Each sealed box comes signed, numbered and tagged as “Garbage of New York City”. A small sticker records the date the trash was collected for the cube.
Listen to the full story at NPR.org.
[via The Dieline]
[The winning motion graphics short for the Digital Design Tournament here in NYC by our good friend Jake Guttormssom.]]
Our good friend Jake Guttormssom!!! YAY!! Jake participated here in NYC this past weekend and WON the motion graphics section of the tournament. We blogged about this contest back in January and we are excited to know one of the winners. Now we are going to let Jake tell his in his own words what happened and how he went about creating his masterpiece.
"Hi, My name is Jake Guttormsson. I just won the Motion Design Competition at the 2009 Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament In New York City.
It was a live, one day event for 2d Designers, 3d Modelers, and Motion Designers at Webster Hall on Saturday, March 21st. Cut & Paste is a multi-city Tournament holding events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Boston, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Milan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney. It will culminate in the 2009 Global Championship to be held June 20th at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.
My portion of the contest began with the orientation a week before the tourney. We all met at the Cut & Paste offices in beautiful central Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There we received some training on the Wacom Cintiq 21UX pen tablet monitors (Wacom is a major sponsor of the event, and we each got on of these touch screen monitors to work on for game day.) We then went through the ground rules, we were able to bring 4 prepared assets to the competition (psd's, video clips, 3d models, etc.) as well as any number of royalty free audio clips. No animation could be done before the day of the contest. We have 8 hours to create and render an animation no longer than 15 seconds.
The next day we got our theme which was "The History of Music." A few things I tried to keep in my mind while I was making it: 1) This was going on in front of a live audience; 2)they've been drinking; 3) they've been there for 2 hours already, while they're watching the other competitions, they've been listening to a Dj. I tried to keep my idea simple and easy to read, my audio minimal, the animation fast paced and punchy. And most importantly, it had to be funny. I also tried to design it so it could be built in layers, meaning I could outline the basic premiss, then go back adding more and more embellishments until I ran out of time. This way if it took longer than I anticipated, I would at least have something to show, with a beginning middle and end."
Check out Jake's award winning short above and get ready to cheer him on in the worldwide tournament in June.
[Photo by Jessica Rolland]
Umbrella Bloom by Sam Spenser found on Urban Prankster.
[via Monoscope]
Inspiration can be found everywhere even in a sandwich. Just check out scanwiches, a site of daily sandwich scans by Jon Chonko, a NYC designer. Simple, beautiful and tasty.
Felt & Wire is a new blog created by the folks at Mohawk Fine Papers to discuss, discover and disseminate paper creations in all its forms. Posts feature favorite designers and printers. There is even a letterpress directory to help locate the finest print craftsman nearest (or dearest) to you.
While watching Mamma Mia last night, I had to pause the movie to seek out the creator of the amazing textiles featured in the film. It turns out they are the work of Swedish designer, Josef Frank, who created more than 200 patterns between 1909 and 1950. He also designed furniture, glassware, lighting and metal. Svenskt Tenn continues to offer a selection of his original designs.
Google is featuring an Eric Carle-stylized version of their logo today in honor of the 40th anniversary of the publication of his The Very Hungry Caterpillar. For some other interesting facts about Eric Carle, check out the Book Patrol.
Uppercase NYC is now publishing their quarterly magazine, Uppercase, full of eye candy for creatives.
(Edit: Thanks to the note from Janine, Uppercase is actually in Canada, not New York. What do I know? I live in fly-over country.)
Read Between The Leading is a new podcast about design by two design students at Savannah College of Art & Design was recommended to us (via Twitter) by typographic genius, Josh Scruggs. Check it out!
I am totally in love with Miller. I have used the font in the past, but over the past week I have become intimately acquainted with it and just love how it looks and acts. It looks timeless yet modern and you can beautifully mix italics, caps and simple text to create elegant and lovely designs. I thank type god Matthew Carter bringing such a lovely typeface into existence.
Mattel and Nickelodeon have attempted to update the look of Dora the Explorer, a staple for the preschool and elementary school crowd. The new Dora is targeted for the tween market, recreating her as a 10-year-old girl. The preliminary sketches were released to overwhelming outrage from parents. Lylah Alphonse at Boston.com made a good point about it being okay for kids to "graduate" to new toys and interests.
Outside of the outrage, I don't think the tween Dora looks all sexy and slutty like the media is painting her. She doesn't look like a Bratz girl, that's for sure. Opinions?
Love this! This is the new Bodoni Script Pro from Parachute. I used a lot of the FF Bodoni Script options but this takes it to a whole new level. Go, now! Don't wait!
Sketch Book: Conceptual Drawing from the World's Most Influential Designers by Timothy O'Donnell features sketchbook drawings from Michael Beirut, Dave Eggers, Marian Bantjes and more.
[Ed Interlock by Ed Benguiat for House Industries]
For those of you in NYC who are craving a good type talk should swing by the Type Director's Club next Thursday, March 26th at 6pm and check out a talk with Ed Benguiat. He will take you on a journey through his career as a by type designer and logotype guru. The TDC promises you'll be blown away and says that his talk "was undoubtedly the most exciting one held at Typo Berlin 2008." You won't want to miss this.
I am huge, huge fan of Orla Kiely so today I was stoked to learn that Target now carries a large selection of Orla Kiely home decor. The line consists of everything from plates to cups to canisters all emblazoned with Kiely's trademark patterns. And everything is priced to be gentle on the pocket book with nothing more then $24. My personal favorite are the pear tumblers. So cute!
French illustrator Marc Boutavant known best for his children's book illustrations.
[Tip from Chronicle Books]
Do you ever get frustrated with your screen graying out or your computer going to sleep while watching an episode of Trust Me, burning a DVD or waiting for a long save or render? Jiggler is the perfect solution. Its a little application that's sole purpose is to keep your computer "awake" when you need it to be awake. This eliminates the need to constantly override your main preference settings and then remember to set them back for battery-saving benefits. Yippee!
Amusing but mysterious Periodic Table of Typefaces found over at Squidspot. If anyone has a story or details about this design, please drop us a note in the comments.
[Edit: Thanks to one of our readers, Katie, for providing us with a link to the Behance post about the Periodic Table of Typefaces. Bob from Skylab wanted us to remind our readers that the table was created by SquidSpot, a Kansas City-based web design and interactive studio. Duly noted.]
[Shoutout to Bob at Skylab Letterpress for this gem]
Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast was lucky enough to do an extensive interview with one of my favorite, yet incredibly illusive, contemporary artists, Dave McKean. His work is incredibly well-crafted, insanely involved and he has managed to span every visual medium I know from comic books to animation and film. Interspersed throughout the article are literally dozens of his pieces: tarot card imagery, book covers, graphic novels, poster, CDs, film stills, graphic novels and more. Read to the end of the interview for an assortment of video interviews and links to his work.
I recently stumbled upon Michelle McCormick's Inspiration Room which culls the world for color, design, illustration and typographic inspiration. A recent post included the research archives of Dave Cuzner of Grain Edit fame. Other posts have included image after image of color swatches, photography and an assortment of archival materials.
Showoff Films ad campaign, "Showoff because there are already enough ways to kill your idea," is a lovely play on familiar film and culture references of bad ends coming to the good from Jaws to the Big Bad Wolf.
The concept was developed by Fuel Lisbon, Portugal, by creative director/art director Pedro Bexiga, creative director/copywriter Marcelo Lourenço, with illustrator Scott C. Retouching was done at SniperShot.
See all the ads in the series at The Inspiration Room.
(Shout out to Shoebox's John Smith for the tip!)
I've been fielding a lot of questions about digital cameras and photography lately so I thought I'd compile the information I've collected and post it here.
I am, by no means, a professional photographer. At best, I'd call myself an enthusiastic amateur. As such, I look at lots of images and have slowly learned some the subtleties of the art of photography. This has earned me a reputation among my friends as a "camera junkie" so I am often called upon to provide advice for camera purchases.
With Fontifier, you can go from this printed sheet filled in with your handwriting:
to this:
in just minutes for just $9 and the click of a few buttons. There's some minor kerning issues and some page dirt that I did not remove but overall, the results are pretty striking! The site gives you the opportunity to preview and resubmit your designs as many times as necessary until you are satisfied before you plop down your funds.
Go forth and Fontify!
Its not often that I get excited about something that's more words than pretty pictures but in this case I'll make an exception. Unit Interactive is publishing a very interesting blog right now. Some of the most recent topics covered were about fighting the recession with optimism and smart business management and reporting freelance wages. Take a minute and read. Its good stuff. Besides they refer to themselves as Unitards, what's not to love?
M.S. Corley challenged himself to redesign well-known book covers in the style of the classic Penguin covers. He got a lot of great press for his the covers of Harry Potter novels, but I'm equally impressed with his Spiderwick series and the Phillip Pullman series His Dark Materials as well. Its a great experiment demonstrating that limited color palettes and minimal illustration techniques can produce powerful results. Less really is more.
Photographer and blogger Susannah Conway is offering her Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self as an online course. Using non-traditional approaches to self-portraiture through photo and writing assignments, Conway hopes to inspire students to challenge themselves creatively to see their world and themselves in a new light – to reconnect with who they are and where they want to go next. The next course starts Monday, May 4th.
Simple, elegant and a little humorous, Bold & Noble create hand silk-screened posters available for purchase.
Poster from Designforfun to encourage bicycle awareness on the road. Designed by Ben Barry in honor of Paul Jerde who was recently hit on his bicycle in Dallas.
[Edit: We made a little typo, this poster was designed in honor of Paul Jerde by Ben Barry]
There is a group on Flickr dedicated to the photographic experiments and adventures of designers – Graphic Designers Moonlighting as Photographers. Aptly named, its a huge pool of over 70,000 images contributed by over 7,000 designers worldwide. It includes a huge array of images, from portraits and "stock photography" to typography and texture in the world at large.
[A small sampling of images from the pool: 1. Maman, 2. P1100955Z, 3. Colo(u)rs, 4. Living Color, 5. "N", 6. big red in bottles, 7. roger, 8. color_markers, 9. _]
P.S. The bunny image is especially for Kirsten. Her birthday is Wednesday. Let the well-wishing begin here!
As a designer in today's economy is it best to know as many skills as possible. As a print designer who jumped to web design, I know it can be difficult to learn the ins-an-outs of a new medium. For those of you in NYC, the AIGA wants to help. On March 30, 31 and April 1 from 6-8pm, the AIGA will offer a FREE seminar called Moving from Print to Web. The seminar plans to cover the basics from workflow to software to programming language.
