Posts filed under “Design”

In a world full of mass produced identical products, we're always searching for new ways to express ourselves. It is common knowledge that Apple’s online store offers to engrave their products with a short text message. For an even cooler way to mark your turf, check out Engrave! This Portland based company customizes personal electronics in a much more creative way. They use laser engraving and the end result is AH-MAZING. They can even permanently etch in your own designs if you supply them with a vector drawing.

In his latest masterpiece, 808s and Heartbreak, Kanye West turns away from hip hop to make pop music “in an artistic way.” He calls it Pop Art.

"This is not hip-hop music. Taking a sample, looping it and doing all that ‘throw your hands up in the sky’ thing has become such a cliche. Hip-hop is over for me. I sing, not rap, on this album. I now want to be grouped among those musicians you see in those old black-and-white photos - the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles. And I’m not going to get there by doing just another rap album full of samples.

"I’ve had to create a whole new musical genre to describe what I’m doing now and I’m calling it ‘pop-art’ - which is not to be confused with the visual art movement."

Voltage Super Designer, Geoff P, noticed the subtle use of these trendy colors on the album cover art. It appears that each of the eleven tracks is represented by a stripe of color. If you're digging this style, stay tuned for Kanye's fresh new clothing line Pastelle. Loves it!

I find this color trend forecast very stimulating. Fashion Industry insiders spotted these sweet hues at Première Vision on creations being unveiled for the Fall 2009 / Winter 2010 season. To stay ahead of the curve, I'm beginning to play and experiment with them now. I really dig the broad selection. Check out the "Spirit of the Season" from Fashion Trendsetter:

Color Trends for 2009

--Seizing on color as a power source to jolt colorful tensions.
--Maintaining equal pressure on liveliness and neutrality and encouraging luminosity.
--Heightening intensity, and circulating energy in a positive, rippling or alternating current.

Spirit of the Season

observing/taking/upsetting
attracting/joking
saturating/rebounding/interpreting to revive a combative confidence and creative boldness
fearlessly experimenting
flaunting fantasy without guilt
being moved by reckless handles
provoking unusual behaviors
running away with heaviness
abandoning consensus
eluding codes/ intersecting references
shuffling aesthetic boundaries
linking technology and an environmental conscience
setting differences ablaze
drawing on fabric and color as generators of energy
strengthening the positive tensions within the fashion whirlwind
thrusting ourselves into the future and radiating with optimism

I absolutely adore these hand-made agenda books, from graphic designer Vikki at Veekee. Inside you’ll find 122 pages with 54 weeks and 13 months hand-drawn out (but undated) so you can start whenever you're ready. Wrapped in vintage silk scarves, each book has silk screened pockets inside as well as the front. Nice heavy paper plus originally illustrated stickers and notepaper too.

All agendas are, very obviously, made with love!

I distinctly remember the great sense of pride instilled by my very first children's book. The moment I closed The Poky Little Puppy, after reading it (all by myself!) from start to finish, I experienced what felt like a life-changing victory.

As a designer, I wonder what kind of impact it would have made if my first children's book was something more like Sparkle and Spin, which was brilliantly illustrated by Paul Rand.

Just imagine... Not only would you learn to read, but it would also expose you to beautiful visuals and typography to inspire creativity and assist in developing your eye for design. Can you believe he created such a modern children's book in 1957? No joke!

Jeffry Zeldman on WebDesignInterviews.com:

...what's really going to drive standards awareness in the next months is the release of IE8. For the first time, IE will no longer support "IE-only" websites by default. Instead, it will support standards by default. Think about that. If you're a developer, and you've somehow managed to remain completely unaware of standards-based design, your IE-only website won't work in IE. Wow! Right? So what will you do?

If you plan to have a career, you'll start learning about standards-based design fast. (IE8 will support old-fashioned IE-only sites if you insert a tag in the head of each web page instructing the browser to do so, but that's merely to protect old sites; it's not a strategy you can pursue if you intend to create new sites.)

That's the big news where browsers and standards adoption are concerned.

He's right. IE's position as the dominant browser on the web combined with it's everlasting lack of support for web standards has created a unique bottleneck that's been hard, but not impossible, to ignore. The pressure for web standards that actually mean something has been building for years. That bottleneck is about to be opened wide and the aftermath will be painful on a grand scale.

So, this May I'm getting married to a wonderful lady who luckily shares my sense of style. Now, being a designer, I (really want to/feel like I should) design our invitations. We've been looking around online a lot for inspiration, but we've mostly found the typical, traditional invites. That's why it's so fun and refreshing to see something out of the ordinary and much more personal.

From the pixel illustration to the letterpress, these invites please on every level. But, to me, the greatest thing about these invitations is that the style truly speaks of the generation that grew up at the dawn of the digital age. It's also pretty awesome that the little pixel folk could pass for my fiance Beth and I. (Check me out on the staff page.)

So check out Cabel's Blog and take a look at some excellent wedding design. It's not just the invites either, Everything is tied together and wonderfully executed. I'll try to keep you posted on our invitations when they're ready.

This is a 5-step tutorial on branding your Twitter profile. It includes a Photoshop file for you to download and use as a template. (There's more to this tutorial than just the template. So even if you don't have Photoshop, read on for some Twitter-branding tips.)

BEFORE (Boringtweeter's profile):

Click to see full size.

AFTER (Voltage Blog's Profile):

Click to see full size.

Twitter is making a beeline for the mainstream. Marketers, friends and moms are finding more and more ways to connect using this social media service. You can scoop it, remix it or you can use it as a social news source and that's probably just the beginning. Twitter is here to stay.

With more eyeballs flocking to the service, it's high time we got rid of the default look and upgraded to something unique. Branding your profile will convey sincerity to potential followers. (Sincerity is just about the only currency that matters online, anymore.) It will be well worth our trouble. Let's go... Read the rest of this entry »

Click to enlarge.

It's not very often that a design is so successful and original that it inspires hundreds of imitations. Shepard Fairey, of OBEY fame, achieved just that with his "HOPE" poster for Barack Obama. Whether you consider yourself Republican, Democrat, Independent, or even just apathetic, good design is still good design, and Fairey's poster is easily one of the most recognizable images of the year.

But now that the election thingy is finally over, we can focus on the more important question: is Sylar good or evil? For those who may not be familiar with Gabriel Gray, AKA Sylar, he's a character on NBC's "Heroes". Lets just say he's not someone you would want to upset.

This season of Heroes is titled "Villians" and we are seeing the duality of the characters on the show. Sylar has always been a pretty bad guy, but has he turned a new leaf? Decide for yourself, and let others know what side you're on by downloading a zip file with 11x17 300dpi printable versions here. (4.95mb .zip file)

Do you recognize this logo? You've probably seen it before. Almost everyone in the world has. It's the logo for Major League Baseball. It's striking, simple and full of symbolism. And no one is quite sure where it came from...