In Transition - a graphic design blog

Moving day!

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:50:00 +0000

So I'm moving on over to a real URL! Updates will be stopping here, so please head on over to www.kevinpowell.ca and subscribe to that RSS feed if you want to keep getting updates!

Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:44:00 +0000

There might be a bit of a hiatus in posting over the next little while while I start focusing on a few other projects. I plan to keep posting here, but with school starting to wind down I have other priorities at the moment. I also have something rather exciting as far as this blog goes, but it's still a ways off from fruition.

If you don't already I'd suggest following me on Twitter.

Chalk - Web based drawing 'app' for iPad

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:03:00 +0000

If any of you follow my twitter feed, you might have already seen this from there, but after playing around with it some more I feel it's worthy of a full blog post.

37signals were inspired by their own offices in creating a new app for the iPad called Chalk. It's a simple chalk-board with white and red chalk, and an eraser. It doesn't sound like much, but it really does everything you want a drawing app on the iPad to do as far as I'm concerned. While other apps try to get fancy, this goes to the basics, and of course, it's free, yay!

They've also found a way to circumvent Apple by making the app web based. Before you complain though, my iPad is wifi only, but as long as you bookmark the page, you can access it all the time, on or offline. You can save your pictures as well, which is nice.

It's a nice, clean and simple, everything I look for in a well made app. They had an idea and executed it brilliantly. Even my wife (who isn't always a fan of technology, despite buying me the pad), who sometimes gets frustrated with certain apps and just starts hitting the screen with all her fingers was able to use this with no trouble nor instruction.

A bit of a rant

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:58:00 +0000

This post doesn't necessarily deal with a thing or concept so much as the attitude of the people around me, and may be akin to my old days as moderator of a Star Wars related message board in which I was most well known for Jediman's Bitching Board (as I had the very original nickname of JediMan84), which after a quick search I sadly could not find, even though I suppose that really is for the best.

As anyone who reads here on a semi-regular basis knows I am still in school, and am set to graduate in about 5 month. I'm excited, but have been a bit put back by my lack of work that I would consider portfolio worthy. Because of this I look forward to every project we get at the moment, hoping to do what I can to turn even the mundane into a great piece (not that I always succeed, but so be it).

Sometimes we get projects which at this late stage of our program are rather mundane (another stationery set? You've got to be kiddin' me!), yet people plug away at them without caring very much. Then we get something interesting, and you'd think everyone would be overjoyed (I know I was). Rather than be happy they have something which holds tremendous potential to be a portfolio piece, they instead complain we don't have enough time, that it is too complicated (because they are close minded... no offence of course), and that the requirements should be changed.

Let me put aside that I think it's a great project though. We are graduating in 5 months and they are saying 18 hours (working time over three days) isn't enough time to design something? And that's a SOFT deadline. What the hell are these people going to do when they get into the industry? Tell their boss they don't like the project they were assigned? Tell their client that time is a bit tight and they'd really appreciate if they changed the scope of the project?

Now I know that I shouldn't be complaining because these are people I'm going to be fighting for a job, and the more adverse to actually doing work they are, the easier my life should be when it comes to first finding, and then keeping a job, but it's just something that drives me up the wall. I am a big believer in the 'sit down, shut the fuck up, and get the work done' mentality. Sure, something might be hard, but all the more reason to do your best at it and make something god damn incredible.

I am one of the people in the class who is often finished first, as are three or four other people. We get our work done, and more often than not people really like the work we do, but they pass it off as "Oh, you're good and know what you're doing." Why am I good? What the hell separates me everyone else? Well, I actually follow the creative world outside of the classroom, following designers blogs, tweets and subscribing to or occasionally purchase design related magazines. What is stopping these other people from doing the same? Laziness? A lot of them go on about creativity, they are passionate about it, but don't invest time into it! Don't sit back and complain that you have no ideas when you refuse to brainstorm or pick up a pencil. Fuck off that you can go straight to work on a computer, when all you do is bitch that you don't have enough time. Why not think of a new approach then? Maybe you don't have time to trace a fucking raspberry in 6 spot colours in illustrator*, so don't god damn do it! But 90% of the people in this room get an idea and go to it without even thinking of a second (perhaps better) idea, never mind actually researching, brainstorming etc.

*We are currently working on a product which comes in multiple flavours, and we must design the packing for any three of our choice, and it has to be done as a 6 spot colour job. Who cares why, that's our constraints. So what do people do? Livetrace a raspberry, realize it looks like shit, then rather than realize their idea isn't very feasible, they decide to make a realistic tracing of a raspberry using 6 spot colours and say they don't have time to do three flavours.

The people around me cannot think for themselves either, they ask about everything. 'Why are the registration marks on your example* of the dieline not aligned?' was probably one of my favourites to come up recently. People don't take the time to think (I mean who gives a shit about the example on the board, obviously yours should line up). When a problem arises or the teacher doesn't give full information. They must ask, and then when the teacher shows them how to do it, it invariably becomes 'it didn't do that when I did it'. They can't accept that they fucked up, but rather it is the software or the hardware or the teacher for not teaching something fully. When I can't figure something out, my last resort is asking the teacher. I want to figure it out on my own, because then I'm likely to remember it, or at least know I can work around a given problem. Whenever I asks someone, I tend to forget how they did it for me rather quickly.

*the example was a sketch on a white board

I suppose all this frustration comes down to the point that I'm at least a little worried about who I'll be surrounded with when I will be working. I am of course dreaming of a fantastic job right out of school in which I will be surrounded by the the greatest and most creative minds in the field, and this of course is just that, a dream. But god help me that I'm thrown into nightmare of a team of people who can't problem solve, who don't know how to brainstorm and who are as stubborn as a bloody mule.

Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:13:00 +0000

I'm slightly obsessed with the TED conferences. I really can't get enough of them and it's a struggle not to link a whole bunch of them to here.

Now that they have the TED iPad app (and my wife got me an iPad as a wedding gift, yay for me and a big 'thank you' to her) I've gone on a bit of a binge. The app is awesome in that it allows you to download talks for offline watching, and has an 'inspire me' button which then asks you to pick a category (inspiring, funny, etc.), and how long you have, so as to find a video that will fit your time constraints. Overall an awesome app, and even better, as with most things TED (apart from actually attending a conference), it's free.

I've been watching a lot of the talks about creativity for the past day now, and there have been some really interesting talks (such as the 12-year old Adora Svitak talking about what adults can learn from kids, and bringing up how kids have the advantage of not knowing what constraints might exist, to Steven Johnson talking about where good ideas come from).

What all this brings me to is my current project at school which is the open ended "design a t-shirt". Can't get much more open ended than that, can we? And when things are open ended like this, I tend to have zero to no inspiration to work on them. Sure I have a sketch book with a bunch of random stuff in there I could just plug into a t-shirt design, and why not? Well none of it is great, and I want to make something great, something that I would wear. I looked through my book and didn't see anything that I really wanted to expand upon for this particular project (sometimes it does work though). I looked over websites and saw a ton of amazing and creative designs, which just made me wonder why I didn't think of that first.

Being so open ended just gives me too many possibilities. I have some fun ideas in my sketchbook that if I were to expand upon them they'd probably make a design, but what if I could think of something better? When I'm stuck like this I like to try and come up with a theme for myself, at least to help start focusing. So I did that, and then ended up coming up with so many themes and ideas I'd like to explore, I was even more overwhelmed than when I started.

Great ideas are often something that need time to mature, but do I even need a great idea here? It's not like I'm trying to stop world hunger... even though if I were, how would I design a shirt around that? That has been my thought process over everything I've thought about or read for the past 18 hours or so, and I'm starting to go mad.

The new gap logo

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 18:08:00 +0000

old logo on left, new on right

It looks like the design community is up in arms over the new Gap logo, as can be found on their site. Everyone is voicing their hatred on Twitter (including myself), Brand New's Armin didn't hold back in his review of the new logo, while Mat Dolphin took a more 'I don't like it, but let's wait and see' approach in his review. David Airey didn't bother saying anything, but made his opinion rather clear as well at his LogoDesignLove blog. Pretty much everyone thinks they are going to be pulling a Tropicana and going back to the old logo, but only time will tell.

Since everyone else is being so vocal I figured I might as well get vocal myself about the whole thing. First off, I do think it's terrible. Second, I tend to agree with Mat Dolphin in that it's important we wait and see what direction they plan on going with the brand before it can be considered a full write off.

I'd like to know why they thought Gap needed be rebranded, and how they thought this new logo was an improvement. I like Helvetica, but just because it's a nice, universal font, doesn't mean it works all the time. Here it does not, it just makes it look generic (as is always a danger with a default system font). I don't think this fails because the name of the company is in Helvetica though. It fails because of small, randomly placed blue box with a random gradient on it. I've heard a few attempts at justifying it, the most logical being that they wanted to keep the blue square as to connect with the old identity, but show how they are breaking away from it. Thing is, this is such a departure from the old logo that the blue square doesn't make me think of the old one, it just confuses me and looks like something from a bad design contest, or perhaps something made using PowerPoint.

The old logo wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either. When I saw it I knew what I was looking at. They had effectively branded their company. Their new mark doesn't even make me think of their company, it looks to amateurish to evoke thoughts of a giant clothing line.

The thing is, they can save this. It'll take one hell of an branding effort and tons of money (all of which I don't see why they'd want to spend unless they are taking the company in a completely new direction - cheaper and more generic possibly? :P), but they can make us forget the old one and embrace (as much as one might embrace Gap) the new one. Until I know why they made these changes I can't say it's a complete and utter fail, but I can say I think it's really bad so far.

If they are doing a complete rebrand, why didn't they launch everything with the logo? So far all they have done is taken out logo.jpg from their site and inserted newlogo.jpg and apart from that, it seems like they are done. If they had gone with a full rebrand across web and advertising in one big swoop, we might have been able to see how the logo integrates into the rest of the system and been content. Instead the design community is freaking out and attacking Gap for being stupid.

Advice for design students

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:09:00 +0000

from DavidAirey.com

So just as I'm really starting to buckle down and figure things out, David Airey puts out this great and resourceful post on his personal blog filled with past advice of his, all nicely organized.

For those of you who don't follow any of his now 3 blogs, what are you waiting for?

- www.davidairey.com
- www.identitydesigned.com
- www.logodesignlove.com

Time to start thinking about my Portfolio

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:56:00 +0000

For those of you who read one of my older posts, you know I'm graduating in about 6 months time. Knowing that, I've started going through my work to find what I might start to put together for my portfolio, and how I'm going to assemble it and what not.

After going over a bunch of sites (such as this one by Jushua Blankenship that I liked) and a Layers Magazine article from their last issue I'm starting to get a good idea of what I should be including and I've got a few basic concepts for how I want to put my physical one together. I find all these sources funny though. Some will tell you that they'd like to see a lot of your work, while others say the less the better. Some say a fancy presentation is necessary to stand out, and over/undersized portfolios are a good thing, while others won't even look at them if they are too out of the norm. It almost becomes a 'you need to stand out without going out of your way to stand out'.

Overall I know that certain styles will appeal to certain people, and I think the right approach is to go in one direction knowing that while some people will dismiss you right away, others will love your approach. It's either that or you're stuck in the middle of the road for everyone, and never really making a huge impression (be it positive or negative).

My biggest concern now is what the hell do I put into it? I seems a lot of people think student work isn't always worth looking at (probably because relax time constraints + a lot of it sucks), which obviously makes it hard to put something else together. I have some pieces I like, and while some of them get nice comments from my teachers and excited remarks from classmates, they don't make me go 'wow', so why would they make someone else go 'wow'?

The other problem is I've been told, and have read from multiple sources, that you want to target a certain job with your portfolio (lots of web based stuff for web design, lots of photoshop/illustrator stuff for ad agency etc...) but I don't have a bunch of anything, but a few select pieces of each that are worth presenting.

Obviously I have to make-do with what I have, and I will, it's just a daunting project I guess, and I want to be able to put something together that really is great. Once it's done I'll get some photos of it and put them on here, even though that's awhile away from now, it's still something to look forward to.

Designer Lightbulbs

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:14:00 +0000

too awesome

How great of an idea is this? Available for pre-order from Plumen in the UK and Europe, with everywhere else to follow. Bit expensive though, at twenty pound / thirty euro a pop.

Photography

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Around a month ago, for a class project, we had to head down to a local farmers market to take some pictures. The subject matter was up to us, and while most people chose to take pictures of the various foods that were on sale I really wanted to try and capture the people who were there. There we so many people and all so different from one another. I also saw it as more of a challenge as it's a lot harder to get good pictures of people, rather than static fruit and veg.

So here are some of the pictures that I managed to get. I'm rather happy with the results, but I wish I had a bigger memory card so I really could have gone wild. It's rare I get much photography in these days, and after going out and taking these I really would like to do it more often.

The Lost World's Fairs

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:20:00 +0000

The Lost World's Fairs has been put together to show off WOFF now that IE supports it. Fun stuff, check it out.

Keeping up with the Industry

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:08:00 +0000

I'm currently wondering how far behind my current skill sets are, simply because my school is still stuck using CS3. We were told shortly after CS5 launched that an upgrade was imminent, and then told when we got back from our Christmas break that it was be ready to go. With approximately six months left of classes, I seriously doubt it's going to happen before I leave.

I realize that what I am learning using CS3's software is relevant and good to know. My biggest concern as I try to keep myself up to date on the new features and workflow present with the new software is that many of the techniques I'm learning are now outdated. People leaving my school have no idea about Refine Edge in Photoshop for example, which if it could be taught, would be a great asset. Now I think it's important to know how to make a very good selection in Photoshop without Refine Edge, but it's something a lot of people in my school have no idea about, and which could help speed up their work tremendously. It's not a hard feature to learn, but it's something that most people I know are oblivious to and wouldn't necessary learn on their own (and knowing my classmates, most won't learn it on their own).

InDesign also came with a lot of updates which I haven't followed as closely as Photoshops, which is a shame because again I feel like I'm missing out on something. Does it mean I can't do a job because I don't know all the features? No. Does it mean that I can't learn them once I get my hands on CS5? No. Does it mean as it stands now (and when I graduate) my current knowledge will be lacking? Possibly.

I mean say I get on a stage and I'm sitting there working on a project doing things the way I know. For example lets say I'm trying to select a girl with her hair flying around using channels (something I had to learn on my own in the first place, as we weren't really taught this properly, which makes me wonder what else I'm missing out on), when Refine Edge could do the same job in half the time. While I might not look like a fool, if I keep doing things in a slower way than the current software allows me to, whoever is supervising me might question my skill sets and not bother hiring me once the stage is done.

I'm not personally worried about my chances of finding employment (well not too much anyway), and I'm doing a lot to keep up with the industry outside of what my school is prepared to teach me, but what about everyone else in my school? Are other schools stuck in the same place as me? Am I being a bit paranoid or are my worries justified? I guess I'll find out in 6 months.

So What I am Suppose to do Next?

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:13:00 +0000

I'm graduating in ~6 months from now and I need to start figuring out what the heck to do next. It's finally time for me to get a real job (and a haircut, from what my fiancée seems to be trying to tell me through the use of a certain song).

In about three months from now I need to finalize what I'm doing for my stage, and I want that decision to reflect where I plan to be once I graduate. I'm not saying I will be hired where I do my stage, but it would be optimal. Even if I don't though, I'd like my stage to at least resemble what I'll be doing once I do start getting a pay check. I also could go the freelance route (for my stage as well), but I'm a bit worried it would be too much pressure on me for the stage if I'm just starting up, because to pass I'd obviously need to find clients and get paid to do some work. I have been thinking about launching my own company once my wedding (Oct. 2nd, god it's close) is over and done with and I have time to start concentrating on other things (and the money needed for a start up). If that's the case, in the two odd months I have between now and when I need to figure out what I'm doing for my stage (at least on a preliminary stage), at least I'd have an idea if the whole freelance thing is feasible or not.

If anyone out there in internet land had any ideas, don't be afraid to drop me an e-mail and give me some advice, or tweet me, or whatever other (not so popular) form of communication you might prefer.

Once the whole process starts coming into focus I'll make sure to post some updates here, obviously sooner than later if I do decide to launch my own company.

Typography resources

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:29:00 +0000

Just a quick post today. For all of us who want to know more about fonts, FontShop has an educational section on their site that has a few really well put together PDFs. I saw Meet Your Type a month or two ago, and I thought it was fantastic. I was rather happy today when I found out they had so much more.

Meet Your Type is a rather long document (52 pages), but a very light read written in a romance style. It's fun and informative, what else can you ask for? They also have the Type Anatomy, Type Tips, and the Right Font for the Job.

While I'm generally not a fan of documentation put out by a company trying to sell me something, I find they've done a great job on all of these and suggest you check it out if you enjoy typography.

And for those of you who are really into typography, there is a great blog (which sadly isn't updated regularly enough for my tastes) with tons of info in it's archive. If you just want to get a nice taste of a few concepts the FontShop stuff is great, but if you want to dive deeper into understanding type, I Love Typography is a great place to start.

And I just ran into this and thought it fit in pretty well. Buy it for $15 at The Birds and the Beasts.

Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy | Video on TED.com

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:44:00 +0000

Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy | Video on TED.com

Old, but great video on design and happiness. It's only 15 minutes long, go watch it.

HTML5 Flexing it's Muscles

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:44:00 +0000

I'm not very savvy when it comes to developments concerning the web. I heard about HTML5 as it was being developed though, and heard only amazing things, many of which I simple didn't believe.

Turns out I was wrong. First Swiss Miss sent me over to Deviant Art's Muro, an impressive painting application (is that the right term), and then Arcade Fire - representing my home town - comes out with this. I'm not really sure what to make of it, other than I'm really enjoying it.

Vintage Packaging Labels

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:52:00 +0000

There is something about vintage labels I really love. The way the typography all works together is something you don't always see these days. I wonder if all these look great because we only keep the good ones, or if more attention was actually put into the work back then. I realize great packaging is still around today, but lots of really bad stuff is out there too.

The Beauty of Complex Graphic Design

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:13:00 +0000

Last week I posted about the beauty of simple graphic design and referenced the STM's new brand identity to get my point across. I think simple graphic design can have a huge impact, but when trying to convey certain moods or messages, I'm not sure it's 100% effective. Don't get me wrong, the simpler something is, generally the more I like it (look back at my Mini ads for some of my own work, which was very simple). Certain themes just cry for something with a bit more going on though. More colours, more patterns, more action and life (not to say simple design can't portray life or action) are sometimes needed.

I was again inspired by a metro ad for this post, and I really wish I could find a better picture of this, but it seems hard to come by. What I'm talking about though, is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 'We Want Miles' exhibit. The poster is wonderful. Whenever I looked at it on the metro it made me smile, and it really seemed to convey the feeling of Jazz. The different colours and movements that it captured, and the pop they have against the rest of the image really worked fabulously.

Now outside of the main body of text, this is a simple design. Really everything about it still is rather simple. There is no over-crowding or excess, but what is there has a wonderful level of complexity about it. The composition of the colours is wonderful. The flow of the text is so great. I just can't help but smile when I see it.

This is often the case with great design. While the main execution will have a nice clean look, the attention to the more complex details can be rather extreme at times. The little things help make the bigger picture all the better.

Another fantastic design I recently saw comes courtesy of where Ty Mattson, upon learning he was going to have a boy, designed this wonderful birth announcement. In a similar fashion to the STM ads, his colour pallet is rather limited, but his attention to detail in this just makes everything come to life so well. I fell in love with this the second I saw it. More images of the birth certificate can be found over at his blog.

The Beauty of Simple Graphic Design

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:41:00 +0000

Think of all the most memorable images that stick in your mind, chances they are all pretty simple. From the Nike 'swoosh' to Apple's, well, apple, we remember simple imagery. Logo design is difficult because it revolves around getting something through in the simplest way possible - afterall a logo needs to work in colour and black and white, as well as look good on a billboard and a business card.

Simplicity in design goes beyond logos though. On the Montreal metro system (our subway), there are ads plastered all over the place, and seeing as how I look at them each and every day I see the full gambit of great to horrible design all the time. One of the most ironic things about the metro ads though, is that the most effective ones are advertising the city's public transport system.

Recently they launched a new branding effort, and I love it so much. It's super simple, build around the four colours which correspond to the colours they use to designated our train lines, and it is really powerful. It's powerful because of it's simplicity. You don't have to fight to find the message, it's just there and always really clear.

Their old system, well, didn't really exsist. They had a logo, and as far as I know that was about it. If they did advertise it wasn't effective as I was completely oblivious to it. This new one is everywhere, but has such a great feel and attitude about it, it doesn't become obnoxious as can happen at times with over saturation.

And while the imagery is always simple, it's effective because of how clear it is. They keep the images as basic as possible, but always have the recurring 'V' used in creative ways, and they always find cleaver ways to get their message across without having the write it out for us. Below is one of my favourite examples; the new bus service going to our airport, which they also did a great job of picking a route number that people will associate with a plane. The use of negative space allows them to have one symbol, which they've branded well enough for people to associate with the STM. They don't even have to include text to say where they are going. It's awesome.

Overall they've done a great job of creating a visual identity, aided with recurring symbols, colours and what I would assume is a strict guideline to keeping the right look. By keeping the visual language simple, it helps it become recognizable very quickly. They've created a fun, lighthearted campaign that makes you feel good about using the public transport systems (many of their ads revolve around being green), as well as being a part of something, with the main slogan revolving around our public transport system being a collective movement.

It's not very often a government funded program does something like this in this province, and I really feel they need some kudos for pulling it off so well.

Photo Retouching Fun!

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:16:00 +0000

Back to working with photoshop at school, this time doing some photo retouching. Being self-taught in photoshop years ago, I knew most of the basic things (clone/heal/patch) and being someone who's doing his best to keep up to date I'm wishing we had CS5 so I'd have access to some content aware features, which would speed things up.

But what I wasn't aware of really blew me away, mostly with how quickly and well a really messed up picture could be cured using channels. Really some amazing stuff. Not sure how practical it is to use though, because I don't know many pictures that look as the ones we've been practicing on, but oh well.

Anyway for a quick idea of what I've been up to here are a few really quick family pictures I fixed up this morning, as well as one major retouch job I've been working on for about 6 hours. The hair is a bit flat around the parameter and I should fix up the BG, but I'm a bit fed up with it. Oh, and I changed the body because I don't have the patience to fix that up. (sorry that the others are sideways, again I'm a bit lazy).

Smart Car ads

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:17:00 +0000

So for class we had to make a Smart car ad and it had to be black and white. We were also limited to only using one, supplied image.

As I tend to do, I went for simplicity, as I tend to believe it's more eye catching than busy images (especially in B&W) In an ad, you should see what's being advertised as fast as possible, because who pays attention to print ads? Nobody. They glance at it and move on. I wanted to create something simple and eye catching, hoping to have it stand out enough for a reader to actually pause for the second it takes to read the tag line.

So as you can see in this first example, you can see what's being advertised... a lot of times.
I went for a repetitive look mostly because I have never really played with it before, even though it's often something I enjoy seeing when it is used properly. I think it's eye catching, and I really like how it turned out. I came up with the tag-line after the fact, but I think it works.

This second one was my first idea, but we were asked to use just the one image supplied for the project. Since I completed my first one, I was free to do what I wanted. Again I went for simplicity, this time with a bit more humour involved.

I'm happy with how they both came out, even though the second of the two could definitely use some refinement. We're going to be working in B&W only for a little while, and I'm really enjoying it so far. As I mentioned earlier I love simplicity in advertising, and work in general. The more white space, the better. I am a firm believer that less is more in print. With that said, next we're doing some HUMMER ads, where excess is what they're known for, so I might approach that a bit differently.

Cell Phone Advertisement Fun

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:57:00 +0000

Bit of a lack of posts recently, sorry about that. Just finished off some cell phone advertisement project for my class, so I figured I'd put it up here.

I wish I could go in depth about why I did what I did for each, but they were all more or less experimentation rather that anything else, specially the blackberry one, which I thought turned out pretty good.

The Sony Ericsson one has a black and green background because the phone is black and green. I through orange in for some contrast. Originally the birds were brighter, but I thought they distracted too much from the phone. Bit of a nature feel, but lots of black to keep that 'slick' feeling going. Not really what one would consider a traditional cell phone ad, but I had fun with it.

For the Samsung phone I originally had a more vibrant green background, but I thought that a more subdued and textured background would put more attention on the phone, without making the BG too boring. Both this one and the Sony Ericsson phones went in a bit of a similar direction (green, nature-y feeling). I think this one would work rather well for that new 'green' phone that I've recently seen ads for.

I picked a Blackberry for the last one because they are generally related to technology and business, which would force me into a different direction when compared to the other two. It turned out to take me the longest, and most frustrating to put together, and the final effect was actually more of a happy accident rather than much else.

Montreal's New Identity

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:45:00 +0000

Being from, and currently residing in Montreal leads to me having a bit of a personal attachment to the city. So when I heard about Montreal getting a new visual identify, I was quite pleased. When I finally found the new logo, I was a more than a little disappointed, specially seeing as I'm one of the tax payers who contributed to it's close to half million dollar price tag.

Granted, the logo isn't for the city of Montreal itself, but for the Greater Montreal Area, which the creators explain is made up of "five large entities", listing them as Montreal, Laval, Longueuil, and the North and South Shores. This would explain why the 'M' in the new logo is split into five. One problem though. Longueuil is a city (albeit a big one) located on Montreal's South Shore, which is made up of a great deal of other cities, and covers a ton of space, much of it empty. It isn't so much of an entity, as it is a geological reference that they labeled here in an attempt to be inclusive, and to help divide their 'M' properly.

The colours they use for the main version, which I've included above, are down right ugly as far as I'm concerned. According to the site they have devoted to this branding effort, through the colours "systematic use in communications, they will provide the brand with its unique character and facilitate its recognition. " I looked around but couldn't find any explanation towards why these are the official colours, which must have been picked for a reason, one would hope. To me it looks like they picked them out of a hat. I'm assuming they wanted to use high contrast in an attempt to show the diversity of the combined areas and the peoples within them, but I find it hard to believe they couldn't have picked more aesthetically pleasing colours than these.

It already seems dated , and they haven't even started to implement it yet. This is supposed to be used to market Greater Montreal on the world stage. To me they've reverted to Expo '67 by creating a logo that might have been used by the then great exposition. Sadly that was over 40 years ago. It was a great time for this city though, and maybe they are just trying to remember or relive those days before the horrors that were the Olympics found their way here.

On a more positive note however, are the variations they have of this logo, which they at least realize is very customizable, and hopefully always will be, so we can avoid the catastrophe of the official version.

Some of these are rather awful in their own right, but at least they show some hope. The red one on the bottom right isn't even that bad, and there are several versions similar to this, which use shades of one colour, rather than a random mismatch, and which actually look half decent.
The question remains how much of this logo we're actually going to see, considering all current city logos will be kept in place, while this seems to be more for international marketing. Personally I think if you're going to take the leap here, why not rebrand all the cities themselves? Apart from implimentation costs, it could be a big step in bringing together Greater Montreal, perhaps having each area using a single colour version.

All in all, it seems like a good idea that's managed to go wrong.

Just another one of those days

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:24:00 +0000

Decided to make a simple image to depict how I'm feeling right now, since I really had nothing better to do. My current class is moving at such a slow speed it really is mind numbing at certain points. What's made it most annoying is the teachers insistence on attendance and punctuality (not that it's really ever an issue for me), even though the 105 hours this section of my course takes could probably be squeezed into 60.

We finally get to start playing with Photoshop in (what is sure to be a long) two and a half weeks, and which point I'm hoping to have a few more projects to share here.

My Favourite Graphic Design Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (KepowOb) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:06:00 +0000

When I changed this over to be a graphic design blog I was hoping I'd be able to use a lot of my school work to talk about since I am only working on only the rare side project. Sadly things are really slow in class now, almost to the point of frustration.

We're working on typography right now, but not exactly in the pure sense. While a lot of what we are learning is essential, the module is too short and lacks some of the minute details I would have really liked. I'm slowly becoming a typophile, and would really like to know more of the minutia in regards to fonts. The teacher we have now is awesome, simply because she is really picky about pretty much everything, and is good at explaining things in clear, concise ways, but I'm often left to my own devices because I find the work pretty simple most of the time. I should be encouraged the majority of the class often takes up to twice as long to complete the exercises we're working on, and often with more errors than myself (not to sound conceded or anything), but it can result in me being rather bored, specially since the school has a lot of sites blocked.

From this I end up reading a lot of blogs and am always looking for new ones to subscribe to. I mainly read other graphic design or typography blogs, which both make me realize how much I still have to learn.

So here is a list of blogs I follow, along with a quick little something about them. If you somehow stumbled upon this site in search for graphic design insight, these would probably much better suit your needs for the time being. These links are in the order that I have them in Google Reader, so there is no real order to them.

•Brand New - Part of UnderConsideration.com, this is one of my favourite blogs. It goes into companies rebranding efforts, comparing their old logos and brands to the new brand. It'll also examine new companies from time to time. While they don't go too deep in to overwhelm, the insight into how they see new brands is educational and they don't hold back on their criticisms, even of efforts they deem well done.

•We Made This - An interesting blog that seems to cover a range of different items, seemingly whatever the authors seem interested in. They offer links to some cool and interesting stuff, and occasionally talk about different projects. While they don't delve as deep as other blogs often do, it makes for some faster reads and it's updated often enough to keep my happy.

•Swiss Miss - I just recently subscribed to this one and I love their content. It's not a deep site, but they put up several posts a day of either great pieces of graphic design, interesting links or simply some cool, quirky stuff.

•I Love Typography - Another one of my favourites, which sadly isn't updated as much as I'd like. It really goes into the 'hows' and 'whys' of type design and is definitely a site worth scouring the archive if you are at all interested in type. When there is an update (seems to be bi-weekly these days) it always puts a smile on my face as the content is always super informative/interesting and really well written. If it weren't for the lack of constant updates, it would probably be my favourite read.

•The Font Feed - From what I can tell, it's a site made to plug FontShop, but it's done is a non-obtrusive way, and the content is just too good to pass up on. Obviously this is another font related site, but rather than delve into the hows and whys that I Love Typography touches on, it goes more into where type is being used, occasionally announces new fonts (from FontShop, of course) and has an awesome, monthly post going into movie posters and media stuff.

•David Airey's Blog - The first graphic design blog I started reading, and probably the most unique I've come across. Rather than delve into design, David Airey instead goes into the world of being a designer. He talks about how to deal with clients, how to land a job, build more experience and all the ins and outs of working within the industry. For anyone who is working in the industry, or thinking about working in the industry, I'd strongly suggest checking this blog out.

•Logo Design Love - Another blog by David Airey, where rather than going into industry details, he now goes into logo design, as the title indicates. The archives here are stocked full of great information including logos he's created for companies and the details of the design process, and new content is put out on a regular basis. If you are at all interested in graphic design, branding, or logo design, I'd say this is a must read.

I have several others I read as well, but for the most part I have simply subscribed too recently to comment on, or feel others I have already talked about are better examples of the same type of thing.