Black Negative

Coda 2

Pixel Resort

Circle

Leap Motion

Jag Nagara’s 365 Project

Meer.li

These bad ass designers bring their “A” game time and time again and we hope that you will find this as a great design resource and be introduced to a few fellow peers along the way.

Kuba Bogaczynski

Website | Behance

Complementary shapes, colors, fonts and images, a good logo also imparts a message without delivering a full sales pitch, designed with a wide range of scalability; enabling it to be printed at any size and, in some cases, even without color. But unless you specialize in graphic design, it can be tough to come up with ideas that cut to the core of your product or service. Here’s how to get started.

The 5-step process of logo design

The best logos are those that contain a concept or “meaning”, often revealing the unique aspects of your specific product or service. So when creating your logo design, focus your attention on these five points:

1. Keep it Straightforward

Keep it simple and straightforward while incorporating something unexpected or unique. In doing so, you’ll create an image that is recognizable, versatile, and, most importantly, memorable. You’ll find 80 great examples of design simplicity at Hongkiat.

2. Make it Unforgettable

As mentioned above in the principles of simplicity, it’s crucial for your logo to be memorable, and simplicity helps this. So to create that unforgettable logo, select an easy-to-read font, limiting yourself to your company name and a short tagline (again, keeping it simple). Then select an image that represents your core offering, paying particular attention to the images often associated with your line of business, and strive to use that imagery that is unique. At Coroflot, you’ll find an endless selection of examples that do exactly that.

3. Make it Timeless

If you’re like most business owners, you’ve got a plan for the future—and that plan involves growth. So when designing a logo, figure out where you plan to be in 5, 10 or even 20 years. This insight can guide you in the elements you select and keep you from designing something that relies on trends (which aren’t timeless). If you’re designing a logo for short-term use, trendier elements can be highly effective. But if you need your logo to work for years to come, it’s best to stick with colors, fonts and artwork that you know will still be relevant over a longer period of time. The Web design blog at 1^st Web Designer provides a wealth of inspiration, featuring great timeless logos.

4. Make Sure its Adaptable

From your business card to your website, your logo should look good at any size. One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to ensure your logo will look good big or small, is to create it using a logo maker like the web-based platform provided by Free Logo Services (or some type vector creation tool). Providing your finished logo in the vector file format, you can easily bring your logo onto any surface without having to worry about pixilation or any similar losses of quality.

5. Make it Relatable

Are you creating the right logo for the right customer? Your core product or service offering should define the key images and text that go into your logo, as well as the style. For example, if you sell real estate by the beach, bright colors and the image of a palm tree would be a place to start. In the same way, a commercial real estate firm would include tall buildings, darker colors and other more formal elements. As an example, consider some of the brand-specific themes you’ll find at fearlessflyer.

What are some services or places you find great inspiration for your logo design? What are some of the key ideas you focus on when developing them? Let us know in the comments below!

Matta – Release The Freq from Kim Holm on Vimeo.

Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

VERSIS ✖ DIBIA$E – FLY ME T’THE MOON from RUFFMERCY on Vimeo.

Cinnamon Chasers – Luv Deluxe (Music Video) from Saman Keshavarz on Vimeo.

Russ Chimes – Midnight Club EP (Part 1: Never Look Back) from Russ Chimes on Vimeo.

Congratulations to Graham Paterson

Graham Paterson is the official winner for our second dribbble invite contest. Please welcome him and have a look at his artwork.

Winners were not chosen at random and it was a tough process with so many great candidates. Our goal was to not only find a great piece of art, and Graham’s go green campaign sold us, but to see great quality and craftsmanship in the work. It was a hard choice with over 25 submissions, but the choice ended up being clear. With that said, we will be doing a seperate post within a week to showcase the top honorable mentions—You’ll get a chance to show a great piece of art and get some publicity in the process!

Congratulations everyone and thanks for being part of the contest, we really appreciate it!

On to the Fix

We are Pollen

Who Makes Apps

Instagram Blog

The Code Zombie

Elliot Jay Stocks

WP App Store

Decorated Playlists

Pure Pleasure Design

These bad ass designers bring their “A” game time and time again and we hope that you will find this as a great design resource and be introduced to a few fellow peers along the way.

Dann Petty

Website | Twitter | Behance | Dribbble

With every Web Critique we choose to focus on things that are relevant to the website and how they’re trying sell their brand while pushing a website that is product-centric, functional, and looks great.

We spend a lot of time looking at big name blogs and sites, its not often we take a look at a portfolio, which most designers have themselves…and we could all use a little help in how we show off our good stuff. With that said, I wanted to show off one of my favorite artist (or group of artists?) portfolio; but is Always With Honor’s portfolio my favorite? Find out.

Always With Honor

Its the simple idea that your art sells itself and Always With Honor certainly believes it too. At one point is it too much or too little? AWH (Always With Honor) does a pretty decent job of this marriage.

They get away with this style by having many pieces of their most current/recent artwork on one page. They might make it more “artsy” if they only had one circle thumbnail, capitalizing on negative space, but losing the audience to a “poor navigation”. With very subtle rollover animations that reveal the actual colors of that particular project, and this subtlety is matched perfectly with the slowly rotating planet (Corusant?). The minimalism AWH packs is great, maybe I’d like some more brand awareness like site name, etc, but it still is great.

Style & Function

Like we mentioned earlier, AWH packs a lot of minimalism in a lot of space. With subtle rollover animations, AWH attempts to stay relevant, but fail to stay up to snuff with decent trends or standards. It isn’t to say the site is bad or ugly, but it isn’t entirely inviting to browse or find what you’re looking for—and with the small text on the left navigation, its tough to see what the buttons are.

Essentially, the navigation on the left filters all the artwork you originally see on the homepage, by the navigation button you selected. The only problem is that you don’t notice this filtering. It seems to confuse me as a viewer to where I am on the site or what I am looking at when I keep noticing the same artwork.

Best way to resolve this would be to create simple and subtle animations (keeping in line with the branding) so that the user can see the filtering happen, otherwise we are left to our own devices, excusing my crude animation. The product pages, those that show a particular piece, remain simple. These pages simple show the graphic and all its glory, and god are they good. If it wasn’t for my initial gripes with navigation and showcase style, their work would look even better—as it is, AWH has great product and I love browsing through the many pages of artwork.

Worsely (yep, just said that), AWH isn’t the least bit responsive. I am not asking for a full responsive site, but I do believe in a site that always adapts based on the browser size—designing with % rather than 0,0 (x & y locations). With wide monitors nowadays, designing everything from the 0,0, we end up having so much empty space on the right side and it really pulls away from the quality of the site—the artwork doesn’t expand to fill the x horizontal.

Can I get a footer

Now, most portfolios don’t need a footer. There isn’t the same need you have for a larger sites like blogs, etc.  Its always important to keep in mind what the design for the content you build. Because AWH has such a simple style and navigation, they really need to remind you where information is. A simple footer could be a great touch with this; finding things like about and contact pages, rather than squinting to see links on the left.

Your Turn

The idea here is to take real world examples and explain what we think were the design decisions and share those thoughts. This is a great way for novice and veteran designers to find things to debate and hopefully learn from.

We also want to encourage user submissions—break down a fan’s portfolio or website—submit it and we’ll take a look. Recommendations or suggestions just send us a tweet @inspiredology, @MikePuglielli, or email me.

What do you think of Always With Honor’s portfolio site?

Spatially aware devices from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo.

hypercompact from Igor Ginzburg on Vimeo.

Starbucks™ & YWFT Hannah from YouWorkForThem on Vimeo.

Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering from Ars Thanea on Vimeo.

iphone- diorama from Mike Ko on Vimeo.

Submit your best, get a dribbble invite

It really is that simple, nothing fancy here. Show us your best piece (more accurate directions below) and, if we like your piece the most, you’ll get an invite. If you want to make something new, go for it, just make sure its the best you’ve got.

The dribbble community offers a lot to aspiring and veteran artists. A previous article we wrote on Inspiredology talks about dribbble’s infancy and the direction a newcomers role can play. We want to make sure that who we pick will push the dribbble community in new and positive directions, and stay on top of their account.

Nick Agin won our last contest and has some great success in the dribbble community, bringing a fresh look and style, garnering 882 followers already. His creativity just oozes style—you are going to have the same success (we hope!). Once you get picked, follow this guide, understanding trendy posts, to a successful first shot (or don’t, if you’ve got the guts).

Here’s how to get drafted:

• Follow Inspiredology on twitter and like us on facebook.
• Tweet @Inspiredology the phrase “@Inspiredology has a @dribbble invite – I want one! http://bit.ly/JoOvwY – Here’s my entry [insert link here].”

Dribbble is show & tell for creatives. Designers, developers and other creatives using shareshots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on.

Winner’s Grand Prize:

• A dribbble invite to join the club!
• Top 10 showcase pieces submitted will be showcased.

We will make a decision on the 17th of May with an announcement of the winner on the May 18th Friday Fix. Top 10 submissions will also be showcased on the Friday Fix, so make sure you’re showing your best for the whole Inspiredology community to see.

If you have any questions please feel free to post in the comments or send us a tweet and we will do our best to address.

UPDATE: This contest is now CLOSED. See who won the invite!

Lee W Robinson

Do We Have Milk? by Teehan+Lax

ImageThink

Sehsucht

Themezilla

Pinstagram

Sketch