Graphic Design Lounge

2010 Trends for Logo Design

2011-01-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

Now Everyday is a Spa Day!

2011-01-15T01:41:00.000-08:00

Now Everyday is a Spa Day!
This is my first entry to an AD contest...more to come. =)

istock licensing agreements

2011-01-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

Here is what you need to know about istock licensing...

CLICK HERE TO GO TO iStock

Link Round Up: Blogging Helpful Links

2010-07-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

Technorati - http://technorati.com/
Is like a search engine for blogs and social media.

Blog growth slows; more bloggers are bringing home the bacon
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/09/blog-growth-slows-more-bloggers-are-bringing-home-the-bacon.ars
Interesting article speaking of the trends of blogging.

Ping.fm - http://ping.fm/
Dont have time to update all your social media websites. Make an account with ping.fm and you have a one stop shop for site updates.

ChatCatcher - http://chatcatcher.com/
Is a service that enables blog publishers to find links from other blogs to their posts and any Twitter updates that include the link to the post.After they are installed, the services crawl the Internet to find mentions of your links; they add them at the bottom of your posts as regular comments, citing sources.

Search Twitter - http://search.twitter.com/
Allows you to search terms that people are discussing on twitter.

Mobify - http://mobify.me/
Make your site a mobile phone site. Design a mobile layout for your website with CSS • Adapt for 5000+ Mobile Devices • Capture mobile traffic from Twitter & Google • Manage mobile analytics & advertising

Twitter Status - http://status.twitter.com/
Twitter acting weird, check the status.

Readability - http://readability.info/
You can use this Web site to determine how “readable” your content is.

SlideShare - http://www.slideshare.net/
Upload and share your PowerPoint & Keynote presentations, Word & PDF documents and professional videos on SlideShare.

Ping-O-Matic - http://pingomatic.com/
If you update your blog regularly, search engines may not pick up on the update right away.You can ping search engines using online services such as Pingomatic

101 Creative Print Advertising

2010-07-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

Car wrap. Watch your step...

Its That Good!

That's one healthy bird.

So fresh and so clean!

I don't get it, but its cool

Great concept

Great use of environment

Very clever

For all the nerds out there!

This is kinda freaky!

Great concept

cool.

Off Road Parking

Love it!

Headlights!

Awesome!

Good idea or bad? I'm not sure?

I want one for my wife...

Very cool campaign

lol

Love it

jajaja

Cool

lol

funny

lol

NASTY!!!

NASTY AGAIN!

awwwww

no wood

I love this campaign!

Over 400 Inspirational Business Card Designs

2010-07-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Business cards, especially for someone in a creative field, is your first opportunity to say... "Look what I can do!" Its your first chance to show a potential client that you are so good at what you do, that you can make a memorable first impression even on a 2.5" x 3" card. Making a strong initial impact with your business card can make the difference between getting the job and your card being on a fast track to a bottom drawer, or the trash.

What to include?
While business cards contain a lot of information, it is important to try and clearly organize the information using font size, paragraph spacing, font weight, or rules. Sometimes less is more, does the client really need 5 different ways to be contacted? Does he really need a fax number?

Orientation
A business card doesn't always have to be horizontal, if anything a vertical card may stand out more. The only reason I believe cards are mostly horizontal, is because wallets are designed that way.

One Sided or Two?
With so much information to fit in a small space, a second side can help to de-clutter a small space. But what to put on the reverse? A tag line, a description of services, or perhaps your company philosophy. Whatever you choose, don’t put the critical information on the reverse, because it may go unnoticed. Another argument against printing on the reverse is that it leaves no room for the recipient to write notes—such as where and when they met you. On another note: Two sides not enough for you? How about printing with a flap and turning your business card into a mini-brochure?

Die Cuts
Using Die Cuts or non traditional shapes/sizes is a gamble. However, if you get it right and your work will be reproduced in annuals of the year’s best business cards, featured in Web galleries. Get it wrong and you look like a dork. The problem is they dont fit in a wallet, Rolodex, or any other place you usually stuff a business card in, they will most likely get folded or tossed.

Focus Group
Before you run the presses be sure to test mock-ups of your card on people whose opinions you trust. Watch their first response when you hand them the card. Are they squinting to read the information? Are they turning the card around, confused about which way is up? Is it clear to them how to contact the person? Did they turn it over to read the reverse side? Present them with several card options and ask what they like and dislike about each. Be prepared to act upon their suggestions...but also be prepared to (politely) ignore them...design by committee can leave you with a bland result.

Inspiration
Finally, here is a series of inspireing designs to get you motivated to design your own business card. Enjoy.

Four kinds of Marketing Emails

2010-07-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Newsletter Email

Newsletter Emails are sent regularly and vary in consistency from daily, weekly to monthly. Newsletters are a proven communications tool that help businesses achieve brand awareness, customer retention, ad revenue, and other goals.

http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/newsletters/37signals/2010-06-08.html

Announcement Emails

Announcement emails are usually sent out when the business has a time-critical announcement to make. Such as 1 day only sales, keynote speaker, grand opening, etc. These are usually very short and contain 1 call to action.

http://thepublishersclub.co.uk/emails/LDN01/

Catalog emails

Catalog emails are usually sent out by a retailer and have a product listing with pricing. The goal is to get the reader to click through and make it to a landing page where they will make the purchase.

http://view.emailinfo2.bestbuy.com/?j=fef61170776d0d&m=fef41d77766c04&ls=fe571577706c027c7312&l=ff9b1771&s=fe53157770670074721c&jb=ff011578746400&ju=fe8f15747c670d7b75&r=0

Press Release

Although they sound like announcements, press releases are more public relations than sales. Press releases may be made frequently, but almost never on a schedule. In fact, the majority of the time, they will be created in the last minute and with tight deadlines.

15 Awesome Examples of Digital Art

2010-06-30T23:38:00.000-07:00

Check out these crazy Digital Art Illustrations created with Adobe Photoshop, Painter and a Wacom Tablet.

QUICK POST - Seven Design Elements for an E-Commerce Web Site

2010-06-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Price
Make sure all price are revealed up front. Emphasize attractive price options such as sales, discounts, and specials without distortions.

Variety
Does your design assist the customer in accessing the entire range of products, and directing shoppers between intuitive and cross-reference categories.

Product Information
Is all the information that the customer needs to make a decision easy to access?

Effort
Does the design minimize the customers effort by providing clear and easy to use navigation? Can product be accessed in a variety of ways? Ar navigational aids accessible so the customer always knows where they are on the site?

Playfulness
Does the design create an experience that moves beyond providing information and creating transactions? Does the site demonstrate innovation?

Tangibility
Does the design creatively compensate for the lack of sensory input in ways supported by current technology?

Empathy
Does the site offer the customer several ways to shop and leaving them in control of the shopping experience?

10 Rules of Logo Design

2010-06-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

1. Answer who, what, why?
Before any design begins, some basic questions must be answered. Who is the client, who is the audience, what is needed? Here are some questions to help get you started:

Compared with other companies, what is the clients current positioning?
What is the clients business? What is the clients purpose?
Beyond the economics, why is it worth doing? What is the clients mission?
What is the clients current internal structure?
What are the clients shared behaviors that best support the mission and purpose?
What is the clients chosen style and manner?
What are five key goals over the next year/five years?
What are the greatest opportunities for growth of the clients image?
What promises does the client make?
Who is the clients current audience?
What is the clients desired demographic?
How does the target audience view the current brand of the client?
How does the client want the audience to view the brand?
How is the client different from the competition?
What is the marketing objective?

2. Identify, don't explain
The logo is a signpost that identifies the company and reflects its attitudes and values. A logo should not describe literally the clients business, a logo is an identifier.

3. Understanding limitations
A logo is not going to make a product sell better, however, A good logo will always help a good product reach its full potential. Smart design, along with the power of repetition can make a huge impact.

4. Be Seductive
The message must be the most important part of the identity design, but the form must draw the viewer into it. Logos are most successful when they are simple and dynamic. The logo must be a clear expression of the client. Because the logo will be seen in only a brief moment, The use of forms that are easily recognizable is important.

5. Make mnemonic value
There are four critical attributes in the process of creating a memory:

Visual recognition begins with shape and color.
We position it with our understanding of historical continuity. Is it modern, Victorian, medieval, etc.?
We the use the information we have from learned responses to form meaning. We are tought very specific ideas: Green means go, pink is feminine, blue is masculine.
Mnemonic value is linked seamlessly with emotional association. If your mother wore a certain perfume, you may feel warmer when you smell that sent as an adult.

6. Pose a question
When we receive input through our sences we pose questions, "What is this taste?", and a response, "It taste like chocolate." This is part of our thinking process. If a question is presented, a viewer must come up with an answer in his head. Making whatever he is viewing to become more personal. However there is a fine line from presenting a question and creating confusion.

7. Design for longevity
The logo must be able to convey its message over a long period of time and must be able to adapt to cultural changes. It might be exiting to design a logo for current trends, but trends fade quickly and you will be redesigning in 5 years.

8. Make the logo the foundation of the system.
The logo is the base for all other messages. This is why it is a mistake to present the client the logo on a blank piece of paper. You should present it in all its forms that it will be presented to the customer. Will it be on a truck, shirts, website, catalog cover, etc.? The visual system will include guidelines for usage of color, placement, type, imagery, copy and product usage. The guidelines protect the mark and clarify any uncertainty.

9. Design for a variety of media.
The logo should be clear and legible on a one-color newspaper ad, a website, signage, brochure or ad on TV. Although in the beginning it may only be used in print, it is the designers job to plan for the unexpected future use.

10. Be strong
Being strong is about understanding your role, the clients role and maintaining a clear vision. Logo design is a collaboration process. A clients love for the color red may be irrelevant to the strategy, but the rejection of that idea may become a big personal issue. On the other hand you may design a great logo, but the client may hate it. In the end, the logo must address the clients goals and messages. While every situation is different, the best solution is to maintain a clear vision and connection to the primal goal!

User Interface (UX) Design (PART 2 of 2) Nine Elements of Engaging UX

2010-06-26T22:18:00.001-07:00

Nine Elements of Effective UX

1. Familiarity

It is always easier to use something you are familiar with than something you never used. Think for example the accelerator and the break in your car. If we where to switch around these two simple tools, a drive around the block would not be engaging and fun, rather it would be very frustrating. The QWERTY keyboard layout is another example of familiarity. The reason that the keys are in that layout is not because it is the most ergonomic format, but rather because it limited the amount of typebar crashes in old typewriters. However, people are so familiar with this format that if we where to change it today, it would cause nothing but frustration. When developing your projects make sure you try hard to design it in such a way that it feels familiar to them.

2. Proper Feedback

Feedback is what reassures the user that the action he has taken has been effective. Lets take a look at a real world example to see how important this rule is.

Apply this to a e-commerce site at checkout. After having added the desired items to a shopping cart, and after having filled out all of the billing and shipping information, including credit card information, the user is finally asked to press a button that submits the purchase. At this point a user should know that the order has been accepted, that the credit card has been charged and that no further steps are needed. But an inexplicably large number of e-commerce sites betray that need by failing to provide the necessary feedback. A simple change in the purchase button can re-assure a user.

Good feedback is the UX equivalent of the polite nod or “uh-huh” that a listener provides to a speaker to reassure her that he’s still listening and understanding. Consistent, valuable responsiveness builds a sense of confidence in the user and thereby improves engagement, allowing him to focus on achieving his goals rather than fretting over whether each of his actions taken toward that end have been effective.

3. Performance

Have you ever tried to listen to a scratched music CD? After about the third skip you take it out, wipe it off and hope it doesn't skip...but it does.It causes such frustration and the pleasure of listening to your favorite CD is now gone.

If your product has performance issues that delay the process of having a smooth interaction with the user, then your user will no longer be engaged. A poorly engineered product leaves the user concerned about the reliability of the product and the safety of the data that he/she is intrusting with it. With software, a user should be able to count on the same task taking roughly the same amount of time for each use, so the delays are familiar and are therefore less likely to break engagement.

4. Intuitiveness

Intuitiveness is the degree in which a user can perform a task with little or no explanation. It relates strongly to familiarity, because a great deal of a UI’s intuitive ease comes from functions being handled in familiar ways, buttons being in familiar places, and things having familiar names. Intuitiveness allows a user to remain focused on accomplishing her goals without having to expend time figuring out or focusing on the micro-tasks needed to accomplish those goals.

5. Delivery of relevant, valuable content

This is fairly obvious in the case of the content-intensive products such as ebay.com, where the role of the application is to assist the user in getting from a question to a useful answer as rapidly and easily as possible while ensuring that content is available and valuable. The content—shipping prices, return policy, descriptions, and so on helps users make educated decisions about the product they are about to bid on. The key content is automatically made available at junctures where it’s important to the user’s activity, is of far greater value than a product that keeps that content separate from its capabilities. A simple and very useful example of this is when an application pops up a calendar when the user clicks into a date selection field, saving the user from having to break engagement and look to another resource to figure out the correct date.

6. Internal Consistency

Consistency requires that the application handle similar tasks in similar ways. Internal consistency can be a simple as ensuring that buttons are in the same places and have the same labels, and that screens are generally organized and presented in similar ways so the user knows where to look and what to expect. A product should be internally consistent from a visual design perspective, to ensure that the user has the impression of it being a unified, well-organized, professional product.

7. External consistency

The more similarly the product operates compared to other products the user is already familiar with, the less of a learning curve there will be in its use. When you walk into a lawyer’s office, for example, you expect to be surrounded by mahogany paneling, expensive burgundy leather chairs ornamented with brass studs, and wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with ancient looking law books. Even though the office design has nothing at all to do with the competence of the lawyers in it, it conveys a sense of confidence in the strength and professionalism of the firm. Likewise, the visual appearance of a software product should indicate its purpose and audience.

8. Appropriateness to context

The appropriateness of a software’s UX to a given group of users is a huge subject, but the constraints and needs of the people using the product must govern how it works. A recent example of this has come with the massive popularity of Apple’s iPhone in the U.S., as many companies have scrambled to make an iPhone version of their product or web application available. However, you can not use a mouse and a keyboard to navigate around like the traditional medium, which is creating new challenges for UX designers.

9. Trustworthiness

Failing to achieve trust can deter the user and failing to maintain it can cause the user to be preoccupied with whether or not to trust the product and wondering whether his actions are having the desired effect, rather than simply being focused on his goals while assuming (trusting) that everything is working as it should.

For more information on this topic, go check out these resourceful blogs:
http://www.immotion.net/blog/
http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites-to-help-you-master-user-interface-design/

User Interface (UX) Design (PART 1 of 2) Immersion

2010-06-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

Take a minute to think back to your favorite scary movie. Think back to that moment when you where so immersed in the movie that your body was tense, you bit off all of your finger nails, the suspense was killing you, you may have been so involved that you yelled at the screen as a hopeless teen walked towards sure death, "GO BACK...GO BACK...DON'T GO THAT WAY!"

Although what you where watching is fictional, and they have no way of hearing you through the screen. You where so immersed in the movie that you lost track of time, you forgot about problems at work and all you cared about for that hour and a half was if this horror-flick-teen was going to make it out alive?

The User Interface or better said User Experience Design of software, web design, mobile app or whatever you are designing that involves user interaction must TRY to achieve Engagement and Immersion.

Deep immersion occurs when the user becomes less and less aware of his surroundings, and his perception of the space separating him and the screen starts to fade. In the example above, the user/viewer becomes the character rather than just a another guy in the movie theater. If you have ever seen someone yelling at the screen at a movie or bite there nails in suspense, you’ve seen someone who’s heavily immersed in the movie. Robbie Cooper produced a video for the New York Times Magazine that shows just how immersed people get in video game play, TV viewing and other experiences:

TRYING to achieve this immersion in your project is the challenge. Of course the examples above are extreme examples of engagement and immersion, and your projects probably will never find a need to keep a user on your app until 4:00 A.M. as they lose track of time. (Or maybe that's not such a bad idea). Anyway, engagement in your projects with web or software is to help people be more focused on and effective at the accomplishment of their goals.

To achieve this you must avoid or reduce any points of frustration, difficulty, or displeasure in your project. Good UX aims to reduce friction and create simple engagement to create higher levels of ease and pleasure, which are what make exceptional software.

Come back next time for part two of our User Interface Design talk on Immersion and Engagement. Where we will focus on Nine Elements of Engaging User Interface Design

For more information on this topic, go check out these resourceful blogs:
http://www.immotion.net/blog/
http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites-to-help-you-master-user-interface-design/