Pakistan-a country which has been hit by a series of catastrophic incidents in the past few years; struck by an earthquake in 2005 was regarded as the worst tragedy for the nation; and now with a fifth of the country under water, an approx 20 million people have been affected by the devastating floods; leaving people homeless and desperately needing assistance. The wave of floods triggered by monsoon rains in Pakistan is now said to have killed at least 1600 people. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who visited Pakistan, said the floods were the worst disaster he had ever seen. There are literally millions of people in Pakistan who are sleeping out in the open on high ground with little or no food at all. Relief efforts are underway, but coping with a disaster of this magnitude is hard and slow as well. The UN has urgently appealed for an aid of $460 million. According to relief workers, without an immediate increase in aid, the disaster could multiply in magnitude causing hunger, death and the spread of epidemic diseases.

Playing My Part

In the light of these circumstances, I have decided undertaking the mantle of trying to add my little drop to the ocean to help bring relief and reach out to those desperately needing for our help. The idea is to initially design a minimum of three logos and contribute the service charges/payment received from the clients to the relief of flood affected areas. 100% of the payment received will go directly to the flood affected areas to help cope with the disaster. There is no restriction on the maximum amount of payment. However, in order to provide relief on a wider scale, I have decided to choose the clients offering the highest amount of bids (Bidding Starts at $200). All the payments would be contributed to a noble cause, so kindly be generous. I hope to extend the number of logo designs depending upon the response.

So, if you are looking for a logo design for your business, kindly place a bid, either by commenting below or sending me a mail directly at abdussalam.rafiq@gmail.com or even if you don’t require a logo for yourself, kindly pass on the word to others who might be looking for one. Bidding would remain open till the 5th of September, 2010. You can have a look at my portfolio, my recent logo designs and a logo design process I published lately. While sending me a request for the logo design specifically for this relief effort, kindly mention the following details in your email:

Subject: Logo Design for a Cause (Pakistan Flood Relief Efforts)
Your Name:
Email:
Phone (optional):
Country:
Desired Payment amount:
Preferred Method of Payment:

I would be glad to send you further details. You get a logo designed (with revisions) for your business, and I bring you smiles and lots of prayers and well wishes. Should sound like a fair deal!

Any suggestions in this regard are welcome.

Header Image Courtesy: BBC

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Hello! It has been some pretty busy couple of weeks lately. I have also been a bit too “easy” on the blogging part but nevertheless, I got a chance to work with a number of clients  and designed a couple of stuff. My current focus has been on logo design and branding lately. I also got a chance to work as a designer at TEDxlahore (an independently organized TED event), a truly great experience. Here is a showcase of some of the recent logo design work I have done for different clients plus some of the usual experimentation and playing around. Not every concept was chosen but still, I got to learn a great deal and I think that’s what matters the most in the long run. Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome.

Business Idea Competition

Award winning logo design for Business Idea Competition held at National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, Lahore. Over 90 teams from over 25 different universities participated in the event.

YaaDahani

A logo design for an SMS based service. The typeface is custom and I created it myself specifically for this logo. YaaDahani is an “Urdu” language word which means “Reminder”. It is derived from “Yaad” which means “Remember”. Basically, it is an SMS based service to which users can subscribe to, set reminders for themselves as well as others; whether it be a birthday, wedding, party or any event. The name was chosen in Urdu in order to provide a more personalized feeling for the locals. I wrote a complete design process of this logo here.

International Trade Fair

Logo Design for “International Trade Fair” to be held at Birmingham, United Kingdom this August.

Andrew Fezza

Logo design for men’s apparel products. I did a couple of versions with this one but I personally liked this one. Notice the tie in “A”.

Pacific Bay Watch

Logo Design for Pacific Bay Watch. The client wanted to have a water theme in his design. So, I created the word “bay” out of water waves.

Rosso Gelato

Logo Design for “Rosso Gelato”, an Italian gelato bar.

RUBY Slippers

Logo Design for Ruby Slippers. The client wanted to have a feminine look incorporated in the design. The Double “P” have been modified as slippers.

Umbrella

This wasn’t a client project; just a result of experimentation with negative space.  I was playing around with Illustrator and came up with this one.

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Creating your first portfolio online can bring with it a lot of questions and anxieties. To put together and showcase your best work, you need to present it effectively to win the hearts of clients and make your mark. Remember that your artwork reflects your personality and you have to make sure that it sends out a great impression to others. Add a personal touch to your designs through which others could recognize you easily. Design is in the details, so you have to make sure that your portfolio sets with the  highest standards of Graphic design.

1. Introduce yourself

While presenting your artwork online, it is important that you introduce yourself and your background. It is preferable that you include a recent resume of yourself.  It is important for others to know what fields do you specialize in, your interests, past projects, affiliations, awards and achievements.

2. Answer all the Buying Questions

3. Do Not be Afraid to Showcase your Work

Many designers are afraid to showcase their work to the world worrying about copyright infringement or the harsh critiques. Well, trust me, that’s for your own good. First of all, people recognize you through your style of artwork, and in the current state of social media and networking, copied work never goes unnoticed. Secondly, positive criticism and feedback helps a lot. It is important to know what others think of your work and in the end, it definitely helps you achieve better. As a professional, it is important to have a great portfolio showcase on your personal domain as well as on various online networking platforms. There are a number of free online platforms and tools which offer you the ability to upload your work and create a design portfolio online for free. Here is my pick of some of the favorites:

Online Platforms & Tools for Setting Up a Portfolio

Behance Network

Behance Network is perhaps by far one of the best and my favorite portfolio management sites I have ever come across. The site offers you a great number of features and the portfolio designs are strikingly appealing, clean and professional. You can setup your dynamic portfolio using their easy-to-use tools, create circles (network with like-minded people), ask for feedback and share content. However, you need to request an invitation to join the Behance Network.

Carbonmade: Your Online Portfolio

Carbonmade allows you to create and manage your online portfolio with a number of online tools. Currently, it boasts to have a database of over 240,000 portfolios. They have two packages, the first is free called Meh. With this package, you are allowed to post 5 projects with 35 images. The other premium package is called Whoo!, This package allows you to get 50 projects with up to 500 hi-res images and 10 high quality videos for $12/month.

Coroflot – Design Jobs & Portfolios

Coroflot is another great site for hosting your portfolio online. It not only showcases individual portfolios but also maintains a database of job openings. It provides you statistics on profile views, and lets you organize your content in folders through an easy drag-and-drop interface. Currently, it is hosting a database of over 190,000 creative portfolios ranging in various genres.

DeviantART

If you are in the world of design, and you don’t know deviantART, then I pity you. DeviantART is perhaps the largest art community of the world which allows you to display, share and sell your artwork online. Moreover, it is a great place to receive feedback from other designers. It allows you to create your own portfolio with unlimited uploads.

SHOWN’D

SHOWN’D is a great solution to help create your portfolio online as well as get in touch with a number of employers. It provides you with a number of tools including importing images from Flickr. Another great feature is that it allows you to embed your portfolio in an external website. Comes with a number of customizable layouts.

World Architecture

WA is an independent global forum and extensive database targeting to become the “Home Page” of architects from ALL countries of the world. Contributions from all our members will have equitable chances to be represented, promoted, reviewed and criticized at this cosmopolitan arena. WA portal focuses on architecture only.

Indexhibit

Indexhibit is a web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound. Indexhibit has a clean interface and comes with a number of customizable layouts. However, a bit of a let down is that it requires more web/php knowledge, but considering that it is a free application, it does have a promise.

Cargo

Cargo managed to get a great amount of exposure lately. It is a CMS tool for creating your portfolio online. They host your portfolio but you can join by invitation only.

4. Include Testimonials

References and positive testimonials from past projects and clients should also be included.  If you don’t have any, get them! They make a winning impression.

5. Know your hood

It is important to always keep an eye out for the latest trends and a review of what others are doing. Look for inspiration by visiting other portfolios and design websites. This would help you keep updated in the design community.

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Recently, I had the chance to work on various logo designs and corporate branding for different clients. While you have a concept ready, it is important to present it to the client effectively in order to create your winning mark. A design, no matter how much good, if not presented well ends nowhere. Every now and then, I work on stationery design including business card, envelope design, CD design etc. Instead of creating a new template every time for presenting the concepts, I thought of creating these generic templates which can be used for presenting your logo designs, business card designs, envelope designs and stationery set design. All of the templates are available in standard sizes for better viewing. You can move or omit out some elements depending on your design requirements. You would require any vector editing program (Adobe Illustrator, Corel draw etc.) to edit these files. Hopefully, these templates would save you some time re-inventing the wheel. I would appreciate any feedback/suggestions in order to improve these templates.

Logo Design Presentation Template

Blank Template for presenting logo design concepts in full color as well as monotone (white plus black).

File Type: Adobe Illustrator (.ai)/PDF

Business Card Design Template

Includes two (Front and Back) blank standard 3.5″ by 2″ size business card design templates for presenting your concepts.

File Type: Encapsulated PostScript (.eps)

Envelope Design Template

Includes a blank standard #10 envelope (4-1/8″ x 9-1/2″) size template for presenting your concepts.

File Type: Encapsulated PostScript (.eps)

Stationery Set Design Template

Includes a blank standard A4 (8.27 X 11.69 inches) size template, two blank standard size (3.5″ by 2″) business card design templates for front and back designs, one blank standard #10 envelope (4-1/8″ x 9-1/2″) size template and a standard 120 mm CD for presenting your stationery set design concepts.

File Type: Encapsulated PostScript (.eps)

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Hi! As promised earlier, here I am with an account of one of my recent design projects, a logo design which I completed recently for a client. A couple weeks back, Rafaeel Akbar Choudhary approached me who required a logo for his SMS based service “YaaDahani”. Rafaeel, a.k.a “Roofi” is a serial entrepreneur, Product Evangelist, Brand & Project Manager, IT & Telecom Consultant, Leadership Trainer, Blogger, Underground Band Promoter and an Event Planner. Perhaps this pretty much sums up his life.

YaaDahani is an “Urdu” language word which means “Reminder”. It is derived from “Yaad” which means “Remember”. Basically, it is an SMS based service to which users can subscribe to, set reminders for themselves as well as others; whether it be a birthday, wedding, party or any event. The name was chosen in Urdu in order to provide a more personalized feeling for the locals.

Design Brief

The main aspect of the design brief was to create a personalized identity which communicates the idea of remembrance. The design needed to have both English and Urdu language incorporated in the logo for making it understandable to the masses. This was a challenging part as Urdu letters are entirely different from English alphabets. (YaaD in Urdu language can be seen written on the top right of my sketches). Moreover, unlike English, it is read from right (as is the case with Arabic language). The target audience was the youth who use cell phones in their daily lives and love to keep in touch with each other through SMS and VAS (Value Added Services). Therefore, the use of colors was really important in the design of this logo. To remind someone or being reminded generally brings happiness to one’s lives and therefore, the logo needed to be clean, stylish and modern as well.

Logo Development

I started out with some sketches on my pad, trying to incorporate both the English as well as Urdu language letters in the logo. Initially, Roofi named his service as “Yaad”, meaning “remember”. I was half way through when he rang me up and told me that he wanted his service named as “YaaDahani”, meaning “Reminder”. So, that’s the reason you would find both versions on my sketch pad.

I wasn’t quite satisfied with most of my sketches until I hit upon the Smiley one. It created the curve I needed for the first letter of  Urdu language part, whereas the upper part of the letter “Y” would accommodate for the second letter. I could then add two dots below the smiley (the curved part for the first Urdu letter), thus keeping in consideration both of the languages.   Initially, I used a variation of the Hobo Std font. The smiley looked quite well beneath the font; I sent a draft over to Roofi who liked it as well. However, I wanted something more personalized and unique and therefore dropped the idea of trying any more fonts and decided to create a unique typeface for the service.

Personalizing the Brand

Once I dropped the idea of using any fonts, I decided to make one. I opened up Illustrator and started out with basic shapes, in this case, rectangles and circles. The entire logo was made out of circles and rectangles, tweaked and tucked. I would create a circle and trim and tweak parts of it to shape the letters.

In the above image, the red lines represent the shapes which I used for the typeface, whereas the ones in blue were discarded off. I would have stopped there but I didn’t like the cornered edges all around, so I made a few tweaks, rounded off the edges and came up with a more modern and stylish look. (Someone later told me that a similar but not an exact font was available, and I could have tweaked that; but I was happy that I had created something unique and personalized myself).

The tweaked version is shown in the above image. The corners were rounded. The above design creates a happy face out of the double “a” serving as eyes, the smiley accommodating part of the Urdu letter with two dots beneath, and the upper part of “Y” was tweaked for the second part of Urdu letters.

Color Options

Although the colors in the logo were important in the sense as they were more youth targeted, nevertheless, the logo had to serve right in both black and white versions. The Black and White version is shown below:

We tried a number of color combos. Roofi hadn’t a great concern about the options presented to him. In fact, he was having trouble deciding among the four shown here. Finally, the decision was locked down on the Purple and Green one and was selected by the client. The tag-line goes, “Bhoolna-Ab Sirf Bahana” which means “Forgetting is just an excuse!”.

The header as it appears with the tag-line on the brand’s website:

I won’t say that this was the best creative solution I designed. There could be a lot of other options. I learn from other designers out there who are constantly providing valuable resources and inspiration to the design community. Therefore, any comments/feedback would be appreciated. Thanks to Rafaeel Akbar Choudhary for providing me a chance to work with him. I wish him all the best in launching his service and future ventures.

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Hello Everyone! It has been a pretty long time since I published my last post. I apologize for the delay but I had been over-occupied with my exams and some design projects in the past few weeks. Anyways, I am back now and have some pretty good posts and account of some of my recent design projects lined up which I would be sharing with you in the next few days. Watch out for some freebies as well. This time, I have collected some really creative splash inspired illustrations and advertisements by designers from around the world. The use of splash adds more dynamism and zeal to a design and I must say that some of the illustrations showcased here are really mind blowing-amazing stuff. Also check out some of the resources provided at the end of the post.

Designer: Jonas Eriksson – Malmo, Sweden

Designer: Waldo LEE – Paris, France

Designer: Predrag Milankovic – Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Designer: Wallstreet Different Creature – Krakow, Poland

Designer: Mike Campau – Birmingham, MI, United States

Designer: Alexandre Szewinski – Sao Bento do Sul, Brazil

Designer: Elina Kasesalu – Tallinn, Estonia

Designer: Stefanos Michaelides – Thessaloniki, Greece

Designer: Jorge Artola – Panama City, Panama

Designer: Rasoloarison Live – Paris, France

Designer: Omar Torres – Guatemala City, Guatemala

Designer: Tatiana Sobral – Sao Paulo, Brazil

Designer: Laura Alejo – Brooklyn, NY, United States

Designer: Medusateam – Lerida, Spain

Designer: Cláudio Hickstein – Porto Alegre, Brazil

Designer: Steve Sojkowsk – Boston, MA, United States

Designer: Unknown

Bonus Material

Detailed Water Splash Vector File

15 Adobe Illustrator Splash Brushes

Ice Cube Falling Into Water Vector Illustration

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Origami is the traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding. It uses the art of transforming a flat sheet of material into a finished sculpture through a number of folds. Following the origami design trend in 2009, graphic design industry has been flooded with numerous examples of origami inspired company logo designs. Origami logo designs have been used by companies who wish to project a temporary modern, sharp and elegant look. Below are some examples of creative origami logo designs for your inspiration. Moreover, some origami logo design tutorials have also been provided at the end of this post. Now, who doesn’t remember the paper boat we used to make in our younger years? Enjoy!

Origami Logo Design Inspiration

Origami Style Logo Design Tutorials

Create an Origami Logo in Photoshop

Origami Logo Design In Illustrator

Create an Origami Swan Logo in Photoshop

Fold an Origami Logo in Photoshop

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Web forms are a mean of interaction between the users and your website. Therefore, a neat, clean and a user friendly interface is a key point in designing web forms. The advent of JavaScript and CSS Techniques have provided unlimited options for interactive components in a website. JQuery is a popular, high performance and a compact JavaScript library/framework which dynamically provides you with a set of useful and highly optimized functions and methods. Below is a collection of some of the best JQuery and CSS tutorials which would help to enhance your HTML forms functionality.

CSS Form Tutorial: How To Improve Web Order Form Design

• Visit Tutorial
• Demo – See It in Action

Create a Good Looking Form Without Tables

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• Demo – See It in Action

Enhance your Input Fields with Simple CSS Tricks

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• Demo – See It in Action

Semantic Horizontal Forms

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Form Field Hints With CSS and JavaScript

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Build a Top Panel With JQuery

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• Demo – See It in Action

A Fancy Ajax Contact Form

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• Demo – See It in Action

Improved Current Field Highlighting in Forms

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• Demo – See It in Action

Creating a Digg Style Sign Up Form

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• Demo – See It in Action

Auto Completer Tutorial – JQuery/PHP/MySQL

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• Demo – See It in Action

JQuery Inline Form Validation, Because Validation is a Mess

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Perfect Sign-in Drop Box like Twitter Using JQuery

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Changing Form Input Styles on Focus with JQuery

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Creating a Facebook-Like Registration Form With JQuery

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Create a Progress Bar With JavaScript

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From my point of view the perfect business card should be clean and corporate looking. What’s very important is to use a right font. First of all it needs to be easy to read and not too fancy. What kind of fonts do I have in mind? Take a look below. I have put together a collection of 20 free fonts which are just perfect for this purpose. If you are looking for some business cards inspiration, check out a nice collection of “Black Business Card Designs“. Enjoy!

SF Grandezza Light

Broadsheet LDO

Zag

Antigoni

Anson

Angleterre Book

Asenine

Continuum Medium

Chisel Normal

Eurofurence Regular

Klill Light

KaratMedium Regular

Sansumi Bold

Lacuna Regular

MicrogrammaDMedExt

Mank Sans

LondonMM

Nilland

Petita Light

Riven: The font

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