the Design
And Color of the Year Goes to…
Pantone LLC, the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced PANTONE® 15-5519 Turquoise, an inviting, luminous hue, as the color of the year for 2010.
Pantone goes on to explain Turquiose as envoking images of tranquil oceans, lush beaches, tropical paradises and healing during stressful times. Its also a popular color in fashion.
Depending on your point of view, Pantone may have missed the mark with last year's pick, Mimosa, which "embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change." Mimosa may have been wrong with "hopefulness and reassurance" but definitely lived up to the "climate of change" part.
Here's hoping 15-5519 Turquoise lives up to the predictions in 2010. Now I'm off to buy a turquoise t-shirt.
She Walks in Beauty Poster
Another type experiment, this time using Gill Sans. The poem is She Walks in Beauty by George Gordon, Lord Byron. The piece was made in poster size (18×24), but I also have a convenient iPhone wallpaper size for download.
Robert Frost Also Writes Poetry
New typography experiment featuring Robert Frost's poem In a Disused Graveyard. In the same vein as my last piece, Walt Whitman Wears Shades, which is basically just me experimenting with new techniques and typography. The typeface used is Lucida Fax. Purposely made the original poster size — 18 × 24 — so maybe one day I'll get some printed up. Enjoy.
A Reflection on the Design Industry
A few weeks ago a student from a local college emailed me to ask me a few questions about my thoughts on the design industry for a class she was taking. I was glad to help. I thought about the questions carefully and replied to her email. I had almost forgot about my answers until I saw the email again in the bottom of my inbox (almost inbox zero, ha!). Anyway, I thought this would be a good thing to share with everyone, so here are the questions w/ responses.
Q) Could you describe your specific day to day duties and responsibilities?
A) Since the company I work in is smaller (about 13 people w/ 4 designers) I work on almost every creative project that comes through the door at some point. I mostly split my time between web design mockups for miscellaneous client websites and doing UI work for NFi's main product, MemberFuse. My time on Memberfuse is split pretty evenly between front-end coding and actual design/UI mockups. Meetings, emails, feature planning and giving the others direction and support also take up decent size parts of my day. Continue reading…
Walt Whitman is Cooler Than You
New illustration with a focus on typography for a change. Iphone wallpaper. Poem. Walt Whitman. Yeah.
The official title is "Walt Whitman Wears Shades" as you'll see why if you look at the image. The featured poem, called A Clear Midnight, was part of the compilation Leaves of Grass from 1900.
I wanted to do an exercise with typography and this is what happened. Just maybe I'll get a poster printed of this sometime. Oh, and the typeface is Lucida Std if any typophiles out there are interested. Enjoy.
Wander in Color Illustration
So its almost years end (what happened!?) and I finally got a few minutes to polish off an illustration I've been working on for a couple months. So, here it is, available in 3 convenient sizes for your desktop viewing pleasure.
Swirls Are Dead, Long Live New Retro!
Its a secret no more. Swirls are dead and New Retro is stepping up to take its place on the throne. Swirls, filigree, vines, twirls, swishes - all are on the way out. Don't be sad, its a natural process that all design trends, heck, all industry trends go through. Fashion, film, the economy and more are all affected by trends. It just so happens that design is now on the verge of its own "changing of the guard" as it were.
Although a few artists like Scott Hanson (ISO50) have been working with this style for awhile, it is now starting to overshadow everything else as the new dominate trend. The design blogs are headlining the change as tutorials and illustrations are now reflecting the new retro trend. The Behance Network is overflowing with new work from artists embracing new retro, like James White. PSDTUTS also recently published one of the first new retro tutorials. Continue reading…
Cool Color App – In the Mod
I'm a reader of the online blog Neu Black, so when they featured In The Mod, an application that helps to create brand new color palettes with the drag and drop of an image, I took notice. The application is based in Adobe Air and also needs Adobe Switchboard to work but once its up and running, its a great, minimalistic app that is extremely useful for designers.
Ever have an image that has great colors that you'd like to create a color palette from for your next project? The old way to make a palette would be to take it into Photoshop and manually sample colors. In The Mod makes this simple. Just drag the pic you would like to sample into the window, set the number of colors you'd like to pull from it and thats it. And by pressing a button you can export the full palette into Photoshop or Illustrator. I'm really excited to play with this more for upcoming projects. The app has a few different editions but the one I'm currently using is the Your Images Edition.
Note: Thanks to Meagan Fisher for the sweet ampersand desktop.
New Illustration
New illustration. Red theme. Available in 2 convenient desktop sizes. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Helvetica: The Movie
About a week ago I excitedly put this movie on my Netflix queue. Yes I know its about a typeface.Yes its a documentary. And no, it wasn't boring. It was awesome. Emphasis on awesome. It may sound boring, but for a designer it is far from it. After a few days of sitting by my TV I finally popped it in and was extremely satisfied. A great film. Great. Maybe a little long, but great. Continue reading…
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