A few years ago I found a radio program playing locally called the Forbes Radio Program. It was business focused and only played in Utah on weekends. The host was Gordon Deal, and I loved the program because it was entirely focused on business and the economy. It was kind of like NPR’s Marketplace show, but even more so. But…
Design
This section is not about web design, interior design, product design, kitchen design, industrial design, fashion design, or even graphic design. It is about “design” in general, which has to do with all of those things, but is no one of them specifically. What is design? While I haven’t heard a great definition of what “design” is, this article on design vs. art is a good place to start.
In no way is this an attack on anyone…well, maybe it is, but if it is, I’m attacking myself as much as anyone else.
This is for all you designers. You creative types. You who work with branding. You people at the advertising, marketing, and design firms and who, in the 80s and 90s, wore thick-rimmed glasses and black turtlenecks.…
If you’re a designer, this song is for you.
I don’t usually beg, but please, please go listen to the brief Marketplace piece on what fonts to avoid using. Comic Sans might look fun and quirky to you, but it’s painful to the rest of us who have a smidgen of design sense.
So I’m republishing what I saw on somebody else’s blog as well as somebody else’s, so what? Isn’t that what blogging is all about? This was too good to pass up, however, because it leads into a good conversation on a number of topics, including:
1. Because a company is big, does that mean everything they do…
Have you ever seen some design work and you can instantly form an opinion about the designer responsible for it? I’m not talking about good design, I mean bad design work. But first let’s talk about furniture and clothes.
If you go into a 70 year old person’s house you’ll see different furniture than you see in a 30-year old’s…
I had something of an epiphany the other day. For years I’ve assumed that most non-designers, clients included, don’t know what good design is. But now I’m looking at things in an entirely different way. I think the problem might be that most clients don’t know what bad design is.
Ok, so it’s really Sigur Rōs and the video is Glōsōli, but nobody is going to actually type that in when doing a search.
Ever wondered what it would be like to cook with Dr. Pepper? Was color coordinating your oven mits important during the 50’s? How do real men like their meat prepared?
Welcome to retro-designer’s heaven. Just don’t eat the vegetables.
I didn’t write this. The credit goes to Fegus Webber and you can view the original text at http://fwob.blogspot.com/2005/07/how-to-handle-web-deisgner.html However, he had so many spelling and grammatical errors that I felt like re-writing portions of it, plus he’s British so he insists on calling dollars “pounds” for some reason. So this is a slightly edited, Americanized version.
All…
http://www.intersmash.com/300images/
Want to see what other people have done for small arrows on their sites? It’s here. How about shopping cart icons? You got it. And print, bullets, mail, and posts. Lots of icons to get the creative juices flowing.
If you’re tired of using the standard lorem ipsum generator to create meaningless text for your design projects then check this one out. It adds a little spice.
http://www.douglasfisher.co.uk/
The great thing about looking at this website is that not only is the website well-designed but the content of the website is beautiful. There’s something about photography that can’t quite be matched with computer graphics alone, but the combination of computer graphics with the photography creates something quite exquisite.
I would highly recommend taking a look at the…
I’ve never designed for print before a month or two ago. I’ve enjoyed learning some of the details–I didn’t even know what a spot color was and I’ve been running a creative agency for five years. How’s that for being disconnected?
I have to admit there’s something about holding something in your hand that you designed, whether it’s a brochure…
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,600125474,00.html
Although this article seems to forget that Motorola is the company that made pagers cool when they started making them in different colors, the core message is still true. Design sells what technology can’t.
This article by Jason Santa Maria struck a chord with me. While I do believe services like LogoYes and LogoWorks do have their place, it’s one thing to create a system by which professional designers create logos faster and at a lower cost, but it’s another to create a program that allows anyone to design a…
Mighty fine designer out of Atlanta with his own blog.
http://www.veer.com/ideas/btt/
I went to college to become an illustrator. I wanted to learn how to paint and do fantasy book covers or something. I didn’t really know anything about “design” or what the world offered to artists. I thought most artists were poor and could never scrape together a living. I had no idea there were designers out there making…
I was watching a program on The History Channel the other day called Stealth and Beyond, Air Stealth. It was about the stealth fighter and bomber programs, and the history of stealth when it comes to planes. I was not expecting them to say anything about design as far as aesthetics are concerned.
I didn’t invent these, and I can’t remember where I got it from, but it’s fairly handy if you’re designing a postcard-sized direct mail piece and want to know the United State Post Office regulations for such a piece of mail.
• Minimum Allowable Postcard Size: 3.5 x 5 Inches
If the width is less than 5 inches or…
Who says spam isn’t useful? I just got this sent to me. I’m thinking of enrolling myself to improve my doodling skills.
http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/sections/tours/virtual_tour/vrtour2.asp
Someone showed this to me years ago. It was impressive then, but what’s even more impressive is that four years or so after it was created it’s still impressive. Truly ahead of its time. I only wish we at MWI had a client with the budget to do something on this scale.
When you’re running a design agency one of the questions you commonly get asked is whether or not you have experience working with a certain type of client or in a certain industry. This question is usually asked by someone you’re trying to turn into a client, and it creates a sort of empty feeling in the stomach if you…
Once a product becomes commoditized there are only a few ways for companies that sell that product to create competitive advantage. One way is through distribution, but generally distribution tactics are fairly easy to mimic and this advantage quickly disappears. Once all traditional means of generating competitive advantage have been exhausted, there are only two ways left to create an…
