Here's a link to a fun article I came across talking about the relationship between copy writer and designer. Written by Andy White. Published in Eight:48.
http://whitewriting.com/blog/blog/the-future-is-um-written/
Friday 25 February 2011
Designers and writers sittin' in trees...
Here's a link to a fun article I came across talking about the relationship between copy writer and designer. Written by Andy White. Published in Eight:48.
http://whitewriting.com/blog/blog/the-future-is-um-written/
Tuesday 22 February 2011
Walk the walk you talk (and design)
Determining exactly how socially responsible a company is can be tricky. Do they really have a soul or do they just throw a few million towards a couple charities every year to distract consumers from how much product they import from poor countries or the low wages they pay their non-unionized work force? I’m guessing that in most cases, particularly if it’s a global company, corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies fall into the latter category.
However, there are a handful of organizations that don’t treat CSR as an afterthought or a safety net. I found a lot of great examples of innovative companies that built socially responsible principles and policies into their primary business plan. A lot of the time this tactic pays off and makes a company a success because a) talented people want to work for a company with sound ethics, and b) consumers want to feel good about what they buy and are willing to pay a bit more to support a company that isn’t evil. For designers or anyone remotely involved with corporate communications, reason a really rings true. Everyone knows the phrase that goes something like, “If you want to walk the walk, you better talk the talk”. Well, it’s a lot easier to design convincing and beautiful ‘talk’ when the subject has the ‘walk’ to back it up.
Here are two examples of businesses I would love to work for one day simply based on their CSR policies and ethics:
The Body Shop:
Founded in 1976 by Anita Roddick, The Body Shop is a pioneer in socially responsible practices. It was one of the first beauty product manufacturers to speak out against animal testing and continues to do so today along with employing environmentally sustainable packaging processes and supporting community or fair trade production practices.
In addition, they head non-beauty-product-related social awareness campaigns every year that range in topics from child trafficking, domestic violence and HIV prevention. They also founded the Body Shop Foundation which to date has distributed £12.5 million in grants to fund global projects for social and environmental change.
Toms:
Founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, the mission of Toms Shoes is simple: with every pair purchased by us, they give a new pair to a child in need. They have incorporated giving into the foundation of their company and have started what they call a One for One Movement.
Since September 2010, Toms has given away 1 million pairs to children in 23 countries. Though the products available on their website come in all styles and colors, the shoes given to children are specially designed to be worn in that region’s environment. Each kid receives a new pair every six months to make sure they don’t grow out of them. The shoes are produced in Argentina, Ethiopia and China in third-party audited factories that pay fair wages and don’t use child labor.
Resources:
http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/index.aspx
http://www.tomsshoes.co.uk/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/12/8-revolutionary-socially_n_679832.html#s123215&title=Seventh_Generation
However, there are a handful of organizations that don’t treat CSR as an afterthought or a safety net. I found a lot of great examples of innovative companies that built socially responsible principles and policies into their primary business plan. A lot of the time this tactic pays off and makes a company a success because a) talented people want to work for a company with sound ethics, and b) consumers want to feel good about what they buy and are willing to pay a bit more to support a company that isn’t evil. For designers or anyone remotely involved with corporate communications, reason a really rings true. Everyone knows the phrase that goes something like, “If you want to walk the walk, you better talk the talk”. Well, it’s a lot easier to design convincing and beautiful ‘talk’ when the subject has the ‘walk’ to back it up.
Here are two examples of businesses I would love to work for one day simply based on their CSR policies and ethics:
The Body Shop:
Founded in 1976 by Anita Roddick, The Body Shop is a pioneer in socially responsible practices. It was one of the first beauty product manufacturers to speak out against animal testing and continues to do so today along with employing environmentally sustainable packaging processes and supporting community or fair trade production practices.
In addition, they head non-beauty-product-related social awareness campaigns every year that range in topics from child trafficking, domestic violence and HIV prevention. They also founded the Body Shop Foundation which to date has distributed £12.5 million in grants to fund global projects for social and environmental change.
Toms:
Founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, the mission of Toms Shoes is simple: with every pair purchased by us, they give a new pair to a child in need. They have incorporated giving into the foundation of their company and have started what they call a One for One Movement.
Since September 2010, Toms has given away 1 million pairs to children in 23 countries. Though the products available on their website come in all styles and colors, the shoes given to children are specially designed to be worn in that region’s environment. Each kid receives a new pair every six months to make sure they don’t grow out of them. The shoes are produced in Argentina, Ethiopia and China in third-party audited factories that pay fair wages and don’t use child labor.
Resources:
http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/index.aspx
http://www.tomsshoes.co.uk/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/12/8-revolutionary-socially_n_679832.html#s123215&title=Seventh_Generation
Friday 18 February 2011
Button: logo and design elements
The following is my work to date on my Business for Design final project.
Logo:
Color palette:
Typography:
Design elements:
Poster tests:
Logo:
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Wednesday 16 February 2011
Working timeline for semester two
The following are draft production timelines for Design Project B and Business for Design.
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Old techniques create today's trends
Technology has changed design. We all know it. Old news. But, though we ARE living in a “fast-moving computer-generated work of animated digital media design” as this task’s description states, there are still a lot of artists using traditional means of animating to create fresh, innovative work. Just as the print designer likes to pick up the X-Acto knife or set their own type every once in a while, many animators still experiment with stop motion techniques. Both produce a texture, quality and overall traditional look that just can’t be faked by using computer software.
Stop motion is, in my opinion, one of the coolest-looking but most tedious-to-make styles of animation. Basically it goes like this: get a real life object, set it up, take a picture of it and then move it a little bit. Repeat ONE BAZILLION TIMES. Then flip through all the photographs and enjoy your 10 seconds of animation. Kidding aside, the jumpy, homemade quality of this style and the amount of detail put into it by the dedicated animator make it a truly unique and visually appealing format.
Stop motion is alive and well today and is used in everything from commercials, music videos, TV series and feature films. Though it sounds time-consuming and monotonous to produce, many report that it is one of the easier forms of animation made simpler by digital film production tools.
The following are some links to examples of stop motion animation productions:
Short film:
Marcel the Shell
Series:
Rasta Mouse
Robot Chicken
Feature film:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Portfolios:
Mike Please
Laika
Grandchildren
Stop motion is, in my opinion, one of the coolest-looking but most tedious-to-make styles of animation. Basically it goes like this: get a real life object, set it up, take a picture of it and then move it a little bit. Repeat ONE BAZILLION TIMES. Then flip through all the photographs and enjoy your 10 seconds of animation. Kidding aside, the jumpy, homemade quality of this style and the amount of detail put into it by the dedicated animator make it a truly unique and visually appealing format.
Stop motion is alive and well today and is used in everything from commercials, music videos, TV series and feature films. Though it sounds time-consuming and monotonous to produce, many report that it is one of the easier forms of animation made simpler by digital film production tools.
The following are some links to examples of stop motion animation productions:
Short film:
Marcel the Shell
Series:
Rasta Mouse
Robot Chicken
Feature film:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Portfolios:
Mike Please
Laika
Grandchildren
Thursday 10 February 2011
Wayfinding around Westfield
The wayfinding system I chose to evaluate was that of the Westfield shopping center in Shepherd's Bush. Featuring several restaurants, movie theaters and both luxury and affordable clothing stores, Westfield is one of the largest shopping centers in London. Located just north of the Shepherd's Bush Underground Station, the center is extremely easy to find. There are many signs inside the tube station to direct shoppers toward Westfield.
Outside the main center are several kiosks and marker posts letting the visitor know where they are and how they can find other sections including The Atrium, Southern Terrace, Loft, Balcony, Village and car park. All signs had a consistent modern look made of silver metal material or clean white acrylic. There were a sparse number of digital map kiosks which could be used to locate a specific shop or restaurant. The typography used appeared to be consistent - a sans serif which differs from the type used in the Westfield logo.
Overall, I feel like a shoppers first visit to Westfield can be quite overwhelming due to the sheer size of the center. Naming the various sections and then referring to those names on the many kiosks does not provide much help at first, but once you get the lay of the land it becomes more useful. The digital maps are much more helpful but they are a bit hard to locate when you really need them. Aesthetically, I fell the system does its job by communicating the Westfield is a modern, cutting edge shopping center. Practically, I feel the system is average.
I took several photos of the signage inside and outside Westfield. They can be viewed here.
Friday 4 February 2011
Type is everywhere
Here are a sampling of photos of signs around my neighborhood that I find beautiful and interesting. Looking through these, it's hard to see a pattern of interest. I was taken by both new, contemporary uses of typography as well as old, traditional and sometimes dated or crumbly looking signs. I do particularly enjoy when the content's message is communicated in the type.
My favorites:
My favorites:
Tuesday 1 February 2011
The best* fonts in life are free
*well maybe not the best, but some of them aren't half bad
When asked to choose two typefaces to discuss and critique I found it hard to narrow down the pack. Serif or sans serif? Open type or true type? Transitional, modern or slab? To make it easier on myself, I decided to focus on some high-quality free fonts I had recently discovered, not only to have an excuse to play around with and get to know them, but also to share some resources with my blog readers.
Ripe
Ripe was developed by designer Cameron Sweeney in 2008 and released for free to help promote the launch a typography website called RipeType in 2009. A modern-looking and unique serif, the Ripe font family consists of four separate weights containing 577 characters each. The stroke weight does not vary throughout each character and its signature seems to be the stick-straight descenders on the lower-case letters. There are also alternate letterforms with looped descenders as seen in the RipeTipe logo. You can access these via the ‘glyphs’ panel in InDesign or Illustrator.
I would argue that Ripe is a fresh, contemporary typeface and could be applied quite well in titles and headers or redrawn as an effective, aesthetically pleasing logo. I believe its downfall lies within its use as body copy because when it’s placed at a small point size, its legibility falters.
Sadly, Sweeney’s portfolio site doesn’t seem to be working at the moment so I can’t check out his other work. However, the entire Ripe family can be downloaded for free here.
Chunk
When I first saw Chunk, I started salivating. So slabby! So serif-y! So FREE! I’ve always been a big fan of blunt slab serifs like Rockwell but I’ve never been satisfied with their ultra bold weights. Seemed to me they just didn’t have enough….well, chunk!
Designer Meredith Mandel explains the origins of Chunk on her website explaining she was inspired by “old American Western woodcuts, broadsides, and newspaper headlines.”
Chunk is definitely best reserved for signage and display designs. Anything that needs to say “HEY! Listen up ‘cause I’m not going anywhere!” The amount of stability built into each character really catches the eye and calls for attention. I personally can’t wait for the right project to come along so I can use Chunk.
Chunk can be downloaded for free at The League of Moveable Type, a website started by design firm A Good Company as an open source font project.
One might think that a high quality typeface would never be given away as a free download. However, it has been shown to be an effective way to promote yourself as a type designer or your design firm.
Free font resources:
http://www.ripetype.com.au/?cat=21
http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
http://www.creativepro.com/article/free-all-freebies-us-you
http://veer.com/free
When asked to choose two typefaces to discuss and critique I found it hard to narrow down the pack. Serif or sans serif? Open type or true type? Transitional, modern or slab? To make it easier on myself, I decided to focus on some high-quality free fonts I had recently discovered, not only to have an excuse to play around with and get to know them, but also to share some resources with my blog readers.
Ripe
Ripe was developed by designer Cameron Sweeney in 2008 and released for free to help promote the launch a typography website called RipeType in 2009. A modern-looking and unique serif, the Ripe font family consists of four separate weights containing 577 characters each. The stroke weight does not vary throughout each character and its signature seems to be the stick-straight descenders on the lower-case letters. There are also alternate letterforms with looped descenders as seen in the RipeTipe logo. You can access these via the ‘glyphs’ panel in InDesign or Illustrator.
I would argue that Ripe is a fresh, contemporary typeface and could be applied quite well in titles and headers or redrawn as an effective, aesthetically pleasing logo. I believe its downfall lies within its use as body copy because when it’s placed at a small point size, its legibility falters.
Sadly, Sweeney’s portfolio site doesn’t seem to be working at the moment so I can’t check out his other work. However, the entire Ripe family can be downloaded for free here.
Chunk
When I first saw Chunk, I started salivating. So slabby! So serif-y! So FREE! I’ve always been a big fan of blunt slab serifs like Rockwell but I’ve never been satisfied with their ultra bold weights. Seemed to me they just didn’t have enough….well, chunk!
Designer Meredith Mandel explains the origins of Chunk on her website explaining she was inspired by “old American Western woodcuts, broadsides, and newspaper headlines.”
Chunk is definitely best reserved for signage and display designs. Anything that needs to say “HEY! Listen up ‘cause I’m not going anywhere!” The amount of stability built into each character really catches the eye and calls for attention. I personally can’t wait for the right project to come along so I can use Chunk.
Chunk can be downloaded for free at The League of Moveable Type, a website started by design firm A Good Company as an open source font project.
One might think that a high quality typeface would never be given away as a free download. However, it has been shown to be an effective way to promote yourself as a type designer or your design firm.
Free font resources:
http://www.ripetype.com.au/?cat=21
http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
http://www.creativepro.com/article/free-all-freebies-us-you
http://veer.com/free
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