Week 10.3

Little Box of Ideas is a design blog that aims to be a go-to resource for designers. It provides many things to its visitors, including inspiration, articles, interviews with other designers, tutorials, and other resources. It doesn't appear to have any preference for one subject or another, like some of the other blogs I've seen.

LBOI is run by Sneh Roy, a designer who prefers to do logos and character designs. Because of that, the blog has a tendency to focus on logo design. I do wish there was a little more than just that in terms of content, both in the articles and inspiration sections, but she does provide more in the tutorial section. Subjects there range from mixed media, web design, illustration, and Photoshop help. The freebies page also features more than just logo-related posts, so she's branched out in those areas, at least.

I think LBOI is a good place to go to find logo inspiration, as well as articles and interviews with designers. I would prefer if there was a little more to it than just a general focus on logos, but for that niche, it is a good resource. I'd recommend it, especially to anyone interested in logo design.

Week 10.2

This one is another abstract typography piece. For this assignment, I had to create a composition based on a word, "playful." So I ran with it.

Both the colors and typefaces were chosen for their playfeel feel. Bright colors, and a lot of them, are often reminscent of children, and are therefore looked upon as either childish, playful, or both. The glyphs from the chosen typefaces were chosen solely on their shapes: they weren't like the most common typefaces are, that have a very simple, clean aesthetic to them. These typefaces played with the shapes, and I used them because of that.

As for the composition of the piece, I placed each element at the top of the format, at different sizes, and set them apart from each other, all in order to create an airy atmosphere. Playfulness is often related with a carefree attitude, so I wanted to give off that vibe, as well. It came out looking like some of the elements may have been jumping, which I think helps to show off playfulness, as well. I think the theme showed through well, and therefore it is a success.

Week 10.1

This is the stationery for Seolearo Design, a ficticious design firm I created. The colors were a simple enough choice: I wanted to use green because I felt that I had been neglected that color, and the orange went well with it. I didn't want too much orange in it, though, so I kept it to the Os in the logo and extraneous information on the envelope and business card.

One of the biggest issues I had with it was where to place the information for the letterhead and business card. I tried out a few different things for the letterhead, and simply chose the one that looked best. For the business card, I had trouble with the name and other information. I wanted to keep the overall look fairly uniform, though, so I put my name in the green bar in white, the (ficticious) website url under it and to the right. The other information was placed in the bottom left-hand corner simply because that was where it fit the best.

I like the designs, overall. I may have to work on the address' placement on the envelope a little. But it's an easily recognizable set, and it goes well with the firm's brand, so I'm satisfied with how it turned out.

Week 9.3

Nenuno Creative is a design blog full of resources. They advertise as a place for designers to find inspiration.

The website has a lot of different things going for it. They have things such as tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator, and web design; an interview with a web design firm; and the newly added community news section. The community news posts are done weekly and are based on Nenuno follower-submitted news, and includes articles with tutorials, inspiration, giveaways, design advice, and your regular news about design.

The best thing about Nenuno, in my opinion, is that they aren't restricting themselves to just graphic design in their features and inspiration posts. They do have logos and posters and the like, but they also have photomanipulations, web interfaces, illustrations, and photography. I do wish the site had more articles, though, but since they're trying to be a resource for inspiration, they ccan get away with it.

Week 9.2

This logo was originally an exercise in simplification and stylization for my Digital Illustration class. My chosen animal was a spider, so I drew a spider and worked on top of that, simplifying it and giving it a stylized flair.

Once I had the spider broken down into a logoesque form, I had to choose a company name and colors for the logo. The name was no problem; the Spider Web Design was the first thing that popped into my head, and it stuck. The colors were an issue, though, because I didn't want to use red. I tried many other colors, though, and none of them looked as good on the spider as the red did, so I gave in and used it, making one half of the spider and company name red. The bottom half was left black, because it added weight to the bottom and drew your eye down through the whole logo.

Originally, I wanted to include a spider web in the design, or at least part of one. The teacher dismissed it, though, and I admit that he may have been right. Having that element in the logo may have made it look too busy. As it is now, it's simple and clean, and I think it works fairly well.

Week 9.1

This is the corporate stationery for Amalgamated Industries, Inc. The color scheme is taken from the logo, as is the typeface used for the information.

I wanted to use circles in the stationery designs because it dated back to the Widgco logo, which had a red dot over the I, and the company specifically asked for new designs that reached back into their history. I wanted it to stay simple, too, so I only used one circle that overlaps the page's corner. I kept that as a theme throughout the designs, although the circle moved to the bottom left corner in the business card, rather than the right.

The biggest issue I had with the stationery was with the arrangement of the information. I went through a lot of different stages while trying to figure that out, and eventually came up with this. I'm still a little unsure about the envelope and business card, but I think it works, at least. The letterhead, however, I am happy with.

Week 8.3

MyInkBlog is a site I found a while back, when I was looking through a list of design resources. It's a blog that brags about being a resource for "all things design," and I think it's earned the right to say that. Maybe it isn't the most well-known site, but it's far from useless.

A good portion of the posts are tutorials. That's always a good thing, because it can teach designers, young and old, something new. That section isn't necessarily updated at a regular interval, but it has plenty of things to look through and learn.

Besides tutorials, the website has a monthly feature post. They call it "MyInkTrail - Best of the Design community." There are different sections within the post - articles, tutorials, freebies, and featured designs - that are recommended by Andrew Houle, the founder of MyInkBlog. This shows good networking on his part, an interest in staying up-to-date with the design community, and a desire to share that with his readers. That by itself is a very good resource.

And then there's the other articles, ones giving tips on many different design-related subjects. They've got things from CSS tips, to "Lessons from the Lunch Pail," to advertising tips. A good many of these are done by guest writers, and they each have a little gem of advice to offer, some of which we may have heard and some we may not have.

All in all, I think it's a great resource to sift through. There are little posts all over the site that can be very helpful, even if it's just offering advice on one thing or another. It provides the resources to learn something new, and offers inspiration at least once a month. It's a good blog, and I recommend it for anyone in design world.