Shillington College

Mads Jakob Poulsen @ NYC Apple Store

Danish Designer Mads Jakob Poulsen will be at the Apple Store SoHo, NYC on March 28, 2011 presenting their work and thoughts on graphic design. Previously a senior designer at Wolff Olins, one talent to admire and keep an eye on. Check out the amazing work.

Letterhead Love

For all you FT students in the UK & US currently working on the branding brief.

www.letterheadlove.com

Design is dead…

Design is alive with "Dynamic Identities", a concept developed by Lava – European Design Agency of the Year. Based around the theory that visual identities should be ever evolving with Brand Magazines and not Styleguides to keep brands fresh.

IDTV identity above has been created around a "pixel" which forms the basis of the characters, the pixels constantly update on collateral. The top left pixel shapes were developed because they created different shades of grey. To find out more check out Lava

Letterheady

Ever wondered what the letterheads of iconic figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Houdini & Charlie Chaplin looked like?  Check out LETTERHEADY — its an online archive of bygone stationery design. www.letterheady.com

Thanks Shannon in Melbourne FT for the Heads up :)

The 6 plights of the modern day branding designer talk

At a recent AGDA talk by the infamous Chris Doyle (known for creating his own identity guidelines that went viral to design studios across the world, which is linked to his name below) now working for the branding studio Interbrand.

Unfortunately I was unable to make it. A couple of the students from Syd FT went along. Lucas, the kind chap he is, picked me up a copy of the newspaper style document they put together which I have photographed and put below. He also very kindly agreed to agreed to write about the talk. So thanks Lucas for the following words and choice links.

Faced with the epic, ever-growing body of work that has gone before, how can today's designers cut through the clutter, let alone create a genuinely original idea?
Presented by Chris Maclean, Mike Rigby and Chris Doyle, The Plight of the Modern Brand Designer covered six dilemmas facing designers today. These included the pitfalls of design by committee, the nature of client/agency relationships (read: master/slave), and standing out in an ever-changing media landscape.
The talk centered around the need to employ design thinking and processes to create solutions to problems in business, and society. They also discussed the need for us, as designers, to embrace a whole host of innovative ways to express ideas – going beyond graphic design, to produce a truly powerful and engaging brand experience. Examples of this included  'Let it ring' campaign and VW fun theory.
All in all a very entertaining and insightful talk, on top of that they gave out copies of 'This Year I Will Try Not To', a collation of common design trends that should be avoided, it is extremely funny and definitely worth a look.

Lucas Black-Dendle

 

Thanks Lucas really appreciate your words and the lovely paper gift. Lee :>)

Stationery design inspiration

Its difficult to understand the challenges and limitations of stationery design until you actually try to do it. Its one area of design where I avidly look for new ideas and I'm always collecting examples of great business cards and letterheads to inspire me. This post called 83 Crazy/Beautiful Letterhead and Logo Designs on youthedesigner.com is hit and miss, but there are definitely some winners on there. Thanks to Adam in the Manchester class for showing it to me.

Be Inspired By Packaging

This is a great site to be inspired by. It covers all areas of packaging and conveniently categorises things into the particular industry and even substrate! Check out the link http://www.thedieline.com

Art of the Arcade

No one ever goes the arcade anymore. In my day (a child of the late seventies and eighties) this is where everyone hung out, got into trouble and smoked cigarettes under age.  

This site has an awesome selection of arcade and early game console artwork including packaging, logos and ads from various sources featuring stuff like the atari logo and the pong console packaging. 

A great deal of designers today seem to revisit some of the styling from this period. I am sure it will pass.Remember when looking at this artwork this was done before the advent of the of the mac and applications like illustrator. Probably all of it was done by hand.

Interested? Check it out at 'The Art of the Arcade'. 

AFOM. A Friend of Mine.

Suzy Tuxen is 'AFOM'. The Melbourne design studio that is. I wish she was a friend of mine so I could salivate whilst touching her beautifully tactile and awesomely executed stationery, identities and print work. She has worked on some beautiful projects in the UK with the the design company Mutlistorey which she also features on her site.

Prepare to drool over 'A FRIEND OF MINE'

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.afom.com.au

10 Common Mistakes of Logo Design

When it comes to Logo design I think most GOOD designers will agree with these common mistakes.

Smashing Mag - 10 Common Mistakes