13 February 2018
31 January 2012
[print] The Gutenberg Wireless Media Player
Well, hell's bells, sign me the tintype up!
17 January 2012
[design] Photoshop, Sweded … As Real As It Gets
It's pretty nifty.
Via this semi-popular guy, blogged about by The Inspiration Room here: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2008/photoshop-as-real-as-it-gets/, and if you want to know how it happened, check out the flickr album of the creators here.
[design] Adobe Photoshop For Those Who Love To Cook
We don't know if it's been upgraded since CS3, but if it is, you'll hear it here first, unless you here it somewhere else first.
Via Holy Kaw.
20 October 2011
[teh funnay] Another Movie We'd Like To See: 2001 Dalmatians
27 September 2011
[design] Infographic Cliches You've No Doubt Seen
Via Google+ user Dustin Hoffmann (no, not the actor) and served forth from the blog of FastCompany, there's a very chuckle-funny summary of the most popular infographic cliches:
03 September 2011
[design] Livin' The Dream, Diagrammed
12 April 2011
[logo design] Mitt Romney: Believe In A Minty-Fresh and Sparkling America
2599.Whoever coined the phrase "there is nothing new under the sun" obviously designed a logo. And the farther we go into the 21st century, the more it seems that influences are harder and harder to get away from.
Mitt Romney, you see, has a Presidential Exploratory Committee out. And, while we wait to see if they find one, they did have time to roll out … what else … a logo. Here it is.
There isn't anything wrong per se with it. It's a solid design - no Saul Bass or Paul Rand calibre, to be sure, but it'll get the job done. The classic type, the ligature between the E and the Y suggesting someone remembered to turn on contextual alternates; the vaguely inspiring tag line that anyone can read anything into. The graphical treatment of the R, the more I look at it, looks like three people standing shoulder to shoulder, facing the future and America's challenges – the three peoples that made America great: the red people, the white people, and the Na'vi.
But since, to a certain degree, everything borrows - eventually - from everything else. And it wasn't too long before the wags figured out that Mitt's logo has a certain minty-fresh feelng also featured by, well … this product:
This, it should be noted, is not the first time a professed Mormon and dental care have been thrown together in the same boat; 20th Century American History recalls the cultural hegemony of soft, family-friendly entertainment and sparkling teeth promoted by the Osmond family during the 1970s and 80s (and the welter of tasteless jokes about how wealthy the Osmond's phalanx of dentists must have been). But more than any percieved eminience grise of the LDS-orthodontia-industrial complex is the idea that these days, it's getting harder and harder to be interesting.
Romney's logo isn't bad, but it isn't memorable. The true triumph of working within a limited canon such as the political logo is to take every restriction and by exploiting them, create something truly interesting. And Romney's logo isn't bad … but it's not interesting. It's like they aimed for the sort of iconic impact of Obama's "O" without perhaps completely understanding what they were aiming for.
15 March 2011
[teh funnay] The Last Advertising Agency On Earth
2582.Something I stumbled on. Be warned that this is essentially a promotional video, and some of the conclusions it asks you to draw may seem a bit glib, but it's well done, and the droll humor is worth wasting a few minutes of your time to see.
It's a brave new world. Or something.
04 March 2011
[design humor] Client Bear Feels Your Pain
2568.Funny, Because it's true …
The next frontier in LOLTopia.
Weekends are for other people, after all.
Peep the rest of Client Bear at http://clientbear.tumblr.com/.
Via Right Brain Resource.
06 November 2009
[ad_design] What Might Have Happened If The D&D Club Started Drinking Canadian Club
Love ya, Mom.
Such ads are ripe for spoofing. And someone did. Beautifully.
Clicky upon the image to embiggen. The copy on the Canadian Club ads reads:
YOUR MOM WASN'T YOUR DAD'S FIRST. He went out. He got two numbers in one night. He drank cocktails. But they were whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club®. Served in a rocks glass. They tasted good. They were effortless. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT.
Whereas the brilliant copy on this reads:
YOUR DAD WAS A LEVEL 22 NECROMANCER. He didn't bitch about server lag. Your dad put on his ears and his green boots and didn't care who saw. He rolled to feel up his elf girlfriend after kicking Acerrack's ass in the Tomb of Horrors. He set his classmates on edge. He was a nerd before it was cool. And he didn't give two shits about what comic books Megan Fox reads. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD PLAYED IT.Like I said, pitch-perfect. And, I don't know about you all, but you've gotta know that the stereotype of the sexless nerd was just that; as the main character in Revenge of the Nerds sagely noted, "All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex". True, that. And, I don't know about you all, but those two cuties down in front in the big picture look pretty rowwwr to my inner 17-year-old.
Yep, back then. There were lady gamers. Yes, typically speaking, they were hot. We tried to tell y'all, but you wouldn't listen.
Ah, good times. Good times.
(Thanks to Lyle, who Knew Me Back In The Day™, if you follow)
Technorati Tags: ad design, teh funnay, dungeons and dragons, ad parody, canadian club, damn right your dad drank it
11 October 2009
[logo] What If Logos Used Comic Sans?
Well, I would. I think logos.
How about UPS?
If that didn't make you cry and die inside:
View the rest at http://jacovox.com/2009/09/logos-famosos-hechos-con-comic-sans/. It's all in Spanish, but you won't need to habla to
(Via)
Technorati Tags: logo design, type design, comic sans, design humor
01 July 2009
I Do Happen To Be Having Trouble Finding My Muse These Days …
Don't take inspiration for granted, yo.
(highly excellent cartoon by Chad Welch, http://chadwelchart.com, http://badartonline.com, http://twitter.com/chadwelch. Used With Permission).
Technorati Tags: Chad Welch, Bad Art Online, webcomics, humor
25 June 2009
Two And A Half Hot Dogs
Many logos have nicknames or even official names. General Electric's classic logo is known, somewhat inaccurately, as "The Monogram" officially, and Bank of America's design which appears to resemble a cross between and American flag and an aerial view of farmland is officially called "The Flagscape".
NASA insiders and fans alike know that the minimalist logo used from 1975 to 1992 is known as "The Worm" whereas the classic logo used before and after that time (and which graces my coffee cup) is known as "The Meatball", though those are both colloquial. There are other meatballs as well: The GE logo, officially called The Monogram in-house, is colloqually called by some The Meatball, and the old Continental Airlines logo, used from the late 60s to sometime in the 90s, was also called The Meatball.
Other amusing ones are The Venetian Blinds for the classic blue-striped version of the IBM logo designed by Paul Rand; The Bocce Ball for the new Xerox logo; and The Coffee Stain for the Zen-insipred logo of Lucent (lampooned in Dilbert as "The Brown Ring of Quality").
Oh, and the "two-and-a-half-hotdogs?" It's this:
Read more at the post that inspired me to comment, here on Identity Works.
Technorati Tags: logo design, identity, branding, logo lore, logo humor
15 June 2009
Portland: You Can Ride Your Unicycle Here
Just one more reason Portland is 100% full of win: the unicycle lane:
According to this flickr user here, it's on NW Cornell Road, outbound, in the inner NW Portland nabe. Photo is by Shannon Henry and is Creative Commons Attrib/NC/Share-Alike 2.0 licensed. Good on Shannon.
All we need FTW? Unicorn lanes.
Technorati Tags: Portland, Unicycles, Unicorns, NW Cornell Rd, Portland Photos
11 June 2009
Kid Sex Change! Inappropriate Stick Figures! Naughty Logos!
... which of course, is supposed to be KIDS EXCHANGE, but that doesn't quite scan either, because I don't know about you all, but where I come from, you're supposed to keep your kids – not exchange them for something else.
Though some new parents might think that a MacBook Air (for instance) would be a pretty good trade. Depending on the context and the kid, of course.
Read the article and be warned: some of the logos come up with images that border on the NSFW.
Technorati Tags: bad logos, design accidents, awkward design, inappropriate design, graphic design, logo design