The “request for proposal” or RFP process for many small graphic design and web design firms is fraught with huge time-wasting and dead-end traps. Have you been caught up in the excitement of getting what seems to be great project opportunity from an established company only to find out “while your offer was compelling, for strategic reasons” they chose some other firm?
Continue reading “When to ignore a Request for Proposal (RFP)”
ArtBistro at Monster.com has released the top 25 US cities for graphic designers and artists. We are glad to see that 4 New England cities made the cut!
Continue reading “Top New England cities for Graphic Designers and Artists”
What has happened to these 10 great graphic design blogs and their bloggers?
Having developed websites by hand as far back as 1995, I have followed the evolution of how websites are made with keen interest, due in large part to my aversion to website development pain. Justin Tadlock’s Hybrid theme framework represents a very welcome leap in website creation pain management. Here are 10 reasons why developing WordPress sites in Hybrid is a pleasurable thing to experience!
Continue reading “10 Reasons to use the Hybrid Framework for WordPress”
The world grows smaller everyday, but in no place does it grow more smaller on a daily basis than Rhode Island! With a metro area of just over 1 million people, there are only so many graphic designers and agencies to go ’round. We have rounded up 14 of our favorite graphic design firms in the Providence area with portfolios we really like or that we know personally. In case we are too busy for your project, you might look up some of these other locals.
In researching logos for children’s toys and clothing stores, I assumed I would find several things which all turned out not to be true, which are outlined below. What we did find instead – a great diversity of design and style – was a pleasant surprise! Continue reading “22 Diverse Children’s Toy & Clothing Store Logos with Commentary”
Font choices can make or break a message. In the 23 examples we created below, we broke the message on purpose to highlight how on a conscious or subconscious level, poor typeface choices negatively affect the message in the copy.
Let’s go shopping in New York City! We visited 27 clothing retailer websites (with some help from Google Maps) and took a look at their logos. What messages are fashion retailers in the Big Apple looking to send with their logos? Let’s take a close look at 27 logotypes.
Continue reading “27 Clothing Retailer Logos from New York City”
Part of the fun of running a graphic design blog is getting to see how people find the site through Google. I recently took a look at my analytics, and found some crazy typos and hilarious search strings! While most of my traffic comes from other designers through Twitter and other graphic design related sites, search still generates a large percentage of traffic – no matter the intent of the searcher!
Continue reading “100 Funny Typos from my Graphic Design Blog Stats”
Get your bib, wet naps, and portable therapist’s couch – we are going out to eat and psychoanalyze 26 succulent and interesting logos designed exclusively for restaurants and eating establishments.
Continue reading “The Logo Psychologist: 26 Mouth-Watering Restaurant Logos and Profiles”
Update: T-Shirts of some of these are now available at CafePress…
My son nabbed Edward Lear’s Complete Book of Nonsense from the library some time ago. It was one of my favorite books growing up. I wondered if it was possible to write limericks about Graphic Design. I penned some (dare I call it) Graphic Design Poetry and now post the results for your amusement and bemoanment:
Continue reading “15 Top Graphic Design Limericks for your Amusement”
How many times have you hung up the phone after a chat with a new prospective client and then immediately slapped your forehead and said “I can’t believe I forgot to ask ______!”. Yes, fill in the blank. You have done this, right? If not, you will shortly. Well, I jotted down my own personal list of forgetful-questions, and did a quick survey of the top 20 results for “questions to ask new web clients” and related searches. Aside from semantic fluctuations, there was zero overlap: we all ask the same stuff. So I present below the best 72 questions to ask prospective web design clients, along with a PDF chart.
Continue reading “72 Questions to Ask New Web Design Clients with PDF Chart”
Boy, the term “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” rings true today. I’m a big fan of M.C. Escher and deeply appreciate and am inspired by his work, both as a graphic designer and artist, and so I was astonished today to find what is likely – directly or indirectly – the archetypal artist for his work.
Continue reading “28 Crazy Geometric Graphic Design Inspirations from 500 Years Ago”
We all need a clever marketing piece from time to time to garner attention and promote our wares as graphic designers. Lot’s of great competition out there! I discovered a secret way of promoting your business though. I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I’m going to trust you in good will with this secret. And what is the secret?
Continue reading “How to Use a Typewriter to Promote Your Logo Design Business”
We collected some of the best logo design tips from the top logo designers and other resources on the web. We sorted them, got rid of overt overlaps and now present to you, dear graphic design enthusiast, the final results. We have here one of the densest, pithiest, and most tip-ladden post on logo design you are going to find. Follow these tips, and you’ll be on solid ground with your design efforts. Ignore them at your own peril.
Continue reading “73 Essential Logo Design Tips and Their Sources”
Last month I posted an article called 19 top fonts in 19 top combinations which caught the attention of Jacob Cass and Smashing Magazine and quite a few other readers as a result of all the traffic that came in from Twitter. I also got a lot of correspondence over the article with a large dose of “THANKS” included, and even a free virtual beer. Why was this article so popular with some people? I know the topic had been covered before.
As the feedback came in, the answer became clear: graphics. Not just any graphics, but specifically the PDF chart attached to the post.
Continue reading “Top 10 Fonts for Graphic Designers with PDF Chart”
For pages 12-13 of my Art House Co-Op “Sketchbook Project” Moleskine, I wanted to do a simple exercise using quasi-isometric shapes. The inclusion of Blackletter type is just totally random. I drew the substructure in pencil and did the black and white work with a Micron .01. The Moleskine paper in this particular book has not grown fond of me nor I of it.
Continue reading “Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, pages 12-13″
Apple just released the all-new iMac 27-inch today, along with a 21.5-inch. The 24-inch model has been retired.
The new iMac monitor is crazy good for graphic designers for several reasons:
Continue reading “The Best Monitor for Graphic Design”
I’ve posted a sampling of recent and past logo design work over at Behance. net. Take a look at the logo design portfolio and then search around the site a little. The interface and presentation are very unique. I really like their approach of creating “projects” rather than just the generic portfolio, though I did simply opt for the simple “portfolio” this time around.
I’m not sure about the efficacy of using third-party portfolio websites in regards to supporting and directing traffic back to a blog. I participated in the Behance network site for two reasons:
As with any new website tinker-tool, we have to just wait and see what happens. It didn’t take long to get signed up and get a pretty nicely-formatted portfolio up and going, so I’m pleased at that much!
For pages 10-11 of my Art House Co-Op “Sketchbook Project” Moleskine, I created a character who snubs his high-class nose at anything green. This bourgeois tea-totaller cannot be bothered with solar-techies, tree-huggers, or GM “Volt” supporters on any level. I also have a fascination with hand-drawn 3d lettering which finds its way into many a freelance graphic designer‘s doodle time, not just my own. I started this one, stopped it, started it, stopped it, and finally finished it so I can stop starting to finish it. It shows 
.
Continue reading “Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, pages 10-11″
Drawing is fundamental to graphic design. Habitual drawing increases the skills of logo designers, page layout designers, and typographers alike. When a designer “makes do” by not sketching on a routine basis, the designer in some ways in shortchanging his or herself. Yes, designers absorb a lot of information from other designers and can “get by” by in the appropriate sense copying the great work of others. But, as some point, all the great design work we should and do borrow from, comes from the hard work of some designer with a good foundation in drawing.
Continue reading “50 Sketches from a Graphic Designer”
I found this great post over at Under Consideration. There are a wealth of insightful comments readers have left about their own reasons for drawing and sketching.
My own contribution is as follows:
“Drawing affords the path of least resistance from the conceptual visual idea to objective visual media. It has the least possible amount of psychological and physical overhead weighing down on and in on one’s inner muse.”
Jump over to the thread and leave your own thoughts…
There are 4 vital ways every freelance graphic designer must divide up their day if they want to continue to develop as an artist and stay ahead of the competition, be it agencies, design firms, or even other freelance designers.
Let’s start with the first 3 you might already be able to guess:
Continue reading “4 things a freelance graphic designer must do every day”
For pages 8-9, I introduce the character of the Mystical Dog King who holds in his hands, the potential of a green crayon. This is because I have found the topic of “It’s not easy being green” to be quite not-easy, and found free associating much easier. First, the dog character is something I came up with in the mid-nineties during colored pencil projects. He just popped up and said “Green is not easy, but I’m easy”. So I started there. The green crayon makes a cameo from page one…because it was easy. Mystery you say? A crown and some clouds with curtains. Yep. Mystery.
Continue reading “Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, pp08-09″
For pages 4-7, I decided I was going to compare and contrast graphite with charcoal. I’ve done a lot of graphite work over the years but never got a grasp of how to use charcoal in a way that approximated my graphite results. I’ve always wanted to sit down and do a piece in both mediums – one familiar and one not – and see what happened. The results are surprising!
Continue reading “Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, p04-07″
Well I thought I had 45 days but now I have about 75 days! Looks like interest in the project was so overwhelming they had to extend in invitation and completion deadlines.
From an email I just got:
As the signup deadline started to approach and people started to receive their sketchbooks in the mail, we started getting two big requests: to let more people sign up and to give everyone more time to complete their sketchbooks. We’ve figured out a way to do some shuffling and have moved the first exhibition on The Sketchbook Project tour from December to January 29th. This will give everyone an entire month longer to complete their sketchbooks, moving the postmark date that they need to be sent in to us to January 4th.
Revised list of dates:
- November 1st – Date to sign up for the project (you did this already!)
- January 4th – Postmark date you need to send your sketchbook out by (keep in mind that the show is a couple weeks after that, so if shipping internationally, make sure they definitely get to us by then!)
- January 29th – The first show of the tour at Art House Gallery in Atlanta, GA
If you have an extra pencil and some spare time over the next 2 months, give it a spin! It cost a few bucks to join but it will be great fun working on artwork everyday. It’s a great discipline opportunity to blow some dust off of your creative window sills, and let some fresh ideas in.
Read more about the sketchbook project.
Art House Co-Op has started The Sketchbook Project: Library. Everyone who signs up gets a Moleskine sketch book to fill up any way they’d like. However, each Moleskine is barcoded and themed. I got mine yesterday, with the theme of “It’s not easy being green”. I immediately misunder-read this as “It ain’t easy being green.” So, my first sketch is wrong. But my second sketch makes good the bad with its own piece of art.
The entire project has to be completed and back to Art House Co-Op by December 1, 2009. From there, it will be on tour across the country with all the other completed sketchbooks.
Continue reading “Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project: Library” and daily Moleskine sketches”
David Airey has posted a breakthrough logo design tutorial revealing the fastest way to get the best logo design possible. Go take a gander and then wander back here.
Since his new logo is on the internet, I have a license to use it on my new limited edition product line in recognition of his achievementness with design. I now present to you 2 products, both designed with the same loving care with which David created his stunning tour-duh-force new logo.
Continue reading “Breaking through to logo design beauty: David Airey Hat and Socks memoribilia”
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