More publications...

This was another calendar I found. I think the picture is bad, I wish there were some closeups, but the description seems interesting. It was made by a collaboration of designers who took much care with the typography, using Avante Garde. They said they used different hanging shadows for each character, giving it extra flair. It also works as a personal planner and comes with a pen.

This was CSPD's annual report. It really caught my eye because they didn't use softwear for the photos and typography. They simply used a camera and a dry erase marker on different surfaces. I thought it was an unconventional spin on a conventional report.

This is the Hudson Gavin Martin Identity book. Its basically an identity based on the idea of things come in threes. It's a great concept because it's a traditional phrase that people have heard growing up and the designers have remade it into an identity. I love the cover of the book, and the back cover photograph.

Winners of the 2009 ID design annual in packaging

I was sifting through ID's design annual and I chose to show some winners from the packaging part.

 

I really liked this one. It's the reinvention of the first aid kit. It has a great integrated handle and it looks clean and simple. If they had redone this product and moved away from the clean minimalistic design, I don't think it would be as successful.

This one was picked because of its  egg carton, eco friendly egg carton material, and homey colors scheme. I like the nest thing going on in the package and the fact that its not a gift box necessarily or a gift bag... its a gift egg carton, that even has some "nest" qualities about it.

 

The other winner was, ofcourse, .... Coke. I have to give them credit, even though they are a huge raging corporate monster; this new aluminum bottle is a great redesign of the their original glass bottle. Its modern yet traditional. 

Design Publications

So I was looking through some popular design publications to get an idea of what the competition looks like. I found four good ones including Print, ID, and How Magazines.

 

Print magazine seems like a good all around for graphic and fine arts. They do a lot of exposes on different media artists which I think is great because you can get an idea of what the professionals are doing out there in different media forms. 

  

I like ID mag because they have simple categories named like live, work, shine, play, trend, eat, wear, etc. They also have a great website where you can download their 2009 design annual. I think ID is a great reference and research magazine.

How Mag is kind of what the title implies, more of the how. How to get a job, how to go to an interview, how to forums which go through a multitude of different subjects. I would say this is less about what is interesting and more about getting you out there to get a great job and produce great work.

 

Typography Products

When I was researching for our publication project, my fellow classmate found a website with really awesome products that included typographical elements. Here are some that I thought were interesting.

 

I've seen shirts out there that say things like eff papyrus or make fun of other typefaces or just have a cool layout of different letters or words. But I liked this one because it's like a type specimen shirt, it includes the whole alphabet.  The other reason I like it is the simplicity of it. There are no colors, no other images, just type.

  

This is a product I've never seen before. I find the colors vibrant and modern. I like that the first word you see is stand. I like the san serif type and I think it would be a very interesting thing to put in your home. Its the perfect product for the typo-pheliac.

 

This is almost a little too intense for me! I feel like I would break it or something. This picture kind of confuses me though, because to the left all the type looks like its on a straight line, but the close up, the type is all jumbled. Either way, I think its another great thing for the grand typographer. 

Some Excellent Examples of Type.. that could be used for production design

 

The biggest reason I was drawn to this piece was because I don't even  know how I could try to create something like this. The type is gorgous because it uses all different faces but somehow it's still coherent. The colors are extremely beautiful in my opinion too. This would catch my attention walking down the street.

I thought this was a good example of photoshop. The shadows on the actual typeface and the shadows on the road look realistic to me. And I really enjoyed the concept because you have this big metropolitan street with nothing but cars and buildings and the message says integrate.

 

I chose to share this one because I thought this could be used in an interesting way in different media. It would like nice on the web, on a poster, other print and product media, etc. I like the 3D effect and the wood effect.

 

This one I actually know how to do, I just picked it out because I like it visually. I did something like this with peas. I like the clearness of the texture, the shadow, and the color contrast. Green's my favorite color, that's probably what got me. Also I think this would work in production because you could do this with a number of things and its simple, people would get this.

Packaging is the New Advertising

So I was browsing through a very creative packaging forum and found a couple packages that I thought were worth showing..

 

I really liked this one because its completely opposite of your average bag of chips. Not only is it not a bag but the shapes in the packaging represent the iconic Doritos shape. I thought it was very well crafted.

  

This package I thought was really nice for the woman demographic. It's clean, interesting, unique; It also comes with a case that protects the phone. I haven't seen anything like this so, to me, its a very nice package design.

 

This one I thikn is really great. There's actually a series of them that I think is even better because the different color headphones have different faces. I love how the logo is the mouth and the product is a pair of winking eyes. It's very catchy; a good use of the product showcasing the package and vise versa.

Type and Stuff

I was looking at the swissmiss design blog and found some different things with interesting concepts that included type.

 

I thought this was really funny because it kind of goes through the timelime of type fads in serif and san serif. You can see a bigger version here since its funnier when you can read the red type. I even just like the simple design of this poster and how it has a dotted line that shows when this person went to art school and learned the differences between serif and san serif.

I also like this poster because of the simplicity, the varying line lengths, and the "owns" going down the middle. Again, it adds a funny quality by putting famous designers next to the material or thing they used in their artwork.

This is the rebranded version of Kulula. I enjoyed this picture because they, once again, use typography in their favor. They point out the co-pilot, the front door, wing #1 and #2, and the one that got me chucking was the "black box"... just in case.

Cd Covers

I was taking a look at the production of cd covers today since they vary so much in design to demonstrate the right emotion or look the musician wants to portray. So I visited non other than the GIANT commercial corporate website of target.

Here are some I found interesting and why...

I found that there are a couple of categories that cd covers sold at target fall under. This one is under the "interesting portrait" category. There is a lot of variation in the creativity of this portrait and this one I found to be on the more interesting side because of the framing hands and yellow lines. I really like how the dealt with the typeography in that the same family of type is used and the name of the album, (since it's not michael buble's first album) is bolded and therefor more important in my eyes.

This alicia keyls album I also found under the interesting portrait category. I find that most portrait pieces that I like have graphic or typographic elements helping the portrait. Here there are both. The color scheme and pattern going on in her scarf dress are reflected in the background, drawing your eyes to the right after looking at alicia keys. Then you see the more important part, the name of the album and the artist. I thought it worked together very well.

The other category I found in the CD cover consumer field is the illustrative cover. There is graphic and traditional illustration and a combo of the two. This one I liked because that heart is not really a heart, it's a bunch of squares that form one. On top of that you have these saturated red squares pulling your eye up and down while focusing on these little pictures that are in the squares, including a larger image of a girls face. I also like the hand scripted type, I think it goes well with the tone.

This cover also falls under the illustration category, but is more graphic in quality. This group also uses red elements to pull the eye around the artwork. I like this cover because the color scheme is simple and the images are interesting. Also the typography is the only thing that is brown, making it stand out against the rest of the image.

The other category I found was photographic covers. Some cd covers have white sandy beaches stacked with palm trees and some go for the more beat up look, like this one. Here is an extremely distressed photograph of a windmill. It makes me think 70s, family farm neighborhood, clean air. I didn't enjoy the music as much as the image but you know, it happens.

This one has the same old photograph quality that I liked.

The other category that I feel like is significantly smaller than the other categories, typography. There is image in the background but I like this cover more for the clean typographic design. I just couldn't find a lot of cd covers that had strong typographic qualities.

The Creative Journal

I was thinking of subjects I could write about for production and one thing that came to mind were journals; you know, the ones you buy to write all your secrets in.. or something along those lines. But if you've ever noticed, there are tons of them!




You have your cliche ones, ones that come with a cute little lock, arty ones, keepsakes, and just "I need something to carry around so I don't forget my life". All of them are pretty much laid out the same, with the same lines (some further spaced out than others for the amateur journal-er) but they all give the artist a different vibe. Here are some I found, that you can buy, that I found interesting.

This, I feel like, is your typical "I want a journal where I can express my feelings about life". It's got a feminine quality, a free flying, cough-falling, quality. It's typical, but it has a good aesthetic.

The moleskine. It's a major brand in the contenders of journal-ing, diary-ing, sketching, listing, planning etc. etc. They make one for all uses. I like this choice because it's not creative, but you are the one that makes it creative. You can make it whatever you want and I feel like the lack of a creative cover or image lets you do what you want with it. I think cover images can put creative limitations on your journal inadvertently

 

I like this one. It's similar in layout and functionality as the moleskine. It has a little more artistic decoration which I enjoy. The tree is always a great symbol for the growth of a thought or purpose. The colors are soothing and it's geared more towards females because of the color scheme and accompanying butterflies. It's not too out there, but it serves a purpose.

This journal I really enjoy because it takes more expressive liberties while giving you creative directions at the same time. I also like this one because of the title, "Wreck This Journal". It definitely starts out with a motive and will drive certain consumers to buy it.

As you can see, it says "fill this page with circles". Like I said, it gives you direction, but do you think that every person who has this drew the same circles? Nahh, they all drew different weird, quirky, silly circles that basically describes a little bit about themselves. This journal was produced to be creative personal expression in a container.

This page says "Hide a Secret Message Somewhere in this Page". I really just like this one because it has those candies I can't remember the name of glued to it. Maybe the secret is I'm a secret glutton even though I'm dead skinny. I just really like the way this thing was put together because you can express yourself in all these different forms but it gives you a direction to go on. I think that's the biggest setback with creative people, they know they have all this creative energy in themselves but they don't know what to do with it.

Ultimate Online Production Design

I was meandering through different "creative containers" on google for my next blog post because I need to research different containers for my packaging class. I obviously ran across the container store again, already thoroughly searched earlier, but they have a service I find compelling enough to talk about.

They will design a "space" for you; whether it's a closet, home office, laundry room, or garage etc.

I chose the home office since I don't have a "real" closet, pantry, or laundry room; the garage for my building consists of non-permit street parking; and my laundry room is all for one and one for all.

After choosing the space it asked me what the dimensions of my room were...

And then it asked what kind of finish I wanted....

I wanted bamboo but the website was giving me some issues. It seems like you have to click and preview all the selections before it will actually let you continue.

After it asked me about the finishing, it wanted to know, pretty comprehensively, what kind of stuff I wanted in my space.

I chose all the options in the "desk area" and the essentials for everything else. Sad to say though, when I clicked continue it took me to a "give us your phone number and we'll call you back!" type of thing. I won't lie, I was completely excited for a this is what your room will look like experience but it seems like they need time to put things together for you.

I chose this for my topic because I think it's a great concept; easily designing storage space for the humble hard worker to the I don't do anything myself money making pedigree. Even though its downfall is not showing you what your space could look like, it is interesting how they easily direct you through simple options to enhance your space.

Two different production design portfolios

I was searching the web for different examples of production design and ran into two different portfolios. One was called Stirstudio designs at stirstudiosdesign.com. What they basically seem to be doing is designing websites and a video, and a portfolio cd for the client. The clients are generally one person with a service to offer or a group committee like a extracurricular dance program. Here are some snapshots of their website.

  

 

The other website I visited was tkcreate.com which offered what looked like it produces identity work and customized portfolios. Here are some images from there...

 

  

  

  

I thought both sites were quite decent but I felt much more attracted to the second one. First, because it has a classier appeal. Second, they didn't seem so restricted by just cd design and webdesign. I just felt like the first site's portfolio was not strong enough to just include those items. I liked the professional looking production projects in the second website.