You Should Know: Amy Martin
I'm so excited about Amy Martin's design style I can hardly contain myself. I happened to be image-Googling "retro-futurism" as research for an upcoming project and one of her posters showed up in the search. A few clicks later, I've developed a designer crush the size of Pangaea.
Book Review: Caffeine For The Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain
From time to time creatives in our field are bound to run low on creative juice. Like many others, I've recently felt my brain needing a good creative spark to get going. I started looking for a couple of outlets that would give me this creative spark with some requirements in mind: something I could do fairly quickly and preferably away from the computer screen. I wanted to get back to the basics of being creative.
As luck would have it, I came across "Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain" by by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield.
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Timeline Views of the News
I've recently been doing a bit of research on real-time, data-driven timelines. Here are a few of the solutions that generally fall into the news/search results category. These are less visual and more functional, but that's what I was after in this case.
Insanely Awesome ExpressionEngine Tools You Can’t Live Without
Recently, some people have asked me how we build ExpressionEngine sites. Although how we build a site varies with each project, there are definitely certain add-ons we find ourselves using all the time. There are so many great ones out there (and new ones being released all the time) I thought it would be cool to share some of them in a blog post. Feel free to add your comments about the ones you like to use.
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Making It Work : 7 Things I Learned About Design From Project Runway
After an agonizingly long wait, Project Runway is finally FINALLY! back on the air. That means a whole new season of tight deadlines, crazy challenges, and design drama. Sounds more than a little familiar. Although it's about fashion, designers of all make and model can identify all too well with Project Runway. There's a lot of real life mirrored in the reality show: you get a project and you need to hit the ground running with an idea, you then have a limited time and budget in which to realize it, and before you know it you're presenting something that you hope is presentable. Over the years Project Runway has inadvertently illustrated a number of lessons that apply to graphic and web design just as much as they do fashion. Here are a few that have stuck with me:
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Viget Design Mob: Fabric, Patterns, and Spoonflower
Do you ever get the itch to try something new? Maybe it's something outside of your comfort zone stylistically or maybe its taking your well established style into a new medium. These kinds of things are exactly what we try to do when we have our Viget design mobs. Back in July we carved out an afternoon to work on some fabric and pattern ideas that we could host on Spoonflower, a custom fabric web site (and Viget client). With limited time (4 hours) and preparation (1 week) each designer brought their own unique approach as explained here:
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You Should Know: Charley Harper
To get my lazy blogger butt moving, I decided to start posting a monthly series introducing artists and designers everyone should know. I couldn't think of a better place to start than with my current obsession, Charley Harper. This prolific artist used abstracted geometric forms and bold colors to render wildlife in a way no one else had ever done. His work is simple and elegant, and although much of it was created in the 50s and 60s it looks modern even now. Todd Oldham and Old Navy brought him to the masses, and his work is showing up in all sorts of new places. He's someone with a minimalist style worth studying, especially for vector artists and illustrators. If you're not already a fan, trust me, you will be.
Recent Comments
Now this is one great list of add-ons. Thanks so much! I wonder how I’ve managed to live without that :)
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