Th Cool Hunter is a useful site. There slogan is "Roaming the UK and the globe, so you dont have to
", and that's basically what they do, it's like a database of cool things from bars to fashion to travel back to design. If your looking for something fun and interesting. This is the place.
Casa Son Vida is located in the Balearic Islands off Spain, on the Island of Mallorca, where humans have lived since 6000–4000 BC and where more recently, tourists have over-crowded every beach. But Casa Son Vida avoids the touristy kitsch and aims much higher. It is in the exclusive Son Vida community, just 15 minutes from the capital of Palma. Casa Son Vida is in fact a reno of a 1960s Mediterranean villa, but it has been turned into an fantastic, sprawling luxury residence, designed to attract the young, discerning and bold, who are confident and design-savvy enough to know what they are looking at. An amzing piece of architecture where i plan on living one day. Maybe.
Haha. Funny, but also probably true (mixed with a bit of botox here and there). This is another great example of adverts that make you laugh, and for me that's the most important thing. Adverts that catch your eye, and have a humorous side to them. This obviously wasn't slapped on billboards across the country, but could be good to use in a portfolio, shows you have creativity and are going to be a laugh in and around the studio. If only this was a real product eh?
Genius idea here, Seen as though my wife is Dutch I had to include something from the Netherlands, but I would of used this anyway. It's little smart ideas like these that are the most interesting to look at. They make you smile and think to yourself, "Aaaah, that's good that". This was the 2010 FIFA World Cup supporters t-shirt. Sadly, they didn't use them in the final.
This book is so good. Written by Michael Perry, the book is a "curatorial celebration of the hand typography of my peers." He selected 50 designers whose typo works he likes, splashed their best creations all over the book, added a few words about them, took pictures of their studios and random snaps of types found around the world. A really nice book to look at, brightens up your day.
Catch me if you can is a good movie, with the likes of Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio starring. But what usually sets the mood for any film is the title sequence. You can have boring credits rolling across your screen, or you can have well made, eye catching sequences like the one from this movie created by Saul Bass. He has made other sequences like this in the past, such as 'The man with the golden arm'. Similar style, similar music and similar greatness over other title sequences. Its smart and humorous, and will also keep you watching until the end sequence starts.
Identity Designed is a showcase and forum for those involved in the design of brand identities.
That's about it really, but it has some really good identity design on there. Worth taking a look at. Some really creative and inspiring work.
I've got to put Creative Review on here, because its such a useful and interesting site for all students. It's constantly updated with new stuff and it's going to be a useful tool in my final year of studying graphic design. Loads of inspiration on there too. Also has a handy blog where people studying to actual designers in the business are all ocmmenting on stuff and communicating. Great site!
Designed by Marc Bessant, I really like the Portishead album cover, basically because I love typography in design and that's all there really is in this., But as we know, "Less is more"..This interview i found with Marc, talking about the design, best describes the album cover in my opinion:
“after the ten year gap from the last record I knew the only visual which had stuck in the public eye had been the ‘P’ character, it was an established brand which I wanted to not only reintroduce but reinforce. We were keen to avoid anything ‘conceptual’, no puns or noir imagery, that was all dead to us, I wanted to present a box, which simply holds the music, with the least amount of information on it which would ultimately say everything – essential minimalism – which I felt captured the eastern block coldness of some of the music I was hearing in the studio.”
Ty Lettau is the designer manager of Adobe. Here he has created a series of minimalist album covers. What I think appeals about these series is the fact they become a puzzle. Without looking at the title you try and guess the cover. With album covers being some of the most iconic design of our time it’s not wonder designers are fascinated by them. No other piece of design lasts this long or is as instantly recognisable as an album cover. Movie posters come close but only few films can say they have iconic posters.
These aren't used designs, Ty has just created them for fun...because he doesn't sleep. But they could be couldn't they??
The Burj Dubai, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the tallest man made structure ever built, at 828 m (2,717 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009. The building officially opened on 4 January 2010, and is part of the new 2 km2 (490-acre) flagship development called Downtown Dubai.
The tower's architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, owings and merrill of Chicago,. In June 2010, Burj Khalifa was the recipient of the 2010 Best Tall Building Middle East & Africa award.
The total cost for the project was about $1.5 billion; and for the entire "Downtown Dubai" development, US$20 billion. Yes, an insane amount of money, but you get what you pay for, and the burj Dubai is a simply awe inspiring piece of architecture
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Portakabins tend to be stacked besides each other and on top of each other. Therefore I decided to use that fact in my designs, I decided to cut out a rectangle in the top right of the red block of the logo (below) to resemble a 'kabin'. Using flash I produced a moving animation showing the 'kabin' lowering into the red block, to then create what looked like a 'kabin' (the initial red block) once it connected into place. The type would then appear once this movement had taken place.
A portable building, or demountable building, is a building designed and built to be movable rather than permanently located. A common modern design is sometimes called a modular building, but portable buildings can be different in that they are more often used temporarily and taken away later. Portable buildings (e.g. yurts) have been used since prehistoric times.
The most familiar modern type of portable buildings are designed so that one can be carried to or from site on a large lorry and slung on and off by a crane.
Modern usage
The modern portable building, or "knock-down" building, was first developed by United States firm Porta-Kamp in 1955. The first portable building under the trade name Portakabin was built in 1961 in England. Currently the UK's number one supplier of portable buildings is Elliott Hire. Elliott Hire is a division of Elliott, which is a subsidiary of Algeco which together with Williams Scotsman is the largest supplier of portable accommodation in the world.
Portable modular buildings have various uses. They are often seen, alone or in groups, as temporary site offices on building sites (where they are often stacked two high with metal stairs to reach the upper level; see also construction trailer). Other uses for these and other types of portable buildings are as guard sticks, rural offices, on-site changing rooms, etc. Some portable buildings are very complex by joining units these forming large office blocks. (even over several floors). These are often disguised as a normal building often with brick style cladding and a traditional pitched roof. Tara Park developed by Liverpool City Council have even used portable buildings to create temporary/permanent domestic housing for communities complying with UK building regulations and disable access.
Due to population increases in many areas, portable buildings are sometimes brought in to schools to provide relief from overcrowding. Portable classroom buildings often include two classrooms separated by a partition wall and a toilet.
This is the logo I was allocated to produce an advertisement 'end sting' for. End stings are usually at the end of an advert which show the company logo in a smart and clever way. As you can see I got given the logo from the company Portakabin, which basically specialises in delivering portakabin's.
Monday, 23 November 2009
For our latest project we were allocated teams of four and given a team name...ours being Meerkats. We were given a door, and thats about it really...we could literally do anything, which always makes it harder when you have no boundaries to work within. Great times:)
Saul Bass was born on May 8th, 1920, in New York City, and died on April 25th, 1996 in Los Angeles, California. He was one of the great designers of the 20th century and also a master of film title design. During his 40-year career he has collaborated with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Otto Preminger, who are considered Hollywood’s greatest filmmakers. Amongst his most famous title sequences is the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm for Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm(1955),knowing that the arm was a powerful image of addiction, Bass had decided to choose it, rather than the famous face of Frank Sinatra, as the symbol of both the movie titles and the promotional posters. The cut-out arm caused a sensation and Saul Bass reinvented the movie title as an art form. By the end of his life he had created over 50 title sequence designs for Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock and many more film directors. He later decided that he found the Man with the Golden Arm sequence “a little disappointing now, because it was so imitated”.
The design shows that Bass is not afraid to show the cut-out jagged edges, despite the birth of postmodernism which brought the onset of computers and digital art. In my opinion this was intentional as it brought the image a more powerful impact to the audience and almost a shock factor, and with the Frank Sinatra image not being the main focus, it also added to the popularity of the image whereas many would of believed that, in theory, that decision would have had the opposite effect. Bass’ sequence design for Preminger not only influenced other designers to try out his style but Preminger himself very much liked the feel of Bass’ design and that resulted in every succeeding Preminger film carrying Bass's distinctive design mark, as shown here: Bonjour Tristesse, Advise & Consent, Bunny Lake Is Missing, Exodus, The Human Factor, In Harm's Way, Saint Joan, Such Good Friends and perhaps his most famous, the dissected body graphic for Anatomy of Murder.
Here is the title sequence design for The Anatomy of Murder (1959). You can see how bass has replicated the style of The Man with the Golden Arm, using the cut-out effect and the black abstract like image.
Director Spike Lee would later replicate the Bass-designed poster art for his 1995 film ‘Clockers’, for which Bass threatened to sue.
You can see the parady in Spike Lee’s design for Clockers. How he has imitated the black body cut-out and the block rectangular shapes in the background with the two colour pallette. All can be seen in the image for Bass’ The Anatomy of Murder.
The purpose of a movie’s main title sequence is to deliver necessary credit information while stylistically summarizing the film. A good film’s title sequence should be a metaphorical configuration of the film itself. In this respect, and no main title designer has been as influential on the industry as Saul Bass. The influence of graphic designer Saul Bass (1920-1996) on pop culture can be seen virtually everywhere today. During his 40-plus year career he’s designed corporate logos for AT&T (and it’s forerunner Bell), Continental Airlines, Exxon, Girl Scouts, Kleenex, Lawrys, Minolta, Quaker, Rockwell, United Way, and United Airlines to name a few.
Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and then the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives. It is used in critical theory to refer to work of literature, drama, architecture, cinema, journalism and design, as well as in marketing and business in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Postmodernism is an aesthetic and political philosophy, which was the attempt to describe a condition. Especially since the 1920s' new movements in the arts, while post modernity focuses on social and political aspects and innovations globally, especially since the 1960s in the West. The English Dictionary refers to postmodernism as "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."
Postmodernism in graphic design for the most part has been a visual and decorative movement. Many designers and design critics argue that postmodernism, never really impacted graphic design as it did with other areas of art. Postmodernism never really stuck to graphic design as it did with architecture. Some argue that the "movement" (if there ever was one) had little to no impact on graphic design. It could be argued that graphic design practice and designs may be the root of Postmodernism. Graphic design started to get popular towards the end of the seventies in the form of Graffiti and Hip Hop culture's rise. Expressing yourself in a graphic form became a hobby amongst school kids and people alike.
The Man with the Golden Arm" gained instant notoriety: rather than a glossy photo of Frank Sinatra, the ads prominently displayed a woodblock-like arm that represented heroin use. This graphic symbolization of themes (for example, the directional arrows coming off the words "North" and "Northwest"), along with the use of jagged typefaces, basic colors, and a disturbingly off-kilter graphic style were instantly distinguishable from the conventional, realistic images of the period. Bass himself credits the "mood and feeling" of the images, over the mere use of graphics, for the success of this style. With all this said, Bass’ design relates to postmodernism in the sense that it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and doesn’t rely on graphics but the “mood and feeling” the images give the audience. Bass has made a breakthrough by making a normal poster design into a work of art basically, and graphic designers ever since have been following in the footsteps of the style he brought to the world from 1950 onwards.
Bibliography
-No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism, Pg 10,18,38
On the other hand, this logo i dislike. The Mozilla Foundation. The Kerning is all wrong, the image is most likely from clipart. Basically no imagination was used in the creation of this boring logo.
Another smartly designed logo for Yoga Australia that i used in my presentation. The posture of the women creates the map of Australia.
This is the logo for Toblerone, which i used in my Pecha Kucha presentation. Toblerone originated from a town in Switzerland, the name of the town translated to 'the land of bears' and if you look closely at the image you can see an image of a bear cleverly placed into the mountain. nice and clever little design.
For the Who Is It brief, we were given an image of a man and had to create a life for them using only what we see and our imaginations. What they are called, what they have done etc...I was paired up with Mike Ngotu and we combined our stories to create a final one. The poster below is how we visualised the story.
Nigel Foster was born into a large wealthy family who owned a business named MK ltd., which specialised in lending money and helping with loan repayments. He had a very strict disciplined childhood, which he strongly disliked and always longed for more freedom. He was a quiet boy who most of the time liked to be alone. Sometimes he would sneakily pack his school bag with his toothbrush, a torch, his action man toys and his sleeping bag with his favourite peanut butter sandwiches, and skip school to go and sit beside a lake 2 miles from his house, just listening to the ambience and peacefulness.
In 1967, when Nigel’s father died, he took full ownership of the business and married to his wife Jess Foster, and had two children, Rose and Sarah Foster. Struggling with running the business and the stress of having a family to look after, Nigel slowly started to become attached to alcohol, he would come home from work late, drunk and then polish off eight to twelve Jack Daniels a night. His wife and kids were ashamed to see there once respectable father and husband crumble, and eventually left him four years into their marriage.
Nigel was devastated and began to drink more and more as the days went past, he knew what he was becoming and what he had lost but could not get himself out of the dark abyss he was currently in. Six months had passed and the business was steadily declining into recession, Nigel decided to sell and did so. He received $1,550,995 for the business and had started rehab for his alcohol disorder. He moved to New York and bought a high-class eight-bedroom house on the outskirts of Manhattan. Things were looking good, but he was lonely and had nothing he was passionate about. With no job and nothing to do to occupy his time except smoke cigars and lounge around his house all day, he decided to take up gambling. Roulette, Blackjack, Poker, and Baccarat you name it he played it. It began to get more and more serious, betting ridiculous amounts of money thinking it will never end, all he could think of is that his life was one big addiction.
One morning he decided to mortgage his house and put the money on a 50/50 chance on the roulette. A local television company was aware of what he was doing and decided to get people to vote for which colour he was going to put his money on, in the end the votes were 65% in reds favour and he went with the publics decision. He walked out with over $1.2 million dollars, which he decided to give to charity, everyone knew his name.
He apparently packed his bags with a toothbrush and a sleeping bag. He felt that it brought his childhood memory back where he had no worries and was free basically.
He was last seen buying peanut butter on CCTV, June 28 1984, at 07:47 PM.
Nigel was missing for over 20 years, no one knew where he was, what he did and if he was even alive. In 2004 he was seen applying for the New York police department, where he was surprisingly accepted, as they believed he had the intelligence and determination to become a successful officer.
Nigel Ryan McKenna was born in a city named flint in the U.S state of Michigan in 1952. He was born into a large wealthy family who owned a business named MK ltd., which specialised in lending money and helping with loan repayments. He had a very strict disciplined childhood, which he strongly disliked and always longed for more freedom. He was a quiet boy who most of the time liked to be alone. Sometimes he would sneakily pack his school bag with his toothbrush, a torch, his action man toys and his sleeping bag with his favourite peanut butter sandwiches, and skip school to go and sit beside a lake 2 miles from his house, just listening to the ambience and peacefulness. Every year through school Nigel achieved the record high score for most of the tests he sat, even though his attendance was way below par. The teachers believed he would go on to do great things, and before he knew it he was leaving school and heading into the real world. In 1967, when Nigel’s father died, he took full ownership of the business and married to his wife Jess McKenna, and had two children, Rose and Sarah McKenna. Struggling with running the business and the stress of having a family to look after, Nigel slowly started to become attached to alcohol, he would come home from work late, drunk and then polish off eight to twelve Jack Daniels a night. His wife and kids were ashamed to see there once respectable father and husband crumble, and eventually left him four years into their marriage. Nigel was devastated and began to drink more and more as the days went past, he knew what he was becoming and what he had lost but could not get himself out of the dark abyss he was currently in. six months had passed and the business was steadily declining into recession, Nigel decided to sell and did so. He received $1,550,995 for the business and had started rehab for his alcohol disorder. He moved to New York and bought a high-class eight-bedroom house on the outskirts of Manhattan. Things were looking good, but he was lonely and nothing he was passionate about. With no job and nothing to do to occupy his time except smoke cigars and lounge around his house all day, he decided to take up gambling. Roulette, blackjack, poker, and baccarat you name it he played it. It began to get more and more serious, betting ridiculous amounts of money thinking it will never end, all he could think of is that his life was one big addiction. One morning he decided to mortgage his house and put the money on a 50/50 chance on the roulette. A local television company was aware of what he was doing and decided to get people to vote for which colour he was going to put his money on, in the end the votes were 65% in reds favour and he went with the publics decision. He walked out with over $1.2 million dollars, which he decided to give to charity. He packed his bags with a toothbrush and a sleeping bag and lay under a bus stop on the streets of New York. He felt that it brought his childhood memory back where he had no worries and was free basically. Nigel was homeless for over two and a half years, and in 1976 he applied for the New York police department, where he was surprisingly accepted, as they believed he had the intelligence and determination to become a successful officer. This was a turning point in his life and Nigel married again in 1984 and began a new life with a new family. Sadly in 2004 Nigel was diagnosed with lung cancer and died at the age of 52 and was described by his wife and family as a special man who was mostly in the wrong place at the wrong time and who was loved by all.
This is the delicious 100% chocolate 'Malteser Munch' created by myself and my good friend Craig Evans (who has toe nails bigger than my toes) we put blood sweat and tears into the making of this but unfortunately it didnt make the top three in our class. Which in my opinion is an injustice. Just look at it. Its a work of art.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
This is the specimen sheet i designed for my typeface 'Ouch', I kerned the letters so they connected which made the letters appear as abnormal shapes in a way. The sharp look of the letters look clean and modern put together. Overall quite a nice sheet :)
Here's a typeface i created on Fontstruct, nothing special! Its called 'Strangulation Station'....don't know why really, maybe the 'T' give me the name??
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