When you get to own a color as much as Coca-Cola does, you don’t need much more around it.
The wrong color can make a great logo look like something a friend left on your bathroom floor the morning after a party.
Take a look at this brief article at FastCoDesign, then ask yourself: How much does color define a logo? Truth-be-told, you should probably spend nearly as much time thinking about your color use as you do designing the logo.
InspiredMag has put together a list of design trends for Keynote/PowerPoint presentations. If you routinely build presentations, it’s worth taking a look. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a Keynote presentation that doesn’t follow these (mostly) obvious rules of design.
Extensis recently revealed the list of top 10 web fonts used in 2013. According to data collected from the professional web font service WebINK, designers and developers used Myriad Pro most often for their projects, a position it also held in 2012.
New to this year’s list of top 10 used fonts are Fakt Pro and Museo Sans. These both continue the typography trend toward modern san serifs. Fakt Pro by Thomas Thiemich is a fresh “Helvetica alternative,” as are several others already on the list such as Theinhardt and Aktiv Grotesk. Museo Sans is a geometric sans serif by Jos Buivenga, that has a warm and somewhat retro feel, not unlike its Top-10 stablemate Proxima Nova.
Extensis has upgraded Universal Type Server, the latest version of the professional-grade font server which helps organizations manage, organize, and distribute their font libraries. Universal Type Server 4 delivers brand new auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe Creative Cloud applications, including InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and InCopy. If you work in small groups or at a large agency, you’ll find UTS a great server-side font manager.
Alien Skin has announced the upcoming release of Snap Art version 4. Snap Art is their natural media application for photographers and artists. It works with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, and is also a stand-alone application. Snap Art 4 will cost $99, with upgrades for $69.
As any iPhone user can tell you, the Apple-supplied EarPods (or earbuds if you have an iPod Touch) absolutely suck as far as fitting. Though they’ve improved greatly with each hardware update, I still can’t find anyone who doesn’t say they fall out of their ear constantly because they simply don’t fit right.
Enter EarSkinz. For $11 you can get these covers that slip on the supplied EarPods/earbuds that claim to not only fit better and add comfort, but improve the sound quality as well. And of course, the 11 color options allow you to choose one that best fits your style.
Many times you are asked to find the CMYK equivalent of a particular Pantone color. If you don’t have a ridiculously overpriced Pantone to Process conversion guide available, you can use Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
There are a lot of theories out there as to how you can get the most accurate CMYK values (some area quite complex, such as first converting to LAB color before converting to process colors, etc.). But if you’re a pro you already realize that no Pantone color is going to match 100% in process printing anyway and the Pantone Color Bridge guide is the best and most accurate conversion method.
The Pantone Color Bridge Guide is expensive, so these are the fastest ways that I’ve come across that give the best results. (more…)
Free icons from They Make Icons. Not a huge collection, and most can be found elsewhere, but nice nonetheless.
An effective packaging design can attract more customers and persuade them buy your products. Here’s a collection of package designs for your inspiration.
Design is about communication. It is about helping clients to realize their goals through a design solution geared toward their questions, concerns, wants, and needs.
Skeuomorphic vs. Flat design is the subject of the article, but in reading it, I found that the arguments made apply to design in general.
