Mike Monteiro, Design Director, and co-founder of Mule Design Studio gave an awesome lecture titled “F#ck You. Pay Me.” to a bunch of web designers that covers legal contracts and the design business. This is a 30+ minute video that should be mandatory material at any design school.
Tagged: design
Design inspiration: 100 logos in 100 days
One man's goal of thinking creatively each day
Robert at Behance Network took on a personal challenge of creating 100 different logos over the course of 100 days, spending no more than 100 minutes of time on each one. While we can make the argument that most of them can be classified as an illustration rather than a logo, it still serves it purpose of inspiring creative thinking each day.
Infographic design: Netflix vs. Redbox
Infographic design is one of the coolest projects a designer can work on. It allows you a hefty amount of creative freedom, with the advantage of not having to put a lot of emphasis on fitting the design concept into an overall campaign. You can just go to town on the cool factor.
This infographic by Redbox highlights great communication work by the designers for Redbox
There are entire websites dedicated to showing off infographic samples, and one I came across recently highlighted this Netflix vs. Redbox comparison made by the folks at Redbox. The use of color was an obvious choice, but the simplicity and easy readability was definitely something that attracted me to it.
If you’re looking to add a few colorful and creative pieces to your portfolio, an infographic that is well thought out, both in the data on display and the design used to communicate it, can make for a powerful showpiece.
Avoiding bland, cliché photography
There are plenty of stock photography sites out there, and while many of them are expensive, more and more of them offer some great, affordable images to use in your designs. But before you decide on your image, be sure to read through this post at DesignShack titled 10 pitfalls to avoid when using stock photos.
The handshake - perhaps the most overused design cliché of all time
The article covers topics such as avoiding cliché and overused photos, creating bad clipping paths, and avoiding obviously posed photos.
Perhaps the most important piece of advice offered is to shoot the images yourself. A decent DSLR camera can be had for $500 nowadays, and can produce stunning images in the right hands. Beef-up on your photography skills by reading through the great photography tips and reviews at Digital Photography School, or subscribe to a photography podcast such as Daily Photo Tips with Chris.
Regardless if you choose to buy stock photos or shoot them yourself, be sure to make good choices when selecting images for your designs.
133 examples of potential lame clients
WebAppers, a site I normally love to visit, recently offered a giveaway courtesy of yet another pathetic “cheap logo design” site, LogoBee. Potential winners need only comment to win. Not only were the examples of LogoBee’s work absolutely, horrifyingly mundane and pathetic (as expected), but 133 people (as of this writing) offered a comment on why they should avoid paying a decent designer an acceptable wage to obtain a truly inspiring and customized logo.
Potentially lame client communications
I saw this as the perfect opportunity to show off what 133 potentially lame clients might look like if they were gathered into one place.
Good grief, I really had hoped most people had moved past wanting cookie-cutter logos, but I guess not. I would sooner design a logo for someone I know for free than refer them to one of these lame sites.
Cool Web Site: Daily Design Advice
Daily Design Advice (DDA) is a new service from Brandeluxe (the people who brought you Freelance Review) that delivers the web’s juiciest design advice and insights at the start of every working day (M-F).
Advice on the site is brief, bit-sized chunks that you can read in under a minute, which is one reason I like the site. Be sure to check it out, and subscribe to the RSS feed if you like it.
Loads of free fonts for designers
Rather than contribute yet another blog post listing boat-loads of free fonts, I figured I would just shoot you a few quick links to other sites that list them.
Plenty of sites list free fonts in their blog posts
Smashing Magazine is a great site for finding lots of free resources. This posting lists 20 great fonts, but there are plenty more if you have the time to go through them.
Another cool site is InstantShift. Among the many free font lists available at InstantShift is this one listing 36 free fonts, and this one, listing 35 more fonts.
There are plenty of other blogs out there that list fonts available for free, requiring only a Google search to find them. Of course, you could always start with the king of all font sites, DaFont.
Logo Trends 2010
For many years, successful logos were built from beautiful shapes. They were usually one color, or perhaps they incorporated a few colors. Now, designers have begun to look at the actual surface of the shapes as an entirely new canvas that can be addressed in myriad ways. Good draftsmanship and good ideas are still crucial to the process, but surface effects now add entirely new levels of meaning.
LogoLounge.com takes a look at the latest trends in logo design
That’s just one of the observations made by LogoLounge in their 2010 Logo Trends article. As always, this annual article is a must-read.
Design survival: Finding design inspiration outside the digital world
With just a few years under your belt as a graphic designer, you’ve no doubt come across a time or two when you experienced a complete and total lack of creativity; a sort of designer’s block, if you will. If it hasn’t happened to you, you either haven’t pushed bounds of creativity yet, or you’ve been darn lucky. Either way, it WILL happen.The best way to fight it is to seek-out and find creativity in places and things that you wouldn’t normally look for it. The key is getting your butt out from in front of the computer screen and into the real world. For some, it’s easy to do – for others, it’s not as simple. Where to go to look for inspiration? And where to find it once you get there?
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Tips for creating a better portfolio
Whether you’re a graphic designer or photographer, your portfolio is your best sales tool; so it only makes sense to make your portfolio the very best it can be. In 20+ years of being in the design business, I’ve seen some really great portfolios that left a long-lasting impression, and enough bad ones to pave a freeway with.There are no set rules to arrive at a successful portfolio, but here are some sure-fire ways to set it on the right path. These tips apply mostly to a Web-based portfolio, but most also apply to a print version as well.
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