Brand Design Blog, News and Ideas

Coming up to the New Year the internet is becoming flooded with the ‘best of’ lists for 2007.

Here are a few of the best 2007 design listings out there.

• The best of CSS Design for 2007
• Graphic Design Inspiration
• Web Design and Functionality

If you have any other great design lists, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

I’d like to just say a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to Everyone. 

I hope you all have time to enjoy the day with friends and family.

Have Fun! 

I recently sent a question regarding Effective Business Promotion to the Mind Your Own Business Podcast and was fortunate enough to have it featured as the topic for the day.

Mind Your Own Business is a great Podcast which talks about business issues relating to the entrepreneur. The podcast is paneled by Guy Kingston and John Richards, two successful business entrepreneurs from the UK.

My question to them was to discuss what are the most effective forms of business promotion.

It’s a broad question and being in promotion myself, I expected the same old answers.

Answers such as, it depends on your unique business area and your unique target market.

Which of course it does.

But the question was asked to prompt some discussion on the subject, which may reveal a few different ideas on the topic. Which it certainly did.

So make sure to have a listen to their podcast on effective promotion which you can find here.

It’s definitely worth a listen to hear their perspective.You’ll find some great information on general marketing topics, but also some real nuggets of information about topics such as strategic alliances.

Thanks to Guy and John for featuring Crimson Fox on their show.

Back in Disney’s hey day, they created some animation reels that feel more like documentaries than just cartoons for children. Here’s a great example of their vision for the future of highways and the automobiles that run on them.

Some of their ideas have started to become reality. But unfortunately, Disney’s vision lies in a perfect world of endless money and materials.

In the real world, most of this technology would simply be stopped by the cost of upkeep and repairs.

If anyone knows the date of when this animation was actually created, I’d be interested in hearing the answer.

Enjoy.

Credit where credit is due. I first saw this video at myextralife.com.

I know I’ve said that you may never need a design book again with internet services such as Flickr around…

…But, if you’re stuck for gift ideas for the designer in your life. You could do worse than to purchase one of the great design publications from this list over at You the Designer.com

A blog I read recently asked the question:

Is good design just a formula?

In the situations he describes there are certainly formulas that work. Magazine cover and movie posters, often have a similar feel or structure. They might not all be pretty but they have had time to refine a design ‘that works’ for the market they are intended.

With the web, design has yet to reach a true working formula, Trends are moving towards solutions that work to fulfill their intentions, but we are yet to see a definitive design model that does all the things necessary to be great. Draw a reader, deliver a message, function well, be easy to use and in many cases, make a sale.

Design needs to carry a purpose. We should be designing to fill a requirement, whether that be function, communication or usability.

Design without purpose is simply artwork. Nice in and of itself, but it doesn’t fill a need.

Many designers see their work as an attempt to create a piece of art that appeals to their peers. When in actual fact they should be appealing to a specified target audience, who’s design sensibilities bear very little in common with their own.

Have a read and let me know what you think. I’ll be interested to hear your opinions.

Hi Guys and gals,

Do you love photoshop? …I do.

If you’re like me, then you’ll be happy to hear that I just stumbled across this blog post that contains 60 great little, free, photoshop tutorials.

I haven’t had a chance to check them all out, but the ones I had a quick look at, are definitely worth your time.

Have a look for yourself at: 60-advanced-adobe-photoshop-tutorials

This evening I’ve had to put together a short show reel for a client, so I thought you might be interested to see the sort of 3D animation work I’ve been up to over the last year.

I’ve used a Royalty Free backing track that came with Sound track Pro for the background music. I think it works quite well.

I’ve also loaded it up to youtube.com to try out the experience. Which I have to say was very straight forward.

The only negative is that youtube needs to compress the file, so that it downloads quickly. The compression reduces the quality of the finished file. Keep that in mind if you upload anything with fine detail.

Anyway…Enjoy.