Brand Design Blog, News and Ideas

A number of blogs have touched on this post by logoorange.com regarding logo design trends for 2008.

If makes some good points about style directions that we’ve noticed moving from late 2007 through to 2008.

A number of the styles, including organic 3D and transparency, take advantage of the electronic presentation of their brand.

While they do look nice, these logos will run into trouble with many ‘real world’ applications, such as embroidery and screen printing.

Pretty isn’t always functional. But functional doesn’t need to be ugly.

The ability to take purpose and function into account when designing is key to creating successful design solutions.

Check out the full article here.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and a is conference that brings together great speakers from around the world.

The TED web site houses a gold mine of presentations given on topics ranging from Business to the Environment, from Culture to Innovation.

With talks by guests such as Jane Goodall, Al Gore and Brian Greene each FREE video presentation is packed with insightful and interesting information.

Each speaker is given (approx) 18 minutes to give the talk of a life time on their chosen subject.

There is some really great stuff on the site and I would highly recommend that you take some time to check it out.

I’ve also selected a category on design which I think you’ll interesting – “Design like you give a Damn” features a range of great speakers talking about all aspects of design.

If you found this interesting, leave me a comment and let me know.

For those of you who enjoy the creative possibilities of Photoshop – here’s some great animal cross fruit & veg creations.

If anyone has seen any other examples of this sort of work, feel free to post it in the comments.

So what is so good about Drop.io?

Well, first let me explain what it is.

Drop.io is a web site that offers file exchange services. Much like an ftp area within a web server, you have the ability to drop files into the server and have them picked up anywhere in the world where web access is available.

Sounds good, but most people have access to their own ftp area. Why do I want this one?

Well, for starters, it’s free. Up to 100mg is available free to anyone world wide and you don’t even need to sign up to use or create a work space.

You simply create a folder, directly on the home page. Put a password on that folder and you’re ready to go.

No sign up. No email input. Drop.io will log your IP address to in case of illegal activities, but the server you create is completely secure and unreadable by anyone without your password. Including the drop.io staff.

But wait – There’s more!

Once you have your own server. You can use it’s rss feed to monitor when the folder has been updated. Great for group file exchange

Another very useful application is the ability to accept facsimiles and voice messages. Each drop.io folder has a phone extension assigned to it.

The number can receive faxs which it will then turn into downloadable pdfs and voice messages will be converted into mp3s.

I find the fax particularly useful because I don’t have fax requests often these days, but they do happen. The cost of a separate line and fax machine to receive these messages can add up. If I can get a service like this for free, then why the hell not.

Of course, you may find that 100mg is simply not enough space for your file exchange. So, for $10 US you can purchase 1gb pf space which will be held for 12 months.

No bad at all.

I’ve already used many of the functions of this web service and I’m sure to use more in the future.

If any of you decide to give it a try, please let me know what you thought and if it was useful for you.

Drop.io can be found here. Enjoy.

Here’s an interesting little post that I found the other day, that walks you through how the Google logo was created and how it’s colours were chosen.

In my opinion, the Google logo itself is nothing for a designer to marvel at.

But…

By keeping the logo simple, the design doesn’t have many flaws (a key to successful design) – Allowing it to become one of the worlds most recognizable symbols today.

It’s always better to go with simple and clean, than over-complicated and over-worked.

You can read the article at: www.wired.com