Think Smart Designs Blog

30 Brilliant Beer Package Designs For Your Inspiration

2012-01-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

In this article you’ll find 30 Brilliant Beer Package Designs that will boost your creativity. Furthermore, the selection includes also some unusual designs such as Black Market Goods’ rocket design or John Varvators Stars’ microphone design. Nevertheless, you’ll find some cool and simple designs, as well as some great colorful and innovative ones. Also, I’ve checked and rechecked Ivan Maximov’s work and I assure you this is really a beer package and not a coffee one!

Roscoe’s

Rialto

Brabante

Student Work – Thorleifur Gunnar Gíslason

Lakefront Brewery

Student Work – Simon Ålander

Sigtuna Ace Of Spades

Student Work – Ivan Maximov

Pembroke Craft Brewery

McLaren Vale Beer Company

Golan Brewery Bazelet

WilliamsWarn

Black Market Goods

JC Dark Lager

Intuition Ale Works

Pikes Stout

John Varvatos Star USA

Manic’s Merrymaking Must-Haves

Motorman

Braufactum

Student Work – Oliver Lan

Monteith’s Single Source

Spooks Ale

Hopper Whitman

Au Yeah!

Pavo

Courthouse Brewery

Kudos Beer

WORK Beer

25 Innovative & Fancy Wine Package Designs

2012-01-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

This is a collection of 25 fancy and innovative wine package designs. In this cheerful time of year, I think that all of you are looking for the perfect gift! Nevertheless, while a wine bottle is not what everybody dreams of, it might still be a great present as it can be a powerful way of transmitting a message. I invite you to see for yourself! Therefore, enjoy, be inspired and share with your friends or community if you will like this article!

From Nadie Parshina with love

Curious Nature

Manifesto Design

Vi Novell 2010

Atipus
AGDA Poster Entry

Dominique Falla

Burlesque Rosé (click for full view)

Marianna Greco
Dolce Vita Wines

Revelry Wines

The Measure

The Measure
Pink Pigeon

Bootleg Wine

Vi Novell

Atipus
Padre Divino

Yevgeny Razumov

Eno Wines

LP/w Design

Bloody Good Wine

Mike Weir Underdog Wine Co.

Insite Design

Finca de la Rica

Dorian

Donna Maria

Motherland
The Supernatural

Innhouse
Femme Fatale

Boldinc
Volute: Aluminum Bottled Wine

French Rabbit Wine

Yellow+Blue
Five Rows Craft Wine

Insite Design

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Amazing Works Of Contemporary Artist Bernard Pratz

2012-01-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

Bernard Pratz is a French contemporary artist whose talent stems from his ability to take pieces of junk like plates, ropes, toys, ribbons (basically anything he can get his hands on!) and put them all together to re-create famous artworks and individuals. The results are breathtaking at times – his work shows a tremendous amount of vision & invention, plus lets face it he must truly have the patience of a saint.

30 Best Tutorials on How to Make Effective Business Cards

2012-01-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

Business card can be termed as one of the Best Business marketing tools. Apart from containing your contact information, it also gives a glimpse of the business as a whole. Hiring a designer for designing a Business card may not be feasible for start ups and small business. On the other hand, even some established Business men want to design a Business card themselves to give the perfect shape to their creativity. For all those inexperienced people, we have collected really helpful tutorials on how to make a Business card.

Stylish Print-Ready Business Card Design

With this tutorial, you can learn how to create a print ready dark themed business card.

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Business Card Tutorial for Print Ready Cards

Learn how to design a print ready Business card so that you don’t have to design first and correct it later according to the printer settings.

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How to Make a Space-Themed Business Card

In this tutorial, author will demonstrate how to design an alluring space-themed business card that igives new edges to your creativity.

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How To Create Old Grudge Style Print Ready Business Card

In this tutorial, you can learn how to create a cool old grudge looking print ready business card in Photoshop.

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Create Business Card Design for Architects

Here author will discuss how to make a one-sided, standard sized business card design for architects using Adobe Photoshop CS4.

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Unusual Presentation Your Business Card

Here is a useful tutorial how to create unusual presentation for your business card.

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Business Card Design Walk-through

Take a walk-though to the process of Business card designing.

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Business Card with Image

This tutorial is specially helpful to those who want to add an image in the Background of Business card.

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How to create a nebula background business card

In this tutorial let us see how to create a dark nebula background visiting card. Business cards are play a very important role in impressing the clients and once they are made differently and good looking then you are half done with earning the client. This tutorial helps you in creating one such business card and this is how the card looks in the final output.

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Create Web designers Business card

Look no further, if you want a Photoshop tutorial to design a business or visiting card for your Website Design business.

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How To Create A Colorful Business Card Template in Illustrator CS4

In this tutorial author will design a bright, colorful and “happy” business card design from scratch in Adobe Illustrator CS4.

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Business Card Design Project Walk through

Take a walkthrough of the design process of making a Business Card with the designer.

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Create a Molten Chocolate Business Card

In this tutorial, author will design up a single sided business card that features molten of delicious chocolate in background image using Photoshop.

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Creating a Cartoony Print-Ready Business Card

In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to create a print-ready business card in Photoshop. Designs made for printing have to be prepared in a special manner so check out the technique.

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How to Create a Small Business Card Size Calendar

One of the way to promote your business card is having a small calendar printed on the back, why not try to do it yourself with this tutorial.

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Design a Cool Print Ready Business Card in Illustrator & Photoshop

Learn how to design a cool print ready business card in both Illustrator & Photoshop

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Designing a Professional Business Card in Photoshop

Author has created an easy-to-follow tutorial showing the steps to create a fantastic business card.

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Create a Fun Print-Ready Doodled Business Card Design

Check out this wonderful tutorial on how to create a Print-Ready Doodled Business Card Design.

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Create a Grunge Print-Ready Business Card

In this tutorial, author will guide you through the process of creating a grunge print-ready business card using Photoshop.

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Blue Grey Visiting Card

Here author is telling you how to create a logo and a Business card for your Business.

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Creating a business card

Check this helpful tutorial, full of interesting and important tips on how to make a perfect Business card.

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Make Swiss Design Inspired Business Cards in 30 Minutes

In this print design tutorial, you will witness a process for creating Swiss Style themed business cards using Adobe Illustrator and some tools and items that you can easily obtain from your your local office supply store (or online).

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How to set up a business card (Video Tutorial)

Learn how to make and set up a business card in this video tutorial.

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How to Create a Stylish Business Card Template

Following this tutorial you’ll be able to understand the architecture of a business card design and create a personalized version for yourself.

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Designing a Business Card

Again a wonderful tutorial on how to design a Business card.

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Design Business Cards in Adobe Photoshop

This tutorial will guide you through the process of designing business cards and postcards in Photoshop as well as providing press-ready templates to get you started.

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Design a business card in Photoshop tutorial

Learn how to design a business card in Photoshop.

Best New Business Card Ideas For Your Inspiration

2011-12-29T14:46:00.000-08:00

I have decided to post some more cool business card designs. Some of these business card designs have really cool cutout shapes including dieline cuts, cool combinations of papers, embossing, cool use of materials, impressions, metals, and inks. I hope that you enjoy.
You might also enjoy our past Cool Business Card Design Finds:

The perfect business card for a toy company.

A business card shaped like a camera. This might be the coolest business card I have ever seen.

This business card is located in a coffee stained burlap sack. This is a very innovative idea for a coffee company’s business card.

This food company’s business card has a bite taken out of the side.

A Greek restaurant has their business cards on broken pieces of clay pottery.

A piano repairman’s business card folds up into a piano.

A marriage counselor’s business card looks torn and taped back together representing what she want to repair your marriage.

It looks like a drawn playing card - a very nice visual.

This hair and make-up artist’s business card has faux hair.

A business card on a piece of cardboard.

A minimalist technique sometimes works well too.

A business card that folds out into a mini-portfolio.

A business card that looks like a folder.

This business card looks a bit like a car parking ticket with the use of perforation (but on an angle)

An illustrator’s business card.

Business card with use of perforation and natural colors.

A business card on a cd.

A business card with use of a bow and an unusual shaped card.

A dentist’s business card with use of floss.

I like the use of a combination of different types of paper and inks.

Really classy business card with combinations of paper and printing techniques.

The same with this card.

Look at thread sewn into the business card for this clothing company.

A really cool business card inside a plastic bag for a forensic research company.

This Acupuncturist’s business card uses pin holes for the business name.

This manuicurist’s business card has cut outs for fingers.

I like the usage of 2 different types of paper and embossed letters.

This business card looks like an impression from writing on a notepad.

This is an inkless business card.

An innovate usage of the “Hello My Name is” stickers

This fiber artist shows off her talents with the creation of her business card.

This business card uses an innovative shape.

It might not be the most beautiful card but it stands out because it is different.

A great business card for a show because it is on a ticket.

A nice use of color and shape.

I like the use of sketching / drafting for this creative thinking company.

I love the illustration and color usage on these business cards.

Best Tips To Make Sure Your Logo Is Flexible

2011-12-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

I receive many questions from both clients and other designers asking me “What makes a good logo?” Instead of focusing on what makes a logo look good (because we all know we can argue that point for days based on personal taste), I thought it would be best to focus on what makes a logo work well – a better question to ask yourself while designing a logo is “How flexible is the logo?”

Below are 5 tips and attributes your logo should have in order to work well, increase its flexibility and help it work better in more situations.

1. Works well in black, reversed-out and full color

A good logo should be created to work in black, reversed-out (white) and color. Many of times designers start to create their logo by introducing color right away. This often takes away from the concept because your mind is more focused on the “pretty colors.”

2. Works well in various sizes

Logos should be scalable and work well both large and small sizes. Try to avoid logos and marks that are overly complicated. As the old KISS saying goes, “Keep it simple, stupid!” Especially with logos being implemented favicons, on signage and business cards, logos need to be size flexible.

3. Ambidextrous

Logos should be able to work both horizontally and vertically. Typically, in most cases, I provide my clients with two variations to their logos, especially if the logo design was intended to be vertical – horizontal logos seem to work well on websites. It’s always good to make sure you’re logo is a switch hitter :)

4. Flexible logos are vector-ized

When creating a logo, you should be using vector-based software, such as Adobe Illustrator. This will give you the ability to provide various file formats and scalable logos. Typically I like to provide clients with various types of file formats, this way they have different files to implement into various programs they use.

5. Readable

Not only does a logo mark need to work well at various sizes but so does the text. When creating the mark at a smaller size try increasing the character spacing. This will help improve readability, especially when shrunken down and viewed from afar. Are you able to scale your logo without losing clarity?
Is your logo flexible? What other tips would you add to the above to make your logo work well in more instances?

Useful Ways To Improve your Designs by Using Proportions

2011-12-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

Proportion is usually unnoticed until something is out of proportion. When the relative size of two elements being compared seems wrong or out of balance it is said to be “out of proportion”. For example if a person has a head larger than his entire body, then we would say that it is out of proportion. Most of the time, we can only value proportion when we see designs or things which look distorted and are therefore not pleasing to the eyes. The human body is the most universal standard of measurement. Things in nature are also used as basis in proportioning. Designs and other stuff that doesn’t arrive with these standards may look ugly in the eyes of many. In architecture and interior design, we consider proportions in creating spaces between rooms and furniture. We do not use a big chandelier in a small dining room. We also do not use a very huge door for a mere bathroom. This is done this way to make the designs look friendlier and more comfortable.

Hence, every designer will try to make his works proportionate in order to satisfy himself, his clients and those who look at his designs. In this article, we will give you a few tips on how to make your designs look better by using proportions.

1.Use the Golden Ratio.

When we speak of proportions, the Golden Ratio is usually used. The Golden Ratio is also sometimes called the golden section, golden mean, golden number, divine proportion, divine section and golden proportion. The golden ratio (symbol is the Greek letter “phi”)is a special number approximately equal to 1.61803398874989484820… (and so on). It appears many times in geometry, art, architecture and other areas.
It is called “golden” because it is said that whenever the phi value is used, the outcome is the most aesthetically pleasing design. The golden ration was used in the Parthenon, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the Great Pyramids of Giza and many other artistic works.
For designers, you may want to use the golden ration in your works. Take a look at Wes Pack ‘s tutorial on Using the new Divine Proportion tool in CorelDraw.
Below is what we call the phi bar. It is shown how the golden ratio is used by dividing the entire length of a and b with the width a which is equal to phi or 1.618 which is also equal if we divide the shorter length b with the width a. Of course, the width and the longer length is of the same distance. Remember, we are speaking of proportion here.

Below are more examples where in the golden ratio is being used. We can see the human hand bones, the pyramid, the golden rectangle and other art works based on this proportion tool. For you to have a more in depth information, you can find sources at the end of this article wherein you can gain more explanation about the divine proportion.

2.Use the body and face tutorial.

It is said that the basis for proportion is the human’s body and those found in nature. Some artists are having a hard time to think if their work is really proportioned or not. Take a look at the picture below and use it as a guide in making proportioned bodies and faces.

3.Consider the relationship of one element to the size of another element.

In making designs, sizes vary. The sizes of the elements we use make our work proportional. Consider the advertising poster below as an example which made use of this principle. The huge leaf was being carried by ants. Of course, ants are smaller and the leaf is bigger. Other than the size of the elememts, we can also observe that what makes the design proportional is the number of ants carrying the leaf. If only one ant carried the huge leaf, then it is not proportional.

4.Consider the height, width and depth of one element to another element.

Aside from sizes, we also look into an element’s height, width and depth. The poster below shows a tall big jar. Inside it are of course tall type characters which gave emphasis that they were inside the jar while the type in smaller size seems like merely printed on the surface of the jar.There are actually many ways in applying this principle especially when you deal with tall or long objects. There is a tendency for long elements to look smaller on the farther part and bigger on the nearer area.

5. Similar elements together.

It is always a principle that similar elements should be placed together. Hence, in considering proportions, elements similar in character and elements which have a common feature should be put together. The design below shows a woamn wearing a pink blouse with square pattern prints. Blue squares in different tones overlay the blouse. On the other side, a flower whose petals are given emphasis thorugh thin lines is shown.Thus, thin lines were also used to overlay it. As we can see, squares were combined with squares and thin lines with thin lines.

6.Make areas in your design.Areas are essential parts of a design.

Make use of areas that are not monotonous. Use major and minor areas to make a better output. The figure below shows the difference of using a bad and good proportion when we speak of areas.

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7.Give a dynamic eye direction in using areas.

Spaces should be arranged in a manner not composing or halves, quarters, thirds, etc. Make your designs more dynamic by giving direction to the eyes but still creating a relationship between the areas. A page layout shown below is done in a manner that it won’t look boring to the readers. Instead of perfectly dividing the page into halves of thirds, the layout artist made irregular sizes of the areas and even inclined the entire layout. This is a smart and creative way of layouting.

8.Consider the relationship of size of one area to the size of another area.

In using areas, as mentioned in number 5, we need to make use of major and minor spaces. In this manner, we will be able to consider the differences of the sizes of areas. We have to be careful not to make too much difference in areas for this will make them unrelated. Big difference in areas may also ruin the harmony of a design. In the web design below, you can see that the designer used various area sizes. This is an effective way of separating some of the parts like the smaller colored rectangles on the top which signifies the menu while the parts that go together were placed in one area. But despite that, we could still see the whole design is together and in harmony with each other.

9.Use harmony.

Harmony is an agreement between the shapes that stresses the similarities of all parts. We have to make sure that shapes fit in its proper positions and spaces adjoining other elements in the design. The business card shown below used shapes whose harmony was maintained because of its usage of lines and curves. Though they come in different colors, they still fit together.

10.Used to determine distance.

The use of proportion is also important in determining if the elements are near or far from each other. It shows a sense of isolation. This way, we are considering the amount of spaces between two or more elements. The advertising poster below shows a mountain which is far from the man. This is obvious because the man is larger than the mountain and the letters on top of the mountain are also smaller. This is how we deal with elements if we want it to appear near or far. Nearer objects are bigger while farther ones are smaller.

Sometimes, it might not be easy to use proportion especially if we try to stick with the rules. But we don’t really have to compute everything so that it will be equal to phi. By merely looking at our works, we could easily determine if it is proportioned or not by comparing them to the things in nature or the human body. When you work on a project, keep in mind that proportioned outputs look more pleasing. Though, some people choose to use distortions which is another form of art.For now, before you try distorting, try working with proportions first. More people can actually appreciate proportions for it is what their eyes are used to look at.
Artists and designers out there will surely agree that proportion-as a principle in design- is truly very much important to come up with a totally great project!

25 Amazing Framed Papercuts by Peter Callesen

2011-12-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

Peter Callesen thrives on creating art from paper, rather on it. Using paper only as a source, he creates beautiful sculptural works. Each work is made by cutting out one sheet of paper, and using the removed scraps to create figures, buildings, and other objects. His work ranges from 2D to 3D. These sheets range from small a4 size or as big as 7m by 5m. The materialization of a flat piece of paper becomes a magical process for him. Callesen’s interest grows while the possibilities as practically endless.

For more information about Peter and his other works, check out: Petercallesen.com

Saving Himself

Ghost

In the Kingdom of the Dead

The Curtain

On the other Side

Broken Palace

The Short Distance between Image and Reality

Paperman

Crying My Eyes Out

Not As Fast As His Shadow II

Bound To Be Free

Broken Flowers

Mirage

Cowboy

Red Running Poppies II

The Core of Everything

Fire Escape Unable to Escape Fire

Holding on to Myself

Fall

The Lost Sheep

Unter dem Nebelmeer

Water Always Finds its Way

Angel

Apple Blossom

Broken Bird

30 Amazing Wedding Ideas On Place Card Holders

2011-12-02T17:17:00.000-08:00

Prior to organizing your wedding seating arrangement, see to it that your wedding guest indeed confirmed their attendance from the wedding invitation that you sent out. In the event, some of your party guest haven’t made it to the RSVP deadline, do get in touch with them and let them know that you need confirmation before finalizing your wedding plan.

Part of the thrill of a delicious meal being served at the reception is the visual ambiance of your party celebration. A crucial factor as well is the location where the wedding party guests must be seated in order that they don’t have to move in and around every single table to get their seat. This can often be accomplished simply by showing a place card on the table or putting a seating chart or escort cards noticeably at the entry way to the reception venue.

Table place cards really are a necessity to be certain that your wedding guests sit at the right table and have the appropriate meals. Your wedding guests is going to be celebrating together with you, interacting and enjoying. The place card holders you pick out can influence the entire decor of your reception venue. Make use of them to create or accentuate your wedding theme.

Two Ways For A Sleek Seating Arrangement

The more common way is to put a seating card together with the guest’s name facing their seat.
A modern way is to present every table a number and designate guests to their table number.

Celebrate your day of love and marriage with these 30 captivating place card holders and seating cards.

1. Cork Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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2. Vintage Silver Fork Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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3. Ship Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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4. Napkin Holder Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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5. Bride and Groom Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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6. Pomegranate Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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7. Key Escort Card | Wedding Ideas

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8. Seashell Seating Card | Wedding Ideas

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9. Dessert Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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10. Party Guest Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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11. Table Place Mat Seating Card | Wedding Ideas

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12. Acorn Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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13. Guest Table Number | Wedding Ideas

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14. Pilgrim Cap Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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15. Glass Ornament Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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16. Wedding Favor Name Card | Wedding Ideas

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17. Pot Escort Card | Wedding Ideas

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18. Calligraphy Tile Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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19. Woodland Log Table Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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20. Purse Table Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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21. Hand Print Cookie Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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22. Fall Leaf Table Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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23. Wedding Guest Name Card Polaroid | Wedding Ideas

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24. Delicious Apple Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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25. Shell Seating Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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26. Chalkboard Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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27. Guest Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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28. Outdoor Leaf Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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29. Cork Table Place Card Holder | Wedding Ideas

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30. Scrabble Tile Table Place Card | Wedding Ideas

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Creating interesting and whimsical place cards can make your wedding guest genuinely feel extraordinary more so when you hand made the place card for all of them. You can easily design customized place card that will amaze most of your friends and family members to the table. Your wedding photographer for your momentous event will certainly capture those precious details for your wedding album.

History of Color Wheel Part 2

2011-11-18T19:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to my salute to the gorgeous, fallible history of color wheels through the years. The first post on color wheels rolled through the mid-1800s, when Enlightenment-era values of close observation and the scientific method exploded many then-prevalent theories, while simultaneously expanding the flat color wheel into bold new shapes.

Take mathematician Tobias Mayer’s color triangle, first introduced to much hullabaloo in 1758 and shown above in a simplified version by physicist Georg Christian Lichtenberg. Mayer’s clear-eyed premise reflected his quantitative background, while proving remarkably useful for everyday color mixing by working artisans. Mayer began with the notion of three “pure” colors - red, yellow and blue - and chose cinnabar, gamboge, and azurite as the optimal pigments to represent each. He migrated these pure colors to the three corners of a triangle, then filled in the triangle’s body with progressive gradations between these pure shades. Mayer’s original triangle included 12 gradations on each side, representing the maximum degree of variance he believed the human eye could perceive; Lichtenberg slimmed this down to 7 gradations per side. In Mayer’s triangle, one could step from one pure-color corner to the next and know at each step exactly what proportion of red, yellow and blue comprised that color. The triangle’s central block had an exactly equal proportion of red, yellow and blue (r4y4b4, in Mayers’ notation). Mayers’ full color-triangle added a black-and-white axis to this mix, showing how systematic additions of these colors brightened or darkened colors.

All in all, Mayers’ algebra brought his color universe to 819 shades - woefully short of the dizzying range in any modern paint store, but still not too shabby. Mayers’ thinking spawned numerous other color triangles, including the 3-D version pictured below by Johann Heinrich Lambert.

Mayer lives on in our modern incarnations of color as CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black/white). Any crackling cathode-ray television with its glowing color pixels operates more or less according to his precepts.

The painter Philipp Otto Runge was the next German to corner the market on color wheels and their related manifestations. His 1807 model took Mayer’s notion of three “pure” colors, plus black-and-white, and spread these ideas over and inside a 3-D color sphere (complete with cross-sectioning). Goethe gave Runge a conclusive shout-out in his 1810 landmark work, Theory of Colors, but Runge’s color notoriety was short-lived. In 1839, his model gave way to Michel Eugène Chevreul’s hemispherical system (below).

Chevreul arranged his 72 colors in a hemisphere, with similar proportional relationships between shades as those posited by Mayer. The use of black and white as a lightening or darkening agent was alluringly called the “nero” factor. Chevreul’s biggest scientific accomplishments spill beyond his color hemisphere: a past-master of animal fats, he invented an early form of soap and pioneered the study of gerontology while living himself to age 102. He also described a phenomenon now called Chevreul’s illusion: the way two identical colors of different intensities, when placed adjacent to each other, seem brighter at the edge where they join.

In 1900, Albert Henry Munsell’s cylindrical system (above), brought color theory into the twentieth century with an appropriately futuristic visual model. Munsell opted for a three-dimensional cylinder, in which the three axes showed hue, value (lightness or darkness), and chroma (color purity). In quantifying color using these three values, Munsell’s model described colors more scientifically than previous models, which themselves cracked the color wheel concept wide open in favor of more ersatz shapes: Hermann von Helmholtz’s cone in 1860, William Benson’s tilted cube in 1868, and August Kirschmann’s grandiloquent sounding “slanted double-cone” from 1895.

Munsell’s color cylinder was the stake driven in the heart of the history of daffy color wheels. A few models have emerged since Munsell - notably CIELAB and CIECAM2 - but Munsell’s system is still used by, among others, ANSI to identify skin and hair colors for forensic pathology, the USGS for matching soil colors, in prosthodontics for selecting tooth shades for dental restorations, and by breweries for matching beer colors.

Have color wheels rolled entirely out of the historical frame? Mercifully, not quite. COLOURLovers spies unusual color wheels in everyday life, like this panoply arranged by Bright Lights Little City (an online shop specializing in lampshades made of cocktail-umbrellas). In an equally liquid vein, MOMA offers its Color Wheel Stick Umbrella. Design Observer co-founder Jessica Helfand praised the infinity variety of wheels in design in her book Reinventing the Wheel.

However inadequate, scientifically speaking, it is to describe the color-spectrum using a wheel-shaped model, there’s an irresistible fitness about marrying circles with color. As a geometric figure, circles possess a certain strength, a self-contained quality in which a smooth, unperturbed body can be imagined to hold an entire universe. Sometimes the pod will crack, spilling its contents with rampant energy, or maybe the circle holds indefinitely. For an entity as slippery and ubiquitous as color, only a circle can be imagined as a perfect enough shape to contain all of it.

Color theme test by Toxiclibs.

History of Color Wheel Part 1

2011-11-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

How many ways can you reshuffle the rainbow? Three, as a matter of fact, if modern color theory is to be believed: Pantone numbers for print designers and brand managers; hex, RGB, and CMYK values for web designers; and CIELAB and CIECAM02 color models for the scientific community. But while the science of color models is largely settled, all that rigorous theory still doesn’t quite squeeze out the sense of fallible humanity underpinning the history of the color wheel.
All it used to take was a load of brilliant chutzpah, a dogged sense of orderliness, and just a smidgen of actual science to impose your personal order over the color universe. This post and the next salute the color giants of centuries past and their often-fanciful, sometimes inaccurate, but always wildly rollicking wheels.

Slightly dotty in the science department but much-loved by generations of art historians and philosophers, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Theory of Colours coincided with this wheel (left) he designed in 1810. In the book, Goethe rebutted Newton’s color-spectrum theory by imagining darkness not just as absence of light but as its own active force. As light struck dark, in Goethe’s view, their battle threw off observable sparks of color.
During the week, Goethe devoted himself to such legend-building stuff as inventing the Italian tour, discovering the human intermaxillary bone, and giving voice to Sturm und Drang and Weltliteratur. But Goethe spent his weekends breathing on glass panes, prodding chocolate-froth bubbles, and flapping his arms in broad daylight, then jotting down how colors changed in each observation. The resulting catalog is an impressive confluence of exhaustive scientific inquiry and pointillistic word-art.
But Goethe had quite a few predecessors, some more wedded to the wheel-shape in quantifying color than others. (It’s an oddly Germanic list, too, these would-be color scientists.) In 1686, Richard Waller’s "Table of Physiological Colors Both Mixt and Simple" offered a handy table for cross-referencing colors one might find in nature samples. If a shade didn’t match exactly, Waller explained, it was a simple matter to locate where on the table’s color-continuum that shade might fall:

The table format, as is obvious to us today, had serious limits primarily because of the vast number of shades that fell between the divisions in color in any table. Even vast catalogues like the Pantone-esque Viennese Color Collection or Complete Book of Samples of all Natural, Basic, and Combined Colors, compiled by Johann Ferdinand Ritter von Schönfeld, in 1794, couldn’t catalogue every single color – and comprehensive catalogues also tended to be huge, unwieldy and expensive.

In 1769, Jacob Christian Schäffer – a naturalist, inventor and German Evangelical superintendent of Regensburg – tackled this natural limitation of the table format in his own color system. He gave blue, red, and yellow pride of place in his hierarchy, explaining how these primary colors could be combined to create a multitude of shades in between:

No wonder color scientists hewed back towards color wheels and other means of suggesting an infinite color continuum. [Image via] Ignaz Schiffermüller was a Viennese butterfly expert whose 1775 color wheel was designed to help him accurately identify the colors he encountered in nature studies:

The color wheel above rolled hard on the heels of Moses Harris’ 1766 model from the Natural Systems of Colors. This particularly fine specimen was the British entomologist’s attempt to explain the color interplay he saw in his own favorite kind of bugs, flies:

Although it would be some time before the color wheels concept finally took over, the notion of suggesting color relationships through smarter information design had taken root.

Next Time History Of Color Wheel Part Two

Best Ways To Make Your Personal Branding Successful

2011-11-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

What is personal branding? Personal branding is something everyone in business and marketing wants to do, but many fear that it cannot be done well. In terms of marketing, branding helps a business focus on what defines their services and products and sets them apart from the competition. In the business world, branding can be extremely helpful. However, for a business professional, the notion of personal branding may seem like a bridge too far.

Does personal branding lead to selling out or effective communication?

What is the Goal of Branding?

Image courtesy 123RF Stock Photos

Perhaps semantics get in the way of discussing personal branding. To a certain extent the goal of personal branding is to communicate to others what you can do better than anyone else. Your brand includes your reputation and the day to day skills and results you achieve.

To a certain degree we engage in personal branding already with how we dress, what we drive, and how we interact with colleagues and customers. Personal branding has gained traction with the prevalence of social media, though it’s a topic that dates back to Tom Peters’ article “Brand You.”

Is Personal Branding Necessary?

Image courtesy 123RF Stock Photos

Perhaps you’ve always worked hard. You have a great reputation and a solid resume. Do you really need to think about personal branding?

In certain industries a personal brand may not pay off right away, but consider Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft. Scoble worked at Microsoft, but he built his personal brand by interacting with customers as himself, not as a faceless Microsoft employee. When it came time to part ways with Microsoft, all of the networking he’d done as an employee at Microsoft migrated with him to his future projects.

This migratory nature of today’s business climate is perhaps the most important reason to develop a brand for yourself. Reporter Shira Lazar says, “The workplace has become fluid, with young people in particular attaching themselves to one-off projects or events.”

In addition, if you hope to advance your career, many businesses are using social media to find new talent. What they look for is someone who embodies what they’re looking for—namely, the right brand (read “kind”) of person. According to Dan Schawbel, the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success and owner of the Personal Branding Blog, “The social graph is filled with CEOs, celebrities, entrepreneurs and people just like you who can be reached through Facebook’s messaging system without any boundaries or restrictions. Facebook is also a talent search engine and part of the college admission and corporate recruiting criteria.”

Schawbel also points out that personal branding is too accessible to ignore it. “Social media tools have leveled the playing ground and have enabled us to reach incredible heights, at the cost of our time.” (Learn more at his article Personal Branding 101)

How Are We Branding Ourselves?

Image courtesy 123RF Stock Photos

If you’re ready to give personal branding a shot, keep in mind that a brand is all about identity and communication. Tom Peters makes the following suggestion about creating your personal brand:

“Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors — or your colleagues. What have you done lately — this week — to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?”

Once you figure out your personal “elevator pitch” for who you are what you are, think of ways you can let it influence your communication, marketing, work, and networking. Jason Keith of Vista Print suggests, “Stay consistent: if you’ve worked hard to come up with a custom logo, marketing tagline or specific messaging in your marketing materials, make sure you’re always using it, reinforcing it and not changing it.”

When Does Personal Branding Go Too Far?

Image courtesy 123RF Stock Photos

Personal branding is tricky, and therefore it’s critical to be aware of the ways that it can go wrong.

Aiming for thousands of shallow connections rather than building up several hundred solid connections may well do very little to advance your career. It may even hurt it. Are you connecting as a person with real desires, fears, and dreams? Or are you just trying to get links, follows, and a higher Klout score?

Then again, we can go in the opposite direction.

Shira Lazar shares about her fellow journalists, “We’re transparent and don’t feel the need to hide.” However, we can cross lines by sharing to much of our family business with our social network. Professional boundaries are critical when building your personal brand.

Inevitably a personal brand may be perceived as inauthentic no matter how hard you try. Ben Yoskovitz of Year One Labs suggests that telling the truth about who you are and what you do can be bold and audacious so long as you tell the truth about yourself. In other words, be yourself, not a marketing parody of yourself.

Another drawback to personal branding is the sheer amount of time it consumes, especially if you’re using social media in order to build your brand with new connections. Social network marketing as part of brand building is the most time-consuming form of marketing.

As you commit yourself to making new connections and communicating who you are, don’t lose sight of the projects you need to do. In that case you’d be all talk and no action.

Personal branding is a process where we learn how to talk about ourselves and what we do. Provided it’s an authentic representation of who you are, you may find the personal branding process liberating.

Would you have any other ideas or comments that you would like to share with us?

Superb Minimalism Food Products Packaging For Your Inspiration

2011-10-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

Simplified package design catches our eye and appeals to our love of freshness. This exploration of minimalism in food products identifies the main elements and aesthetics that work the best in packaging. So in this post, I showcase some amazing minimalism in food products for your inspiration.

Minimalism in Food Products

Walk into a grocery store and you’re likely to be overwhelmed by a virtual explosion of colors, images, advertisements, and product promises. With so many options available, what makes one product stand out over another?

Sometimes it’s not what the packaging adds but what it removes that counts. Simplified package design catches our eye and appeals to our love of freshness. Removing the excess places an emphasis on the product ingredients and quality, an effective marketing decision when promoting something we eat or drink.

This exploration of minimalism in food products identifies the main elements and aesthetics that work the best in packaging.

Neutrals

Think Thin bars, Bear Naked Granola, and The Fresh Pasta Company’s pasta all market themselves as healthy products. Along with losing the extra calories and unhealthy ingredients, these packages have also lost any unnecessary images and colors. See how they stick to neutrals and eliminate too much lettering:

1. Think Thin Image

2. Bear Naked Granola Image

3. Fresh Pasta Company Image

Monochromatic

For each flavor, Flackers crackers, Pop chips, and Noosa yogurt pick a corresponding bold color for each label and packaging. Paired with statement typography, and a lack of distracting graphics, the look is definitively modern:

4. Flackers Image

5. Pop Chips Image

6. Noosa Image

Izze Sodas actually changes its logo image to match the color of each beverage flavor:

7. Izze image

Nothing But the Product

For Talenti gelato, Pom Wonderful juice, and Echo Water, distinctive package shapes are enough to catch a customer’s eye. Simple logos and lettering, a lack of graphics, and clear packages allow the product itself to shine through.

8. Talenti Image

9. Pom Wonderful Image

10. Echo Water Image

The technique is often seen on water bottle packaging, to connote purity:

11. Smart Water Image

12. Voss Image

A Single Image

Justin’s Peanut Butter, Food Should Taste Good chips, and Dave’s Gourmet Sauce use a single image, indicative of each flavor while sticking to a neutral color palette of whites and blacks. By getting rid of extra colors and graphics, while sticking to classic packaging, they prove that you don’t need more than one image to stand out.

13. Justin’s Peanut Butter Image

14. Food Should Taste Good Image

15. Dave’s Gourmet Sauce Image

This approach is particularly popular for products with fruit and vegetable flavors or ingredients:

16. Brianna’s Salad Dressing Image

17. Olade Image

Vintage / Retro / Futuristic

While we may associate minimalism with modernism, the truth is that it can be used by all types of companies and products to enhance a range of different styles. Here are three examples that showcase a variety of personalities:

Vintage

Bonne Maman jam evokes a classic European look with their checkered caps and handwritten script, yet the simplicity of the packaging, colors, and label are pure minimalism.

18. Bonne Manan Image

Retro

Hi-Ball soda’s midcentury bottle shapes, typography, color, and graphics produce a streamlined look for that pops.

19. Hi-Ball Image

Futuristic

Mix 1’s health drinks combine nutritional technology with a pared down, cutting-edge look that speaks to a new wave of products and design.

20. Mix 1 Image

Best Business Card Design: Tips and Trends For Designers

2011-10-20T19:45:00.001-07:00

What does a business card say about you and your business? A lot. A business card is like a face: it’s the first thing people see when they “meet” your business for the first time. And as we all know, first impressions count.

No matter what line of business you’re in, business cards are a way to encapsulate – and solidify – your entire identity. They exist to create a tangible connection between you and potential clients, and if that initial connection comes across as a negative one, the relationship may not flourish.
Of course, business card design is as personal as home interior design– a sleek, modern black and-white interior with blood red furniture might be one person’s lifetime dream, and another’s worst nightmare. So let’s start with the basics of making business cards, the ABCs that everyone should know.

Business Card Basics

First off, you may ask why it’s necessary to have a business card in the first place – especially today, when so many people connect on the internet. The answer is simple: business cards exist to provide necessary information about a company or an individual – such as the nature of a business and contact details – and are usually shared when people meet each other for the first time.

You might already have built up a network of clients – perhaps largely online. But even if most of your business is conducted online, don’t forget that there will still be networking events, talks, conferences and meetings when you can’t whip out your computer.
Business cards contain pertinent information, including the owner’s name, business affiliation and contact information (address, phone number, email address, and website URL).
In the past, business cards were almost always black and white, printed on thick cardstock on one side only. That’s all changed, but no matter what type of design you choose, you still need:

Individual’s name (Joseph Brown)
Individual’s position (Website Designer)
Company (Wonderful Web Designs)
Contact Information (321 Elm Road, Price, Utah, 82134. Tel: (801) 277-7667. Email: jobrown@hotmail.com. Web address: www.example.com)

Often, people choose to copy the Ogilvy ad layout formula when designing a business card. It puts the company logo in the upper left or top part of the card, followed by the individual’s name, with all contact information in the bottom right. It may not be the most exciting way to fashion a business card, but it’s direct, to the point and safe.

Current Trends in Business Cards

Once you have the pertinent information that you want to include, the next step is to decide how you want it to appear. Here are some of the latest trends in business card design, which can give your own cards a bit of je ne sais quoi that you may find is lacking.
Die-cut cards. These can create a beautiful card showing your company’s commitment to design and value. Give your cards a bit of added value by turning every one into a design masterpiece.

Photographs. This can be a great idea when trying to show off furniture, home design, or landscape architecture. Or, include a picture of yourself to “put a face to the name”.

Print vertically instead of horizontally.

Textures. Different materials can make a card stand out from the rest, such as cards printed on leather or engraved in stainless steel.

Foil accents. The idea behind this is that the old card is all spiced up, but may look a bit desperate unless done properly.

Folded cards. More like a greeting card, these usually contain the logo on the front with contact information embedded inside. Folded cards provide real estate to include more information.

Gadgetry cards. When is a business card not a card? When it’s a bracelet, a bag, a fridge magnet or even a paper airplane. Many businesses print their logs and contact information on a variety of different objects, then pass them out.

Office gadgetry. These gadgets seem to serve a more useful purpose than just being an attention-catcher. Contact information written on mouse pads, mugs, coasters and message pads can be an effective marketing vehicle, as they provide entertainment or value.
Plastic cards. These are quickly taking over from paper cards, as they last longer.

A Word of Caution: While you may want to get creative with your card, some critics caution that it’s a good idea to stick with the original dimensions of a traditional business, or they may not fit into potential clients’ wallets or other business card holders. And, if they don’t fit, they’ll probably get thrown in the trash.
When it comes to creating the perfect business card, be true to your personality and style, but don’t let design overtake content. Today’s trends are leaning towards clean, simple designs in neutral colors (or black and white), with big logos on one side and contact information on the other. In a nutshell, less is more. And more can be, well, tacky.
Keep in mind that the goal of a business card is for people to be able to contact you easily – but they have to want to contact you in the first place. If your business cards are bulky, littered with misspellings, missing basic information or just plain ugly, clients might not put you first on their list.

A Tribute To Steve Jobs With Rare Videos

2011-10-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs was himself a revolution.His vision, innovation, and leadership not only changed the world, but he changed our lives as well. His death has made that all too apparent - Steve was our leader. Although I never had the opportunity to meet Steve in person, I have always felt that he was a part of my life. He has been my personal role model for as long as I can remember and I am truly crushed by his passing. I was in the 5th grade when I realized design was my calling. I didn't simply decide to be a designer, I realized that I was born to do this. I was born a designer.

The catalyst to my discovery was only made clear after I used my first Mac.From that point on, I looked at Steve as a beacon to my destination unknown. He followed his vision, and I knew without a doubt that I had to follow mine. I was determined to turn my vision into reality. And I did.There is no doubt in my mind that without Steve Jobs, many of us would have not realized our full potential.His creations have touched humanity and inspired the world over - for that I am eternally grateful. Steve Jobs - A leader, an inspiration, a revolution. May you Rest In Peace.

The First Mac( Lost video of 1984)

Steve Jobs introduces the fist apple store

25 Fresh Ads Featuring Excellent Use Of Typography

2011-10-08T04:17:00.000-07:00

Typography is everywhere, from the web to the print industry. In fact, there’s a lot of talk about beautiful typography in web design, but let’s not forget about the print industry – this is where it all comes from.

What most of these ads have in common is that they use typography in a very interesting manner in order to get their message across. Of course typography alone is great, but here we’re featuring some ads that combine type and images to convey a strong and influencing message. Enjoy!

Freedom or Limitation in Graphic Design – Too much is too bad!

2011-09-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

Graphic design is a vast field and its bounds are nearly limitless. Similarly, there are no limits to the degree of creativity of a graphic designer. Most designers believe in freedom in design, while at the far end, some follow design limitations. But…anything done in excess is bad.

The followers of design limitations hold firmly to the set rules and principles as laid out by the book. While at the other extreme, supporters of design freedom advocate that it gives them the opportunity to explore their creative instincts and come up with better designs. While both aspects are significant in their respective domains, excess of both freedom and limitation can spoil the design.

Drawbacks of freedom in Graphic Design:

Let us first analyze the freedom aspect of designing. How is excessive and uncontrolled freedom in graphic designing a bane?

Time consuming:

Having said that freedom in graphic designing gives you the liberty to explore new and unique trends, it also can be a time waster. Lack of restrictions enables a graphic designer to think of more and more concepts. The more the concepts you think of, the more the choices you will have at hand. The more choice you have to select among, the more time is exhausted on the project. Sometimes freedom in graphic designing becomes detrimental when you have to meet project deadlines.

Wandering away from the subject:

Graphic designing is such a diverse field that excessive contemplating the design concepts can result in deviating from the project itself. Without any bounds, when a graphic designer starts conceptualizing the design, one idea is superseded by another. In this way, he deviates from the main subject and gets lost in the thought processes.

Confused concepts:

It is an accepted fact that freedom in designing broadens our horizons and gives us the opportunity to think out of the box. But too much thinking leads to confusion. Sometimes when you get involved in excessive freedom, you come up with various choices to choose from. This can be quite confusing for graphic designers to choose the best alternative out of superfluous options.

Leads to regret:

The worst part about being liberal in graphic design is that there are more chances for cognitive dissonance to arrive. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling that arises after taking a certain decision. Sometimes after selecting one design, graphic designers lament…“If only I had chosen the other design”. When there are more choice to select from, the grief of not selecting the other designs is more.

Drawbacks of Limitation in Graphic Design:

After having discussed the drawbacks of freedom in graphic design, let us now analyze the other extreme. How does design limitation cause problems for graphic designers?

It bounds creativity:

While design limitations are good to the extent that they save valuable time, excessive design restraints bound the creativity of graphic designers. It undermines the ability of graphic designers to fully utilize their creative talent and try out innovative ideas and styles. Graphic designers can come up with creative ways only when there is a certain degree of liberty for new ideas and concepts.

Inflexibility creates boredom:

A designer bound by design limitations is like a lion trapped inside a cage. Excessively working in limited domains creates boredom and dullness to the job. Graphic design is in no way a dull and boring field and hence working within design limitations can be quite frustrating for graphic designers. When you work within specified constraints, it becomes a monotonous and tedious endeavor.

You don’t make a distinction:

Imagine if all graphic designers work on the same design principles and are bound by the same design limitations, then there would be no difference between any of them. Although personality types of graphic designers are different, they are distinguished by their style of work. Operating under design constraints disables the designer to exploit his unique skills and limits him to the fundamentals. Hence nothing innovative is to offer to the customers can distinguish them from their competitors.

Don’t think out of the box:

The best part of graphic design is that it lets you experiment with new trends and techniques. With design limitations and strict regulations, you don’t think out of the box. To get noticed, one has to come up with innovative and revolutionary ideas. But with excessive limitations around a graphic designer, this task is quite hard to accomplish.

Hinders progress and development:

One of the major setbacks of design limitations is that it creates hurdles in the way of progress and growth as a graphic designer. Since you stick to the fundamentals of the design and don’t explore new trends and practices of the industry, you are likely to lag behind as a graphic designer.

8 Types Of Graphic Designer You Should Avoid To Be

2011-09-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

Most of us have had, or have been, that friend warnings were issued about. The bad influence whose behaviors the older generation were so afraid others would begin to emulate, and then it would all be downhill from there. Well they are back! And here come the warnings to prevent as many of us in the design community as possible from following in their damaging footsteps. So take a look below at the breakdowns of those types of designers you should strive to not be, and see if you fit into any of the categories.

The Browse and Biter

First up we come to the nefarious Browse and Biter. This designer-type is characterized by their tendency to browse the web for ‘inspiration’, and they end up biting, borrowing, or simply flat out stealing the styles or designs that they see there. No matter how pure their intentions may be, this type of designer never learned the difference between being inspired by and, well, copying another’s work. Taking a look through their portfolios, one sees a lot of familiar looking or feeling works that they know they have seen somewhere before.

They see a design they like, and they just have to copy it. Image Credit

Tips to Avoid Being a Browse and Biter

These unfortunately unoriginal folks have a way of upsetting the understood natural order of things with their browse and bite ways, so it is best to learn where those lines are, and stay on the right side of them. Know where inspiration ends and your own voice and work begins. Know the difference between an homage and an ‘Oh, my god they ripped me off!’. Understand that if you admire someone and their work, the right way to honor them in your design is to use the way their work makes you feel and voice that through your work. Not duplicate what they have done. That tends to not be looked on as an honor. So be original, not a browse and biter.

The Stag

Next up, we have the Stag. This type of designer is mostly known for having a really specific style that never really grows or evolves. They just get to a point where they become satisfied with where they have gotten to, and they just stay there. Being stagnant. Soon all of their designs begin to feel stale, as no new ground is really ever broken in their work. And each ‘new’ piece that they craft feels very close to the last piece they just finished before it. And the one before that. And so on, ad nauseam. With this designer-type good becomes the enemy of great. They become satisfied with good and they never strive to be better. To be great.

Tips to Avoid Being a Stag

Now this is not to say that as a designer we should never be happy with the levels to which we have progressed. It is simply saying that we should always strive to be keep progressing. Growth is not a journey’s end, it is a never ending journey. A quest to always be learning more and evolving our skills. Nurturing them so they can rise to the next level and us along with them. And when we finish a design and begin a new one, we should always try to begin anew, as it were. To start fresh, and give each design a chance to be unique and not just a variation of our last piece.

The Boxer

Another designer-type to avoid becoming is the Boxer. These designers tend to be completely boxed in by the field, and for some unknown reason can not allow themselves to ever think outside the proverbial box. These incessant rule abiders become so caught up in the rules and principles of design that they never dare to break outside of or think beyond any of them. While Boxers may exhibit a technical proficiency, and their galleries may be full of precise, sharp designs, the work itself will have no heart. No daring. And as most of us in the field can attest, usually the pieces that have a lasting impact, tend to be those with heart.

For the boxer, everything makes sense in the ‘ring’, and they can’t bring themselves to step outside of it. Image Credit

Tips to Avoid Being a Boxer

While it is easy to see how a designer can become so enveloped in the basics and those standard design practices that they forget about actually ever trying to push any envelopes through their work, it can be overcome. Design is a dynamic and versatile field that is built on those rules, but they are meant to be more of a guide for us than an absolute. As long as we have an understanding of them, then we can try pushing beyond them every now and again to find our way to true innovation in our designs. Think of the box as our arrival packaging into the design world. Now that we are here, we are not going to stay in our original packaging. We are going to unpack the box and use those things inside the way we best see fit.

The Safe-Player

Not moving on very much, we come to the next designer-type you want to avoid becoming, and that is the Safe-Player. This is actually somewhat of a variation on the Boxer. These designers do want to push the envelopes, and take huge design leaps of faith, but alas, they are too scared, and as a result they reel it in and always end up playing it safe. When you look through their work, you get that comfortable safe feeling exuding from all of it. None of the designs feel like they dared into any new or unfamiliar territory. This often stems from the designers desire to not make any mistakes, so they opt for the safer route. Forgetting all the while, that we need to be making mistakes so we can learn and grow.

Tips to Avoid Being a Safe-Player

For the most part, the advice here follows in suit with the tips for avoiding the Boxer model. However, we should stress that if you want to cast off these Safe-Player shackles, then you really need to be comfortable taking risks in your designs. You cannot let fear of mistakes or failure keep you from trying something new. Not if you want to stand out from the masses.

The Offended Defender

Now we move into the next warning section, that of the Offended Defender. These designers are usually characterized by their offended defenses of their work against any criticisms. Even those that are intended to help the designer make improvements. And they may actually be a good designer by and large, but the fact of the matter is, that they could be great if only they knew how to take and use these critiques of their work. As you look through their gallery, you wonder why some of the works seem like they could benefit from some slight tweaking. You might even go so far as to send them a polite note suggesting one such tweak. That is when you learn why those designs are and will forever stay that way.

It does no good getting all offended and in someone’s face because they tried to help. Image Credit

Tips to Avoid Being an Offended Defender

The main thing that one can do to step out of this less than favorable light, is to learn how to take criticism without imploding or defensively clinging to the critiqued element and allowing the work to suffer due to some over-inflated sense of ego or pride. And that is unfortunately the way that some designers take it. Even in the harshest of critiques we can often find some useful tips or hints to take away. We just might have to dig down to find it. We also can not let someone else’s negative tone let us get defensive and tune out to what useful tidbits might be buried underneath it.

The Apt-less Pupil

Now we come to the Apt-less Pupil designer-type. Now here it is not that these designers are so much slow learners that makes them less than desirable to become, it is just that they never quite get there, but think that they have it. There is nothing wrong with being a slow learner, but clients and colleagues working with you on a project should not have to suffer through your learning curve. These designer-types also can reflect poorly on the industry overall, as they introduce a segment of the market who call themselves designers, and hire themselves out as designers, but they are not quite designers.

Tips to Avoid Being an Apt-less Pupil

Basically, learn the field before stepping onto it to play in a game. Plain and simple. Also, do not take a job that you are not yet fully qualified to be taking, and you will steer yourself clear of this label easily.

The Underwhelmer

Now we come to the next designer-type, the Underwhelmer. These not-so over-achievers are mostly recognized by their tendencies to effectively under-deliver for their clients. In fact, they even tend to talk a really good game, which makes them hard to recognize to most. But even though they themselves have set the bar of expectations they rarely, if ever, live up to their own hype. Where most designers will tell you that the secret to success is to always over-deliver for your clients, this flock tend to fall short of that mission statement.

We want to make the best of impressions all the way through the project, not completely drop the ball by under delivering on their expectations. Image Credit

Tips to Avoid Being an Underwhelmer

To keep from baring this brand, again you have to know your limits and not let yourself get in over your head. Whether it is by committing to a project that you do not have the design background or know-how to come through on. Or whether it is by taking on too many clients or projects so that you end up coming up short on one or more of them when the deadlines roll around. Make sure that you can stay ahead of your workload, and have enough skill to deliver on all of your promises, and you might be able to keep from falling into this category.

The Space Cowboy or Cowgirl

Moving on, we come to the Space Cowboy or Cowgirl types of designers. Sufficed to say, their heads are far beyond just being in the clouds, they have left our general atmosphere and are floating in space. These designers are typically characterized as promisers of the moon, without any consideration given to the coding that will have to breathe life into their designs. Also known as the Coder’s Nightmare. Most designers for the web understand that some level of coding background is necessary so they can proceed somewhat reasonably. The Space Cowboy or Cowgirl makes no such concession.

Tips to Avoid Being a Space Cowboy or Cowgirl

Basically, to keep from wearing this dreaded label you need to be informed. Come down from those heights and plant your feet on the ground for a spell. Walk a mile in a Coder’s shoes. Then give them their shoes back and work together to make the most of the design project. Be reasonable in your expectations from the coders, just as you would expect from your them, or as you would expect from your clients.

40 Inspirational Photography Business Cards

2011-09-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

Creating a logo for a photographer is an interesting experience. As a creative, a photographer is likely to have more ideas and want to have more input on the process than most other clients. You’ll no doubt have to talk them down off the cliff on some ideas, and yet they’ll likely have enough design knowledge to talk you out of some ideas. Enjoy

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34 Very Successful Tobacco Vintage Ads You Must See

2011-09-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

I love vintage ads. A lot of details were given to the color scheme, illustrations, and typography. And They were very unique and memorable. Who doesn't remember those old tobacco ads of Marlboro or Lucky Strike? Here are some of the greatest examples of vintage tobacco ads - Enjoy

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28 Best Articles Every Designer Should Read

2011-09-09T03:53:00.000-07:00

While attending design school one thing I regretted after graduation was the lack of business and networking classes they offered (seems to be a trend among other design schools as well from what I’ve heard).

While social networking and blogging has filled that void, I thought I’d share 28 of my favorite freelance/business articles that have helped me over the years in developing and improving my freelance design business.

Freelancing Tools & Resources

Find More Freelance Work

Promotion & Growth

The Paperwork & Legal Side of Things

Must Read Freelance/Business Blogs

Miscellaneous

Amazing Tips On How to Become a Design Genius Video

2011-08-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

Every seven years, the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister takes a one-year sabbatical. As he argues, that's not so crazy.

Stefan Sagmeister is one of the most talented graphic designers working today, so he knows a little bit about keeping his creativity flowing. His trick? Taking really, really long vacations. In fact, every seven years, he takes an entire year off.

As Sagmeister describes it in his recent TED talk (which just made it to the Web), we spend our first 25 years learning, the next 40 years working, and the last 15 retired. "I thought it might be helpful to cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years," Sagmeister says. And what's more: "That's clearly enjoyable for myself but probably even more important is that the work that comes out of those years flows back into the company and the society at larger rather than benefiting just a grandchild or two."

You have to admit it's a pretty great way of looking at things. And incidentally, it's one that neoclassical economists such as Milton Friedman would endorse--those types are always rattling on "consumption smoothing"--the idea that consumers will spread their income or goods (such as leisure) over time, so that overall consumption is even. Sagmeister channeling Friedman? Who knew?!

Sagmeister notes that the first sabbatical wasn't terribly useful because it wasn't structured enough. But when he segmented his day into activities--from "storytelling" to "future thinking"--things started to pop. In fact, Sagmeister argues that all seven years of work after his time off sprung from ideas that were formed during the previous sabbatical. His proof is his own charming portfolio--including one example of a brilliantly flexible logo system he designed. Check the video for more.

Rare Celebrity Photos You've never Seen Before

2011-08-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

Think Smart Designs loves the artists out there. Some are still around us and some are already gone. This is a rare collection of famous artists that will take you back in time and will bring you great memories. -Enjoy

Madonna, Detroit, 1976

Marilyn Monroe in 1946

The Beatles in 1957. George Harrison is 14, John Lennon is 16, and Paul McCartney is 15.

Andy Warhol and Candy Darling (she was born James Lawrence Slattery)

Allen Ginsberg

Jack Kerouac

Hunter S. Thompson (the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

Bob Dylan, Cher and Sonny

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin

Michael Kane and Nancy Sinatra

Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot

Madonna and her family, 1970

Michael Jackson, 1972

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd (she is the former wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton)

Paul McCartney

Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard

Pablo Picasso

Elizabeth Taylor

Twiggy, 1967

Marilyn Monroe

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton

Beatles

Bob Marley

Bukowski and Rourke

Bruce Lee

John Travolta

Elvis and his dad

Sean Penn

Christopher Walken

Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith

Marilyn Monroe

Clark Gable

Mick Jagger

Anton LaVey and Marilyn Manson

Tim Roth

Audrey Hepburn

Adolf Hitler

Bebe Buell And Steven Tyler

Bob Marley

Elvis Presley

Bonnie and Clyde

Stanley Kubrick

Goldie Hawn

Jack Nicholson

Clint Eastwood with his first wife Maggie, 1965

Salvador Dali

Iggy Pop and Blondie

Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, Iggy Pop

Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie

MickJagger, 1967

Elton John

John Lennon, George Harrison

John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol

Marlon Brando

Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow

Kurt Cobain

Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate

Charles Manson

Che Guevara

Alain Delon and Romy Schneider

Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolf

Henry Miller and his hot model

Young Charles Manson

Elvis Presley and Sophia Loren

Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola shows Akira Kurosawa his new polaroid

Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Lauren Bacall

Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon

Iggy Pop, 1970

Manson Family

Bruce Lee

Brooke Shields and Diana Ross

Salvador Dali

Dennis Hopper

Sean Connery

Jack Nicholson

John Travolta

Jane Fonda

John Waters and a stripper

Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith

David Bowie

David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor

Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder

Johnny Depp and Kate Moss

Johnny Depp and his niece Megan

Star Wars Crew

Angelina Jolie with parents

Stanley Kubrick

Liza Minnelli and her mother Judy Garland

Larry Flynt

Jackson's Five visiting Bob Marley

Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich

Marilyn Monroe

Natalie Portman

Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins

Paul McCartney

Rod Stewart and Bebe Buell (Liv Tyler's mother)

Sophia Loren in Disneyland

Freddie Mercury and Jane Seymour

Alfred Hitchcock and his kids

Che Guevara

Marilyn Monroe meets Queen Elizabeth II, London, 1956

Marilyn Monroe with her mother

Monroe and JFK

Catherine Deneuve and her sister

Audrey Hepburn

Alice Cooper

Eric Clapton and his grandmother

Elizabeth Taylor

Angelina Jolie and her father, 1986

Jimmy Page

Barbra Streisand

Ernest Hemingway fishing

Gia Carangi

Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger

Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep

George Clooney

Kirk and Michael Douglas

Jodie Foster

Kurt Cobain and his daughter

Marlon Brando

Amazing 90 Year Evolution of Movie Posters

2011-08-25T03:59:00.000-07:00

The 1920s

The 1920s was known for movie posters that employed fairly traditional type for the time and hand-drawn illustrations over stills that depicted scenes from the movie.

1930s

In the 1930s, we see a shift towards bolder typographic designs with a growing tendency towards illustrations focusing on main characters of the film, particularly faces, over depictions of scenes.

1940s

By the 1940s, we rarely see scene depictions anymore. Character illustrations are most prominent, and typographic treatments are a little more subdued after the experimentation of the 40s.

1950s

In the 1950s we start to see poster designers trying conceptual approaches, such as the Love in the Afternoon poster which is free of characters, emphasizing typography and subtle clues as to the movie content forming the type’s background.

1960s

60s posters don’t go as far as getting rid of illustrations altogether, but type plays a more important role in the layouts. The illustrations move to a more peripheral role, adorning the type.

1970s

An example of the fast movement of trends in the design industry, the 70s sees photographs play a big role in posters for the first time, often taking up the bulk of the canvas with type thrown in below, seemingly as an afterthought.

1980s

The 80s is where we start to see the movie poster in a form similar to what we’re used to seeing today. Large photographic backgrounds are more common than ever, but type and imagery are more balanced than we’ve seen in previous decades which favored one over the other.

1990s

Posters of the 90s are reasonably formulaic: we’ve got the photographic backgrounds, pithy slogans at the top, and the names of headline actors sitting quietly above the name of the film, usually near the bottom of the poster.<

2000s

Through the 80s and 90s we see the evolution of movie posters slow down as designers hit on a series of winning layouts. In the 2000s we see incremental improvements to keep up with trends in typography and photography, but the layout often remains the same. Towards the end of the decade as minimalism comes into vogue, that influence can be seen in the posters of movies such as Up, The Dark Knight and Buried. It’s a move away from a more balanced layout that probably won’t prove to be particularly timeless — but it does cater to the trends of the day.

Conclusion

The evolution of movie posters demonstrates a common theme in the development of new fields. As the field gets older, its participants more experienced, the rate of change slows down. Designers have had 90 years to figure out what works, and as each decade passes, the changes become more evolutionary than revolutionary. It’ll be interesting to see what the next decade brings, but it may be wise not to expect huge differences between now and then.

How The Right Logo And Brand Design Can Bring Customers To Your Business

2011-08-19T03:34:00.000-07:00

What do the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Parthenon, Leonard's "Mona Lisa" and "Vetruvian Man" and the paintings of Rafael, Rembrandt, Seurat and Mondrian all have in common?

They were all designed using the Golden Ratio, a mathematical ratio called Phi that is also found in nature.

The shell of a chambered nautilus, for instance, is an exact mathematical spiral based on the Golden Ratio. The ancients first found that shapes with this ratio were pleasing to the eye.

A couple of years ago, science caught up with pure aesthetics. An award-winning engineer and professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University said his research shows the human eye interprets, and the brain processes, an image featuring the golden ratio faster than any other.

Design is all around us. Customers and consumers are used to eye-candy: clever, creative, communicative design, they expect it. It helps them make choices. In choosing one brand over another or one business among many, they will pick the one with the great design every time—even if they don't know why they like it.

So here are three good reasons why design matters in your business plan.
Design Makes Ideas Visible

Have you ever been at an art gallery and stood before a great piece of art that seems really simple? I have, and while I'm standing there marveling at it, sometimes I've heard another viewer say something like "I could have painted that" or "My 6-year-old could have painted that!" I inevitably want to say "No, you could not have painted this because you DIDN'T paint this."

Why? Because our prototypical art critic DIDN'T THINK OF IT.

In business, design—whether it's for a business identity, a new product or an advertising campaign—is a collaborative process that starts with an idea. A designer makes that idea visible. "Design is the part of your business communication that shows your competence. It shows that you understand aesthetics," says designer Janet Conover, head of Xarktopia LLC, a small, international media consulting and design firm in an interview with a local reporter.

Design ideas that are too complicated or cumbersome won't work, and you will find out quickly that you can't make the viewer work to understand them. Your viewer and potential customer doesn't have the time or the patience to figure something out. That's why good design makes the complex simple and has obvious, common sense appeal. A customer's reaction might be "Cool! Why didn't I think of that?" If that's the reaction, your brand has hit home and is now memorable.

Delve into the world of design in these TED talks.
Design Communicates Your Brand Instantly

"Design communicates things without words, subliminally and subconsciously, so you really want to make sure that your design is your message," Ask yourself, are we a tech company? Are we a classic company? Your design communicates to your target audience."

"Design is branding holistically," she says. "You want to think about your brand as more than a label you stick on your product."

No doubt you've heard about the trend toward "democratization of design" or "design thinking" at all levels throughout a company. It hasn't been embraced by business executives who prefer to keep their departments separate and pay the creative people to do creative things. But creativity comes in many forms and is inherent in all of us. More heads on a design project to create the idea that's shaped into design can certainly be a good thing.
Design Separates The Amateurs From The Pros

A business plan that includes design inspires confidence. Design transmits the business and its brand fast and makes chances of success greater. Clients and customers will be seeing the design message again and again whether you are a start-up, a small but growing business, or a large company branding a niche product or market.

Most businesses I've worked with, as well as customers, don't want design served on the cheap.

You want your design work to resonate with your customers, When you skimp on something like that, it doesn't say much about your company. If you're cutting corners on design, it makes me wonder what else you're cutting corners on.

35 Best Examples Of Branding Design Today

2011-08-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

This article will not only give you inspiration, but hit you with some branding knowledge! To make things easier on the eye, there is a combination of the most important elements and facts about the categories concerning a brand. Check out the following bullet points, and feel free to use them as a valuable resource. Enjoy

Brand:

More than a name or logo
All the combined impressions and experiences associated with a particular company, good or service
Something consumers relate to on rational and emotional levels

Brand Identity:

The following elements work together to project a consistent image and are instantly recognizable.

– Name – words, letters, or numbers that can be spoken

– Symbols or logos used with the name on promotional products – cannot be spoken

– Trade characters or personified symbols may also be used

A Brand is Built Around Values:

Characteristics and values represent what a business or product stands for.
These “intangibles” connect with consumers in a meaningful way.
Brand cues remind consumers of values and qualities.
Brand personality is the essence of the brand and encompasses values and emotional connections.

Brand is the Customer’s Total Experience:

Touch Points – Opportunities to connect with customers and reinforce brand values
Every business – large and small – is a brand with touch points
The brand promise must deliver on consumer expectations

Levels of brand Loyalty:

– Brand recognition: know something about it

– Brand preference: prefer a particular but will buy another if it is not available

– Brand insistence: positively want one brand and one brand only

Branding Internationally:

Requires businesses to incorporate international considerations
Requires names that translate into other languages
Requires sensitivity to customs, cultures, and values
May even require changes to actual product itself
May use product extensions

Challenges that the Internet has provided:

Limited customer interaction, less loyalty, makes building brand on the internet more difficult
More time spent researching/comparing products than buying
Innovation and first-rate customer service needed
Strong, established brands don’t need to spend lots of money to attract people
Brand is a requirement for Internet businesses

Now that you have an idea that a brand is much more than a logo, it’s time to focus on the design part. The examples we have for you below are on point. The following companies have done an incredible job at monetizing and setting the tone for their brand. As you plan out to create a logo, think about how it will be used. Will it be used on social networks, websites, packaging, business cards, stickers, clothing, pens, USB’s, engraved on products, CD’s, notebooks, and any other things? You need to plan things out, because the colors will be different. Online you will most likely use RBG colors for the logo, while on packaging, business, cards, letter head, and other printing materials will be CMYK. This is a vital part of the process, because if you use lets say an extra bright green it will not be bright at all when printed. For more color decision making and help, check out our useful collection of color tools for designers.

1. Olympic Provisions

2. Nueblok

3. Fourmation

4. Norton & Sons

5. Iti

6. Møller/Holm

7. Wallas

8. Sam Tootal

9. Berg & Berg

10. Seaward Bakery

11.

12. Perrine’s Wine Shop

13. Fast Eddie’s Barber Shop

14. Fruita Blanch

15. Frances May

16. Art & Graft

17. Academy

18. Yii

19. Ambrose Hotel

20. Eight Hour Day

21. Stationery of Horror

22. Theurel & Thomas

23. Creavisa

24. Nolitan

25. Hermanos Naranjo

26. Soto

27. Oficina

28. Cavalier Essentials

29. Nevada

30. Playground

31. Bone Daddy

32. Stockholm Culture Festival

33. Deichmanske Library

34. Stack Architects

35. Kokoro & Moi

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for recent updates.

60 Stunning Conceptual Photography Examples

2011-08-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Conceptual photography is an art of getting your ‘concept’ across the mind of the viewer using just the contents of a photograph. The main thing about such a photography is that it is not at all instantaneous. In this post we are publishing 60 Outstanding Examples of Conceptual Photography for your inspiration. Enjoy

- shelter -

Somewhere under the rainbow.

CONTROL II

The sweet escape

Crime Scene – The Escape

Travelling hearts

The Rainy Day

Trapped

Don’t let the music escape

A little birdie told me

A Touching Christmas day.

Hysteria

Unconscious life

BehindTheSmile

A knock on the door

Casual Sex

Come here…

Cuddle

Death is a Matter of Time

deceptively yours,

Don’t Label Me

Racism … IV

F a k e

I miss you

Is this Love

Just Breathe

Life Cycle

Lost room

LOVE

Love

Love is

Miss u

Mr. Snail has got new house

My Sweet Poison II.

No pollution please

no title I

One Way

week twenty three

Piece of Me

Self Portrait

shadow

solitude

Tattoo pioeuvre 12.

the seasons.

Twin Genesis.

urban love…

Wall

Water

Leave – Don’t

Dreams are not easy to achieve

BP Dependence1

Life is a dream

Black Holes In My Soul

emotional

social classes

sleepwalkers

keys to my heart

Silent Dialogue

love

30 Most Creative and Beautiful Invitation Card Designs Today

2011-08-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

Invitation cards always make good collection items. You’ll hold on to them for a while, or even end up keeping them for good. These invitation cards are beautiful, creative and they are definitely keepers.

(Image Source: Heatherjeany)

Invitation card can impress its recipients on many levels. The way the design and content presents itself shows how much the event meant to its organizers and how much effort they have put in. Take a moment, try recalling the most creative invitation card you’ve ever received and how much it has impressed you.

In today’s post, I’d like to present you 30 creative and beautifully-designed invitation cards. Full list after jump.

Creative Invitation Cards

Typography Inspired Wedding Invitation. (Image Source: Sarah Parrott)

Twootenanny Invitation. (Image Source: texburgher)

Wedding Invitation. (Image Source: SimonQ)

Kyle & Katie. (Image Source: Nick Brue)

13th street Universal Invitation card. (Image Source: fabrice vitet)

Jason & Jennifer wedding invitation. (Image Source: Phae)

Perky + Richter. (Image Source: Perky Bros LLC)

HintonMarsh Wedding Invitation. (Image Source: Carolyn_Sewell)

Carnival Pinwheel Poster Sample Invitation. (Image Source: mandolin invitations)

Creative Type wedding invitation. (Image Source: 2bsquared designs)

The Collection – Debra. (Image Source: Sarah Parrott)

Wedding Invite Letterpress. (Image Source: Chloe Horowitz)

Hatch Shower Bridal Shower Invitation. (Image Source: blush printables)

Robot Themed Carnival Poster Sample Invitation. (Image Source: mandolin invitations)

Rhode Island Beach Wedding. (Image Source: Sarah Parrott)

Invitación de boda para Fer y Nora. (Image Source: La caja de tipos)

Jennie & Darwin Wedding. (Image Source: Lauren Dickens)

Bittersweet – Valentine’s Day Party Invitation. (Image Source: blush printables)

The Big Day. (Image Source: Todd Thyberg)

Love Compose Letterpress Wedding Invitation. (Image Source: Elegante Press)

Save the Date. (Image Source: Brian Hurst)

Letterpress & laser cut invitation. (Image Source: mattcrest)

Classic Aubergine. (Image Source: Parrott Design Studio)

Andrew and Alysha. (Image Source: Seth Nickerson)

Letterpress Matchbook Invitations for a Summer Wedding. (Image Source: Martha Stewart Weddings (via Beast Pieces))

Unique Green and Black Letterpress Wedding Invitation. (Image Source: Elegante Press)

Mid-Century Style Blue and Gray Save the Dates. (Image Source: Us & Them)

Modern Letterpress Wedding Invite. (Image Source: FPO / The Hungry Workshop)

Rosebrook Meyer Wedding Invitations. (Image Source: Rosebrook Meyer)

John and Nancy’s Old-Fashioned Hitchin’ Wedding Invites. (Image Source: PTARMAK)

Most Fresh And Beautiful Packaging Design Products

2011-07-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Looking at great packaging designs always gives a designer a breath of fresh inspiration.Here are some amazing ideas of packaging design today.- Enjoy

Mack Cider: Tank

Glorious Soup: iLovedust

Smarter Foods: Mirello Grafico

Teapot: Nadia Arioui Salinas

Swell Drinks: Ruiz Company

Olivier & Co

Frutta: Versuspublicidad

La Sirena Kitch Utensils: Erola Boix

Back Label Wine: Voice

64 Rio Coffee: Voice

La Maison Fontaine: Design Friendship

Hurraw!

Mala Vida Red Wine: Damajuana54

Black Drop Beer: Toni Garcia

Fazer Vilpuri: Hasan & Partners

Found Organic

Southern Comfort: Cue

Tuatara Brewery: Anton Hart

Exotic Planet: Wonderland WPA

Karen Murrell: Mata

MYGO: B+T

Schmoo: Biz-R

Naked Grape Spritzers: Dossier Creative

Strangeland Molle: Proconta

Heritage Lagers: Collective Sao Gabriel

Espolon Tequila

Europa Café: Camila Drozd

Okologisk Stenbakt Mel: Stromme Throndsen Design

Resolution: Hampus Jageland

Optimo & Strukto: Tridvajedan

Best Ways To Deal With a Non-Paying Client

2011-07-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

What can we do when a situation like this takes place? Actually quite a lot. The solutions are really only limited by your imagination. Some solutions are better than others, but there is no golden rule to follow here. You are interacting with real people and have to deal with them differently each time if you want to get paid at the end of the day.

So let’s build on that and see where it leads us.

First things first though. Instead of worrying what we will do if the client doesn’t want to pay us, let’s think what we can do to prevent that from happening in the first place.

Of course the best option would be to work with a contract, but that is not always an option. We are very well aware, that a heck lot of you out there work without one, so instead of pretending the problem doesn’t exist, let’s discuss what we can do when there is no contract to help us.

Before we begin I would like to once again remind you that you’re working with real people out there. So don’t take anything for granted. Treat the things below as guidelines. It’s up to you to assess which ones will be the best suited to your particular client.
Right, so:

How to prevent it from happening

Host it yourself

If you’re working on a website, you want to make sure that your client can’t at some point tell his ten-year old son, to steal all your work and put it on a different server. Remember, you don’t have a contract to help you out, hence your trust can only go so far. No thief will actually wear a mask and sign his emails as Zorro.

The best thing you can do, is to work on your own server and connect the clients domain to it for the time being. Make sure to tell your client that’s how things will go down up front and that once you’re done you can move his website to a server of his choice. Or why just not leave it there and make him pay for it’s upkeep. It’s one of the best steady income sources for freelancers after all. You take care of a few dozen clients which decide to pay you for hosting and suddenly you have a nice yearly income bonus for all those toys you always wanted.

Watermark your images

Some of us out there are not only coders. With graphic design you will more often than not stumble upon clients that want you to make catalogs, business cards, logos etc. (of course coders can make as well some logistic systems etc., but that’s not the point) Obviously hosting those on your own server isn’t that helpful. When it comes to designs though, we have different weapons to defend ourselves, the most efficient ones being:

Watermarks – those will save you in most of the cases. A watermark is an identifying element which you put on the whole design to prevent the client from using your work and not paying for it. Below is an example.

It’s not always as simple as that. It really depends on the project, but on simple designs the watermarks can be easily removed. So be sure to look twice that the watermarks cover the most complicated part of the design, or just…

Send smaller proofs- very often just minimizing the image by 10% or so, can render it useless to steal. Especially if some elements of it have to be cut later on and used between programs. This way you avoid those annoying watermarks while protecting your projects.
Be aware though, that when working for print decreasing the image size by 10% will not really be a huge problem, as it still can be printed without much loss in quality. Though when working for print the image sizes are so huge, that a 30-40% zoom will be enough. It’ll be up to you to determine how much you’ll need to reduce an image so that your customer can approve it’s use without stealing it.

Remember not to send the source files before you get paid. That would defeat the whole purpose of trying to protect yourself.

It’s a very common and good practice. Of course not every client will want to pay you before seeing any work. It sounds perfectly reasonable and how I work, is that I tell the clients that an advance will be required after they accept the graphic designs of the website. Until that point they risk nothing and are not asked for any payments.

That gets you on good footing with your client and shows them you believe in your work. After eight years working this way, I have yet to go wrong with it.

Last but not least. After the client has paid you that initial 20% he will feel more obliged to put effort into the process of creating the site. If you haven’t had a client that takes ages to send you some essential materials for the project and then gets mad because you don’t have the project finished the next day, you will, it’s a situation that is so common it stopped being funny long time ago.

So if you look at it this way. It benefits your client to pay you an advance more than it benefits you really.

Right, so we took all the necessary counter-measures but still we hit a wall somehow and the client does not want to pay for a completed project. To the main point of the article.

How to make him/her pay

Send a summary

Some people just love documents, especially the folks running companies. While I cannot for the love of God understand it, I do acknowledge its existence.

You just might be dealing with that kind of person. If you think that may be the case, do a summary of your work, preferably in PDF form (people love PDF’s) and send it to your client.
It makes you look serious and works as a great reminder that you need to be paid. Very subtle and polite, a great way to start asking for your payment.

I recommend you do one whether the client falls behind on payment or not. In most cases it will increase your chances of landing future jobs with the same person.

Kill the site

It’s pretty much the most obvious and common practice.
In simple terms – if the client refuses to pay, you shut down his whole website until he sees things your way.

While it seems like a perfect solution at first glimpse, it does not necessarily have to be. People like to be stubborn. If you poke some people, they will poke you back whatever the cost. So if you suddenly kill their whole site, they’d probably rather find another freelancer and go through the whole hassle again than pay you.
Yes, it’s very illogical and stupid, but remember – it’s you who lost the time and has no money to show for it by the end of the day. The client already had a site and probably thought of some improvements which he can pass down to the next freelancer.
So think twice with who you’re dealing with before you take action.

As well, there’s a lot of sites which provide a script to kill the site in an easily reversible way like csskillswitch.com but I believe if you created a whole site, temporarily shutting it down won’t be a problem for you. If for some reason it will though, you just had the link a second ago.

Don’t launch the site

It’s certainly one way to keep your client in check. Be sure though to make it perfectly clear at the very beginning that their site will not go live until you get paid in full. Otherwise you can get into a world of trouble and not without reason.

Remember, that you’re the expert here and cannot expect that your client will know or follow any routines established in the virtual world. So if the client was expecting the site to be launched before paying, it’s pretty much your fault for not making the necessary explanations before that.

Modify the site

Now, let me state right off the bat, that it’s totally non-professional and may put your own reputation at terrible risk. That being said…

A modified site can frustrate the client much more than just taking it down or putting up a maintenance sign. Not long ago I found a case on the internet where the client was refusing to pay freelancers their money for the site and other things they did. What they did in return, was write a whole story on the guy’s site, stating how he ripped them and some other people off.

The money in question was quite a considerable sum and from what I’ve read, they have received it in full, two days after taking over the site and modifying it. They did this only after not receiving payment for over 60 days.

While they were in fact successful, ask yourself a question.
Would you hire that company?
They didn’t do anything wrong. They just wanted to get paid for the work they did. Nonetheless, I’d be more inclined to go with someone who I knew wouldn’t talk about our business to anyone else.

Contact the client

Yeah, I know. Another obvious course of action. But there’s more to it then meets the eye.

Emails have become the go-to thing when it comes to contacting your clients. There is a flaw in the process though. Frankly, it’s very easy to avoid answering them and the longer you avoid answering them, the harder it is to come back and so unpaid bills are born.
One way to prevent it from happening is maintaining steady communication with your client via an IM client like Skype. Get him used to talking with you and you might avoid more problems than just not getting paid. I know, that most often it will not be possible though, if your client for example is a dog breeder, chances are he does not spend his whole day in front of a computer uploading Facebook photos. In that case you still have one more thing, that could help you.

Your phone.

It’s much harder to tell you “no” on the phone, then it is to write it in an email. So if you are anticipating that your client may be thinking of talking his way out of paying, you can try to call him first and just maybe turn the situation around. It’s not exactly like you have something to lose in the process.

So if a phone call works better than email, than meeting your client in person will work even better. It’s true in most cases. You will not always have that opportunity though. May it be because it’s to far or he just will not want to meet you in person because of a lack of time or another reason.

So choose your contact method carefully and try to find the fine line between reminding the client about yourself and annoying him. I know you may be mad because you were expecting to be paid long ago, however, if your client decides to walk, you get nothing out of it.

Stall other works

If you’re good at what you do. Often the client will ask you for additional things.
Actually you should make a habit of offering your clients additional services. If I’m making a website for someone, usually I end up doing additionally some business cards, posters etc. What I’m getting at is, if you do additional work, you can stall them a bit if your client is late with his payments. Rather stall giving your work to him then doing actual work on it, or additional problems may arise.

If you’re making posters etc. usually it would be too much of a problem to replace you in time, so the time to open the bank account to send you the money will suddenly be found.
It’s not really unprofessional of you to do something of that sort.
Remember, that you’re not his employee, but basically a one (or more) man company that he hired for your skills. So it’s just to be expected that you demand mutual respect. Getting paid on time is a part of it.

Accept partial payments

I know it sounds stupid, but sometimes at the end of the work your client will in fact tell you, he does not have the money to pay you due to various reasons.

Again, you don’t want him to just walk away and trash the whole project. How you can still gain the upper hand here, is propose partial payments with interest. Maybe you will have to wait longer for your money, but in the end it will be worth it, as you get more cash over time. If he fails to complete even those partial payments, then you got a whole article above about what other things you might then do.

That’s a wrap

And that’s pretty much that. It’s not really possible to take into consideration all the possible scenarios, so you’re just going to have to improvise a bit. But you got the basics down now and have some things to back you up.

Just remember that getting angry is not the way to go, not if you want to get payed.

All Sources You'll Ever Need To Become A Great Designer

2011-07-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

We all know as designers how hard it is to keep up with the design world today.There is always something new to learn.Here are all the design sources you need.Either if you are a designer or are still learning, these sites are a must to bookmark. They will be all you need to learn to become a great designer - Enjoy!

Brushes

1. Brusheezy

Brusheezy is the place to share your free Photoshop brushes and other Photoshop related resources. Here you can explore and discuss the creations of other artists from around the world, or just find that perfect little freebie for your next Photoshop project. Brusheezy makes it easy to explore thousands of resources created by artists from all over the globe.

2. PS Brushes

PS Brushes is another place where Photoshop brushes are gathered. With weekly brush updates this site is a place you should definitely check out if you’re looking for fresh and neat brushes.

3. Brush Lovers

BrushLovers has one of the largest collections of exclusive and high-quality Photoshop brushes on the Web. They feature hundreds of Photoshop brushes that are free for both personal and commercial use. You won’t find this collection anywhere else.

Patterns

1. Colour Lovers

COLOURlovers is an international community of designers and artists of all kinds who visit the site to get color inspiration, ideas and feedback for both their professional and personal projects. In the ColourLovers pattern section you’ll find over 1,410,989 user-created seamless patterns to use in your creative projects.

2. Squid Fingers

At Squid Fingers you can find over 100 creative patterns to use for your projects. They come as GIFs and are free to use.

3. BG Patterns

BgPatterns is a tiny web app for making background patterns in a few clicks. It was created mostly for fun and was an experiment by Sergii Iavorskyi.

4. Background Labs

Background Labs feature a wide variety of Photoshop backgrounds, patterns, textures and graphics for use in customizing your Twitter profile, blogs and websites. Browse by color, by tags and styles. It can’t get any simpler to find graphics than on Background Labs!

Textures

1. CG Textures

CGTextures strives to be the world’s best texture site. It can be quite difficult to create textures without good photo materials. Making textures should be about creativity, not about frustrating hours looking for images on the Internet. By supplying good quality textures in an organized manner, CG Textures makes your everyday work easier and more enjoyable.

2. Texture King

Texture King is a resource for free stock textures. Currently the site has over 300 textures in 16 categories.

3. Lost & Taken

Lost and Taken was created over two and a half years ago with one intention: to helps designers by giving away the best free textures available. To this day, Lost and Taken textures have been viewed tens of millions of times and has helped thousands of designers accomplish their jobs a little easier and with more beautiful results.

4. Mayang’s Free Textures

Mayang’s texture library has over 3800 free to download, high-resolution textures. The reason I included this site is because here you can find a lot of unseen and different kinds of textures you won’t find anywhere else.

5. Texture Lovers

The purpose of Texture Lovers is to archive some of the best free textures from around the web, and better yet, only archive the ones that are free to use in commercial and personal work without worrying about giving credit to the source (no attribution).

Stock photos

1.Stoxk.xchng

Sxc.hu is the world’s best free stock site. SXC was launched in February 2001 as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work. The site has evolved into the massive community you see today — there are over 2,500,000 registered users and around 400,000 photos online.

2.Everystockphoto

Everystockphoto is a license-specific photo search engine. Currently they index and search millions of freely licensed photos, from many sources, and present them in an integrated search. It’s usually my second choice if I can’t find what I’m looking for in sxc.

3.Morguefile

Morguefile is the third largest free stock photo site. The Morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for illustrators, comic book artist, designers, teachers and all creative pursuits.

Icons

1. IconFinder

Iconfinder provides high quality icons for web designers and developers in an easy and efficient way. The site launched in 2007 as the first search engine focused on icons.

2. FindIcons

FindIcons is an icon search engine helps you find free icons. They have the largest searchable free icons database in the world and both a sophisticated search filtering and result matching system make it possible for you to get an icon you need for every design task.

Fonts

1. Dafont

Dafont is the largest free font library on the web. Nearly all free fonts make their way onto dafont and it’s definitely the first place to check if looking for qualitative fonts for your projects.

2. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is your best resource for free, hand-picked, high-quality, commercial-use fonts. Even if that means they send you elsewhere to get them.

Cheat Sheets

1. The Photoshop CS5 How To Geek Cheat Sheet

The Photoshop CS5 Cheat Sheet is a great tool for all Photoshop users, with keyboard shortcuts, graphs and graphics not only good for CS5, but also valid for most versions of Photoshop. The cheat sheet comes in PDF format, which you can easily print using your favorite PDF reader.

2. Photoshop Toolbox Reference

This is a comprehensive Photoshop toolbox reference. You can click on each tool to view its video-manual. It’s very handy if you’re just starting off with Photoshop though even experienced users can find something useful here.

3. Photoshop Etiquette

The Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto for Web Designers is a list of helpful and subtle suggestions to organize Photoshop documents, making the transfer of them less painful.

General Resources, PSDs

1. Blue Vertigo

Blue Vertigo is a huge design resources site established in 2003. You can find almost anything there – starting from stock photo marketplaces and ending with color scheme sites.

2. Premium Pixels

Premium Pixels is a bunch of free design resources & tutorials created by Orman Clark. Oman Clark created Premium Pixels to share some of the resources and files he’s created in his quest to make the web a more attractive place.

3. Swift PSD

Swiftpsd offers stunning resources for web, iPhone and iPad. It’s created by Ed Cousins, and swiftpsd is his venture to supply high-quality resources to designers around the world. Launched only couple months ago SwiftPSD looks like a site I’m going to visit often.

4. Designmoo

Designmoo is a community for discovering and sharing free PSDs, vectors, textures, patterns, fonts, and more. Their goal is to build a great network of designers and community resources and provide a centralized location for finding great-looking free design resources.

5. Free PSD

Free PSD offers bunch of free high-quality PSD templates for your use. You’ll find tutorials, brushes, patterns and other Photoshop resources there as well.

6. Design Kindle

Design Kindle is an idea of Build Interactive, a small web design studio founded by Adrian Pelletier. Their goal is to provide the best free design resources on the web by keeping the file quality incredibly high. You can submit files for review too by sending us an e-mail with a preview of the download you’d like to contribute.

7. 365psd

365psd is the world’s highest quality source of PSDs that are free for both personal and commercial use. That means any PSD you download can be reused in any project without worrying about licensing.

8. Little PSD

Little PSD is a brand new (in fact it seems it’s launched only couple days ago) site to find high-quality PSD files.

9. PSD Home

PSD Home is a web gallery for Photoshop PSD files. It collects PSD files, that’s designers give from everywhere to a single website. At PSD Home you can find PSDs pertaining to buttons, icons, text effects, themes, graphics and much more.

10. PSD Graphics

Psdgraphics is one man show, launched as a hobby site.Here you can find a lot of free stuff for webmasters and designers. Enjoy fully editable Photoshop PSD files and high resolution stuff.

Plugins

1. Nik Software

Nik Software, Inc. is a privately-held American company that develops software solutions for the growing digital-imaging and photography markets. Although their plugins are premium only, they’re really worth it. Particularly developed for photo retouching Nik Software is giving photographers the most powerful tools for precise and natural photographic enhancements and corrections without the need for complicated selections or layer masks. You can apply for their live training sections to see the power of this software in action.

2. Fluid Mask 3

Fluid Mask 3 is a very effective tool for separating complex objects from their backgrounds. Fluid Mask 3 lets you isolate difficult areas and apply alternative selections with all new edges find options – making the tough bits easier. It’s a premium plugin, though you can check out the demo version and tutorials to decide whether you want to purchase it or not.

3. Topaz Labs

Topaz Labs distills the latest in imaging technology into useful products that deliver excellent results at a reasonable price. Topaz plugins makes it quick and easy to create stunning and dynamic enhancements that will instantly make your images pop with detail, color and depth. Although they’re not free I consider these plugins the second best choice after Nik Software to enhance your photos remarkably.

Tools

1. Divine

Divine is a plugin that helps you convert Photoshop to WordPress in a few minutes instead of long hours. The idea of making Divine came to a young but talented designer who himself was fed up with wasting time on coding. As soon as you get a tool to convert PSD to WordPress, you save your time, effort and patience. You need no special extended knowledge about HTML, no special skills in coding, basics are completely enough to convert PSD to WordPress.

2. Script Arsenal

Script Arsenal is a handy catalog allowing you to quickly find and apply the required script. It comes to you with 100+ ready-made scripts for creating various effects and streamlining your everyday work flow. Using most of them doesn’t require a substantial Photoshop experience.

3. Compare PSD

ComparePSD compares two Adobe Photoshop PSD files for you and highlights the differences. Layer by layer. Effect by effect. Simple. Plus it is absolutely free.

4. Mr Stacks

Mr. Stacks is a Photoshop script that rapidly generates storyboards, stacks, and PDF(s) for CD check-ins, client-ish presentations, and whatever else it is you do. Helping to nail some of the most monotonous tasks in art direction.

5. Modular Grid Pattern

Modular Grid Pattern is an application for web designers, which helps you quickly and easily to create a modular grid in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks, GIMP, Microsoft Expression Design and other. To use the app directly in Photoshop you only need to download and install the convenient extension.

6. foxGuide

foxGuide is a firefox extension that displays horizontal and vertical guides. Guides will appear as thin lines that float over the webpage. You can move or remove them just the way you do it photoshop. Guides are useful for laying out elements symmetrically, structure a design and improving the overall layout.

7. Photoshop Touch Apps

Touch, mobility, and Adobe Photoshop® CS5 software—how’ that for a creative combination? Adobe and the developer community can now create apps that communicate with Photoshop CS5 via a range of devices and platforms. Explore new Adobe Photoshop Touch apps for iPad, the first to tap into this new connectivity.

8. Pixel Proliferation

Change is a constant. The device landscape is always changing and the device types are proliferating. With the increasing demand for unique mid-screen devices, it is becoming an even more arduous task to keep all of the device resolutions and screen sizes straight. This toolset includes Photoshop CS5 marquee tool presets for common screen resolutions, a collection of layered Photoshop CS5 PSDs each providing common devices for comping and design presentations and a reference chart for resolutions and device landscape.

9.960 Grid System

The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem.

10.GuideGuide

GuideGuide is a tool for columns, rows and midpoints panel for Photoshop CS4 & CS5. It works similarly to the grid tool in InDesign. With GuideGuide it’s incredibly easy to create columns, guides, gutters and midpoints with just a single click.

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