Old Photos

If you're looking for old b&w stock photos to use, this website has a decent collection: http://www.old-picture.com/

They're not the best resolution, but they are still kind of large, so they might be good for sizing down to use in smaller images.

4th Friday Art Stroll in Castleberry Hill on September 25

4th Friday Art Stroll in Castleberry Hill on September 25

Starting from next month on, the art stroll will take place on the 2nd Friday of each month.

Brands of the World (Lots of Vector Files!!)

A certain screenprinter I know turned me onto BrandsOfTheWorld.com, a website through which one can search for and upload vector files of many name-brand logos such as Pepsi, AT&T, Windows & many, many others. I thought this would be a great resource for everyone to use, especially during this next project. :)

Sample Advertisements for Project 2

I grabbed some magazines at the coffee shop I work at and leafed through them for some interesting ads and companies to use for this project. Here are some I found the most appealing:

Vitamin Water


Found in Details Magazine


Ray Ban Sunglasses

     
Found in Details Magazine



Found in Elle Magazine


Maybelline Cosmetics

     
Found in Elle Magazine


Converse


Found in Elle Magazine

Newest Obsession

I am a regular webcomic reader, and I recently happened upon this one which caused me much joy: Nedroid Picture Diary. It's so ridiculous, but hilarious at the same time. And nestled here and there among the entries you can find some useful Photoshop tutorials, if you explore a little bit. ;)

Personal Logo Project : Final Images

In the end, these were the two I decided to go with. I went with the "CMR" signature logo after all because it was the most personal to me. The second logo seemed to be a favorite, so I went with it because it was simple, clean, legible and kind of playful & dynamic at the same time.

Adding Color

So I took my favorite from the last set I posted and started adding color to it. I chose to use my two favorite colors, purple and green. I also played around a little with the placement of the letters, and also with a "drop shadow" effect using a darker color underneath.

Newer Logos in Illustrator

I re-created some of the new logo sketches in Illustrator. I haven't added color yet besides the one on the top right with the rainbow spilling out of it, but I would have to alter that one as we are only allowed to use 3 colors in total:



My favorite of these is the one at the bottom right. I think it lends itself well to possibly adding an illustrative element.

Blessing or Curse?

I forget how I came across this website, but I found it intriguing but also kind of distressing:

→Wix.com

So the premise of this site is: free fully-customizable flash websites! Totally awesome, but what does that mean for those of us wanting to concentrate our careers on web design? Flash is definitely the biggest, fastest-growing trend in web design that I've seen, so making it easily accessible to the masses is a logical step. However, it inevitably ends up "cutting out the middle man," so to speak. This is the first website like this that I have come across beside the myriad "myspace flash layout" sites, but those usually afford you less customization. I guess despite everything, there are still those clients and businesses who lack the technological/creative capabilities to do this sort of thing on their own and will still require the help of someone who has said skills.

I created an account and I may test it out if I find some free time to do so. ;)

Personal Logo Concepts Part Deux

As per instruction, I did a few more pages of sketching and picked these out as the best among them:



I tried to go in a less "scripty" direction. I used dafont.com as a source of inspiration, most notably the "techno" fonts. Of these, I favor 4, 8, 9 & 13. I would probably never use 11 for myself, but I threw it in there because I thought it was interesting nonetheless. To me, 9 looks like a container of some sort that has opened and ink/paint/etc. is spilling out. It could also be used without the bands of color and I think it would still be effective. I think 8 looks the most "techy" of these because of its streamlined, low-profile look.

I'll bring some of these into illustrator and see how they come out.