Swiss Packaging Design

Simple, Efective, Swiss.

My entry this week is on the fabulous design of the swiss. Particularly on packaging design with swiss roots. Swiss design is characterized by bold type bold color and bold shapes. Below are some examples of swiss packaging design that I found whilst researching this fantastic subject.

These paint cans caught my eye because of their stark contrast with the colored drop

Hand Lettering and Modern Day Typography

This semester of classes as recently opened my eyes in the world of typography. There is a whole new world of typography in hand lettering. I have gained a new respect for typography and hand lettering. I feel that each type has its own mood and personality. Any advertisement can be drastically changed with the type that is put in it.

I decided to share hand lettering as my post this week because I feel that it is important to have an understanding and appreciation for typography. It can make or break a piece. I shared a pinterest link to inspire and promote hand letter. It can be incorporated into shapes, on top of pictures, or even stand on its own. There is something so personal and homemade about hand lettering, I think that is why it has become more appealing among our generation of designers and marketers.

So just take a few minutes and enjoy this art placed before you. Each one tells a story and has a personality of its own.
In addition each "hand lettering" word has a different link to other get hand lettering websites.


http://www.pinterest.com/poppytalk/typography-hand-lettering/

Creattica: Design Inspiration

Creattica: Design Inspiration

So, Since most of us know about designspiration, i decided to forego using that as this weeks post and instead found a very similar site. (designspiration is pretty cool if you haven't seen it already. It reminds me of pinterest, except cooler because its for designers.) The Site I found is called Creattica. As said before it I very similar to Designspiration but it never hurts to have more sources for inspiration. I know a lot of us struggle trying to finding something to do when it comes to a project and I always turn to one of these sites. Mainly for a little help for an idea, but also to find what is cool and "hip" I guess is the word kids are using these days. I don't want to  make something out dated and i want to make something that is going to stand out to someone and go "wow, thats pretty neat". Right? It is. Thanks to these websites, you can get that wow factor and help you find something that is "pretty neat".

With Creattica, you can look at what is new on there website and just browse through the front page for ideas, you can look at stuff by category by just using the Explore button or you can search for anything or something specific. 

I think this website will definitely be a great source of inspiration for me but also something cool too look at and also what you can do with certain things and certain programs. Being able to just look at what someone has done in photo shop makes me want to try it out and see what I can do. It also helps fine a lot of similar designs too so that you can branch off of an idea you have and see what you can do with it. 

My favorite feature though is the wall papers. I do like inspiration but being able to download a new wallpaper is pretty sweet too. 

Jan Tschichold - sweet design

Jan Tschichold

   Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) was a book designer, teacher and writer and most importantly, in our case, a typographer.  During the first stages of his life he believed and embraced Modernism and even created a book Die neue Typographie.  Although, later on in his life he reverted back to more Classism and even went so far as to condemn Modernism and his book for being too authoritarian and inherently fascistic.  

   During the years 1947-1949 Tschichold lived in England, which is where he oversaw the redesign of 500 paperbacks published by Penguin Books.  By doing so he left them with a standardized set of typographic rules, the Penguin Composition Rules. Even though he gave the books a more unified look and enforced a lot of the typographic practices the are mostly taken for granted today, he also allowed for the character of each work to take charge of its own look, with varying covers and title pages.  

  His pieces, even though done a while ago, are designs that are very visually engaging and impactful.  His use of grid and color create a design that is very much a part of today's own design. His design inspires my own to take a step out of the box and use more complex grid systems.

Check out a biography here: retinart.net

Shh...this has nothing to do with our next project.

I totally forgot to reply to this blog.

In other news, since project 2 is starting soon, I thought that it would be a good idea to share a relevant article about packaging design. I stumbled upon this while researching for the project.

Here are some of my favorite designs.

I adore the "bean bag" for it's organic, transparent look. The product looks so much fresher in it than the normal bean products I saw at the supermarket last week. (It reminds me of the "milk in a bag" I encountered in China back in the 2000s, I think they have those in Canada now.)

The pun involved in this design is just genius. Putting mints in coin rolls (usually distributed by monetary mints) makes it a memorable item that you can find in store.

This reminds me of the IKEA packages. The important texts are bold and highly visible on the package. The opening makes it easy for consumers to examine the light bulbs before purchasing. Also, just imagine how much ink (& money) the manufacturer will save by using this design.







I just love the dogs in this one.















The milk cartons are great because they are simple. It really gave me the impression that the milk are perfectly white and pure. Here is also a similar design that I also like.

This has to be my favorite one. Despite the cost concern I loved how it has the academic theme. Perhaps it could be sold individually by the test tubes. 

These are all designed by students, not that we need to raise the bar because of that...

In you're interested in seeing all 30 of them, here's the link to the article: Awesome

Pemberton & Whitefoord Design

While we were taking a break from the Project 1 craze this weekend, I decided to do some stumbling across the web to see what sort of design firms and ideas I could pick up in preparation for Project 2. One site that I stumbled upon is P&W design.

Like any design firm or company, the website really has to showcase P&W's prowess both in general design as well as website design. This site in particular clicked with me because of the clever intro to the site that featured a doorbell that was actually interactive. Although there wasn't a blatant button saying 'push the doorbell to enter', the concept of pushing a doorbell to enter a house is so deeply ingrained in people that it was instinctive to click the doorbell without considering if it was a button or not.

Not only is the website designed cleverly, there are a few little easter eggs that aren't really important for P&W, but it makes the audience grin. For instance, try clicking on the watering bucket on the left side of the page.

I'm not saying there aren't flaws. When the mouse hovers over a clickable item, the cross stitch in the center of the page switches to display what that button is supposed to do. When I first saw the site, the change was so subtle that I didn't notice it until I was looking directly at the center of the page.
Also, some areas that appear clickable because the mouse changes when you hover over them wind up not leading you to any new page. This is either misleading or it shows that the site may still be in development.

I encourage you guys to look at this site both for it's content and portfolio, as well as the actual design of the site - usability, friendliness, all that jazz.

P&W offers a guide book for clients to see how P&W works.

Part of P&W's Starbucks branding project in their portfolio.

Paint Tool Sai

For this blog, I’d like to bring people’s attention to a software that I’ve come to grow very fond of, especially if you’re into Anime or cartoon illustrations.  The software/program is called Paint Tool Sai, and it is from Japan. Paint Tool Sai costs around 50 USD.

One of the reasons I love this software is that, although it doesn’t have as many tools as Photoshop, it is really great for outlining scanned drawings and creating ‘lineart’, and I believe is cheaper than buying Adobe Photoshop. This software is meant to create, edit, and enhance graphic images or photographs. The interface is pretty simple to navigate through, but it might take some time to get used to where things are, as well as trying out the different paint tools. However, once you get the hang of it (and there are plenty of tutorials out there on DeviantART or YouTube that you can look into to familiarize yourself with the program) you can create some pretty amazing art. 

One of the things I like most about this program is how easy it is to manipulate lineart, where you can get precise contours when outlining your scanned drawings (I recommend using the 'Curve' lineart option). I sincerely love the ‘Pressure’ tool, where you can change the thinness of any anchor point on the lineart you’re making, and once you have the entire lineart done you can use the ‘Weight’ tool to change the thickness of the stroke too. The lineart ends up coming out crisp and clean.

Some great perks about Paint Tool Sai is that it supports file formats like PSD, BMP, JPG and PNG, so if you feel like you limited yourself with effects on this software, all you have to do is save it as a PSD and bring it onto Photoshop where you can make changes and touch up on your art; Sai has layers like Photoshop, so when you save it as a PSD it’ll configure and open up on the program just as any document created on Photoshop itself. A downside to this program is that it doesn’t support Mac, only Windows PC. Sorry Mac people, but hopefully they’ll make it available in the future!

Here are some examples of brushes and their strokes, as well as some of the settings for them that you can manipulate to your liking. If you’d like to give it a try at this software, you can download a trial period of 1 month from Softonic.

Expose your talent

Take creative control.

I found an awesome website where you can post all of your work to showcase to the world!
Companies go on here to find talent for their companies.
It attracts millions of visitors looking for talent, inspiration, and networking.

It distributes work to online galleries maximizing your talent!

You can post projects that you are working on and get comments from different designers around the world.

Its a a really cool place to visit, and I would recommend signing up for an account! I almost forgot the website: https://www.behance.net

Less Is More

'Less is More' is a show put on by the 31 year old artist Zoltan Bekefy. Bekefy is a landscape photographer and focuses on minimalism and use of black and white themes to capture natures beauty and persevered silence.

When ask why he preferred the black and white theme over colored photography, to which he replied, “I cannot tell you exactly. I love the simplicity and mood that black and white photography gives us. Monochrome images of a scene seem to encapsulate more personal meaning to me.”

His work is spectacular to look look at, the contrasts are so sharp that it is truly one of the best photographers I've seen; coupled with the amazing simplicity.

Befeky travels all over the world captures these extremely dramatic images and I think they can inspire anyone to see how simplicity can create dramatic depth through a medium like this. If you want to see more of his work, click here to check out his website.