Lately, I have been creating patterns inspired by Moroccan tiles, using Adobe Illustrator. There is something therapeutic to the perfect aligned repeating designs… order from chaos and all that. Although its main use is for products at Paper Lantern, I’m tempted to have it printed up as a fabric for my dining room chairs as well. Hmm…
"Vintage Moroccan" as applied to magnets, journals and notecards.
G2 Designs won a coveted “Today’s Best” award from Zazzle.com. Way to go! Here’s the winning design:
Pirate Panda is the newest original character released by G2 Designs. Cute!
Organic Baby Bodysuit
The Girl's Ringer T-shirt
Pirate Panda Women's Black T-shirt
This is the blog-equivalent of a retweet: go here to download free paintbrush stroke brushes from the ThinkDesign blog. Enjoy.
Print designers like to point out that a weakness of the web is its lack of ability to produce beautiful typed-based layouts. They’re going to have to find a new argument… check out these Typographic Web Layouts
In addition to being great examples of typographic-based design, these layouts are free for anyone to use. [via Smashing Magazine]
HOW Design Interactive Design Awards. Deadline: July 31,2009.
This just in: I have received word from Zazzle that all this 4th of July weekend, everything is 17.76% off. Get it? 1776. Oh those clever Zazzlians.
Shameless Plug: I co-own a storefront based there, so head on over to pick up something cute.
Vist: G2 Designs
Use code ZAZZLEUSAUSA
-Kristian
p.s. The store is still under construction so please excuse the disorganization. On the plus side, consider this your invitation to a sneak peek of the great things to come.
A few goodies I dug up from my archives…
1996: A bit of spot art I drew for Human Code. They called this little guy the Media Beast.
1999: Sadly, I've lost the source file for this one. I would have liked to finish it. This one was for my own amusement, not a client.
1999: Fun with type, at the beginning of my obsession with magazine design.
2002: My web site, approximately 14 versions ago.
2006: Letting the cat out of the bag. I did this illustration for a PR guy I know.
2007: In my "Shag" phase.
199....4? 5? This is one of the first illustrations where I started it in Illustrator and then exported to Photoshop for additional shading and texture. (I do that a lot now.)
While playing with type is undeniably fun, deadlines generally aren’t interested in fun. Deadlines are interested in What have you done for me lately? And that’s where Typechart comes in: Browse through styled type. Find one you like? Click the Get CSS button. Paste code into stylesheet. Done.
Um, Typechart, are you seeing anyone? Because really… I think I love you.
Sample Preview:
A sample type sample (er...yeah) from Typechart.com
Get ‘em here: http://ideas.veer.com/wallpaper/
…and a couple of previews:
Desktop Wallpapers From Veer
Here are two in a new series of posters I’m designing. Eventually I will make them available in the store; for now, enjoy the quotey goodness. -Kg.
New BK ad
According to the concept behind this ad, eating a burger = giving a blow job. Which pretty much ensures that no straight guy will ever order the “BK Super Seven Incher“. Too bad that’s their primary demographic.
-Kg.
So I had this entire post planned regarding the announcment of Yum! Brands rebranding of Pizza Hut as “The Hut”. And by “post” I mean “diatribe”. Because this is a diabolically bad idea.
There is the obvious reason that there are countless local pubs, grills, diners, etc already named The Hut which have nothing to do with Pizza Hut, causing brand confusion on a local level in cities nationwide.
But other than that, honestly, I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm for a good rant. So there you go. You have been duly notified of The Coming of The Hut, and no doubt many, many blogs will be covering it.
Just not this one.
-Kristian
Great news: I am in the process of migrating this very blog to the self-hosted version of WordPress, doing the install and the custom theme myself (naturally). This upgrade will give me far more flexibly in the types of content I can include, as well as more robust features via widgets and plug-ins. I expect to have the migration complete about mid-July. (Did I mention I’m doing this in my spare time?)
Super excited about becoming a WordPress platform expert, and looking forward to building many more sites on it for my clients. Everybody wins.
-Kristian
As a designer working in this depressed economy, I sometimes have the need for icons, fonts, themes, templates, and how-to’s on the cheap — or even better: free.
And this is where Smashing Magazine comes in. The awesome folks behind this invaluable resource roundup the best in freebies, tutorials, tools, and more on a daily basis. If you aren’t clued in to these folks yet, consider this your engraved invitation to check them out. Then prepare for the floodgates to open to all the resources you could ever need when you’ve got a client with Maserati expectations and a Dodge Neon budget.
Recent posts include “Freebie Release: Quartz Icon Set”, “50 Excellent 3D Adobe Illustrator Tutorials” and “Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts for Your Designs”.
They also have articles that get into web standards, CSS, and plugins for everything from WordPress to Joomla to you name it.
Of course, standard etiquette applies when using freebies: give props to the author and if possible throw them a link. Everyone likes to know when their work is appreciated, eh?
-Kristian
 |
SocialVibe