So mentioned in yesterday’s post I have put together a 3 post series of Rolling Stone Magazine Covers.

Here lies the first post, which displays the vast evolution of the brand, and how it has been used and displayed.

Now every “brand guru” preaches that it is vital to keep consistent with your brand image and design. This is to ensure maximum impact and ’stickiness’ to remain in the desired target audience’s mind. Rolling Stone has done things a little differently, almost right from the start. As you look through this image set it is evident that the title font has changed a few times since the 1970’s. This isn’t totally uncommon with a brand, as it is sometimes done to coincide with a directional change. ( in this case from a political content based magazine into a pop culture resource)

 One fascinating change that occurs is that they move the logo around the top of the cover page. Sometimes it is aligned right to the top, other times it is underneath a headline. The most interesting change that takes place throughout these magazine covers is that Rolling Stone often (especially in the newer editions) covers up part of their logo, at times almost ALL of their brand. This demonstrates the astounding strength of the brand. They are able to reveal a small piece of their logo, yet the consumer still knows exactly what magazine it is.

So browse these covers and notice the change in the Rolling Stone title brand image. They are a great example of something I like to call ‘Brand Consistency Evolution’.

**Coming up next in Part 2 of this 3 post series is the power of the Rolling Stone Magazine Cover, and how they push limits and create iconic magazine covers.**

Andrew.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rolling Stone Magazine has been in production for over 40 years. The magazine started as an outlet for controversial political coverage in the 1970’s but has transformed into a highly recognizable brand, full of pop culture icons, while still incorporating in-depth political content.

I have put together a 3-part series of posts showcasing 3 different categories of Rolling Stone Magazine Covers from the past 40 years. The first category will showcase the “Rolling Stone” brand that appears on the cover of every magazine. Nearly every edition of the magazine displayed the brand differently. The second showcase will show the covers that have became iconic and also how much Rolling Stone Magazine pushed the boundaries and limits in the media. The third post in the series will show off the best design covers from the past to present through amazing photography, design techniques and typography.

So check back tomorrow when we kick off this 3 day cover shoot. You will not be disappointed.
Andrew.

As the economy spirals out of control, more and more designers are emerging in the industry. We will find that there will be more freelance designers, reasons why; easy to start-up, can work from home (looks tempting for people that get laid off, or their hours cut back), can make extra money on the side, and its a fulfilling career choice.

After posting the Industry leading web studios last week… I turned the other direction to look through designer portfolios. These portfolios are not just good they are great… a good portfolio isn’t just a few good projects, it’s a relation between the portfolio itself, and its content or projects.. and in most cases quality before quantity.

So if you are looking to redesign your portfolio or give it the extra something it needs…. I encourage you to look through these great portfolio pieces.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am very excited to announce our Day 12 Christmas Day Winner,
Congratulations to Toni Almeida

This contest was not based on how good or bad the comments were but, I would like to showcase the winners comments anyways…

Toni Almeida wrote:

Inspiredology is going very well, but something that I would like to see, is a weakly area, where you show some of the work of your readers, like personal websites, photo manipulation, vector draws, and things like that, one post for week dedicated to one or more guys, would be very cool.

Keep going Inspiredology and a merry Christmas to all.

Congratulations, I hope you enjoy your prizes, Merry Christmas!!
Myself or the according company will be in touch with you.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE

Hi End Coding Markup ($217) Courtesy of PSD2HTML
Brings the markup to the highest level. W3C Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict Table-less CSS markup under SEO Semantic Coding, Complete Presentational Separation techniques. Special attention to Load Speed optimization.

3 month membership to PSDTUTS+ Courtesy of TUTSPLUS

PSDTUTS is the web’s most popular Photoshop tutorials site. Your PLUS membership will give you access to hundreds of exclusive members only Photoshop tutorials and files.

I am very excited to announce our Day 11 Christmas Eve Winner,
Congratulations to Chris Barnett

This contest was not based on how good or bad the comments were but, I would like to showcase the winners comments anyways…

Chris wrote:

What an excellent idea Chad. The prizes are great and should yield a heap of comments, floats, tweets and suggestions of what people would like to see on the site.

I would like to see more frequent posts, which may mean more authors. As far as post content, some more tutorials would be nice. Specifically, Wordpress related topics and how it can be used as a powerful way to manage content. As always any kind of design related content is always exciting to see in the RSS feed. Tutorials, resources, inspiration, related to designing for the web.

Going to tweet, float and dig this bad boy. Cheers and thanks again my friend!

Congratulations, I hope you enjoy your prizes, Merry Christmas!!
Myself or the according company will be in touch with you.

1 days left till Christmas…. it happened so fast didn’t it.. everybody have a Merry Christmas Eve Sleep

Read the rest of this entry »