Inspiredology » Graphic Design

25 Fun Vector Illustrations

Chad — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:58:42 +0000

It’s been a long time since we last spoke about illustration, I have always been a big fan of Illustrator, and the cute and fun vectors out there. There are so many different types of vector illustrations, and that’s the beauty of illustration. Artists can define their own style, and run with it. Here you will see the use of bold key strokes, amazing colour palettes, and quirky cute characters that you just cant help yourself from falling in love with them. I had a lot of fun putting this post together, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

P.S. I have been working on the Inspiredology redesign that we have now labeled “The Lab”. While working on the redesign, one of the huge changes we have in store for you is the header, we have hired illustrator Mathieu Beaulieu, to create an awesome illustration.

Adidas Originals – Jared Nickerson

Smart – Konstantin Shalev’s Portfolio

Commissioned Designed for www.despair.com – Glenn Jones

T-Shirt Concepts – Glenn Jones

Darwinamic – Samuel Werczler

Brothers Grimm of Fairy Tales – Andreas Krapf’

Attack of the Zombie Squirrel - Andreas Krapf’

Love Hurts – luis cazares

The old school of new barbers – IKS

Oh sí, me gusta mucho! – zitone

Jo Jo Left His Home – Predrag Milankovic

Floppy Illustration – Marcelo Oliveira

Attila Szamosis Illustrations and Collaborations in 2009

AKA.MEDIAONE

Black Panther – RUbensSCarelli

Pimp my buss! – Konstantin Shalev

Factory – Luca Belotti

Largest Nosering Ever – Freakshow6

Self Portrait 09 – j3concepts

Who’s Your Type?

RaShell — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:35:43 +0000

As any regular type fanatic type will tell you right away, readability is the key. And yes, you shouldn’t try using all the “pretty/funky/cool” fonts available on the web for your main body of text (in print or on the web, doesn’t matter), cause unless your readers have an x-ray vision, THEY CAN’T READ IT! But, there’s always a case (get it? case!) for original “statement” font, created with a certain header in mind! Fonts made of unorthodox mediums are aplenty these days, and if used cleverly and sparsely, can pack quite a punch for your presentation. And just to make this a little more interesting, let’s present the fonts I’ve been admiring as personality types, each with their own kinks and quirks, but all creative and exciting.
Let’s start with the “usual suspects” – introducing…

The Paper Pushers

Cut Out: Type made of 3D cutouts surrounded by the “negative space” left from the lifted pieces of paper. Sharon Pazner:

Folded: Handmade type project from Tyrone Ohia: Each letter is made from a folded sheet of A4 paper, which is then placed on a lightbox. The dark areas that form the strokes are where the paper folds and overlaps, therefore letting less light from the lightbox through:

Cut and Taped: Well, it’s much thicker than your regular paper, and bigger, but still, close enough -Sex C on Legs from Marc Wathieu:

Outdoorsy Types

Grass from the geniuses behind Handmade Fonts

Fly high in the sky with Photoshop Star’s Cloud Text tutorial:

Watch the ice melt on this clever cover design by Ruiter Janssen symbolizing the increasing desperation of the plane crush survivors:

Foodies? Yum-yum

High Fiber Foodonts (Handmade Fonts again):

Got a sweet tooth? Open wide for a Candy font all the way from Montreal, by Julien De Repentigny:

For comfort food, nothing beats some pb & j (minus pb) via lovely For The Love of Type Blog:

Wanna see an awesome Food Font Fight? Come on over to a Typhphile:

Oh, and here’s a glass of milk from Jónas Valtýsson, to finish off your meal. Don’t spill!

Clean Freaks? Here we go

Typography Soap is now available from The Soap Lab

Juvenile Delinquents

Crayon letters courtesy of some very creative soccer moms:

Balloons will never look the same, thanks to some creepy clown types (no offense, I just have a mild case of Coulrophobia):

Let there be light from a German photographer ~Blickwinkel~ on Flickr?

For your viewing pleasure

Backbreaker font:

or better yet, Stick Figure Kamasutra font:

And now we’ll have to erase your memory so you will not be able to transfer all this valuable information to the aliens… Cause this is exactly the TYPE of knowledge they are after

30 Stunning Wallpapers

Chad — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:15:47 +0000

I love changing my desktop wallpaper, I have it set to change every 15 minutes, looking at a dull background can really kill the creative juices.We have never done a wallpaper post on Inspiredology, even though they are super popular, and I have so many on my computer, and every time I see a huge wallpaper post.. I download every single one usually. So it was about time that we featured desktop wallpapers on Inspiredology.

GOOD Magazine Data Design

Chad — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:25:38 +0000

I found this website a few months ago and I was stunned to see what they were doing. GOOD Magazine has a “Tuesday Transparency” where they compile data from anything whether it’s pop culture, political or even world issues. They don’t just create dull, boring charts.. they make some of the most interesting, and stunning designs I have ever seen. These graphics make me want to learn about the data compiled. A fantastic piece of work, my hat goes off to you GOOD. I have showcased a few below, but make sure you head over to their website and subscribe to get your weekly dose of transparencies.

Typography in InDesign

Stuart — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:00:53 +0000

Typography is an art and skill which is enjoying a renaissance in interest within the design community. Along with use of space and use of colour, typography is one of the most important facets of good design, and the expert use of tools to manipulate typographical elements cannot be emphasized enough. In this in-depth post, we will be going through some of the tools, at both beginner and advanced levels, available to use when working with type within that unappreciated program, Adobe InDesign.

The Character Palette

At first glance, the Character palette is pretty straightforward. You can select a typeface, its style, the leading (the space between lines), tracking (the overall spacing between characters) and kerning (the space between an individual set of characters) as well as some text distortion options. While simple in function and layout, control over a wide variety of typographical options exist within this palette, particularly with regards to tracking, kerning and leading.

The hidden side of the Character palette can be discovered through the drop-down context menu. In this menu, a wealth of other options is available: overall OpenType settings for contextual replacements and other OpenType features; type styles, whether all caps, small caps, strike-through, etc; as well as further options for both underline and strike-through. The OpenType settings allow you great control over selecting which OpenType features you want to enable for this paragraph. The side benefit to both the strike-through and underline options that is you can use these to highlight live text within the text box itself, as opposed to having to create a separate rectangular object to draw attention to a particular word or phrase. When digging a little deeper, we discover that the Character palette has much more to offer than just simply allowing us to choose a typeface and size.

The Paragraph Palette

The Paragraph palette, meanwhile, allows for over-arching control suited to creating the shape of the paragraph itself. Justification, alignment & hyphenation options abound, and these allow for a wide degree of control over the typographical color of a paragraph or page, providing macro-level adjustments which affect entire bodies of text.

Where the fun begins, much like with the Character Palette, is with the drop-down context menu. The first two options are for Single-Line or Paragraph Composers. Single-Line optimizes the hyphenation and justification options for each individual line, whereas Paragraph optimizes lines based on the needs of the entire paragraph. For example, Paragraph will adjust the spacing and hyphenation of an earlier line to make room if a later line in the paragraph contains a troublesome word, whereas Single-Line would simply adjust the paragraph on a line by line basis.

Some other options within the context menu for the Paragraph palette include links to the menus for Hyphenation and Justification (more on that shortly), an option to balance the ragged lines of a non-justified paragraph, options for bullets & numbering for lists and other larger-scale options. Once again, the depth of InDesign’s typographical control really shines through within the context menu of a particular palette.

The Glyph Palette

We’re only going to take a quick look at the Glyph palette, as it’s not as deep as the other two, but it is still quite useful. Basically, the Glyph palette contains every character for the font you’re working with. The principle use for the Glyph palette is for the manual substitution of a selected character or set of characters within your document for ones you choose from the palette itself. Some uses for this could include subbing in old style numerals to replace lining, or manually inserting ligatures. The other main use for the Glyph palette is the creation of Glyph sets.

A Glyph set is a collection of glyphs which you might use on a regular basis, regardless of which typeface or style it is. Let’s say you’re a fan of a particular set of old-style figures and use it across multiple documents, regardless of any other design factors. Creating a glyph set containing those old-style figures allows you to quickly and easily find them and insert them into a document without having to go digging through each font for the right options.

Hyphenation

The control we have over hyphenation with InDesign is unreal and, particularly when combined with the justification controls, can result in some really slick paragraphs which let the text breathe and helps captivate the reader’s interest. We can reach the hyphenation controls through the context menu in the Paragraph palette, which gives us a pop-up dialogue box containing the hyphenation controls. While what each option does is self-explanatory, there are a couple of guidelines which can help your text sing.

Proper hyphenation requires some care and supervision, but can be generally controlled through the hyphenation options. In general, we should leave at least two characters on the start line, and have at least three on the finishing line; with InDesign, we’d set that as hyphenating after the first 2 letters but before the last 3. We should also avoid more than three consecutive hyphenated lines, to prevent a distracting rag. Any word shorter than 5 is too short to require hyphenation (though you can set this as low as 3), and in general, the last word should not be hyphenated in order to prevent any widows. InDesign can take care of all these more automatic hyphenating tasks, leaving the subjective ones (such as avoiding hyphenation where It awkwardly int-terupts a word, etc) to us to remedy.

Justification

Like hyphenation, we reach the justification panel through Paragraph palette’s context menu. The options for justification are self-explanatory, but the real benefits don’t kick in until we begin to explore a bit. Word spacing will adjust the spacing of words, and generally a range of 80%-100%-120% will give us a decently spaced paragraph without too much distraction. Letter spacing, meanwhile, can afford some flexibility as well; in general, a range of -5%-0-5% is ideal. Glyph scaling affords another means to “tweak” the words to make a paragraph optimally justified, and generally around 95%-100%-105% will allow the glyphs enough room to adjust without being noticeably larger or smaller.

There’s also options to adjust the auto leading percentage as well as single-word justify; 120% is InDesign’s default for leading, and typically single words should be aligned left. Through all these different adjustments, ensure that the drop-down menu for Composer is set to Paragraph in order to set the engine to adjust for the paragraph as a whole, not each individual line.

These are general guidelines which I’ve found make a decent, workable range. Each paragraph might call for different settings, but like all things design, smaller changes are preferable to sweeping ones. When combining the features of hyphenation with justification, some really beautiful paragraphs are possible which stretch from margin to margin, without rivers, orphans and widows or any other distractions.

That’s a Wrap

InDesign is a powerful program which, unfortunately, doesn’t enjoy the same widespread appeal in the tutorial & blogging world as Photoshop or other programs in the Creative Suite. However, the wide range of options and tools available to you makes it the ideal program for working with typography. I hope you found this post useful, as it barely scratches the surface for what InDesign is capable of with type.

35 Inspiring Examples of Typography in Album Covers

Steven — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:37:37 +0000

Album covers can often prove to be a great source of design inspiration. Like any other type of graphic design, there are a wide variety of different styles that can be used effectively. In this post we will feature 35 album covers with inspiring use of typography and text effects.

No Doubt: Rock Steady

The Killers: Day and Age

P.O.D.: Greatest Hits

Pillar: Where Will We Go From Here?

Lee Morgan: The Rumproller

The Chemical Brothers: Push the Button

The Hives: Tyrannosaurus Hives

The Hives: Black and White

The Clash: London Calling

Metallica: Ride the Lightning

Coldplay: Viva La Vida

Norma Jean: O God, The Aftermath

Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown

Paramore: Riot!

A Perfect Circle: Mer de Noms

DJ Shadow: The Outsider

Spank Rock: YoYoYoYoYo

Radiohead: In Rainbows

Van Halen: II

The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks

The Who: Then and Now

Lambchop: Nixon

Blood, Sweat & Tears: Greatest Hits

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Show Your Bones

Daft Punk: Discovery

AFI: Sing the Sorrow

The Rolling Stones: Rolled Gold +

Blindside: Blindside

Chicago: 13

Danko Jones: Sleep is the Enemy

Third Day: Revelation

Vintage Coke Pop Can Designs

Andrew — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:43:13 +0000

While visiting a friend a few weeks ago I noticed this collection of vintage Coke cans, so I figured I would share them with the Inspiredology community.

These can designs are a great example of how some design styles never really go out of style. A few of these designs look slightly dated, yet others look as though they could have been released last week. I played around with a few of these and they can be used to make some very cool vectors or brushes, try it out.

Analyzing A Trademark Brand: Absolut Vodka

Chad — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:00:36 +0000

Absolut Vodka is one of the most recognizable and innovative brands in the world. Driven by their trademark Absolut ad publications. Absolut Vodka has taken a simple product, and created hundreds of different advertisements. Absolut has stayed ahead of the game with their unique ideas, and consistency within the brand. In this post, we will explore the consistent elements, the unique differences, and several different ad campaigns. Using their product as the star of the show, Absolut has created clever ad campaigns by using simple ideas, and great placement to build a fantastic brand.

Creating A Brand

We all recognize the advertisement when we see it, not just the logo but it’s full page of glory. Most companies put all their hard work into creating a recognizable logo and brand. Take Nike and McDonald’s for example, their logos are recognized world wide.

Absolut took a different approach to creating their brand. They didn’t just pour millions of dollars into the design of the logo, instead they focused on creating a recognizable brand for their product. Because of their their strong branding consumers worldwide recognize their logo, their product, and their ad campaigns. Seeing any of the design elements that are carried through the brand, we automatically know that we are looking at an Absolut ad.

Revisions Of A Good Idea

Absolut Original

Absolut Pride Rainbow

Absolut Collections

From time to time, Absolut creates a collection or family of ads. These ads are usually found in the same publication, or found in a series of publications that relate to each other.

The Absolut Sin Collection is based on the seven sins; Absolut Seven, Absolut Gluttony, Absolut Greed, Absolut Sloth, Absolut Envy, Absolut Wrath, Absolut Pride, and Absolut Lust. Introduced in Australia, Summer 2001, the collection sticks together with consistent elements and layout. The traditional dark silhouette background, and the beautiful, clear, bottled product.

Getting Creative With a Trademark

To keep the brand alive and fresh, Absolut Vodka has created some advertisements that don’t fit the standard brand. Absolut got creative with different respected musicians and artists. Not only this but used simple ideas and just placed their trademark vodka bottle in a very clever placement.

Absolut Exposure

Absolut Image

Absolut Voyeur

Absolut Gets Artsy

Surrender to a peach

Absolut Release

Absolut Steadman

Stepping Away From the Brand

Good brands know when and how to take risks, and how to deliver time after time. How does a brand stay so strong by just working with a simple vodka bottle? Well Absolut has strayed away from the usual Absolut Bottle Spotlight ads from time to time. In An Absolut World is an ad campaign that stands alone, has no elements from their standard ad campaign, except for the font choice and product. These ads are much more creative and there is more of a story to be told with these ads.

In An Absolut World Product Campaign

Absolut Mango

Absolut Pear

Further Resources

Absolut Vodka
The official website of Absolut Vodka.
Absolut Ad
Website devoted to collecting, purchasing and researching Absolut ads.
Absolut Unknown
Website devoted to Absolut Advertisements.
Ads of the World
Popular website featuring ads around the world.

Freedom of Doodles

RaShell — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:27:39 +0000

Doodling is not something you think long and hard about. It comes naturally to many of us. Out of boredom at endless meetings, during dull phone conversations and long commutes, doodling is a simple, mindless activity that can be surprisingly creative and… inspiring.
I’ve been doodling as long as I can remember… In school, I couldn’t stand the pristine whiteness of pages in the new notebooks – had to cover them with little scribbles
Now, as I look around, doodles are more popular than ever. They actually made it pretty much into all aspects of our lives. You’d be surprised!

Doodles are on TV, yes, that’s right. Case in point- Season 5 of Project Runway:

Interior and Product Designs have certainly dipped it’s virtual toes in doodling pool. From vinyl decals and wallpaper to down right doodling on floors!

Textiles that began as doodles on a piece of paper:

Fashion & Jewelry designers use doodles a lot:

Would you like a cup of doodles? Here you go:

Environmental Art, is just doodling on a large scale:

Advertising is just brimming with doodles:

Last but not least – web design:

Not to mention the places where I suppose you’d expect to see doodling the most – journaling, street graffiti, lettering (hand-written and typography), artists sketchbooks and graphic design.

Opportunities for doodling are endless! You don’t need any fancy equipment, or even skill to try it. The freedom is the second nature for doodling, so there are no artistic standards or restrictions to worry about! Any place, any time, you can doodle for fun, relaxation or to give your tired brain a little jolt of creativity! Let the doodles (together with creative juices ) flow from the tip of your pen/pencil and onto the scrap of paper you’re using.

Here are some links to few of our favorite doodling exercises and articles lovingly collected from all around the web:

* Great article by LaurenMarie @ Creative Curio for mental and physical doodling as a way to combat designers’ block.

* Illustration Class led by the super talented designer and artist Von Glitschka is all about doodling exercises, complete with PDF instructions and excellent progress photos of projects by the author himself.

* For something totally different and fun, take in one of Daily Monster’s videos by Stefan Bucher and then go ahead, try creating one yourself!

* Or how about engaging in some Digi-Doodling at Veer?

Over at Doodlage, we (LeO and RaShell) are on a mission to elevate doodling to an art status it certainly deserves. Come, come out of the doodling closet, join the ranks (no registration required, just curiosity and good spirit), and you will be inspired as well! We love, love, love when people leave comments and send us links to all kinds of unexpected doodlyshness! And if you follow RaShell on Twitter you’ll be the first to know about the important news in the doodle-world. Doodlage even has an Etsy store, that features doodles by RaShell. Check it out for very unusual and fun gifts and art.

Design from the Street – Graffiti Art

Andrew — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:21:04 +0000

One of the best parts of the creative process is pulling inspiration from unlikely sources. I thought it would be a good idea to showcase some graphic design samples that display an immense amount of design ability, colour knowledge and artistic talent, but is from a different world than standard “graphic design”.

When going through this stellar set of designs it is hard to believe that it is all done by hand, and unlike digital designers, these designers don’t have the luxury of [undo]. The use of colour and creating a 3 dimensional space is outstanding and sometimes mind blowing.

What was once considered an act of vandalism, is now being utilized by big business as a way of marketing and advertising. So it just goes to show that you never know what might end up going mainstream.

I was so inspired and have such a great appreciation for this design style, we actually interviewed one of the contributing artists to this set, so look forward to that interview post, to meet one of the men behind some of these awesome graffiti designs. Create an impression and study at the Atlanta Art Institute.