In today’s ever changing market, each and every application has its own unique icon. Apple icons look so tasty that you just want to lick them right off the screen it seems.

The development of today’s version of an icon has not only a strong metaphor, correct size, and accurate perspective, but a number of elements along with a heightened graphic design level to top it all off. Why not add to the beauty of your Desktop in a fun and creative way?

We have figured out a set of 6 Mac icons for all major Macintosh applications:

We decided to design a few icons for the major Mac apps like Safari, Address Book, Preview, System Preferences, Archive and Trash. As we usually do, we started out our design with pencil sketches; each icon had a few sketches before we would decide on a winner.

For example, the Safari icon we have chosen is the one with the African safari hat:

When we finally decided on what the metaphors were going to be, we started to render icons in Photoshop. Then, we created the main shapes and continued to work out the details:

We always use references in our work which helps us understand how to create realistic glass, what textures should look like and how lighting will cover the object. In reality, there are very similar traits between icon design and painting in real life. Essentially, we amplify and exaggerate the effects so that the user can recognize what we want to say.

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”
Steve Jobs.

Apple’s philosophy is aimed at simplicity, usability and beauty. Each Mac icon will meet Apple’s Guidelines and follow a general philosophy embedded by Steve Jobs.

Icon design has always been very exciting, however it’s a big responsibility. Icons are not only a beautiful picture, it demonstrates the prestige and face of the app. Icon design is extremely important and sometimes it can play a crucial role in the competitive AppStore market. The first impression people make about an app is by its icon and the fact that your application should stand out from the masses and become memorable.

You can easily download the icons from this article here: Custom Mac Icons

He likes the colours you’ve chosen and raves about the beautiful typography—Great! This means it’s time to start creating a full set of brand stationary: business cards, envelopes, a letterhead, everything. People often wonder how to design these different things in a creative way while making sure the result is a coherent identity, and here are some tips to keep you on the right track.

I think we’ve all seen the examples where people go the ‘easy way’ by simply placing the logo and some basic typography on the front of a business card; Oon the back they place the logo again, inverting the foreground and background colours. I’m not saying this will result in an ugly or bad design, however, the approach isn’t really the best creative approach. Luckily, designing something a little more unique doesn’t have to be very hard…and can go a long way! I aim to share some practical techniques I’ve used in a recent design for a client called Say Green Cosmetics. I will show the entire design process I used and explain the choices I made hoping this will inspire you and give you some ideas for your own branding projects.

First, let’s take a look at the logo

Say Green Cosmetics is a web shop specialised in ecological and biological cosmetics. The logo we created features some pretty green typography and a little icon of a bird, the bird representing the typical Say Green costumer: connected to nature and free to choose the sources where he/she gets the best that nature has to offer. We wanted to avoid chemical additions to products as much as possible. As you can see, the bird is subtly shaped like a leaf, done to represent the strong link Say Green has with nature.

Experimenting to create additional graphics

So there I was, happy that the client accepted the logo design; I set out to create some pretty stationary for the client to use. The first step in creating this was making some additional graphics (you’ll notice it’s really tempting to jump into creating some pretty media straight away, don’t). With that said, make sure your entire identity is coherent first; it’s a good idea to start creating some reusable design elements. I first started playing with some pattern designs; patterns are a good place to start. They always come in handy as backgrounds and can be used on a variety of media. Since I loved the curves in the little bird in our logo, I tried to incorporate those (see below).

In example 1, I liked the green parts, but wasn’t really feeling the negative space too much. I took two birds and connected them at the tail creating a shape that is more inspiring but in my opinion, ended up being a little too simple. With that idea in mind, I copied the entire shape and rotated it 90 degrees. The resulting shape was a little flower-like and seemed incredibly really fitting for our client (I experimented a lot more with patterns, but these examples illustrate my point enough).

Creating ornaments from the pattern

Really satisfied with the pattern shape,  it reminded me of those old fashioned floral ornaments that you see in antique books—or at your grandmother’s house. That gave me the idea of creating my own modern version of these ornaments for Say Green Cosmetics. I took one of the flowers from the pattern and started building upon it again.

As you can see, experimentation is key. I started with shape 1, which I found too simple, and then copied and rotated it to create a something a little more complex. The resulting shape is pretty, but you can hardly spot the bird from the logo in it; that’s why I added colour (example 3). In my opinion, the green was way too strong, so I gave it some transparency, as seen in example 4, to soften it up and add some depth. I wondered what would happen when I’d repeat the first step, so I duplicated the shape and rotated it again. However, this shape was losing the ornamental feel I like so much in the first shape and why I eventually settled for shape 4.

Using the newly created design elements

At this point in the design process I was armed with some pretty design elements that really went well with the logotype. That’s a really big plus of using the logo as the basis for your design elements. Now the last step I took was using the elements in a creative way to create the stationary. For example, take a look at the business card I designed.

As you can see, I pushed the size ornament to give the business card a unique look. To ensure a feeling of balance, I used pretty basic typography so that it wouldn’t fit on the page. This made sure the end result wasn’t too distracting. The real unique application of the ornament was on the back of the business card.

I positioned nine business cards on one sheet of paper and positioned three big ornaments on them. After printing and cutting, the result was nine unique abstract backgrounds. All nine of them were derived from the basic logo, so they had the same type of curves, colours, etc, making the whole business card very coherent. Now, after I discovered how pretty this ornament was when used large, I made sure to bring this on a couple more elements. Take a look at some more examples, you’ll also see the pattern I designed earlier popping up:

Summary: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment

In this article I tried to show you a simple approach to creating some interesting stationary using your logo as a starting point. I did everything possible to the early, simple bird shape: copied it, rotated, resized it, gave it a different colour, et cetera. The end result was a set of unique shapes that really go with the style and feeling of the logo. It all comes down to experimenting and not being afraid to go over board. As long as you copy every shape before you start editing it, it’s really easy to go back to a previous version you liked better.

Of course this is just one approach, there are tons of others thing you can do when creating stationary. I’d love to hear if this design process worked for you! Show us some of the results in the comments or some other approaches you take to creating quality stationary.

As such, I have always been drawn to simple and clean designs that convey meaning at a glance, yet still have an air of mystery about them. When I see a book cover or film in black and white, I like the feeling of being transported to a different time; the designer’s crafty creative techniques, consequently, having an effect on me.

Bookworms, budding designers, and even the occasional blog-wanderer, will find this particular round-up of book covers inspiring. Here are 25 photos of black and white book covers that caught my attention:

A Mad Desire to Dance

A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005

Andy Warhol, The Day the Factory Died

Atonement

Brideshead Revisited

Creature

Ellsworth Kelly Reliefs, 2009-2010

Empire Rising

In Cold Blood

Judging Obscenity

Love, London

Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Milk

New Yorkers as Seen by Magnum Photographers

Out of Step, Faces of the Straight Edge

Religion Explained

Subway Dreaming

The Abomination

The Book Thief

The Glass Castle

The Great Gatsby

The Theatre of the Absurd

Vanity of Duluoz

Vita

Yvon’s Paris

We’ve been taught to not judge a book by its cover, but with designs such as these, we cant help to be instantly drawn to the book.

I hope you enjoyed this collection of black and white book covers, and sound some you love. Share which were your favorite book covers in the comments section below or recommend some you enjoy.

Business marketers know brand-rendered logos are indispensable in communicating acompany’s quality and reputation, and consumers don’t need master’s degrees to recognize, or feel, that impact as well.

1. Coca-Cola

One of the most quintessentially American beverages around, Coca-Cola’s lettering hasn’t changed much since its first appearance in 1885. That gives it the air of the most reliable and trustworthy soft drink on the market.

2. BMW

BMW’s signature blue and white design has just enough highbrow appeal without overstating itself, even though the visual imagery is supposed to evoke a spinning airplane propeller (and simultaneously recall the flag of Bavaria), drivers are drawn to its simplicity.

3. LEGO

Just seeing the brightly colored LEGO logo takes you back to a time when imagination was king. The name itself comes from the Danish phrase leg godt which means “play well”, but as far as consumers are concerned it means a timeless toy that’s still going strong.

4. Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Better known as MGM, it’s one of the few companies where you’ll find a roaring lion announcing itself. The logo took shape after a group of studios got together and referred to themselves as the lion’s pride.

5. eBay

The playful look of eBay’s logo has an anything goes spirit and that’s just what you’ll find on the site. People find everything from used cars to prosthetic legs, and if you could sum up the logo in one word, it would be “possibilities.”

6. Starbucks

While you may not know what a mermaid has to do with coffee, you know the Starbucks logo when you see it. The company established itself in Seattle, Washington in 1971 and the nautical theme implied by the name has remained to this day.

7. UPS

The no-nonsense UPS logo fits perfectly into Brown’s solid all-around presentation of itself. The company’s status as the largest package delivery company in the world also makes it the first choice for guaranteed service.

8. Marlboro

No cigarette has been able to capture the mystique and character Marlboro has been able to create. The allure of the Marlboro Man may seem a little outdated to some, but it’s almost impossible to separate that ruggedly masculine image from the logo.

9. MasterCard

The two interlocking circles from the MasterCard logo started out as symbolizing businesses partnering with each other. Consumers have come to recognize them, and the slogan “priceless”, as meaning worldwide buying power.

10. Google

The great and powerful search engine has gone above and beyond in creating interest in the company’s brand. Every change to the graphic logo on the site lets web surfers have a little fun while they get the information they need.

It seems the most enduring characteristic among all of these logos is consistency. Through good times and bad, these companies demonstrate a commitment to who they are and what they stand for, which shows in their enduring logos. Their images are their good word, and that’s good business.

This post displays the panels of this multifaceted fold-out piece, (originally intended as a printed package) and describes their meaning one by one. This piece is a result of my final project at Design Essentials, a Graphic Design program at BCIT, and Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC.

As an artist born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I had many artistic influences growing up; Latin American folk art, Native Art from the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest, as well as the visionary paintings of Salvador Dali and the films of Tim Burton. This illustration is a collage of influences and developed educational skills. Follow along as I briefly analyze my design decisions.

Stage 1: Inside/Out

This is the first panel of the piece you see after removing the cover sleeve and is created solely in Illustrator. The first stage of my process involves influences and art that stimulates my imagination; this mask is an homage to art from Southeast Asia, the Pacific Northwest, and New Mexico. My idea was to have these masks seem as though they are eating each other or attached to one another like a totem pole, another of my favorite artistic modules. As you flip up the first panel, the back of the mask which contains it’s title and the description is revealed, and the next panel is exposed.

Stage 2: The Brainweather

This is the second panel of the piece and was painted in Photoshop. This part of the process involves idea generation, brainstorming, mind mapping, and dreaming. The world of ideas is an expansive universe filled with new and exciting visual information that needs to be explored thoroughly. I imagined a face made of atmosphere and clouds that is complete with cloud cities, a rainbow and a sun creating a third eye. The top face is a daylight scene, and can be reversed to show another face that represents the night time and outer space.

Stage 3: The Information

This stage in the process involves a wide variety of research and visual information from books, magazines, web pages, TV, movies, and any other media that would contribute. These Newspaper clippings, illustrations, icons, and webpages are inserted in the facets of an African inspired mask with bulging eyes, which symbolize the digestion of all this information.

Stage 4: The Experiment

The next step is all about experimenting and trying new possibilities by creating thumbnails, sketches, and compositions—in order to make a polished creation, use a multitude of ideas and artistic styles before arriving at a solution. Since this mask is all about the different possibilities and methods of creating, I used hand drawn sketches, Photoshop painted and stamped portions, and Vector Illustrations to create this explosion of variety.

Stage 5: The Furnace

This is the final panel in which all the elements from the previous stages are fed to The Furnace to create the final creation. This industrial machine-like face has two doors that open to reveal the final message: The Furnace is ultimately fueled by PASSION, so it has the power to produce again and again, which is the underlying message of the entire piece.

These next two images show the piece as it is folded out all the way. First, the inside view of The Furnace and all the description panels. The next image shows the other side with all the panels as well as the back of the piece in the center.

I really enjoyed creating and developing this case study; it was very satisfying in many ways. It not only shows my variety of interests and illustration techniques but also give the viewer a glimpse into my personal artistic process.

While a film poster is essentially a snapshot of the entire movie in one image, either an iconic scene or a hint towards the theme of the film, it can still be interpreted and recreated in many different ways. I’ve chosen a selection of 20 beautiful and creatively redesigned film posters from very talented artists in chance of inspiring you.

The King’s Speech

Dumb & Dumber

Star Wars

Jaws

The Birds

Dirty Harry

Source Code

The Lion King

Ghostbusters

Top Gun

Inception

Black Swan

Moon

Rocky

Man on Wire

Tron

The Lost Boys

The Usual Suspects

Jaws

Back to the Future

Are there any redesigned movie posters you’ve found that deserve a mention? Which are your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

You know your idea is pure gold and you can practically see the t-shirt being sold at retail stores. However, having the vision is only the beginning in a long process of taking a design concept to a finished product.

A project like this involves a lot of steps and iterations as the design starts to breathe and grow. It is crucial to get feedback from your family, friends, and design peers at each stage of the process so your design can be its best. This feedback can be as simple as confirmation of a good idea to the more critical, with suggestions or changes to the composition.

Getting Started

So what can you do to make sure your t-shirt design is the best it can possibly be? The best starting point and the most obvious is taking the concept and putting it to paper or screen, whichever you are most comfortable. This part begins the WIP (work-in-progress) phase, that allows you to share and refine the design throughout the multiple stages of its creation.

There are quite a few different mediums you can begin with during the rough draft phase. A sketch on paper without regard to colors or a quick mock-up in Illustrator will suffice at this point because sometimes starting is the hardest part. In the age of social media with sharing in mind, it will be important to get some kind of version in a digital format so you can spread it around for feedback. Even tweeting a scanned image of a rough sketch can give you an immense amount of feedback on the direction you should be going in next.

Getting Feedback

The first subset of people that you will want to show should be family and close friends because the likelihood of a positive response is higher. This will give your design the momentum it needs; just don’t get too high, you haven’t exactly thrown yourself to the wolves yet. This group might even respond best to a printed version on paper because you will have more of a chance to explain your concept as they look at it.

After receiving the feedback, review the most repeated suggestions or questions. These questions may provide insight that you hadn’t considered at this point or all share the same confusion over the message you were trying to convey. If you feel good, based on their reactions, this might be the refinement point where you begin adding color to the design and really bringing it to life; then again it may not be the right time, you don’t have to rush that part.

Feedback From Online Friends

The next set of people to share the design with are going to be online friends through social networks. This can be done on Facebook and Twitter where you should receive a portion of responses that are more critical than the first group. A lot of the responses here are going to be based purely on one’s style and preference. Obviously the source of the critique needs to be taken into account before any major changes are made. Don’t let this group’s feedback discourage you no matter how harsh the comments—they may lack the vision to see the finished product.

When sharing on Facebook or Twitter, it is common to use Instagram or another photo sharing app to add a little polish to your presentation. Other social outlets for sharing could be Tumblr or Flickr because they allow commenting and can distribute your WIP to the masses quickly and easily. Pay close attention to the comments you receive and be available to respond to keep the conversation going. These are also good places to ask specific questions about decisions you have been going back and forth on.

After your design has received its fair share of criticism and praise from the groups of people that aren’t directly involved in the design industry, it is time to put some finishing touches on it. This includes the part where you create a digital mock-up of the design on a t-shirt. You can find premium t-shirt templates at places like Go Media, Deviant Art, Flickr, and Vecteezy.

Having the digital mock-up will allow you to post your design to the portfolio on your website, your Facebook page, or other online gallery sites you frequent. These sites are great platforms to promote your design socially, building up a demand before it is actually printed. The number of views and comments in the design’s final digital resting place will give you a good idea of how many to print or help you determine the sale price for the design by itself.

Feedback From Design Peers

There are a few communities online where the t-shirt designers hang out. They frequent sites like Mintees or Band Job obsessively and are willing to sing your praise or shred you apart. Regardless, you walk away knowing exactly how they feel about your design—this is the part of the process where you have to put your big boy pants on and get ready for brutal honesty (remember, the comments you receive on these design sites are coming from designers that do this for a living). They eat, sleep, and breathe t-shirt design and can help you get a perspective or understanding that you cannot get elsewhere.

So let’s say that by following all or part of these tips you’ve come to the point where you know people will like your design. It’s been tweaked and revised until it’s perfect and a number of people want to know when and where they can buy it. That’s just perfect, right? Well, there’s still one more very important consideration to take into account. Is your design actually printable?

Feedback From Printers

A design can look amazing in your portfolio on an electronic mock-up. However, that doesn’t mean that it necessarily translates to something that can be printed on an actual, physical shirt. Some designs, such as allover designs or over-sized designs, may be tough for most screen printers to handle. Another potential problem is having too many ink colors or color gradients in your design or generally trying to incorporate a design technique that looks great on the mock up but is difficult to accurately and reliably do on the printed shirt itself. These are things that may not be possible and may change the overall look once printed.

Occasionally you may also create a design that the screen printers can print but it may have so many colors, locations, or other complicating factors that it becomes an extremely expensive design to print. There’s also the risk that while the printer may be able to do it, it may not come out looking as good on the actual shirt as it did on the mock-up. That is because electronic mock ups are inherently different from actual t-shirt fabric. Remember, the best looking t-shirt design in the world is worthless if a printer can’t accurately print a quality looking t-shirt with it.

Sealing the Deal

That is why it can be essential to get an actual screen printer involved in the design process. Having a screen printer you know and trust, often from having worked together on other projects or through the recommendations of other designers, is a great way to get early feedback on how printable your design is. The screen printer can also make suggestions for how to resolve potential printing problems and may even become another source to give you good advice about the design itself. After all, they print t-shirts all day and are likely to have a pretty good feel for what is popular and successful as well.

Unfortunately there will always be some degree of uncertainty in the process, but taking the steps outlined above can go a long way toward laying a strong foundation for your t-shirt design project. At least at this point you will know that you’ve done everything you can to give your t-shirt idea all the benefits and opportunities that it deserves.

Online, in print, on television, and even at the movies, complex information is being presented in clear, and sometimes not so, graphical formats that truly engage media consumers. In the 21st century, information graphics and visualizations are seemingly becoming destined to be the preferred method of conveying important, highly statistical knowledge.

“To remember simplified pictures is better than to forget accurate figures.”

The use of charts, maps, tables, drawings, graphs, diagrams, schematics, colors, and other graphic devices to represent information isn’t new by any means—cave paintings from prehistoric times and ancient nautical charts are perfect examples of humans’ innate desire to distill complex information and present it in a way that is concise and attractive, without sacrificing the importance of communication.

Information graphics, in fact, predate ancient writing systems. The Egyptian hieroglyphs found in the pyramids are a clever combination of logograms, writing and graphic representations, that proved extremely effective in telling the story behind  ancient Egyptian civilization.

Those old staples of data visualization, such as the pie chart, line graph, area chart, or bar chart, were introduced by a Scottish political economist and master statistician William Playfair in 1786. French civil engineer Charles Joseph Minard mastered the use of information graphics with an astonishing two-dimensional flowchart that illustrated the ill-fated Napoleonic Russian campaign of 1812. The chart has astonished historians and scholars reveal the powerful impact of brevity and clarity given by Minard’s flowchart. However, lengthy history books on the Napoleonic Wars failed to describe the catastrophic Russian campaign with the effectiveness of a single flowchart.

Style is at the heart of information graphics and the early 20th century saw an emergence of pictograms, an effective method of communication in pictorial form. Isotype, a pictorial language which was developed in Vienna, Austria, before World War II, emphasized simplicity and lived by the motto that, “To remember simplified pictures is better than to forget accurate figures.” The goal was to transmit ideas, while effectively using pictograms, that were both simple and attractive. The graphic representations shown these days on road signs, informational pamphlets, computer desktop iconography, and newspapers materialized from the Isotype language.

The Information Age has given preference to online infographics because of their ability to capture viewers’ attention and transmit meaningful information in a clear and organized fashion—abundance of text can be tiresome to read on mobile devices. On the other hand, graphics can be easily scaled, which make infographics perfect for smartphones. Informational graphics also have the advantage of being understood by readers of all ages, something that text-heavy content is not able to easily accomplish.

Dear Clients and Prospects,

You need a logo designed for your business. Which also means you have to find a graphic designer to create that ever so perfect logo for you. Perhaps you haven’t worked with a graphic designer in the past, or maybe you just need to brush-up on best practices for working with a creative professional. Regardless, there are a few things you should know when working with a designer!

Keep these tips in mind and keep your design service happy (this is very important!), and you’ll be on the road to having a great logo.

Communicate clearly – One of the biggest complaints of freelancers get is a lack of clear communication with the client. From the beginning, tell the designer what you want and need out of your logo. Remember, they can’t create something that wasn’t asked for—they aren’t mind readers.

Be specific –During the initial meeting, be sure to let the designer know which deliverable you want in the end, and be as specific as possible. Here are some common deliverable to consider:

• Primary logo and all related files
• Website banner
• Printer and/or Web logo
• Facebook and Twitter logo
• Letterhead
• Business cards

Set a reasonable deadline – Quality work takes time for creation, revisions, and client feedback. Plan accordingly from the beginning of the project and allow enough time for a great design. Rushing a project could actually have the inverse effect in the quality of work (freelancers should have an idea of their own time-frames).

Set a fair budget – Similarly, offering your designer a lower-than-market rate  (or worse) can result in poorer quality work. Often, offering price usually dictates the amount of work a designer will put into your project. Lower offer, lower amount of time spent. Quality, ideally, stays the same, but less time is put into the ideas, execution, etc.

Be available – Even after the initial meeting, your designer may run across questions that are pertinent to the final logo—and there’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to get in touch with you to learn the answer.

Don’t second-guess – Constructive criticism and positive feedback is very helpful to a designer, but don’t continually second-guess their work. You’re an expert in your industry and they’re an expert in theirs. Just remember that you hired them for their talent and creative eye—trust that they’re doing it right.

Pay on time – After your project is complete and your designer sends you the invoice, don’t sit on it for weeks. Take note of their payment terms and make sure you meet them. Plus, not paying for weeks could give you a bad reputation among other freelancers in the area. People in the industry do talk about clients they’ve worked with and who they’ve enjoyed the most.

Spread the love – If you’re particularly excited about the work your designer did, give them a “pat on the back” and let them know how happy you are. And, next time someone asks you for a recommendation for a designer, it wouldn’t hurt to mention his or her name.

Thank you for reading, client or prospect! The above advice can go a long way toward a healthy relationship with your graphic designer—and a great logo for your business.

Sincerely,
The Design Community

While normally an electrical socket doesn’t provide much opportunity for a creative edge, October means you can add some dripping blood, and that’s not only OK but makes energy ads striking!

Even with zombies creeping up in popularity, vampires are still sexy, scary and sometimes funny – all aspects that can make up an exciting marketing campaign. The following are just 10 examples of vampires in promotions – sink your teeth into the variety and draw some inspiration for your own design jobs!

Vampire Power Awareness campaign.

“True Blood” promotional posters.

Youth coalition against smoking campaign.

Propaganda design by Alex Ross.

“Vampire with handicap” Dental Design campaign by KNSK Werbeagentur agency.

Cross-promotion for “The Vampire Diaries” and American Red Cross.

Club flyer design by Matthew Medley.

IBM’s anti-energy-sucking campaign.

Alterna.tif T-shirt design for Vampire Industries.

Adidas ad by Iris agency in Singapore.