Nice Porfolio websites...

1) Andrea Pinchi - essential portfolio



This portfolio website is very charming. The use of illustrations makes for a very intimate and personal effect on the viewers. Torn papers and an awkward looking protagonist plunge the viewers right into the personal space of the author. I'd say this is a very nice portfolio with good use of colors. Even though the arrangement is somewhat random, I guess it was intended.

2) iDigital Emotion



Unlike the last website, this one screams techno... but it is a very well done website with a modern look. Everything is consistent, the colors go well with the graphics, the background music fitting, everything is organized in a professional manner, even the banner fits in well with the rest of the design. Again, this is a pretty simple looking website but it utilizes well its potentials.

3) APOKA Graphic Designs



If the first one is personal, the second suave, this third website is just pure magical and artistic. The graphics flow as they please, and the main image dominating the whole layout has a very liberating sense to it. It takes the viewers a while to break away from the main image, but it's worthy of doing so. The colors could have been a bit better, and the thumbnails on the left could have been made so that they stand out more, however, this is still a well-designed website in its own right.

FLIGHT comics

I didn't really read American or European comics, I'm what you'd call a die-hard Japanese manga (graphic novels) fan. However, one day I had a chance to check out the comics in FLIGHT and I was impressed. To quote from Wikipedia, FLIGHT is

A series edited by Kazu Kibuishi, showcasing young and innovative artists and writers. According to Volume One's Afterword by "Scott McCloud's Brain", the average age of its contributors was 24 years, although Volume Two features one or two older contributors. Image Comics published the first two volumes. In June 2005 Kibuishi announced that the series would move from Image to Ballantine Books from Volume Three on in an attempt to increase sales through mainstream bookstores. Kibuishi also stated that subsequent volumes would be released twice-yearly.

What really got me into reading those comics in the first place was the gorgeous illustration covers. Just by looking at the cover, one could feel a sense of freedom emitted from the flying images of magical birds, etheral airplanes, etc... Just to prove how beautiful the covers are, I present you:

The stories in these anthologies are great as well with some very amazing arts, so just go out and check out these comics because I just think they really deserve more attention. Go here for more information about the anthologies: FlightComics .

Ectype's End... interesting animated film

I just found this short animated film that was created by a relatively new studio in New Zealand called Rhubarb Zoo and thought it was very interesting and wanted to share. The story is as follow

Ectype's End is a fast-paced and visually charged ride that combines hand-drawn characters with photographed locations. Featuring a quirky soundtrack that drives and describes the journey of its protaganist, Ectype's End approaches the age-old issue of conformity with a story that is suitable for all ages.

Enjoy!!

Electronic sculptures...

Art really can be anything, it can be created from anything the mind can possibly think about. Ann Smith makes amazing sculptures out of broken electronic parts and pieces and they look wonderfully beautiful. Head over to her place to see some more amazing sculptures, most of them animals just as cute and lovely as the ones above: Ann P. Smith's Robots .

Book by Its Cover - another great book cover website!!

In one of my previous entries, I talked and linked to a website that has the image covers for the majority of the newly published books out on the market right now. Similarly, this time I'd love to introduce you to a site with similar ideas but the covers the website mentions are more artistic and art-related. It's called Book by Its Cover . It's a great website so make sure to give it a visit, I'm sure you will love it :).

Book by Its Cover

A great illustration artist - Leo Espinosa

I found the website of this great artist Leo Espinosa on Veerle's blog and was instantly struck at how vibrant and energetic his illustrations are. The illustrations are no doubt very modern with clean and smooth use of shapes. The characters have some similar qualities to Asian cartoon characters but they are no doubt very original and bursting in shimmering colors of imagination. So come give his website (which is very clean, simple yet professional looking one) a look, and give his illustrations some love :): Studio Espinosa .

(Studio Espinosa)

Dress up your desktop...

This post is relevant to the last one in term of helpfulness. I love to dress up my desktop whenever I can, and having cute pretty icons and especially free ones does the trick sometimes. So here is a very special website that let you search for a particular icon you need, and show you all the free ones that you can download for free. And they are very professional looking as well. Have fun exploring! Oh I almost forgot, here's the website ;) : Iconfinder .

Free vector graphics...

I'm not promoting copying and using others' graphics, but sometimes time restraint and designer's block make it impossible not to. I found this very nice website that has a lot of free vector graphics that obviously allows the visitors to take as they please but with credits given. This is a great site for inspiration as well in case you need it Vecteezy . Enjoy!!!

Very creative Harley Davidson ads!!!

I remember seeing these ads in a magazine many moons ago and since then, they have been stuck in my mind because well, they are some really amazingly cool ads! Great graphic executions!

(Click to view full sizes)

||||||||| Bar Code Arts |||||||||

I work as a cashier and every week I literally check out hundreds if not thousands of products and of course I see bar codes every time I'm on the job. Never once had I thought that those bar codes could become... art. Well, the thought just never crossed my mind. Those boring bar codes don't really click the mind. But they obviously did to some Japanese artists, and those artists decided to create art out of the oh-so-boring bar codes we see probably a ton everyday. Some of them are very fun to look at too. Like these:




For more amazing and fun-tastic bar codes art, check out this website: Bar Codes Revolution !! Apparently these artists are planning to have those bar code arts applied to real products in the near future. Oh well, I don't mind seeing those fun-looking bar codes when I check out those products, they can save me some boring time at work :).

The beauty of carefully designed logos...

When we talk about logos, we immediately think of that tiny little image representing a big corporation or a company of some sort. Logos have been around for a long time and it never loses its importance. For something so small, it does work wonder. I love a well-designed logo, it tends to stick around my mind for a long time, even when the product or company it represents turn out to be very mediocre. I found a website that has a list of 450 very attractive web 2 designed logos. Looking at them I noticed a pattern... the majority of them use vector images, there's very little use of gradients, and the fonts are mostly modern, non sans-serif fonts. In a sense, they all represent web 2 really well, modern, sexy, practical and savvy. Colors and text are favored more than images in most of these logos. It's like they are yelling "We don't like to mess around, we like to get straight to the point." These logos show the confidence of a new age, they are not afraid to be bold, straightforward, and effectively simple. Now, you can look for yourself the list of those 450 logos: Web 2 designed logos .

60 Advanced Photoshop tutorials

I just found this very helpful site that has a list of 60 advanced Photoshop tutorials for those who want to experiment more with the program. Hope that it will be of help :) : Advanced Photoshop tutorials.

Don't judge a book by its cover... do we really?

I hear that proverb all the time, and often I do admit that it's true to some extent. However, I'd be honest with myself here, the cover of the book is always the first thing that draws me to a book. So, design is important after all. Having a good book cover doesn't make a book good, but what if we just focus on the good design on the cover. I found a website that is just exactly what I need in discovering some good designed covers without having to struggle through the book (not that I have to, but you get the point.) So brace yourself for some goodness that is: Book Covers!!! One of the good things about this website is that it doesn't go around making you click page after page to find out what you need to see, it displays all the covers right on the main page and you're free to browse to whatever cover that catches your attention the most. Once you click on the picture, you're taken to the page that has the info about the cover, and the comments so you get to read what others think of the design as well. It's a very well-rounded website.

Book Covers

PingMag - Online Design Magazine

PingMag is an online design magazine based in Tokyo that offers a lot of interesting articles touching almost all facets of design in general. I always find design magazines expensive so having an online magazine like PingMag is a great treat. This online magazine is not only informative but offers a global view as it goes around reviewing designs from many other places outside of the US and Japan as well.

PingMag - Online Design Magazine

Web Designer Wall

I have a little passion for children illustrations, or any type of illustrations in general basically. By chance I visited this very awesome website called WebDesignerWall.com that focuses a lot on the recent trends and ideas of illustrations and gives out a ton of tutorials as well as the latest news technology. The first things that drew me to it were the very colorful, energetic and somewhat exotic illustrations. The whole design just exploded with colors, curves and vivacity. I'm just in love with the detailed posts and updates they have on the site, with posts ranging from great artists of the month to what's new and hot in the illustration community to the latest technology news. Definitely WebDesignerWall is a great place to learn, exchange ideas, find inspirations and connect with others who share the same passion. I'm sure I'm already in for a great treat :).

Web Designer Wall

Great books

I was at Barns & Noble the other day looking for the Flash CS3 book when something delightful caught my eyes. If you frequent the place you will know that Barns & Noble has several bargain isles displaying some really great stuff for artistic and crafty individuals. While I was there I picked up a hardcover copy entitled "The Golden Age of Advertising - the 60s". It's a huge book with over 300 pages of amazing ads from that decade at only $13. This is something that would not be available in the libraries. In fact, I think the libraries have very limited reference books about Art in general. Browsing through the book I saw ads that in many ways were the bases for today's designs but with a softer touch. The illustrations are more detailed and colorful. There's also another one called "The Golden Age of Advertising - the 50s" with even more amazing ads! I think this is great for any graphic design students wanting to explore a bit more with the designs of past decades. You might be able to draw some inspirations from them too as well. I don't think these books are available for purchase on Amazon anymore, so if you're interested, pay Barns & Noble a visit :). Here is a link to read some comments on the book from Amazon:
The Golden Age of Advertising - the 60s

Just a little something...

I was browsing an online merchandise shop since I'm a big fan of Korean and Japanese merchandises when I discovered something really cool. It's the idea of incorporating simple illustrations to a photograph and making them interact. I would not say that the idea is entirely original, but with only a few simple strokes of the pen tool added to a pretty-looking photograph can transform the whole image. It's nothing fancy most of the time, but for some odd reason, the final images come out looking totally interesting; they have a more personal, playful and intimate feel to them. These designs are a departure from what we normally see in the market here in the US, that's why they make for a very exciting viewing experience. There's no doubt the target populations these designs aim for are children and women; after all, almost every notebook cover appears to be very happy, fresh with a somewhat childish and feminine touch. However, I love how original they can be, esp. the last two sample covers I attached with this entry. Also, I'd like to comment on the photographs. They are very modern and artistic, for example the picture to the very right on the third row. It's just like an ad straight out of a magazine. The color combinations are wonderful, and the arrangement of the graphics is very bold and stylized.

(Click to view full sizes)

To those of you who feel a bit adventurous and don't mind visiting a foreign website in an entirely different language, then feel free to give this website a visit. You will be in for a treat, at least if you are a merchandise lover like I am =) : Barunson
Just use the navigation links on the left side to go around the store. Have fun viewing!

Some Web Design Tips

Well, to start off this post, I'd like to share this little comic strip:

(click to view full size)

credits: Usability.uk.com

Of course, there are many different websites on the Internet, serving different purposes. A hugely popular news site like CNN would not appreciate a graphics dominated design. On the other hand, an entertainment website like Disneyland would be so boring without all the interactive. So how should we go about creating the right kind of website? There are many things we as designers have to take into considerations. It'll be better to seek advices from the pros and more experienced designers. I posted a link to an article on how to create a better website, hopefully it will be of help: Good Web Design Tips

Interesting commerical

This is not entirely innovative or new, but the execution is very nice and it makes for a very short but interesting watch :).

Discussing design 177 - Zen City Morning

Design # 177:

Zen City Morning
by Ray Henry, United States


(+) The positives:

• Eye-catching layout, good use of colors design. I really like the layout, it's both practical and fun to look at. The content and navigation areas are both spacey, allowing the viewers easier access to the information. The colors give out such an energetic and vibrant mood, very fitting with the theme of the whole layout. I'd say this is a very straightforward but effective web layout that would work extremely well for a personal blog or personal website that needs plenty of space for links and content.
• Browser-friendly, fast loading time. These two are very important, especially loading time. The graphics and content of this design load fast and it is also browser-friendly as the layout will stretch and position itself nicely in larger screen sizes.
• Nice web effect on the background. I'd say the transparent background is what drew me into this design at first. Most large websites shy away from fun effects because of their heavy contents and large amount of traffic bandwidth. But having one or two cool effects/functions on a website can really attract users' attentions. In this case, the transparency on the main content really stands out and makes the design more dynamic and creative.

(-) The negatives:

• The clouds on the background are distracting. The layout could have been better with a plain or gradient dark blue background. It can loose the boring looking clouds. I just think those clouds are not contributing much to the overall design quality and are somewhat unneeded, since they look too geometric next to the more organic graphics of the whole layout. Those clouds don't really belong.

I don't really have any more negative things to say about this layout. Overall, it's a very well done design.

Wonderful Paper Arts...

Paper has got to be one of the most wonderful inventions ever of mankind. With just a piece of paper, one can do so much with it, even with no other tools. I luckily stumbled upon the sites of two great artists who create amazing art out of paper. They're truly truly beautiful and creative, so be sure to pay them a visit!!

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Chris Natrop - http://www.chrisnatrop.com

Examples:

(Click to view full sizes)

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Peter Callesen - http://www.petercallesen.com

Examples:

(Click to view full sizes)

The joy of photo manipulations

If you're in with this career as a graphic designer, the idea of doing a photo manipulation is not foreign. In fact, it's one way to spice up an ordinary photograph and make it into something really unique. You probably might have seen pictures of big guys' heads on women's slender bodies, and tons of other creative great fun photo manipulations. I pulled out a few nice ones I saw in the book "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 - Studio Techniques" by Ben Willmore and posted them below. The graphics are copyrighted to their rightful owners and I just posted them here for viewing purpose only.

(Click to view full sizes)

And to follow up with the wonderful examples above, I also did a photo manipulation one or two years ago in preparation for Halloween. I know that Halloween won't be here until the end of next month, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to show it now. Images used in this graphic were taken from GettyImages, and the featured girl is Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi. It was done entirely in Photoshop and the primary tools used to create to burns were the Dodge/Burn, various brushes for the blood and the lasso tools for the scratches and such.

(Click to view full size)

Discussing design 190 - Lonely Flower

Before I jump into dissecting the pros and cons of each of the layout at the CSS Zen Garden website, I've got to comment on how professional and unique looking each one is. To think that all has the exact HTML structures with only the CSS modified is strikingly amazing. Again, it just showed me how powerful one tiny little file, one little idea can be. Anyway, now I'm moving to the main focus of this post:

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Design # 190:

Lonely Flower
by Mitja Ribic, Slovenia




(+) The Positives:

• Clean, professional looking layout. The colors combination is wonderfully effective in bringing out the mood of this piece. The header alone is done really well, it has the ability to hold the viewer's interest for a long time. Nothing is over done, the slogan "CSS Zen Garden" is clearly visible and stands well on its own, while the title of the theme is incorporated seamlessly with the addition of a lone flower confined in a little square on the right hand side of the header. The grayish background brings out the solemnity of solitude.
• User-friendly interface and navigation. For a website, it is important that the content reaches the readers without excessive and complicated guidance from the creator. This layout uses the traditional two columns design; it is undoubtedly less on the creative side, but creativity would not work well for this design. From the beginning, by looking at the designed header, we as the users sense an approach on minimalism by the designer. So it is no wonder that it would make great use of the two-columns layout, the left one is for the main content and the right is for navigation. It is a perfect balance layout with delicate designs and practical content.
• Appropriate loading time and browser-friendly. These two are very important, especially loading time. The graphics and content of this design load fast and the small dimensions of the layout make it a nice layout for users with smaller screen resolutions.

(-) The Negatives:

• Main content is overshadowed by the header. This critique is more on a personal level. As I look at the layout as a whole, my eyes keep drifting back to the header no matter how much I try to look away from it. Like I said earlier, the header design is very strong and nice-looking, but it somehow takes away from the main content below where the font color is of a much softer color on a plain white background.
• Layout looks small on larger screens. Computers nowadays come in a variety of screen sizes. The standard 800 x 600 is long out-of-dated. I know the design is made in consideration of users who have smaller browsers, but still, the layout looks tiny on a large screen. It could have been better if this design is turned into a liquid design where the layout would always take up 90% or so of the screen resolution no matter how big or small the screen size is.
• Need of a footer. Again, this is just cheap nitpicking on my part, but I personally prefer footers on most layouts. The inclusion of a footer just makes a layout seem more finished a completed to me. Of course, this is NOT a must, but in my humble opinion, for this design, it could have been a bit nicer with a footer.
  

Website inspirations

Below is the link to one of the websites that I frequent a lot in my free time. It's just a collective site that holds a lot of interesting and visually appealing sites on the net. Hopefully this would give some inspirations to those who need them:

VisualDesigner.Net

Link to see some cool advertisements

I've always been very fond of looking at some innovative and creative advertisements around the world. Sometimes just a very small idea can become big if one knows how to make the best out of it, just like these examples in this website below:

Creative advertisements around the world

Have fun!

Welcome!!!

As a greeting for this new blog, I just wanted to post an artwork I created several moons ago. It was made entirely in Photoshop. I was learning how to make a glass ball when the idea of a smiley came to me. The gender of this smiley is not very... clear though. It could be a she or a he for all I care. The logo on the upper right hand side was something I came up in high school. It says Art Muka, and well, Muka is just a nickname.