The importance of milestones
Friday 25 February 2011I’ve been taking life-drawing classes for the past few weeks and whilst it’s help me to improve my drawing skills (kinda) it’s also reminded me something about design projects.
Our tutor will tell us at the start of each pose how long we have to draw. This can range from 20 minutes to 1 minute. With the drawing that last for just a minute we were told that this is only enough time to get an outline and at a small scale. The proportions should still be right but we should try and use our instincts to things right rather spending time measuring.
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Red makes me angry
Monday 21 February 2011There are hundreds of books and websites out there on the subject of so called colour psychology and therapy. Google it for yourself and you’ll find a number of sites that explain what certain colours supposedly mean, and how they apparently make people feel. Many of these theories are based on tests that were done some time ago under artificial, staged environments using colour that was either painted on a wall or shown on a card i.e. with paints or inks.
These theories can make for interesting reading but can sometimes have a negative impact on design projects. The problems begin when clients and stakeholders attach themselves to these theories and start to believe that black is evil, or red will make people angry or full of energy (depending on what theory they subscribe to).
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Household Brand Names
Thursday 10 February 2011I had a good online discussion the other day about household brand names. I heard the term ‘do the Hoovering’ and wondered if there were any other brands that had achieved the same success. To spawn a whole new verb is quite something but to have a brand name that we all just use by default even though there are plenty of other makes available is pretty cool I think.
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A logo design for Joel Richmonds Accountants
Sunday 23 January 2011I did some work for a new accountancy firm based in London recently. I wanted to try and create an interesting icon from the letters ‘j’ and ‘r’ whilst keeping the overall feel simple and clean. This is the end result (though the client never went for it):
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You the brand
Monday 17 January 2011Remember when Stuart Baggs referred to himself as ‘the brand’ in the last season of The Apprentice? We are all guilty of being a bit like Stuart either individually or with our businesses and the problem is not really understanding what your brand is or even worse thinking you understand it but everyone else having a different idea. The best description of what a brand is “it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room“. Stuart’s idea of his brand was hi flying, super cool businessman, yet our idea was that he was a knob.
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