Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer

100 Fantastic Design Blogs (and their logos)

Andrew Kelsall — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:45:23 PST

Here is a fantastic list I have put together, showing 100 Design Blogs with their branding logos. They are shown in alphabetical order (well, mine’s at the top) together with a few words about the nature of the Blog. The blogs are primarily Graphic Design sites, with a few Wordpress, Web Design and Inspiration sites thrown-in for a great mix—enjoy!

1 | Andrew Kelsall → Design Project Studies and Graphic Design Blog

2 | 10 Steps → Photoshop Tutorials and Resources

4 | 1st Web Designer → Design and Freelance

5 | Aaron Russell’s Blog → Web Design Tips

6 | Abduzeedo → Tutorials, Wallpapers and Design Showcase

7 | Aiburn → Art, Inspiration and Vectors

8 | Andrew Keir → Graphic Design & Inspiration Blog

9 | Andy Sowards → Web Design and Development Links

10 | Anidan Design → Web Development and Wordpress

11 | Anti-Social Development → Wordpress Tips and Links

12 | Arbenting → | Tutorials and inspiration

13 | Bittbox → Web Development and Freebies

14 | Blog Perfume → Wordpress Tips and Themes

15 | Boag World → Web Design and Podcasting

16 | Brian Yerkes → Graphic & Web Design

17 | Chris Wallace → Worpress Themes and Blog

18 | ColourBurned → Graphic Design Resources and Tutorials

19 | Creatica Daily → Design Inspiration

20 | Creative Curio → Graphic Design & Inspiration Blog

15 | Creative Overflow → Photoshop and Anything Creative!

21 | CSS Tricks → CSS, Code and Web

22 | David Airey → Logo Design and Branding

23 | Dead Wings Designs →Print Design and Helpful Resources

24 | Design Blurb → Tutorials and Freebies

25 | Designer Daily → Graphic, Web Design and Inspiration

26 | Design Shard → Design, Inspiration and Free Resources

27 | Design Flavr → Art and Design Inspiration

28 | DesignM.ag → Web Development, Galleries and Inspiration

29 | Dev Snippets → Code, Galleries and Inspiration

30 | Design O’ Blog → Graphic Design and Illustration

31 | Designus → Design Resources and Freebies

32 | Digital Arts → Design Inspiration Magazine

33 | Dosh Dosh → Internet Marketing and Social Media

34 | Dot Design → | Graphic Design & Inspiration Blog

35 | Doug Draws → | Cartoons & Blogging

36 | DzineBlog → Inspiration and Resources

37 | Echo enduring Blog → Design, Illustration and Writing

38 | Elite by Design → Tutorials, Inspiration, and Resources

39 | Elliot Jay Stocks → Design, Illustration and Wordpress

40 | Forty Seven Media Blog → Web and Graphic Design Blog

41 | Freelance Folder → Freelance Advice and Resources

42 | Freelance Switch → Freelance Advice and Resources

43 | Fudge Graphics → Free Textures and Resources

44 | Fuel Your Creativity → Inspiration, Freebies and Articles

45 | Function → Web Design and Development Blog

46 | Gabe Taviano → “Technology meets Eternity” Design Blog

47 | GoMediaZine → Tutorials, Freebies and Graphic Design Blog

48 | Helvetic Brands → Logo Design and Branding

49 | iDesignStudios Blog → Web Design and Freelancing

50 | I’m Just Creative → Logo Design and Brand Identity

51 | Inspiration Bit → Web Design, Photography and Blogging

52 | Inspiredology → Web Design and Inspiration

53 | InstantShift → Web Designers and Developers Daily Resource

54 | Janko At Warp Speed → Web Design, Freebies and Tutorials

55 | Just Creative Design → Graphic and Logo Design Blog

56 | Kyle Steed → Life + Design + Faith

57 | Laughing Lion Design Blog → Graphic Design and Inspiration

58 | Logo Design Love → Logo Design Blog

59 | Loon Design → Tutorials, Comic and Freelance

60 | Lost and Taken → Free High Resolution Textures

61 | Mayhem Studios → Graphic Design and Marketing

62 | MediaLoot → Premium Graphic Design Resources

63 | MyInkBlog → Graphic and Web Design

64 | Naldz Graphics → Tutorials, Freebies and Inspiration

65 | Net Tuts → Web Tutorials and Freebies

66 | Noupe → Photoshop, Tutorials and Wordpress

67 | Outlaw Design Blog → Freebies, Tutorials and Resources

68 | Pixelflips → Web & Interface Designs

69 | Pro Blog Design →Wordpress, CSS and Php

70 | PSDFAN→ Photoshop Tutorials, Inspiration and Freebies

71 | PSD Tuts → Photoshop Tutorials, Inspiration and Videos

72 | QVectors → Vector Freebies and Blog

73 | Redswish → Web Design and Marketing Blog

74 | Rob Cubbon → Web design, print graphics & more!

75 | Script and Style → Design and Web Development Blog

76 | Sharebrain → Web Design, Fonts and Graphics

77 | Six Revisions → Web Development and Design Information

78 | Smashing Apps → Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers

79 | Smashing Magazine → Graphics, Inspiration, Coding and Design Magazine

80 | Spoon Graphics → Photoshop & Illustrator Tutorials and Freebies

81 | Standout Blogger → Blogging Tips To Help Improve Your Blogging

82 | STYL.ETI.ME → Design news and links

83 | Texture Lovers → Free Textures, Inspiration and Resources

84 | The Design Cubicle → Graphic Design, Twitter links and Inspiration

85 | The Roxor → Freebies, Tutorials, Logos, Package Design and Photography

86 | The Dieline → Package Design and Inspiration

87 | The Graphic Mac → Mac OS X tips, tutorials, resources and software reviews

88 | Think Design → Graphic Design Freebies, Resources, and Inspiration

89 | Tracey Grady → Graphic Design, Web Design and Illustration

90 | Tutorial9 → Photoshop Tutorials, Photography Tuts, and Resources

91 | Usability Post → Usability issues for Web and Design

92 | Vectips → Illustrator Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

93 | Vectordairy → Illustrator Tutorials & Tips

94| Vector Tuts → Adobe Illustrator and Vector Tutorials

95 | Veerle’s Blog → Webdesign, CSS and Graphic Design Blog

96 | We Are Not Freelancers → Web, and Design Blog from Obox Design

97 | Web Designer Depot → Web Design Resources and Tutorials

98 | Web Design Ledger → Web Design Blog, Tutorials and Inspiration

99 | Well Medicated → Graphic Design and Inspiration Blog

100 | WP Beginner → Beginner’s Guide for WordPress + Resources

Okay, I worked on this list at various times over the last couple of months, so some of the graphics will be outdated. However, I do expect that I will expand upon this list and add other sites on at a later date. There are plenty of quality design blogs out there, so if I missed your blog, it may get added on the next revision Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

100 Fantastic Design Blogs (and their logos)

Logo Design Process for BlueDrift

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:56:52 PST

This is the follow-up post to my previous article How Twitter aided my latest Logo Design.

Blue Drift Pottery is a unique company that makes “pottery out of recycled materials” (or upcycling), which was set up by Cathleen Savage and based in Colorado, USA. The Blue Drift website site explains:

After much trial and error, Cathleen developed a working method that allows the bowls and bases to take their own form with a little guidance from the artist. The result is organically shaped vessels that would be difficult to reproduce by machine. And no two pieces are alike. Some vessels use other found and reused items, such as latex rubber tubing and old jewellery.

Cathleen contacted me regarding a logo design that would convey the uniqueness of the pottery she made. The images below show some the vase’s and their very distinct and contemporary style:

Vase by Blue Drift Pottery

Maria Vase by Blue Drift Pottery

Shell Vase by Blue Drift Pottery

Spiral Vase by Blue Drift Pottery

At first glance, it would seem like a fairly simple task to create a logo for this company. Not so. Whilst visions of pottery-inspired logotypes spring to mind, a questionnaire I emailed Cathleen revealed to me that Blue Drift wasn’t just limited to Pottery.

In the future, Blue Drift may create Jewellery, too. The word ‘pottery’ was required to be interchanged with the word ‘jewellery’ for a second logo at a future date. In light of this critical information, I set about creating a unique logo for a very unique requirement.

The Logo Design Process

After reviewing the detailed answers I received from the questionnaire, my mind was buzzing with ideas. In contrast to my normal work process, I didn’t do any mind mapping. Whist the mind-mapping can be very important, there are no solid rules when it comes to getting ideas on paper. Sometimes, letting your creativity flow is more important that following a rigid process.

◥ As always, I sketched out my ideas about the logo design straight down onto my Moleskine Notebook. Even though this photo shows a landscape view of my drawings, the very icon a drew was close to the final design. Sometimes, first impressions are the correct ones.

◥ Here, I highlighted another possible candidate icon for the logo design.

◥ This was another variation of my first and initial idea, although I felt this type of icon was becoming a little too out-there, so to speak.

◥ More concepts explored. As can be seen, I use graph-paper to help structure my concepts. Sometimes, the squares can be a hindrance to the design process, but not in this case.

◥ More conceptual work, where I explore using an icon based on the letter B.

◥ After a break from designing, my son drew a picture of my on a spare notebook page. I’m not sure if I looked that unshaven—but maybe my eyes did look somewhat wide-open from too much coffee! So, my next set of sketches were done the following day after some rest.

◥ After several rounds of loosely sketching icons, I collated my chosen concepts onto a single page for review. Sketching them out all again somehow helped me to focus on the shapes and forms in a very personal way. If I worked straight onto the Mac, I would loose this connection with the initial design work.

◥ Oh, one more concept that popped into my mind at the last hurdle—a 3D B shape.

This is my write-up on the first set of proofs I sent to Cathleen:

Concept a (page 3/4) shows a design concept based upon the letters B and D, combined into one symbol. This is the simplest of all the designs I have done for you. My main focus here was to create an icon that could easily look like a very clear stamp-styled symbol, that will work at even the smallest of sizes. As can be seen in all 3 variations (a1, a2 and a3), the logo can be used in different proportions and sizes to fit a variety of applications.

Concept b (page 3/4) shows a design concept which is, as I consider, “really far-out there” in terms of its dynamic nature. After reviewing your questionnaire, I formulated a concept that would enable the very unique nature of your business to be translated into a very modern and forward-thinking icon. The icon itself contains, although subliminally, the letters B and D in a very un-obvious way. It has a very 3D style and attempts to capture the uniqueness of your pottery (and future jewellery products?) with use of segmented blocks. This logo would also translate very well into a web-2.0 style logo, whereby gradients and even textures could be used in these segments to convey different aspects of your company, i.e., Pottery and Jewellery.

Concept c (page 4/4) shows a design concept that aims to capture the imagination and the ethos of your pottery works. After viewing your works online via Twitter Pics, etc, I designed a very fluid logo that represents the style of work you undertake. Again, a subliminal B (inner ovals) and D (outer shape) are present, but in a very limited way. The icon (like the rest of the designs) can be used on it’s own or with the text, too. *I have designed once of the B+W logos with the word Jewellery, so you can see how any of these logo designs will translate.

Concept d (page 4/4) is an addition font that I though may work, instead if the sans-serif styles in use

◥ After setting to work creating vector versions of 3 chosen icons in Illustrator, I spent a fair amount of time researching typefaces for the logo design. You’ll notice here that not only did I present three sets of logo concepts, but included some scans of my final pen drawing as additional options.

They were neat and tidy, and I thought including them could present Cathleen with more options. I don’t do this in every logo design. Sometimes too many options is a bad idea, but in this case, I thought it prudent to do so.

◥ This is how the B concept (3rd image above) turned out on the first set of proofs.

◥ Pleasingly for me, Cathleen liked my very first initial idea I produced. After finalising the first proof of the initial logo icon, I experimented with some differently-styled typography for Blue Drift.

◥ This is how the icon looked with a little colour, set to the right of the typography.

◥ Here, I have selected varied tones of the chosen colour scheme.

◥ Here are two black and white variations of the chosen concept. Notice the TM symbol, as the logo is due to be registered by Blue drift.

◥ This version of the logo is crafted for possible use as a sticker-design (to place under the upcycled pottery). It was just an idea that wasn’t taken any further.

◥ When the formation of the logo was complete, I suggested a Pantone® colours, based on the chosen blur/brown scheme.

◥ This is a photo of a printout of the logos, showing the colour and B+W versions.

◥ For the B+W version of the logo, I chose Pantone Black U. For more information about other Pantone® Black choices, you may want to take a look at my article The Professional Designer’s Guide to using Black.

The final logo typography was based on the following weights of Aller:

• Aller Italic & Aller Bold Italic for word BlueDrift

• Aller Bold for the word Pottery

• Aller Display for the TM & ® symbols

◥ Final Black & White version

Branding Concepts

Whilst designing the logo, I couldn’t help but think about the varied ways that this logo could be presented as part of a branding-style for both print and web use. Here are a few visions of this design style I had in mind:

◥ Here, I have experimented by overlaying a black version of the logo with transparent areas in the logo icon.

◥ Same in white, with equal impact.

◥ Another idea I had was to encompass any pattern with the confines of the icon. I can see where this could be implemented.

◥ Just for fun, but I think it looks the part.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic project to work on. I also learned a lot whilst producing the designs. My techniques were refined further and I feel that I produced a logo design that truly represented the Blue Drift Pottery brand.

What do you think? I’d love to hear any constructive criticism or your opinions on the designs…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Logo Design Process for BlueDrift

How Twitter Aided my Latest Logo Design

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:59:11 PST

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by a client who found me via the Mashable Twitter list 85+ of the best Twitterers Designers Should Follow. This quite surprised me, because at the time, I didn’t really know the “laws of Twitter” in a sense. I think I tweeted out way too many links of my own blog posts than other peoples. Now, however, I mostly post links from other blogs and resources with the odd link of my own a couple of times a week (apart from socialising too, via @AndrewKelsall).

Not only was this how I was “found” by a client, but Twitter turned out to be my primary research tool.

A year or so ago, I knew nothing of Twitter. Now, however, this new social behemoth has provided me with a great logo design project that I wouldn’t have received without it.

The logo design process I am currently writing on this project is quite extensive—and I’ll be posting it here on AndrewKelsall.com as my next post next week. The above image shows a snapshot of the logo as a printout. Be sure to get Free Updates via Email or RSS so you don’t miss the forthcoming article Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How Twitter Aided my Latest Logo Design

Logo Design Love Book Review

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:18:05 PST

I don’t normally review books—indeed I hardly even buy physical books any more. Every so often, though, I will step out of the digital sphere and buy one that I really want to read. My recent purchase was LOGO DESIGN LOVE: a guide to creating brand identities by well-known graphic designer and blogger, David Airey.

◥ The first thing I noticed about the book was the wonderfully-embossed text on the front cover. Nice.

I must admit, this isn’t a full in-depth review of the book. To be honest I’m only half way through it, but I thought I’d share some thoughts on what I’ve read and seen so far in this short post.

◥ The content of the book is great. It’s simple to follow and easy to digest. It’s been hard work putting it down, but I have several projects to do so I’ve forced myself to read a little at a time. The way the book is written is rather different to other books I’ve read—and I’ve found myself learning new things already.

◥ In both colour and black and white, this book uses samples of logo and identity work from across the globe. Working process’s are looked at, logos are reviewed and solutions revealed.

On the whole, I’d recommend this to any designer. I have come to respect David’s opinions and expertise over the last couple of years, so reading this has been a real pleasure.

Well done David—you’ve done a great job.

David Aireys’ blogs are located at www.davidairey.com and www.logodesignlove.com

PS: I’ll revisit this post and mark it out of 10 when I have read the whole lot
Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Logo Design Love Book Review

The Ultimate List of Gradient Resources

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:46:12 PST

I love gradients. I don’t like them when they’re used incorrectly, though. The very common “corporate fade” (or strongly-saturated colour fading into white background) on many business advertisements in recent years have given gradients a bad name. However, when used correctly, gradients can give a sense of added depth and 3D-appeal to both print and web works alike.

On that note, here is a list of articles, tutorials, tools, code and downloads to satisfy any gradient-induced craving you may have. Enjoy!

If you don’t think this article deserves the title of been the Ultimate List of Gradient Resources, then let me know of any more great links below, and I’ll add them Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

The Ultimate List of Gradient Resources

Poster Designs for the Bob Cheevers Tour

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:51:54 PST

Just a quick post about a poster design I recently produced for the Bob Cheevers tour, which also featured Dominic Finley and Lizzie Nunnery. My last post was about the CD Sleeve I designed for Dominic—and this poster was done straight after to announce that he was touring with the other two musicians.

◥ These PDF Proofs show two versions of the poster design, which announce varied dates and venues.

◥ The posters were supplied in three [European] sizes (A3, A4 and A5)—and also in black & white. Notice that the B+W one isn’t just a direct copy of the coloured one converted to greyscale. I individually lightened the text shades so the whole thing looked sharp and legible.

Any thoughts? I’d love to read them Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Poster Designs for the Bob Cheevers Tour

CD Sleeve Design Process for Dominic Finley

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:05:01 PST

Dominic Finley is a singer/songwriter who has worked in the UK and USA. There’s a full bio on his site, but this quote from the site (below) sums-up his career and music in a glance:

For the last decade and a half Dominic Finley has successfully adapted to various different styles of music. He has moved though Brit-pop, Motown and jazz, to more recently doing session work and playing progressive rock with Combination Head and classic pop-rock with the recently reformed Cutting Crew.

Before I write about the CD Design I produced for Dominic, here is one of his tracks entitled “As Often is the Case”. It’s a great song—and I recommend that you let it play whilst reading the rest of this post—it’s quite mellow and relaxing…

The Design Process

This was one of those rare projects where I had total artistic freedom over the design. Before I started the design, I asked Dominic to answer a series of questions pertaining to the design and specifications (my online CD Design quote form is available on my site here).

◥ The only thing that was absolutely specified was the use of a photo of Dominic on the front cover—in some way, shape or form. Another aspect of the design was for it to have an earthy feel, and to be aimed at people 30+ years.

I had a very basic idea in-mind for the CD Sleeve design. As always, I sketched a rough plan of my intended illustration. Nowadays, I use a Moleskine® Notebook to collate my thoughts and ideas.

◥ As can be seen in the image above, I only required a very rough sketch of what I had envisaged, as the next step was to create some vectors in Illustrator® on my Mac. The actual specification for the CD was a 4-page colour booklet, Tray Card + CD Print.

What is the design concept? Well, after I listened to some sample music from Dominic’s site, I settled on an organic-looking, earthy formation that was both visually-appealing and suited the style of music it represented. This kind of job is, in essence, illustration. There are “no rules” to artistic interpretation, so I just designed what I saw in my mind when I listened to the music.

◥ This is the vector I created in Adobe Illustrator®.

◥ I wanted the vector to be textured, so I downloaded a couple of free images from Fudge Graphics, authored by Franz Jeitz. Most of the time, I pay for stock images from sites like Dreamstime, however, with great designers such as Franz around, there are many high-resolution textures on the web—free for commercial use— and also downloadable for free, too.

◥ This is how the main images I used on the CD Sleeve started to shape-up using textures.

◥ The image above shows pages 4 & 1 of the CD booklet from the final PDF I supplied.

◥ This was the tray Card PDF (I’ve left the guides visible here for illustration only). As can be seen, the CD was inclusive of a professional barcode. Even though these CD prints were to be printed in Digital, I only used flat black in the actual barcode .eps to ensure a sharp-print on the black lines.

Client Proofs

◥ After I finished the design work I sent off some PDF proofs to Dominic. For a more in-depth look at the type of proofs I supply to my clients, please refer to my article Total Design Process for Edit Websites.

CD Photos + Technical Info

◥ The prints were printed on a Digital Press, which is a suitable choice for small print runs.

◥ The CD comprised of a Clear Jewel Case with a Black CD Tray.

◥ The actual “CD print” was produced digitally too. For larger print runs, CD’s are normally printed using a Litho or screen process.

◥ The inside of the 4-Page Booklet shows the track-list, credits and production information (I get a mention, too—thanks to Dom!).

◥ The back of the 4-Page Booklet is visible on the inside of the Jewel Case. As can be seen, there is a thank-you message from Dominic [t0 the listener].

◥ A big headache that can be caused when designing CDs is getting the placement of the Spine Text just right. Even if the text is placed in perfect position on the template, the actual tray print is still subject the guiletines. However, a good print-house should always do a good job when it comes to perforating the Spine “creases” in the right place.

◥ The only gripe that I have is that the reflectiveness of the Jewel Case makes the print look a little darker than it should. I’ll remember this next time I design a dark-blue CD.

This was a great project to work on. I didn’t have a massive budget to work with, however the project worked out well—and Dom really liked the design. I think that his music is great, and this design has the potential to let his music flourish in physical sales and online, too.

I’ve included another one of his tracks below named “Misery”. His albums can be purchased here.

I’ve also produced another CD recently for Dominic Finley which will be featured in another design-process article in the new year. Be sure to Subscribe to my RSS feed for free as not to miss it Any comments or questions about this article can be left below…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

CD Sleeve Design Process for Dominic Finley

The Andrew Kelsall Introductory Video

Andrew Kelsall — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:14:07 PST

A whole three weeks have passed since initially recording an introductory video—but here it is. After nine takes of mindless blabbering and forgetting what to say, here’s the video as it stands now.

I’ll probably record a new one when time permits, but it’ll do for now. I’m no pro at this kind of stuff, but this video allows you, my blog readers and clients alike to see who I am, what I do—and how dreadful my video making skills are, hehe…

Andrew Kelsall Introductory Video from Andrew Kelsall on Vimeo.Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

The Andrew Kelsall Introductory Video

How Indestructible is your Business Card?

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:46:50 PST

A few weeks back, I posted a video about my new Business Card Design. I talked about many aspects of the design, but neglected to put it through the ultimate durability test: How indestructible was it?

Well, after my daughter, Paige, got her grubby mitts on one of them—I must say, it faired pretty well. The cards were printed onto 400gsm Equest® stock, so the attack of Said childs’ saliva made the edges droop somewhat.

Trouble is, she then proceeded to chew it.

My advice? If you want an Indestructible business card, get it printed on plastic Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How Indestructible is your Business Card?

What Wouldn’t you design for?

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:24:24 PST

Image Copyright: Neubie

Way back at University, one of my design tutors was a well-know designer and illustrator. He told me that he once turned down a substantial design contract for a major company because he didn’t agree with their work ethos.

This seemed very strange to me at the time. I thought that if you’re a designer, you would design anything for anyone (within reason) because it’s your job. You need money to pay the bills and spend all your working life with a fully booked diary of work…right?

Below is a list of over 20 designers who have generously shared their thoughts on the matter; all answering the same question: What (or Who) wouldn’t you design for? Some answers are short and some are longer, but they all offer valuable insights into this burning question, including my own. Here goes:

Please note, some certain words contain an asterisk (*), as I don’t want them indexing on this site.

Liam McKay → www.wefunction.com

I’d have to say that I would definitely consider each project individually. Obviously you hope that every client you take on isn’t some sort of evil corporation, and thankfully so far I’ve not had to turn any clients away due to my personal beliefs or such. For me, there isn’t anything I could pick out and say I’d never design for anybody who was involved in this. At the end of the day I can easily detach my personal beliefs from my work if I needed to.

I think it’s more important for me to keep away from companies who have the wrong idea of what it is that I can do for them. I wouldn’t like to work for a company that would restrict my creativity on a project and be too forceful about doing things their way. Personally I’d be more concerned about how client would handle my ideas and then I would be about any ethical reasons that might hold me back.

David Airey → www.logodesignlove.com

The British National Party, because I’m not racist.

Jon Phillips → http://spyrestudios.com

I’m not one to turn down work, unless my schedule is full, but I can say for sure that I would not design for a hate group or website. I wouldn’t do it for many reasons, the first one being that I don’t want my name associated with those kinds of websites. I’ve worked with companies and people in many industries, form the adult entertainment business to the real estate industry, and every time it’s been a great, professional experience, and I learned a lot. Not sure I could say the same thing about a hate website.

Chris Spooner → www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk

I’m afraid my answers are pretty boring and clichéd as I don’t really have any gripes about anything in the world other than the usual ethical no-go areas of terrorism, p**dophilia and animal cruelty (amongst others…!).

So I guess that rules out Bin Laden, Gary Glitter and Yosemite Sam on my potential client list!

Mark Biegel → http://markbiegel.com

I turn down work where the client has no respect for the process. In my last example I received a enquiry from my website and the potential client had a small budget. After dealing with him for a little working out what he wanted it came time for the deposit. After asking for a deposit to get started (as usual) , I then missed a call from the client. I promptly called back and said “sorry, I missed your call I was driving”.
The response was “Don’t ever ring me and say sorry, when I call you I expect you to answer! I have 2 other developers who could work for me so your lucky to get my business”

I promptly wished him well with his other developers and informed him that we could not do business together.

The main point, I don’t work with clients who are demanding in an abusive way who think that contracting my skills is the same as hiring me as their employee.

To this day (3 months later) his website is still not started…he must not be having luck with being pushy!

A note to clients, I and many other designers/developers will bend over backwards to help you and give you MORE than you pay for….if you are nice and respectful.

Andrew Keir → www.andrewkeir.com

I got a call asking if I could remove text from above a watermark on an existing document and reproduce a blank original document. The project was pitched as if for refining a letterhead that the digital source file had been lost for, or doing a vector tracing of a raster graphic etc. so I asked for more information and that an example be sent to me.

The document turned out to be a police criminal record check for prospective employers… I didn’t accept the job…

Typically speaking though, aside from the obvious stuff like promoting violence, racism, etc. I think the only product I wouldn’t work on would be cigarettes? A bit of personal history their and I would never help promote them.

Karen Mc Dade → www.omegared.co.za

Some designers will say that work is work and there really shouldn’t be any distinguishing factors between the kind of projects you take on. However, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I’m a freelancer, so it’s very important to have a good reputation – and building a body of work I can display proudly is a part of that. I think it’s responsible to be socially sensitive as to what you put out there. Probably the most risqué thing I’ve designed was creating some artwork for a TV channel doing a biography on a 50’s pin-up star. Even though some of the pictures I got with the design brief where racy to say the least, I chose to use the more conservative images of her. I didn’t feel conflicted taking on the project as it wasn’t about the pinup industry per se, it was about her as an individual, and her story about how she came to work in the industry. That’s probably as far as I would take it – I don’t think I’d design anything that blatantly glorified extreme p**nography. I think I would also have issues doing work for any company I felt was harming the environment in someway. Excessive violence and racism/ethnocentrism are also areas I would steer clear from. I have no rules though – I consider the impact of each project I take on individually.

Hernan Valencia → www.theconstructcreative.com

A wise man once said, the measurement of success as an artist is the ability to turn down clients who are diametrically opposed to your belief system. I’m not sure who the author of this quote was but I would have to say that this is true of my experience. Nevermind the obvious nightmare clients we’ve all encountered since I believe others have already listed them. If a client offers me a retainer and a contract to have a consistent amount of work but his agenda is to distort facts, promote aggression or demean race, sex or creed, then I won’t work with him or her.

Lauren “LaurenMarie” Krause → http://creativecurio.com

The story: I was approached by a colleague one time to design her church’s website. I take my Christian beliefs very seriously and I always screen potential religion-based clients; I don’t want to personally help promote ideas or beliefs that I think are false. It’s not easy to turn down the money, but keeping my conscience clear is far more important to me. Sure, there will be a designer who aligns with the beliefs of the organization or who simply doesn’t mind the religious aspect, but I don’t want to be a part of promoting something I fundamentally disagree with.

Emily Lozano → Emily Lozano’s site

When I decided to go freelance I struggled for a little bit with this idea. While there are a few causes or types of people on my blacklist that may change as my views change one steadfast group will remain on my list forever: Cigarette companies. Cigarettes, in my opinion, are nothing more than death sticks and I don’t want any part of that.

Phillip Lovelace → www.pixelflips.com

I had a client a few years back that wanted to hire me to fix/update certain areas of their site. The problem was that at the same time as I was supposed to be working they had another design firm working on a full redesign of the same site.

Quite a bit of the work I needed to accomplish was based on the other design team implementing their work and then I could make the updates I needed. I ended up turning down the work because there was also a tight deadline involved and I felt too much relied on the other team which I was not familiar with. They also weren’t very responsive when I tried to get in touch.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t work for a client with a separate design team which is working on the exact same website.

Jacob Cass → http://justcreativedesign.com

Deciding whether or not to design for a certain company or product is going to be determined by a number of factors, all of which must be taken into consideration at the time. To be honest, in this context, I couldn’t say who or what I would not design for… there are just so many considerations one must take into account before making a decision.

Brian Pajak | www.pajakdesigns.com

I would not design advertising for any pseudo scientific products/services. If I create something that promotes a downright scam or even a harmful product then I am an accomplice in ripping people off and I choose not to be a part of it.

Stephen Tiano → www.tianobookdesign.com

As a book designer, my sense of what work would be objectionable is a lot less obvious, since I rather think the whole freedom of speech thing enters. Would I refuse to work on a new version of Mein Kampf, for instance, knowing what it stood for? What about a new Mein Kampf—that is, this generation’s type of book?

I’d like to think so.

Two books I found objectionable, that I simply priced myself way out of league, so I wouldn’t get into an argument that would perhaps turn up in print or online somewhere, and sink me at a pivotal time in my career, were one on violence as a strategy and another on the harm of “wind turbine syndrome”.

I think I’d be way more forthright now, however, and just say I can’t get behind what such books are trying to make a case for and decline in so many words.

Andrew Kelsall → www.andrewkelsall.com

As a Christian designer, let’s say that there’s a whole lot of stuff I won’t design for—basically, I won’t promote anything against what is taught in God’s word, the Holy Bible. Apart from this, there’s certain doctrinal beliefs even from other Christians that I won’t design for. I’m more “picky” than most, I reckon.

Yeah, this costs me clients and money, but no amount of money is worth betraying my beliefs or principles.

Recently, I ended up turning down a project that I had already started for a top fashion company here in the UK. Lets just say that at about 20% the way through the project, the client supplied images to be used that showed way too much flesh in my opinion.

Other project categories I have rejected in the past are heavy metal websites, foul mouthed rap artists (I’m not saying I won’t design for rap, but will review lyrical content), Christian-psychotherapy and new-age healing.

I’ve also learned as a designer that working on projects for friends and family can be a real nightmare. About 8 years ago, when I started as a designer, I would work for nothing for them—but would still end up chasing them for feedback. Now, I will quote them (apart from my immediate family). Even at heavily discounted prices, I have learned that they never get back to me as they want it for free. Now, the only free design I do is pro-bono work of my own choosing.

Ryan Scherf → http://www.ryanscherf.net

I would never design for any person or company that was expecting me to do spec work for them to decide if they want to hire me or not. You can’t hire a plumbing contractor to come over and do spec work to see if they do good work, so why should hiring a designer be any different?

Kyle Richardson → www.enrichdesign.us

• Those who want more than what they are paying you for
• Those who refuse to give you information (mission statements, business plan, overall vision)
• Those who want a project way faster than any normal time would allow
• Those who are late or faulty on their payments

Not a huge list, but those are some definite red flags that pop up. Obviously some of these things you won’t know about until you’ve started a project, but when you see a red flag pop up, it’s time to stop the project and get out of there.

Brian Klepper → http://briannotbryan.com

I would not design for PETA no matter the amount of money! I love animals and would never harm them, but give me a break. How much money does one have to spend on world wide smear campaigns? They could be spending this money on many other causes that actually save Human Lives.

Andrew Brynjulson → http://www.brennifresh.com

I had to respectfully turn down logo design work for a company/site that celebrated “love of strippers,” to be discreet. I wouldn’t have been able to look my grandma in the eye the next time she asked how work was going.

Daniel Whyte → http://danielwhyte.com

I would not design for people or companies that have just had work done by other designers that is overly complex, badly designed… and they are raving about how great it is.

Rob Cubbon → http://robcubbon.com

The only work I have turned down on ethical grounds involved nudity (not mine, I hasten to add). Not that I’ve got anything against people who would do this – I just thought it was a line I shouldn’t cross.

I’ve yet to be tested by other businesses, organisations or people who I would consider politically unethical. Obviously I wouldn’t work for people with deeply offensive views (eg. the BNP) but it’s difficult to know where I would draw the line politically. And, socially, as well. I’m sure lots of us work for companies who import from the third world. Do I think about what the conditions were like in the factory that produces the product I’m advertising? Not often, I’m afraid.

But I’ve got a list as long as my arm of other people I wouldn’t work for (I’m going to sound really picky here):

• Friends. Friends are a nightmare to work for. They always ask for “mate’s rates” or corner you at a social occasion saying they’re starting up a new business and need a fantastic new logo. The business never takes off and you don’t get paid.
• People who want you to work for no money or less money in lieu of promised future work.
• Ordinary people who want their personal photos Photoshopped in someway. They are terrible at briefing, really picky and you feel bad for charging them.
• Even people who can’t spell and don’t explain what they want properly. It’s always a bad sign.

These people I don’t just refuse to work for I just ask for a ridiculously high price and if that doesn’t get rid of them I’ll feign business.

Conclusion

Well, that’s a real mixed bag of opinions, but there’s one thing in common with the majority of them: we have limits on what or who we design for. Be it for political, ethical, religious or personal reasons, it appears as though we reach a point where we will say “no” to work—at the cost of personal income and potential long-term clients.

I think it’s obvious that most designers won’t design a p**n site for example, but it’s been a real eye-opener to see what other projects creatives won’t work on.

This has been a great article to put together—and the varied responses of all involved in this “poll” have been quite interesting. Thanks again to all who participated in this study, and I hope that anyone who reads it, be they a designer or client who hires creatives, will gain an insight into the issue of ethics in design.

Who or what wouldn’t you design for? Feel free to leave your own thoughts below…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

What Wouldn’t you design for?

Total Logo Design Process for Edit Websites

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:42:49 PST

Project Start

Edit Websites is a powerful web solution that enables its users to effortlessly edit their websites with little or no web-skills. There will be five website services in all, with Edit Websites comprising of Holiday Edit, Church Edit, School Edit and Plus Edit. All of these sites are still in development, except for Church Edit, which will also be re-branded soon.

Kyle Cottington, the man behind the whole operation tasked me to design a cohesive set of logos that work both individually and as a whole. As an existing client, Kyle hired me to work on one concept that would work for all five logos.

My first step was not to start designing on the Mac, but to conceptualise my thoughts with pen and paper. My tools of choice are a simple black Bic® Ballpoint pen and a MoleSkine® squared notebook. The image below shows how I started the logo design process:

The idea behind the Concept

The whole selling point of the Editwebsite system is editability. With this in mind, I set out to design a set of logos that simply and constructively conveyed this message with the use of shapes or blocks that fit together. This was a simple idea that formed a branding identity that conveyed the right message.

Next Steps

When I sketched-out several pages of designs and some mind-mapping, I designed very rough icons for the logos in Illustrator, presenting them to Kyle as an emailed PDF.

I always include a cover page in the PDF, showing the Job, client number/codes, project name and date. I then proceed to explain the designs and the decisions behind the concepts. The image below shows a typical cover-page layout (text here is blocked-out due to client-designer confidentiality).

The following images show the rest of the six pages from the first set of proofs. I have also highlighted the text adhering to each concept. Also, in this first set of proofs, I have provided scans of some of my sketches as alternate options for Kyle to review. I feel it adds a more personal touch to the whole process, as well as saving time which is better spent in the latter stages of design.

Plus Edit logo with Capital “P” variation + Additional sketches

This logo uses a slanted + symbol, very much in the same ethos of your original logo. I have designed the symbol with blocks, with a slightly 3D appearance to show a sense of depth.

Schooledit Logo + Additional sketches

The only symbol that can represent any School, from junior to Uni, etc, is a shield/coat of arms symbol. As can be seen, it’s made of blocks and features the letters “se” to reinforce the meaning behind it.

Churchedit Logo + Additional sketches

Again, blocks are used to form a church window. Although not all churches have such windows, they’re instantly recognisable.

Holidayedit Logo + Additional sketches

After a fair few sketches, I thought that the sun is the best universal symbol of a holiday, without giving the wrong impression of a “travel company”.

Editwebsites Logo + Additional sketches

This logo is the only “true 3D” one, as it encompasses the whole set of logos and ties them all together. Not only does it show that the company has many facets, but like the others, shows the building block concept…and a more subliminal letter “E”.

Here is a snap-shot of the Adobe Illustrator® file I was using to create the vector logo forms. I have turned on all the 20+ layers on at once so you can see how I like to just copy, paste and replicate things randomly until I achieve the desired forms. To me, I find it much easier to work this way, rather than constantly lining images up and creating “proper” layer names in these early stages, as it hinders my creativity I feel.

After the first set of logos were reviewed by Kyle, it was agreed that the concept worked, but both the Plusedit and Churchedit logos needed amending. It was thought that the Plusedit emblem resembled an emergency cross, so something less clinical was required.

Set 1: Plus Edit Logo. Changed to version 3 from sketches on previous proofs.

Set 2: School Edit Logo. Shield is curvier and has a more appealing look. 2G-2L show what the logo would look like without the CE letters.

Set 3: Holiday Edit Logo. Colour changes and options.

Set 4: Edit Websites Logo. Cube logo recreated with minimal amount of rectangular panels for clarity. Border added for overall aesthetics and appeal. Colour emphasis placed onto the word “websites” to give a more unified look across all logos in the set.

Set 5: Church Edit Logo 1. Crucifix design made into a formation which could resemble a priest or person to some viewers. Matches the graphic styling of the other logos in sets 1-4.

Set 6: Church Edit Logo 2. Crucifix design created in the same style as the Plus Edit icon.

Set 7: Church Edit Logo 3. As Logo 2, but with a family silhouette added. If you want me to explore this option further, using either less people or different poses (i.e., a more conservative approach, with just people stood) please let me know and I will revise it.

The Image below shows how I selected the Pantone® colours to be used in the logo design. As well as Pantone® Swatchbook (Coated & Uncoated), I had two books from my local printers, which show how the certain swatches will print in CMYK on their presses.

The Image below shows how I choose to represent what Pantone® Colours I proposed. It shows the colours together with their codes. Here ‘PC’ means Pantone Coated (often just referred to as ‘C’). In all likely-hood, Only the darker colour (in this case Black 5 PC) and the darker orange (Warm Red PC – or Warm Red C, depending on the printer) would be used, as the Warm Red could be used as a “gradient-colour” into “gradient-lower-tint“. However, I have chosen to display a 3-colour Pantone® Set for completeness.

Nearing the end of the project, I had made some more changes to the logo designs, namely altering line widths on the School Edit and Edit website logos. Also, I altered the School Edit shield, so it looks more curvy and 3D.

Finally, I produced four separate versions of each logo: Gradient (optional for web use), Duo or Tri-tone Pantone® coloured ones for print use (or simply used online as non-gradient option), Greystyle for print use (fax, etc) and Black & White (B+W).

In the set of PDF proofs below, I have also given a few more colour options:

When all the logo designs were approved, I set about finalising the designs, making sure all the vector paths in Illustrator® were joined, with no stray points. The image below shows the logo designs in outline mode:

After the colours were agreed, this is the final set of proof files I sent Kyle, with the finalised colour combinations and Pantones® included:

The Final Logos

The image below shows the set of logos together without colour, so you can see the formations of the design work, with the bias of colour:

To Conclude

This was a great project to work on—and it was quite a challenge I must admit. Given that there were five logos that needed to work together as a whole—and with 4 different versions of each concept (Pantone®, Gradient, GreyStyle and B+W), this was a project that demanded attention to detail. I enjoyed the process thoroughly, reminding me of another set of logos I produced for St Luke’s Church.

I know this article has been rather long, but I wanted to show the entire design process from start to finish. I’ve been reading other designers’ posts lately, with snapshots of the logo concepts, but lacking the detail on how their designs were presented.

I hope this post has given you an insight into how I work. If you have any questions or comments about this article, please feel free to leave your thoughts below..Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Total Logo Design Process for Edit Websites

How to build a Home Office

Andrew Kelsall — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:56:26 PST

This ain’t The New Yankee Workshop, but here’s some photos I took whilst building a new home office, showing the construction in various stages, along with some humour for good measure. I’m not going to talk about what screws I used, or what brand of products, etc, but you’re welcome to ask any details in the comments section after the post.

A little Background Info

18 months ago, I was happy in my small, but quaint office upstairs at my home here near Leeds, England, UK. As can be seen in the photo below, I had a great view of the bowling green at the rear of my back yard—and all the tweeping birds and such-like. However, as my wife gave birth to our second baby, I needed to relinquish my office and turn it into a nursery.

This is how my old office looks now:

And this was my peaceful view…although it looks better in Summer (the bowling green is the pride and joy of the Hemsworth Conservative Club):

Since I was booted out, I have been busy designing away in the corner of my living room. However, working downstairs with two kids and a nagging wife isn’t the best environment to be working in (don’t worry, Mrs. K never reads my posts).

So, over the past few weeks I have been building an office, as well been as busy on several design projects at once. Yeah, it’s been a challenge but now it’s finished, I thought I’d share some photos with you, outlining the steps I took to build it…and yes, it hasn’t fallen down yet.

The Build

I’m a designer, not a tradesman, however I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to build my own little office. In this image, it shows where my Mac and desk are downstairs, in the corner of the living room. It’s only a small space, but it worked well for me in the daytime at least.

Here, I have started to cut away the flooring and started on the timber framework…

A few months ago, I was constructing some large-format Foamex® prints for Next, Plc and wrote an article named How to make a mockup Pallet Racking, where I saw a stud drywall being constructed. I figured that it looked simple to do, so I just noted the construction method. Here, I have started on one of the walls:

In all, there were three separate sections of the timber wall to construct. I also researched online to find out the best way of doing things:

After the stud wall was completed, I set about attaching large panels of plasterboard to the framework. I did the inside first, then insulated the inside before applying the outer boards. Then I nailed on the architrave onto the door frame:

I used special plasterboard tape and filler to smooth over the joints. After it dried, I used sandpaper to smooth it over:

Whilst I was doing all this over a period of several weeks (when I had spare time in-between projects), I worked in a bit of a mess with dust everywhere. At least I covered up my iMac—now I didn’t want this to brake!

I sanded down the inner walls and constructed an air vent. It’s only a small working space, so I didn’t want to suffocate whilst designing!

Here’s my daughter, Paige (yes, the one who kicked me out of my larger office). Since she’s so cute, I’ll let her off I suppose!

At one point, I needed to apply some more joining plaster, but bought one which was too coarse. However, I fixed the rough surfaces with some Polycell Smoothover compound instead of spending hours sanding it off. This is why the walls are all nearly all white here. I used a Dyson to suck up much of the plaster dust, but I clogged it much to my wife’s despair:

I painted the plaster with UVA Bond to seal it, then after it dried, painted the new office and entire living room for consistency:

The office is larger than it appears, as it is neatly tucked away under the stairs and looks more like a closet. I’m out of the way in the corner and I have a living room which is more visually appealing. No cluttered desk on show—and my wife doesn’t need to look at me, hehe.

One final step was to gloss the woodwork, so it matched the rest of the house:

On the interior of the office, I stuck on Acoustic Foam triangle/pyramid tiles to help with the acoustics of the office. Previously, when I needed to take a phone call when my family were in, I would have my Skype number divert to my mobile (so I could talk elsewhere, etc).

Now that I have a new office, it was very “echoey” and hollow-sounding, so I installed these tiles to dampen the sound. This way I can easily just sit down and talk from of my screen via the in-built microphone. As can be seen, I also installed shelves:

To cut the tiles into the correct shapes, I just used a saw (yes, that is Kermit the Frog in the background):

As my desk is under the stairs, there is an area where I have my scanner and printer. It’s great that they’re out of the way and not in my direct workspace. Again, I have used acoustic tiles to dampen the echoes—and it helps in soundproofing when I have music playing while I work.

By-the-way, to attach the foam to the plasterboard drywall, I used 3M Scotch-Weld number 74 Foam Adhesive for a very strong bond:

As the office is small-ish, it’s very cluttered, but tidy at the same time. I’m not one for wanting a lot of colour around my Mac screen (read my article on this for more details), but if I am doing colour-critical work, I can simply turn out the lights.

Oh yeah, here’s my son, Chase. He’s only 4 but can use Photoshop® with a graphics tablet already! A designer in the making?

Now the construction of my new office is complete, all that’s required a very mature, 30 year old graphic designer, complete with a retro He-man and Skeletor!

To Conclude

It just goes to show that with a little know-how and determination, anyone can build their own office. The total material cost for this project was about £300, but if I hired someone to build it for me, it may have cost a thousand (although it would’ve been built faster).

Do you have a home office? If not, would you consider building one if you had the space?

NoteBook: There’s a few of great articles on other blogs about designers’ workspaces that are worth a read:

Where Designers Work by David Airey

Designers present your workspace by Brian Yerkes

My design workspace by James Kurtz IIISimilar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How to build a Home Office

Logo Design for Woodlands Community Church

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:25:34 PST

I was approached by David Fletcher from the Woodlands Community Church in Sheffield, England, after viewing my logo designs for St Luke’s.

David stated that the characteristics of the logo would have to have be: simplicity, community, purity, peace, vibrancy, modern and natural. David had one idea in mind for the logo design, but he also wanted another concept altogether.

The image below shows a section of proofs I sent David as part of a PDF (concept a). This was my own concept, which I thought fitted the project brief rather well. This was the logo description in the proof file:

a1 & a2 show a design concept based upon an oak leaf and acorn. The acorn can symbolise growth, which is a good message for any expanding church to convey. Also, the coloured-version of the oak leaf has an crucifix within it, that is more subliminal than obvious. I can make this more/less prominent at your request.

The second concept was based on David’s idea, which he drew a rough sketch of and emailed to me. Athough David isn’t a designer by any means, the sketch was good enough for me to gage what he wanted in the design. The whole concept was way to busy initially, but I managed to simplify the whole look, structure and appeal of the design concept:

b1 & b2 show a design concept based on the sketch you kindly provided. I have simplified it into a more
meaningful and coherent emblem. This is a more complicated and less simplistic design compared to
concept a.

Although the first logo was well-received, David and the Church committee preferred the second concept. However, some members were wondering what the logo design would look like with various additions, such as fruit and a crucifix included in the imagery:

Obviously, such additions made the design look even more crowded and complicated. After they reviewed the designs, it was agreed that the first solution was simpler and clearer—and I was thankful they arrived at the same opinion I held.

After some final tweaking, this was the end result below. I may be doing a letter-head for the Woodlands Community Church soon, so I may update this post in the near future.

I haven’t gone into the smaller details (such as sketches, etc) in this post, as I’ve just completed another set of five logos for another company, which I will soon be writing on in much more detail. Be sure to subscribe to the Andrew Kelsall RSS Feed so you don’t miss it.

What do you think of the designs and colours? I’d like to read your opinions….Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Logo Design for Woodlands Community Church

Have you watched the new iMac Video?

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:23:19 PDT

Okay, I use Macs, but I don’t normally write articles about them. However, in this case I’ll make an exception—as the new 27″ iMac was launched a few days ago.

My first Mac was a G4 Quicksilver with a 23″ LCD display and then a G4 Cube. Afterwards, I invested heavily in a dual-core, liquid-cooled G5 until finally settling on my current 24″ iMac.

I do a fair amount of large-format print, and it handles large documents fine, so I’m sure that the newer iMacs are even more powerful workhorses—and they run silently, unlike the tower Mac Pros.

On the official Apple site, there’s quite an awesome, very down-to-earth yet visually stunning video all about the new iMacs which can be viewed on their site.

If you’re a Mac user or not, the 6 minute video is quite amazing and I’ve watched it twice. It also features both the music of Bloc Party and features the new Star Trek movie, which is pretty great too

Do you use a Mac? Would you consider upgrading?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Have you watched the new iMac Video?

Learn Something New Every Day

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:45:00 PDT

Whilst on Twitter yesterday, I followed a link via @Retinart (Alex Charchar) regarding a great new site aptly named Learn Something New Every Day.

It has weird and wonderful facts that are illustrated and updated daily. Here are 10 such facts from the site, with amusingly simple yet effective and colourful images. Don’t rely on these facts for accuracy, but I’m sure they’re true

“Star Fish have no brains”

“The brain is 80% water”

“4000 year old cheese was found in Egyptian Tombs”

“Jim Henson developed an allergy to fleece”

“Golf is the only sport to be played on the Moon”

“90 percent of the Worlds species are yet to be discovered”

“penguins are able to jump 2 metres high”

“Shakespeare was dyslexic”

“A Rubiks Cube has 43250032744898856000 possible positions”

“Sherlock Holmes never said Elementary, my dear Watson”
ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT of LearnSomethingNewEveryDay.co.uk.

PS, If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @AndrewKelsall (yes, very hard to guess)…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Learn Something New Every Day

Colours by GF Smith

Andrew Kelsall — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:30:43 PDT

I love to collect paper samples. As a designer, you never know when one will come in handy—plus they look cool on your shelf! This is one of my favourite collections, Colours by GF Smith Paper. What’s so stunning about this box set is the vast array samples it actually contains. The box set holds four beautifully made books that are packed with textured and smooth paper samples.

If you’re into print design I definitely recommend a set like this. I received it from GF Smith a few years back (for free) and it has been a source of inspiration for me when considering paper types.

As can be seen in the image gallery below, there’s everything from smooth coated stock, to parchment/marbled paper and “Specials“, which contain Metallic Gold, Pearl Ridged and Carbon Papers. Okay, enough waffling, here are the photos which don’t do this fabulous book any real justice…

Do you collect paper samples? Which one’s are your favourite? How often do you use speciality paper stock?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Colours by GF Smith

The Secret of Tracking Keywords

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:42:00 PDT

Have you ever been in a situation when you’re writing a blog post, but have no idea how many of your keywords have been used? Well, if you’re like me, you’ll find a very handy FireFox add-on extremely helpful.

It goes by the name of Wordtracker SEO Blogger—and it deserves this title. Once installed you simply type in your desired keyword in the search box. For example, when I wrote my article How to Design a Mockup Pallet Racking, I typed the word foamex. Now, this word appeared at the top of the list with 83 searches. To use this word I simply chose “add” and it was entered into the “chosen keywords” list (shown in the image below).

This is the amazing part: every time you use a keyword, the Wordtracker SEO Blogger Addon adds it in a column so you always know how many times it has been used. As can be seen, I have used the word foamex 25 times, which seems quite a lot. However, the article in question was nearly 2500 words long, so simple maths places the use of that keyword to roughly 1%—perfect.

As can also be seen, I have used words such as pallet racking, correx and industrial velcro in various amounts (based on the importance of the keyword).

Does it work? Well, it certainly does help, although for the article in question, the keyword foamex is a very niche word. The search results shown below, display the top 2 listings in Google for the keywords Foamex Designer. Both the links are for both my articles on Foamex designs (How to Design a Mockup Pallet Racking and Large-Format Foamex Design for Next Distribution).

It just goes to show how there is very effective way of tracking keywords and it’s no secret—like many would want it to be (so a competitive edge may be sought).

I’m no expert on using keywords, but I hope this article can help you out. If you’re a Firefox user I recommend this great addon—and I believe it will do your site or blog real justice.

Have you been using this addon? What do you think of it? Has it helped your listings within search results?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

The Secret of Tracking Keywords

First Video Post: My New Business Card Design

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:03:58 PDT

Recently, I had over 4000 My New Business Cards printed, and I had planned to write a post about it. Moreover, I had been toying with the idea of producing a video for this blog for a while now, so I whipped out my HandyCam and filmed this 5-minute video explaining the new business card design.

Okay, it’s my first attempt, so I set the recording resolution too low, it has some random boxes showing at the top of the frame, it was unrehearsed and for some strange reason, I kept saying “urrrr” every 10 seconds. However, I hope you get the gist of what I’m trying the explain.

I discuss the Equest® card I used, 10mm round-cornering, Pantone® spot colors and typography. Here goes:

Business Card Design from Andrew Kelsall on Vimeo.

As stated, comments and questions are welcomed…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

First Video Post: My New Business Card Design

How I customized my Blog #5: Conclusion

Andrew Kelsall — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:06:39 PDT

When I first started this blog over a year ago, I started a series aptly entitled How I customized my Blog #1 (see also parts 2, 3 & 4). My aim was to document my step-by-step approach setting up this site. However, since then I have shifted the focus of this site onto posts about my own work processes and technical articles about graphic design in general.

I intend to write about more of the unique projects I work on like Design of a large Foamex® Pitwheel, How to get a design job using tinned meat and Case Study of Logo Designs for St Luke’s church.

I also want to write more quality posts on color, such as What are the Benefits of Designing in RGB for CMYK Print? and the very popular The Professional Designer’s Guide to using Black.

I’m still finding my feet in the whole blogging arena, so I apologize for cutting the series short. I am considering designing my own unique template design from scratch when time permits, so carrying-on this series seems somewhat pointless.

However, If you have any questions about customizing your own Wordpress templates, this is intended to be a sort-of “open post”, whereby I will try and answer any questions about the [limited] knowledge I have about the subject.Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How I customized my Blog #5: Conclusion

How to Design a Mockup Pallet Racking

Andrew Kelsall — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:06:13 PDT

Back in November ‘08, I wrote an article about a 2 metre high Foamex® PitWheel I designed for a Next, Plc Distribution warehouse. Well, this time I was contracted to design a ‘mockup pallet racking system‘ to fill 3 walls of a new room, built inside another one of their new warehouses in Manvers Way, Wath, UK.

Why?

As part of a new multi-million-pound venture, a new warehouse was constructed to pick larger, non clothing items for Next Stores nationwide, as well as the Next Directory. Picking is carried out using mechanical ‘lollops’, but the Next training department wanted to train new employees away from the health & safety dangers of these machines. They needed to train people on how to pick items using various barcode systems before using any machinery, in short.

What I my task was…

The solution to training new employees away from the warehouse hazards (in the early stages of training) was to re-create a life-like working environment. So, I was tasked with the great challenge of designing a 2.4m high x 15m wide set of racking for a room that was only just being built. Oh yes.

How I rose to the Challenge

I shall now outline how the project proceeded, from initially visiting the site—right the way to actually constructing the mockup pallet racking in the allocated room. Here goes…

◥ This is a typical aisle in the warehouse on the second floor. The left-hand side shows one type of pallet racking—with the right showing another type (with ‘yellow bars’) that required replicating in Foamex®.

◥ After taking many photos, here came the most important aspect of the project—measuring-up. I whipped out my Moleskine® notebook at various stages of being escorted around the warehouse to jot-down exact—yes, exact measurements of everything I required to start conceptualising the racking structure.

If I got this part wrong, the whole project would go awry. Seriously, I advise you that if you are ever asked to do something like this, only settle for rough handwriting, not rough measurements.

Photography

◥ Now, second in importance to the measurements were accurate photographs. By ‘accurate’, I mean precise in relation to my goals for this project. I had already conceptualised in my mind how I would start producing the designs on my Mac, so I required certain, detailed and well-angled shots to accomplish the task in hand.

◥ Back at the desk, I imported all my images into iPhoto® from a 10MP digital Cannon SLR (which, admittedly, I borrowed from my Dad for this project). I then just dragged the required snaps from this application straight into PhotoShop®.

◥ This photo sums up my first real challenges this project brief threw at me. As can be seen, the racking wasn’t just perfectly straight. The main steel orange and blue bars were, but underlying racking was skewed, distorted, covered in tie-wraps and shrouded in protecting black foam. Replicating how the racking actually looked with ‘worts-and-all‘ wasn’t on my agenda.

Yeah, it had to real, but it had to function as a working-design; out of the ‘natural environment’ and into a projected notion of itself. In short, the racking, as I saw it, had to represent the racking positively, without its negatives—just like a model who is airbrushed for a glossy magazine.

Working in Photoshop®

◥ To create a coherent design that retained the authenticity of the photography, yet was scalable and replicable, I decided after some experimentation, to map certain photographic features of the racking onto solid blocks of colour.

◥ In this example, I took the detail of a weld from the end of an orange racking support; “mapping” it onto a very generic-looking Photoshop® mockup using gradients and basic shading features.

◥ The top of this image shows some elements I extracted from a photo, which I over-laid (mapped) onto the generic-mockup. I then used similar methods for the grey shelving elements.

◥ I used one art-board in Photoshop® to start sizing-up elements, assessing how they would relate to each other. The sponge texture was taken straight from the photography and seamlessly repeated.

◥ This image shows how I began to map some shelving “fixing” elements over a proportioned blue racking bar. As always, the most crucial aspect of this project was correct measurements, proportions and unity.

◥ After completion of the “fixing” elements and background, I started to look at how well it integrated with the rest of the pallet racking design.

◥ This is how some of the racking was starting to look. Every-so-often, I would zoom-out to ensure all was well with the design work. Keeping my “eye on the ball” was crucial.

◥ When everything was in proportion, I started work on smaller details that added a 3D feel to the designs. Here, I have started work on a shadow, which is situated behind an orange racking-support.

◥ In-all, I had to design three separate sets of racking design, as shown above. I have set layer transparencies in Photoshop® at varied levels so they can be shown against each other clearly.

◥ This pallet racking was higher than the others, so I had to be careful when matching the “holes” (in the blue vertical bars) to the smaller pallet racking design.

◥ This was the room that was being constructed for the Foamex® design. It was made from plasterboard and aluminium supports, with a wooden door.

◥ Because of the fact that plasterboard was used in the construction, it meant that I could use nails or screws to attach the designs if needed. However, this wasn’t how I was to attach them (more on this later).

As can been seen, the building contractors used a 4″ high skirting board around the base of the wall. This meant that the foam board style design couldn’t rest on the floor, which was a pity, but sometimes compromises have to be made.

◥ When I designed some pallets (in two separate sizes) to be used in the design, I simply used my own measurements to design a flat-pallet shape, and map the pallet-wooden-texture onto this shape I created.

◥ Each pallet was coded either A,B or C, depending on where it would be situated doing construction. In fact, all the racking was coded, too, making it easier identify the varied sections of the designs. Note: It always pays to think ahead.

◥ This is an example of the type of boxes that were located on the shelving racking at Next DVP (when I took the photographs).

◥ To make a mockup box in Photoshop®, I simply transformed it into the size required, and used layer masks to hide elements of it (mostly the edges) that I didn’t require.

◥ After this was done, I created a mockup-box shape, filled it with brown—and overlaid the original masked-image. This method, like the racking, created a very realistic yet very generic/unified look and feel to the designs.

Printing onto Foamex®

◥ When all the elements of the design were nearing completion, I set up a document which was exactly one-quarter size of the intended output print-size @ 400dpi. The designs were to be printed onto two 5mm Black Foamex® sheets measuring 2.5 metres wide x 1.5 metres high. Setting up the resolution at 400dpi meant that the whole design was printed at 100dpi, which is adequate for large format printing.

◥ Here is another example of the types of boxes I reconstructed digitally. These bore the warning “FRAGILE”, so I saw it quite fitting to include messages such as this in the designs. I also used “HEAVY” messages and varied symbols and arrow warnings.

I also made sure I erased the information and barcodes included on the white box labels. I did this so that when the boxes were printed, the trainers at Next could place their own scannable-labels onto the designs, as requested.

◥ This image shows the file to be used for large format printing for the second Foamex® board. As shown, the whole design is like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with all the elements required squeezed into place; to fit-in as many extra boxes as possible.

◥ In between the boxes, racking shelving and pallet designs, I left some white space so when they were printed, the folks at the printers could cut them out individually—”knowing which bit was what”.

I also indicated which parts were to be cut-out using “Trim” text, as well as phone discussions and instructions by email.

◥ Built-in contingency: In some of the “spare spaces” in the files, I created some extra few inches of racking shelving, just in case. If I had measured the wall wrong, for example, I would have extra lengths of racking to lengthen it when it was assembled. However, if the racking was too long, I could simply cut some off with a scalpel and metal ruler.

Design Proofs

◥ When the designs were ready to be sent to the printers, I printed off the proofs with an A4 colour laser-printer (Magicolor® 2530) ready for both review and approval by the client. The first page was formulated of a description of the designs and detail.

Design mockups

◥ I thought it prudent to print another set of designs and cut the main individual pieces out with a scalpel and ruler. I then used my kitchen table to lay-out the paper pieces to make sure of the following:

That I had the right amount of racking posts and shelving.
To ensure the pieces were in proportion to each other
To gage how the pallets would look under the racking sections.
To ensure, simply put, that the design truly “worked as a whole”.

After I laid the pieces out on the table, I was satisfied with how it all fit-together and looked. After preparing the artwork, I emailed them to the printers, along with the corresponding quotation number.

Foamex® Delivery & Assembly

◥ The people at the print-house printed the designs onto a special paper, and bonded it onto two large sheets of Black 5mm Foamex®, sealing it with an anti-scratch coating. Then, they used special cutting equipment to cut-out the individual pieces.

They then wrapped the Foamex® segments in bubble-wrap, placed then in a large wooden box, along with some industrial velcro (hooks and loops) and posted them to the client.

◥ After a couple of email exchanges about when I would construct the racking design, I visited the Next Dearne Valley Palletised site to assemble the Foamex® pieces.

◥ This is Industrial Velcro, which is very strong and is more-than-capable in holding Foamex®, Foam Board, MDF and Correx® to a flat surface. After fixing about 25 separate large-format Foamex® designs to walls and notice boards in the past, I have seen the benefits of using velcro to assemble these designs.

My own method is to attach lengths of the hooks and loops of the industrial velcro first, stick the strips together, peel off the backing from the “loops” length of the velcro and stick this side to the underside of the Foamex® (obviously, this would work for MDF board, foam board, etc, too).

◥ Constructing the design wasn’t easy—as the shelving elements of the pallet racking had to line-up exactly to the vertical bars. Moreover, once the velcro hooks side was attached to the wall, it was a permanent action, as removing it would take the paint off the new plasterboard walls.

It was therefore a rather tricky task attaching the Foamex® board to walls in the exact places required. I used a tape measure and spirit-level to aid me during this process.

The Finished Foamex® Pallet Racking Design

◥ Once I assembled the pallet racking elements, I evenly distributed the various boxes and pallets in between the pallet racking and shelving.

◥ The large foam design stands out clearly from new new white-painted walls of the training room.

◥ In this view, the 5mm thickness of the Black Foamex® can be seen, giving the racking design a very prominent 3D appearance.

◥ The final step in the completion of the design will be for the Next training staff to attach what barcodes they need on the racking edges and boxes in their own time.

I will be doing some more foam designs for Next soon, which will have some “spare” space available in some of the Foamex® boards, where there can be some extra boxes printed to fill-out the design. It would look fuller with more boxes included, but the budget only allowed for printing onto two 2.5 metre x 1.5metre foam boards.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic and inspiring project to work on. It’s great to work on projects where what you’re doing is a really custom job, with nothing else out-there to match it. I’ve worked with Foamex® now plenty of times, and although I also love to design posters, logos and other printed matter, producing customised solutions is my true nature as a graphic designer.

I’ve yet to work with MDF board or standard Foam Board, but I’ve produced Correx® signs before. Bar far, however, Foamex® has the durable capacity to produce large-format designs out of. It’s bendable, pliable, cuttable and very strong (being made of a plastic/foam composite). The use of Foamex® and Industrial Velco worked perfectly for this task—but the other material mentioned would have lacked the durability required.

I can’t really think of anything I would have done differently in this job (or “challenge”, I may call it). I made accurate mathematical calculations, analysed the racking and photography properly—and applied them to a creative agenda.

I don’t believe I’ve done something special personally, as any good graphic designer is capable of producing this kind of work. If you’re a designer and have never produced work like this before, why not give it a try? Please ask me any questions about the design in the comments section below.

Finally, a bit of self-promotion…

If you would like me to work on a custom project like this for you, please contact me or use my Hire Me online form. If the project requires assembling, like this example, I’m a very ‘hands-on’ designer and can qive you a quotation inclusive of this. Generally, I will travel up to 50 miles away from the Leeds area, but costing for longer distances is not ruled out.Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How to Design a Mockup Pallet Racking

Case Study: Identity, Branding and Signage for St Luke’s Church

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:34:34 PDT

This is a case study for logo designs, identity, branding and signage I produced for a local Church Organisation, St Luke’s. It is one of my older projects, but I didn’t author a blog when I produced the designs, so now is a great time to talk on the brief and design processes.

I was asked by Pastor Martyn Sullivan at St Luke’s Church, South Elmsall UK, to design a fair few logo design concepts for them—and the additional organisations that were affiliated with St Luke’s. These were The Family Centre, The Hope Centre, The Rainbow Nursery (and Rainbow Preschool), LifeTime Ltd, LiveLink and The LiveLink Shop.

The Brief

The challenge of the brief was to create a set of designs that were both individual, yet obviously part of a branding and identity structure. For example, if “someone” saw both the St Luke’s logo and the Rainbow Nursery logo, they had to know that the designs were part of the same organisation.

Fortunately, the project had a decent budget (obviously not revealed because of designer/client confidentiality) so I could go ahead and design many pages of designs, along with an explanation of how the designs were to be unified.

Initial Logo Designs

Here are the pages/designs that I attained from the printers, produced in A3-size for Martyn and other relevant staff members to view:

1◥ This design was based on the St Luke’s logo inclusive of the image of a Bible with a bow tied to it. This bow was then used to promote the St Luke’s brand throughout the rest of the logo designs.

2◥ This concept was based on uniting the church and subsequent organisations with bands of colour. A horse and rider with a flag were used as a way to show the Church moving forward. In this concept, the actual church name was included in all the organisation logo’s too, making the connection very clear.

Sidenote: This logo set was really well-received, but wasn’t chosen as it was noticed that the horse symbol could be seen as a “crusading rider”—and subsequently be offensive to some religious groups.

3◥ The idea behind this concept was to utilise simple shapes to unify the shop, centres, charity and church. All the “button logo’s” were branded with the “Part of St Luke’s” tagline.

4◥ The classic shield concept. I gave quite a few options on the designs of this Shield Logo set. Each part of the organisation contained a symbol of its own to accompany the dove, which was used on the main St Luke’s emblem.

5◥ In a very similar flavour to the shield-concept, but utilising the box shape, colour and river to unify the organisation and church. As can [just] be seen, the connection works in Black+White also.

6◥ This concept was based on the Christian Fish Symbol, with each of the partner logos containing the fish that “spearheads the set”. This was the chosen concept—and the rest of this article is dedicated to exploring it…

Concept 6: The Logos chosen for development

As stated, logo design concept 6 was chosen by the client, as basically, it embodied the whole ethos of St Luke’s—which is a contemporary church that was “on the move”. Other “religious” churches in the area bore the crucifix, but St Luke’s wanted to stand out and be different, using a different symbol of Christianity.

◥ After some reasoning and variations on the main church logo designs, these two were chosen. Gone is the rigid, square box the previous logo was contained in. Now, the design is more fitting with the brush-stroke-centred design of the rest of this “logo family”. Two designs were created, with one bearing the tagline “A Church on the move“.

◥ The Rainbow Nursery logo. This, like all the logos in the collection, uses different weights of Helvetica Neue. There’s nothing ground-breaking about this font—there’s no need for it to be. It works well, with different, varied weights combined with tight tracking are used to create a contemporary look, whilst reducing the line-length of longer names.

TYPOGRAPHY ◥ The Rainbow Preschool logo. Similar as the previous one, except for the wording that creates a slightly longer line-length. All these logos displayed here show the “signage-versions” of the church logo designs, with a coloured-bar at the base of the logos. The stationary versions do not include this addition.

FORM & SHAPE ◥ The Hope Centre logo. As can be seen, the Christian fish symbol is contained in a circle in all the additional logo designs. This “device” is symbolic of a brush which “paints” the varied shapes. Here, a flame is used to symbolise Hope.

COLOUR ◥ The Family Centre logo. The business logo colours for each logo have been chosen to best suite either the notion or shape design. The Hope Centre utilised yellow—and this one a “Royal Purple”, I would hope for obvious reasons.

LOGO BRANDING ◥ The LiveLink logos. LiveLink, The LiveLink Shop and Lifetime Ltd are all part of the same sub-organisation within the St Luke’s organisation as a whole. Yeah, it gets complicated, so I decided to to make the logo branding match in regards to colour and form.

◥ I treated Lifetime Ltd slightly differently to the other two logos, as requested by the client, as it was the “head” of the sub-organisation. a “river” concept was chosen to emphasise “life” is a very gentle and non-direct manner.

◥ Here is the signage design I created for The LiveLink Shop. I have included the tagline “Part of St Luke’s“, as there was room to do so—and added to the purpose to the sign.

◥ I drove past the shop recently to take a photo of how the sign looks. Apart from the telephone wires hanging in the way, I think it does the shop justice. I’ve made the rest of the photo B+W to highlight it better—it was a poor photo from a low-res phone camera!

◥ This is the sign that I designed and handed to the client, ready for print. However, somewhere down the line, more text was added at the base before printing, which I didn’t do.

◥ Again, I tried to take a photo of it on my dodgy camera, after forgetting to charge my proper one, D’oh!

◥ This is the signage design for The Rainbow Nursery, although I don’t yet have a photo of this sign yet.

Letterhead Designs, Business Cards & Stationary

For each logo, I created a business card design with the usual business and contact details contained on them:

ST LUKE’S CARD, FRONT ◥ The front of this card is designed using just one spot [Pantone®] colour.

BUSINESS CARD, BACK ◥ The reverse is full-colour, as it is inclusive of all the Church, Charity and Organisation logo branding.

HOPE CENTRE CARD, FRONT ◥ Rather than display the designs for all the church logo designs, I will focus on the Hope Centre stationary. As can be seen, each business card is branded with its corresponding colour; fused together with a the partial fish symbol formation on the right.

BUSINESS STATIONARY, HOPE CENTRE ◥ The envelope design, compliment slip and letterhead designs all used the same colour scheme and graphical-orientations to promote a unified branding structure throughout.

BUSINESS STATIONARY, ST LUKE’S ◥ Unlike the business card design, the rest of the stationary just used one Pantone® colour to reduce printing costs. However, the whole branding still looked professional and coherent.

Project Summary

Overall, this was a fantastic project to work on. At times, it was rather challenging; keeping track of all the logo iterations, files, folders and paths/non-paths file versions—and not the mention the numerous design decisions made.

It was a much bigger undertaking than I originally thought, and I have progressed and learned much with the experience of the whole project. Not all the stationary is as yet printed, nor the web URL’s up and running.

When I look back upon the work I undertook for St Luke’s Church, related organisations and charities, I believe I have created a useful, coherent and original branding structure that stands-out from the crowd.

What do you think of the designs? In what ways do you think I could have improved upon the designs. Is there any aspect of the project you would have done differently? I’d like to hear your opinions…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Case Study: Identity, Branding and Signage for St Luke’s Church

TwittBits: A Lazy Sunday Afternoon for Designers?

Andrew Kelsall — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:30:18 PDT

Lately, I’ve have a few projects going on all at once—and I’m having some difficulty trying to write articles for two blogs due to my workload. One thing I’m learning at the moment is to not start article series (like How I customized my Wordpress Blog & What are Color Gamuts? ) until I can fully commit to them. I do intend to carry on the article series that I start, but I can’t guarantee I will get around to writing them soon. Articles like that simply take more time to write.

However, I was on Twitter today, and I wondered how busy other designer’s were on this, so-called “lazy Sunday afternoon”. Is there such a thing for a designer? With this in mind, I asked this question to other designer’s on Twitter:

What are you doing today?

It’s sort of like the original Twitter question, but for designers. These were my varied responses:

★ @craigspeirs Tidying up the house and also listening to Greatest Hits. Then will sit down and search for an LCD monitor to buy

★ @netWire working… :S

★ @traceygr Despite being busy with web & print design work right now, I’ve taken Sunday off. To-do list tonight to get the week going.

★ @kgrz I’ve seen 2 movies today, Will see more And then, I’ll probably draw an idea for a logo for a friend of mine!

★ @retinart Been wadding through the CSS for my new site design, enjoying the momentary departure from print.. what about you?

★ @RichardCarter swimming, sketching over a cup of coffee somewhere and then listening to a few web-themed podcasts later tonight

★ @jannicamorton hanging with the family and not even starting up my computers!

★ @VizionThree I’m sorting through my massive list of bookmarks and porting them over to Google Bookmarks.

★ @StephenTiano Friends visit today, tomorrow back to day-job & call client on teaching-reading boxed set to get us back on the same page.

★ @ckfio hanging out with my family

★ @BrenniFresh I’m watching soccer today and workin up a soccer logo/ club identity.

★ @garrick_s I’m doing chores around the house today. No design work.

★ @seanio putting my portfolio together. and you? [replied on Twitter]

★ @AndyL81 spending time with my wife and daughter, yard work, then later today some logo design work

★ @MeMBNandURB It’s Sunday and it’s raining, so … relaxing, replying to emails, listening to some new music promo’s. No design today.

★ @Rockhoward001 *sigh* making edits to a site, building a wp theme, designing a forum, emailing…lots of emailing, and editing photos.

★ @jchronowski47 winding my springs. Break out of this codependent funk

★ @designshard Thinking about and making a list of features to include on texturelovers.com in the future, i like to stay in front!

★ @svolinsky writing html for new website and thinking about strategy for company’s twitter

★ @normalslife Looks like finishing up a website and going to a baby shower. I know… international lady of mystery I am not.

★1 @tommsinclair Finished a small freelance project and updated my portfolio adding 3 small freelance dev projects to it! http://bit.ly/kiTtU ★2 Oh and I just did a new blog post all about it http://bit.ly/Y72Pz

★ @ktshipp creating after effects video on the ten commandments for church

★ @starchildluke Answer to question: went to see a mate to discuss some t-shirt designs and a possible collaboration

★ @Laughing_Lion Editing photographs for a photobook.

★ @lornamorris Taken a day off and spent it with my family in the sunshine.

★ @cthomp7777 Chillaxin’ and gonna go look for some zines.

★ @justcreative Seeing though it is night, probably sleeping.

*Italics represent my own editorial changes and denote either websites or other information I am unwilling to promote. No offense is intended—as all replies are appreciated.

The results of my original question indicate at least half of the featured designer’s are still busy dabbling in a design project or personal task in one way or another, which is valuable time spent.

However, some designers are spending time with their families, which is priceless. What was I doing this afternoon? I packed the car for a short break, make sure my mobile broadband connection was installed on my Macbook to take away with me, had a BBQ, finished a clients’ web template, studied the color on my new business cards, took my dog for a walk, looked after the kids, went shopping…and wrote this article, sigh…

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this Twitbits article and for sharing these insights into your daily lives on Sunday…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

TwittBits: A Lazy Sunday Afternoon for Designers?

How I (in theory) increased my Google Pagerank

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:32:58 PDT

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my most popular article The Profesional Designer’s Guide to using Black had a Google Pagerank of 3. All well-and-good, however the Pagerank of my AndrewKelsall.com homepage had a PR of just 2. Huh? I thought. How could this be?

I took a look at the code on all the links within the sidebars of my homepage—and discovered that none of them were “no follow” links. Now, I know some basic SEO, like all blogger’s do, so I had a theory based on a previous article I had read, that I was sharing my homepage PR to such an extent, that it lobbed-off an entire level of pagerank.

Of course, this was just a theory, but I deduced that if I changed said-links to “no follow” tags, eventually, the PR’s would reverse—giving my homepage PR3, whilst said-article, PR2. Four weeks later, this was exactly the case!

I’m writing the results of this experiment for two reasons: as to help to anyone in a similar situation—and if anyone could possibly shed some light on whether or not my conclusion was right. What do you thinks of this. Did my “no follow” theory work, or just coincidence?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How I (in theory) increased my Google Pagerank

Velvet Ant feature: Ghosts of design work past

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:41:16 PDT

Recently, Antonea Nabors, author of VelvetAnt.net asked me if I wanted to contribute to a new article named Ghosts of design work past.

The whole purpose of this article was for designer’s to, er, “showcase” a piece of design-work from their past, whereby the quality of the work wasn’t up-to-scratch, to say the least. The article starts:

Do you remember your very first school project? How about the first website you ever made a profit off of? It is a real treat to see a designer transform and evolve into a professional by taking at look back at where they started. Our early work isn’t something we should be ashamed of. It should be used as a visual timeline to monitor our continues growth and gain in our profession. The following 18 designer’s took a trip down memory lane [...]

My submission and explanation shows a Billboard design from back at University—nine years prior. If you want to check it out, and the other works from the likes of Jacob Cass, Lauren “LaurenMarie” Krause, Chris Spooner, Andy Sowards and Stuart Thursby—then head over to VelvetAnt.

Warning, be prepared to see some questionable design Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Velvet Ant feature: Ghosts of design work past

Billings 3 for Mac OS X—Professional Invoicing

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:29:20 PDT

What is Billings 3*?

Billings 3 is an excellent billing and invoicing tool, which is solely for Mac OS X 10.4 and higher. The following article is my own review of the software after using it.

Once installed, which is an easy enough task, my first step was to see if there were any software updates before I used it. Intuitively, I visited the Billings Menu—and clicked on Check for Updates—and within a couple of minutes, the software was updated.

Before proceeding, I would strongly advise that you go to the Help Menu, then read through the Billings 3 Guide. At first, I didn’t do this and instead just got myself confused when trying to work it out myself—especially regarding the use of Timers (which I will come to later on).

How to use Billings…

One of the first steps I made when using billings was to set up a client. This can be done easily—and your clients can also be imported form the Mac Address Book application.

Once a client is chosen, you simply create a new project, with various other options that are very intuitive to follow. From there, you create Working Slips (which are the line-items on an invoice). Once these simple steps are complete, you are able to start working on a project—keeping track of every minute you spend working on it. What’s good about this software is that these slips can be timed at a flat fee—or by the minute.

Screenshot of Billings Copyright of MarketCircle | *By Affiliate.

Timers

This takes me to the subject of Timers. You can easily set-up a timer that corresponds to each working slip on a given project to record how much time you have spent working on it. For example, if I was working on a project that required internet research, I could create a timer (which handily appears in the Mac menu bar), simply clicking on it like a stop-watch to record how long you’ve spent on a task—and it will be billed accordingly in an invoice.

Invoices

Once all working slips on a particular project are complete, you simply create an invoice and send it to a client. There are many professional templates to choose from, or you can create your own from scratch (with your logo on, etc).

There is also a wealth of information contained in the left sidebar, which amongst other things, shows the balances which are overdue in red. The accounting software is professional, too, with retainer and tax options galore—but all displayed with ease-of-use in mind.

Conclusion

All-in-all, Billings 3 is a very powerful, but relatively easy piece of software to use. As long as you spend time reading the main points of the user manual first, it doesn’t take long to start using the software, which is a really useful—and indispensable tool that you may wonder how you’ve done without all this time.

This is quite a simple review, and there are many aspects of the software that I have yet to use and experiment with. That-said, I know that this software is now on it’s 3rd version, with many amendments made to it by MarketCircle to make this software the best it can be. I know that when I need to use the other varied software options contained in Billings, they will aid me effectively.

Do I recommend this software? Yes. In a nut-shell, it has professional invoicing capabilities, easy-to-use project management and because it’s made for Mac, looks great (especially the red PAID stamp, see image above). I think I’ll be using this software as long as I have a Mac, which will be until the day I stop designing! You can download Billings 3 from MarketCircle on thier site, Billingsapp.com.Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Billings 3 for Mac OS X—Professional Invoicing

Excellent Email Advertisement about Skype

Andrew Kelsall — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:26:08 PDT

I’m rarely impressed by email advertising campaigns, but I received such an email recently from mobile network 3. The email was advertising free Skype calls forever—and like many online-dwellers, I use of Skype myself. No, this isn’t some kind of affiliate blog-post…I just really like the design.

I just think [the excellent advert below] is pretty-well structured, meaningful, enticing and above-all, original. I also love to see designs that have a heavy emphasis on typography. I studied for my BA at Coventry University—and the tutors there really drilled typographic knowledge into us…so I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I like this so much.

By the way, if you want to add me to Skype, my user name is andrew-kelsall. What do you think of this email advertisement? Do you think “it works”? Have you been impresed by any other email campaigns?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Excellent Email Advertisement about Skype

Amazing Color Effect 2: Successive Contrast

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 16 May 2009 06:27:51 PDT

Earlier this month, I wrote an article about simultaneous contrast entitled Amazing color effect that all designers should see. This new “illusion” is based on the principle of successive contrast, whereby the absence of a particular color produces a visual perception of its opposite.

As a demonstration of this, please follow these instructions before triggering the “color-illusion” that the image below can produce when looked at properly.

Stare at the white-cross in the center of the Green & Yellow Union Jack Flag for a whole minute. Then, stare into the black-cross of the white image and blink a few times. All-going-well, you should see the Union Jack appear before your eyes—in the correct blue, white and red colors.

Did you see it? I’m not trying to indoctrinate every nation into Britishness here, it’s just that this is a great example of this “illusion” As a designer, such color-displays and illusions really inspire me—and I love to experience both the limitations and wonders of our sight.

Knowing these things can aid every designer at some point. Please tell me if there’s any other illustrations of successive contrast you know of…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Amazing Color Effect 2: Successive Contrast

How Mashable gave me 1200+ Twitter Followers

Andrew Kelsall — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:45:19 PDT

As per usual, I logged into my Twitter account the other day (@AndrewKelsall). I was amazed to find that I had nearly 500 new followers—just a night after I last checked. Bemused of this, I tweeted how strange this was, only to discover just after that @cameronolivier already tweeted me in congratulations for making a “Mashable List“.

To be honest, I’d visited Mashable before, but didn’t really use it. Just then, I was been tweeted up to 20 times by other “tweeple” that ‘I had made’ the Mashable List 85+ of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Follow. I was pretty amazed—and there I was, 2nd form the top of the list (right under @abduzeedo). This wasn’t because I was more “tweetier” (if that’s even a word) than anyone else, it’s just that the list was in alphabetical order.

Cameron River, who was also featured, tweeted me that he didn’t receive as many followers that I received, so having a name beginning with the letter “A” certainly helped. A few days later, Mashable have sent my way 1200+ Twitter Followers. I feel very honored to be part of this list—and I don’t really think I should have been there. But, things as they are, it’s was a great experience to be recognized!

Have you had a plug from Mashable before? Have you had any large influx of Twitter users follow your updates?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

How Mashable gave me 1200+ Twitter Followers

My Bag Contents Featured on Design O’Blog

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:02:08 PDT

Today, a photo of the contents of my bag (well, rucksack) appeared on Niki Brown’s Design O’Blog, in an article entitled “It’s All In The (Designer’s) Bag Part 2“. The beginning of the article reads:

This is the second edition its all in the (designer’s) bag! Check out the original post over here –> Graphic Designer’s Bags Part 1.

Now, we all know that designers are cool. They generally dress well, and have a good sense of style. I’ve also noticed that they tend to have cool bags – but what is inside of those bags? I know you are dying to know!! I asked several designers to snag a pic of what they carry around with them on a daily basis.

I was originally contacted by Niki and asked if I wanted to take part in this amusing exercise to take a peek into designer’s bags. My photo (shown below) shows what I generally carry around when I’m out and about (with the actual numbered descriptions in the actual Design O’Blog article):

I recommend this post, it’s a great read—and includes the innards of the bags of fellow designers, Chris Spooner, Franz Jeitz and Jon Phillips, to name but a few. If you haven’t already done so, why don’t you check it out on Design O’Blog—it’s a fascinating read Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

My Bag Contents Featured on Design O’Blog

Amazing color effect that all designers should see…

Andrew Kelsall — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:15:00 PDT

Displayed below is an amazing color effect that all designers should see. If you take a look at the X’s, they both look as though they are different colors. However, they’re not. The colors are exactly the same tone:

Look at where both the X’s intersect at the middle-base of the image. You can see there that the ‘true color’ is in fact a greyish-yellow tone (a mixture of the two colors used in the rectangles). This effect is based on a painting by Josef Albers.

To see something a little weirder, take a look at the second image I have devised, taking the effect one step further:

As can be seen, the horizontal bar appears to show a gradient, starting with yellow on the left, to grey on the right. However, as with the first image, the color is a solid tone—not a gradient of two colors at all. If you don’t believe me, drag the images into PhotoShop® and whip out the color-picker tool

Why is this happening?

This effect is know as trichromacy, with the images above demonstrating simultaneous contrast. To cut a long story short, out eyes record color in RGB—but none of us can image a yellowish-blue. Our brains therefor plays tricks on us, resulting in the effect/illusion.

I think knowing this kind of information about color can be extremely beneficial to a designer. Color theory is embedded in all we do, so it’s great to understand great effects like this to aid in design work. Knowing what colors will or will not work together can be imperative—especially in logo design.

I have written an article about metamerism with another color-illusion there if this subject interests you. Do you know of any other great effect like this? Do you think knowlege of color theory will aid in your design work?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Amazing color effect that all designers should see…

Twitt-Bits: Logos, Illustrator and a Couch

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:21:44 PDT

Welcome to another Twitt-Bits. If you would like to know more about these posts, please read the introductory article on them. Now, to the links…

Tweet by @designshard

Watching @colorburned Interview With David and Marc Perel of From the Couch http://tinyurl.com/dn385f

The link is to a great video from Colorburned entitled “Interview With David and Marc Perel of From the Couch“.

Tweet by @chrisspooner

125+ Ultimate Round-Up of Illustrator Tutorials – http://is.gd/nW4z

This link is to a great resource entitled “125+ Ultimate Round-Up of Illustrator Tutorials” via InstantShift.

Tweet by @pixel_jockey

Inspiration Show me some well designed logos! #23 (more clever logo work) http://twurl.nl/fi8c1m

The logo work refered to is from the site Design Your Way—and features some really thoughtful logos. Worth a look…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Twitt-Bits: Logos, Illustrator and a Couch

What are Color Gamuts? Part One

Andrew Kelsall — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:55:04 PDT

What are Color Gamuts? Simply put, a color gamut is a whole range of digital colors that are included in a color profile. Different gamuts contain varied subsets of different colors.

Now, this is a huge subject to cover, so instead of just trying to explain what they are, I will start by comparing two similar gamuts from two RGB profiles: Adobe RGB (1998) and sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Adobe RGB (1998)

Displayed below is a 2D image of the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile. This is the type of image you’re going to see a lot of throughout this set of articles. Ignore the LAB color letters (b+, a+, etc) and observe the color and shape. Notice how all the colors shown radiate from white, denoting the additive color model.

The next image (below) displays the same RGB gamut but in 3D. This is one of countless views that can be viewed with special software, such as PerfX Gamut Viewer or ColorThink Pro. As can be seen, the 3D view reveals more tones, hues and shades than the 2D version.

Each color gamut shown is complete with a colored-boundary, which indicates the extreme edge of the gamut in both 3D and 2D angles. This one, for example, shows this edge in Red.

Comparing Color Gamuts

Now we know what we’re looking at, I’ll start comparing the two color gamuts. The larger gamut is a representation of the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile, shown in RED. The smaller profile, sRGB IEC61966-2.1, is displayed in BLUE (just visible).

The next three images show varied angles of the two color gamuts…

Both gamuts displayed are visible at a medium opacity, so you can see both at once.

Notice that even though the Adobe RGB profile is generally larger, RGB 2.1 supercedes it in certain key areas of color…

These areas are primarily in the green/blue region of the gamut, shown above.

There you have it—the introduction to the series of articles about color gamuts. It would be very hard to cover many aspects of the subject matter in one post, so Part Two will continue the journey shortly. Why not subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss it?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

What are Color Gamuts? Part One

Introducing Twitt-Bits Mini-posts on AK

Andrew Kelsall — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:16:19 PDT

I’m a very busy person―that’s the way I like it. I don’t always have loads of time to write in-depth articles, but I do try. Recently, I’ve been spending “spare” time on social networking site, Twitter. It’s great to re-tweet links and socialize―however, I had a profound idea to include really interesting stuff on this site.

Like the image above states, I calling these mini-posts “Twitt-Bits“. I reckon it’s a catchy name―so I chose the image to suit. Hope you like it

“So what’s the real purpose behind it all” you may ask. Well, not only will I be able to update my blog more often, it will allow me to share articles with you, my readers, in an unusual way. When I post a great link(s), I’ll also link to the original tweeters profile.

I was going to do the next part on the next Twitt-Bits, but here we go…the first “bit”…

Tweet by @HawaiiRealty

Reprise….;> You know you are TOO into Twitter when: http://tinyurl.com/5lycwc

The article linked is entitled “You know you are too popular on Twitter when…” from the Sarah Jones Larson Blog, which lists a staggering 65 reasons why. It’s quite a funny read!

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter @AndrewKelsall; you can read the post about when I joined Twitter for more information.Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Introducing Twitt-Bits Mini-posts on AK

What are Color Profiles?

Andrew Kelsall — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:05:43 PDT

Image Copyright here

The question “What are Color Profiles?” is one asked by every designer in their early career or studies. The thing is, this is such a generic question, it really needs breaking down into three other questions. I will attempt to answer them below, but be aware that this is just a summary. Indeed, whole books are available on the subject of color profiles, so there’s an awful lot of information to condense into this post…

Every image or file that is created in programs like Adobe Photoshop®, Illustrator® and InDesign® needs a color profile assigned or embedded in order for the software to display and print the image accurately. If no profile is assigned, or a ‘generic profile’ is used, results can be very unpredictable.

To clarify, here is a brief overview of the questions that relate to the use of color profiles:

What are Device Profiles?

Basically, device profiles contain certain information pertaining to three variables regarding how a certain device (such as a digital camera) ‘represents’ color. These variables are Color Gamut (color & brightness), Dynamic Range (relates to the white point) and finally, the Tone Reproduction of colors.

For example, a device profile would be included in the software of a digital camera, scanner or desktop printer.

What are Profile Classes?

Profile Classes relate to the types of Device Profiles available:

★ INPUT PROFILES, which describe the ways in which Digital Cameras and Desktop Scanners capture color.

★ DISPLAY PROFILES, which describe the ways LCD displays display colors.

★ OUTPUT PROFILES, which describe color for printers and presses.

What are Document Profiles?

Document Profiles are ‘destination profiles’ that are assigned to a file after a conversion from a Device Profile (or source profile). For example, ProPhoto RGB Color Profile from Digital Camera (source) > Photoshop® File with Adobe RGB (1998) Profile (destination).

I realize that there is much information to cover on the subject, so this is just one of a series of articles about the subject of Color Profiles, Gamuts and Color Spaces. Why not Subscribe to my RSS Feed so you don’t miss the next article?

Next up is a more visually interesting post about Color Gamuts. If you have any questions about this article, please feel free to leave your thoughts below…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

What are Color Profiles?

The Andrew Kelsall Logo Design Showcased…

Andrew Kelsall — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:59:22 PDT

Recently, my logo design has featured on a couple of design blogs, I’m Just Creative by Graham Smith & Dache, by Logo Designer David Pache.

Firstly, I felt quite honored when David Pache contacted me a few weeks ago―and asked if he could have the Black & White version of my new logo for his new article 100 brands of interest Part 2. A quote from the article reads:

This article is the sequel to 100 brands of interest, published on the dacheboard on December 4, 2008. After the last article and the feedback received, it was clear that another article of this nature was in order so, here it is! Over the past few months, I have been compiling another 100 brands of interest and have been very lucky to have such a selection to choose from. The standard really is very high.

My “AK” Andrew Kelsall logo featured amongst another 99 great logo’s that are all showcased in B+W. It’s a great read, and I recommend that you check it out at some point.

Secondly, I submitted the more illustrated “ribbon” version of my logo design to Graham Smiths Logo Design Roundup Part 5 article. A quote from the article reads:

This is the fourth part in a series showcasing a collection of logos and brand marks, self submitted by a bunch of designers and creative folk in many creative areas. These designers use the logos to sell, promote, brand and market their various skills.

I has been great to get my new logo design ‘out there’ beside from my own site, and this article gave me a chance to explain why I chose to design it in this way. I would recommend that you check this post out as well, as there are some great insights about other designer’s brands too.Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

The Andrew Kelsall Logo Design Showcased…

Pure Christian Graphic Design Launches!

Andrew Kelsall — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:20:47 PDT

Image source/copyright here

Pure Christian Graphic Design (or PCGD for short) has been a side-project of mine now for a few months. Having a wife and two kids and all, I have very little time to pursue my ambitions. However, bit-by-bit I always seem to get there in the end with determination…and coffee.

A few years back, I started a web site that was a cross between a Christian design service and a ’secular’ design service. It didn’t work out, but I learned much from the experience and moved on. I then tried to run a ‘generic design service’ based on moral principles, but again, I didn’t feel this was working for me. Whilst I support and commend designers such as Kyle Steed and Doug Cloud―who inject their Christian thoughts and experiences into their blog format, I feel this isn’t the direction for myself.

I want AndrewKelsall.com to be a place where I can discuss graphic and creative issues, delving into technicalities and discussion. I don’t believe this blog is the place where I should suddenly write about the difference between 200gsm and 400gsm paper stock then state “I’m a Christian!”

So, I decided a few month back to separate general design issues and Christian-design issues into two separate blogs. I have done this for another reason also. On my Pure Christian Graphic Design blog, I not only want to talk on Christian design, but also discuss non-design subject matter in general―and the AK blog isn’t the place to do this.

If you think you may be interested in articles about Christian design issues and living, you are welcome to visit. I’ve got some elements on the design to tweak, but overall, it’s 95% complete. You will notice I have used a very similar design for the blog. I have done this so both my blogs look coherent and unified, as I have typed the strap-line “Authored by Creative Design Andrew Kelsall” along the banner with my logo.

I plan to write about one article per week to get started―about the same as this blog. I hope it works out well…and I’m looking forward to my new venture. If you have any thoughts on my plans, please leave them in the comments section below…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Pure Christian Graphic Design Launches!

Never mind .eu .me or .whatever, give me .tel!

Andrew Kelsall — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:15:47 PDT

I have heard a fair bit about the .tel “revolution” of late. So much so, that I bought andrewkelsall.tel before some cyber-squatter or other Andrew Kelsall decided to buy it.

I’m not too concerned about anyone buying the .eu, .me or .whatever version of my domain name (I have the .co.uk, though), but .tel’s are meant to be the next big thing, so I though I’d cover my bases and buy this one. I first heard about them in the tabloid press, so I looked into it and supposedly, .tel domains are meant to be some world-wide telephone directory.

The whole point of them is, as I have gathered, you simply update your contact information so that if you give someone your .tel address ― they can always contact you by looking up your details. What you want kept private or public is up to you, the account holder.

Basically, I have only just set mine up with limited details to see what it’s all about. You can check it out at andrewkelsall.tel and look at the simple purple interface that everyone else on .tel has to give a unified image.

To find out more on .tel domains, you can visit Telnic, the organization behind them.

Have you got yourself a .tel address? Do you think this world-wide directory will take off? Do you think it’s just a waste of time?Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

Never mind .eu .me or .whatever, give me .tel!

What are the Benefits of Designing in RGB for CMYK Print?

Andrew Kelsall — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:41:32 PDT

I recently had a great discussion about the use an RGB color setup when designing for CMYK print. I received various responses within my article Top Ten CD Cover Design Tips, whereby the talented designer’s Alex Charchar, LaurenMarie and Rob Cubbon joined the conversation.

I generally support the notion of designing in an RGB color mode ― for print and web regarding imagery that is to be printed in CMYK. Some of you reading this may know what I’m talking about and agree wholehartedly, yet I suspect that some of you would ask yourself:

Why would I ever design in RGB for printed material that will be printed in CMYK ― or even CMYKOG (Hexachrome®)?

Moreover, some may have heard about initially designing in RGB for print before, tried it ― and never did it again ― offering a statement such as this:

I tried designing in RGB ― but all the colors just turned out muddy when I converted it. That’s the last time I’m trying that again…

A valid point. But to prove my case, I will start at the beginning and explain why, in the majority of cases, I design in RGB in the initial design stages of print work. Of coarse I send my files off to the printers in CMYK, but this article is about how the initial file setup in an RGB color profile can benefit designers.

You may ponder as to why anyone would design in RGB, when the final output is in CMYK. This is like saying:

Why should I mix the ingredients to make fresh cake, when I can go to the shops and buy one ready-made?

Well, the answer to this is quality. If you design in RGB, you have a larger color gamut to work with, as well as many additional benefits:

Benefits of Designing in RGB

★ RGB File Sizes are about 25% smaller than CMYK

★ Many filters and functions are only available to use in an RGB color mode in PhotoShop® and similar programs.

★ The RGB color gamut is larger than CMYK

★ Working in RGB means that your images are web-ready with no color conversion (as opposed to designing for print in CMYK and converting the color to RGB for web-use).

To place the above list in a workable context, here is a simulation of how using RGB to design your printed material would have been more beneficial than CMYK (based on one of my previous comments in the aforementioned CD article):

…I setup my files as CMYK with a FOGRA 27 color profile. After spending hours designing an 8-page CD Gatefold design, the client supplies me with some more photo files to be used. As they originated from a digital camera, they are in RGB. I place them in layers in Photoshop® and get to work. An hour later, I want to use certain filters on these layers — but I can’t, as many functions and filters are only available in RGB mode in PhotoShop®.

…After spending much work-around time editing these photos in separate RGB files and importing them back in, I transfer my PSD file onto my MacBook as I’m working on the move. As CMYK files are approximately 25% larger than RGB ones, my laptop starts to slow down, causing loss of productivity to myself.

…My client also informs me that this CD cover is to be used in an interactive digital booklet and used online in iTunes, etc. As the CMYK SWOP gamut is vastly smaller than the “additive” RGB gamut, some color info will be lost on conversion to the “subtractive” CMYK one.

…Further down the line, I may also want to include images from my own scanner — again, from source RGB.

In conclusion, it’s always easier to work in RGB. Some colors may be lost when converting to CMYK, but that is what the “Preview in CMYK” option is for in PhotoShop®, so you can keep track of desasterous results from any conversions.

Are you convinced of the reasoning behind these benefits? Next, I’ll take a look at the CMYK color mode:

Benefits of Designing in CMYK

★ When designing in RGB, there will have to be a conversion to CMYK at a calculated time near the completion of an image. Sometimes, the color of the image can change appearance due to this conversion. If you work directly in CMYK, there will be no such conversion ― and therefor, no color loss.

★ er…

★ and….

Ok. That’s it. The only benefit (in most situations/generally) of working in CMYK is the color control ― but a league of restraints counteracts this benefit.

This is not the end of the subject

I realize that this post is becoming rather long, so soon I will be writing some more articles that will accompany this one. The subjects of color gamuts and color profiles are top of my list.

In the forthcoming article about color gamuts, I shall be addressing the issue of why colors can appear ‘muddy’ after an RGB-to-CMYK conversion.

Why not Subscribe to my RSS Feed so you don’t miss a thing?

If you have any questions about this article, please leave your comment below. I know some of the termanology I have used may be unknown to some, so just ask-away ― I’m always glad to help out…Similar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

What are the Benefits of Designing in RGB for CMYK Print?

Three Great Logos I saw in London

Andrew Kelsall — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 06:28:28 PDT

Not so hot-off-the-heels of one of my previous articles, Three Great Logos I saw on the Motorway, here are three great logos I noticed when I visited London recently with Mrs K and a couple of friends.

I thought it was about time I visited the Capital. I live 280 miles away, but I had previously only travelled through the great City. Ironically though, I had visited Washington DC and New York on several occasions, but never the City on my door-step. I had a great time―and managed to see the last UK show of Buddy, the Buddy Holly story―which was fantastic.

Here’s a self-taken photo of me on the London Eye. I have about 20 layers of clothes on, but it was February and very cold, but quite sunny too!

Okay―enough news of my exploits, here are three great logo designs I saw whilst walking through the streets of London. Before my visit, I had never set eyes on any of the logos below, so my descriptions are my very first impressions:

Blacks logo

I saw this on a shop sign whilst strolling along near London Bridge. I don’t think that it’s a great logo because of its form or color, but I liked it because I knew what the shop sold even before I looked through the window. If I wanted a new pair of hiking boots to aid my 18-hour trawl around the sights of London, this would be a great place to start looking. Logos are all about communication―and the ‘Blacks’ design did its job well.

Eat. The Real Food Company

I first saw this logo from afar―and needless to say, I knew exactly what to expect when I reached one of their eateries. Great, contemporary, simple design and in-your-face brilliant. What’s so great about the ‘Eat.’ name, is the whole branding structure that is maintained on all the packaging for their various soups and sandwiches.

Geox Logo

I saw this logo on a shop sign and I admired it because of the treatment of the typography used―especially the ‘x’. Admitantly, I didn’t know what the shop sold, although I suspected it was a clothing store…and it was. But all-credit to the designer of the Geox logotype, as it looked great―and gained my attention.

I featured the following list of related articles in my Three Great Logos I saw on the Motorway post, but they are still relevant to this latest article, so here they are again―and worth a read…

A Binary life: A day in brands

Designers Who Blog: Branding before Breakfast

PhilsBlogging: Where we encounter brands

Aaron Russell: 13 Logos without moving a Muscle

Rob: Brand Timeline Portrait

Mike Vogel: Brand Timeline Portrait

The Happy Corp: What Time is your Brand

Rafie: 10 Logos as you open my door

Dehog: My day in brands and logos

The Marketing Student: Day in a life of Gen Y

LogoDesignLove: 33 logos in 33 Minutes

Brand Awareness: 14 Logos in 14 Minutes

Vivian: Brainwashed in 8 minutesSimilar Posts of Interest

Post from: Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer | Poster and Logo Design

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Uprinting Business Card Competition Winners!

Andrew Kelsall — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:29:21 PDT

On the 28th February, I ran a competition for you to win one of two prizes courtesy of the great folks at Uprinting.com. There were some great comments, some very weird ones…and some rather bad ones―however, the whole point of the competition was to leave a comment that was creative:

How to Enter to competition:

1. Leave a comment at the end of this article, describing what you would use the free business cards and/or canvas print for.

2. IMPORTANT: To make things more interesting, you must include THIS WORD below in your comment to be eligible to win: Dinosaur

After much deliberation, here are the winners:

Gold > Josh: 1000 Business Cards Winner

Well, obviously I would use them to construct a hat and earmuffs for my dinosaur.. It’s winter you know.

Silver > Elizabeth Cooper: 18×24 canvas print winner

Have you ever wondered why there are old dinosaur bones in museums?

I have, and I decided it’s for the same reason I haven’t had new business cards in a while — because new ones are too expensive!

Shonika, I thought your comment was thoughtful, so although you’re not a winner, here’s a link to your site: Teen Entrepreneur Blog to say thank-you!

I appreciate the longer comments that some of you left, but it was the two comments above that captured the creative concept in a more memorable way. Josh’s comment, in particular, made me smile when I read it.

So, well done Josh and Elizabeth, I will email you both with the details on claiming your prizes.

I’ll probably be running more competitions in the future, so why not Subscribe to my RSS Feed so you don’t miss them?
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