So, I just caved and bought a Yudu printer, since my Gocco printer purchase a few months ago was a bust. I’ve been wanting to experiment screenprinting forever, and I figured I’d take the first step. If I can print anything as cool as bee things‘ art prints (above), I’ll be more than thrilled. Bee thing’s prints are hand silkscreened on archival paper, get ‘em while they’re hot. |DBK
Screen Junkie
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Inspiration or Hard Work?
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One of the most frustrating things for a designer to deal with is the unrealistic expectations that can be set upon them by both internal and external sources. Clients, account managers, and our peers can put a lot of pressure upon us to find the solution to the design the problem at in ever shrinking amounts of time. When faced with a time crunch or high set expectations, sometimes the only solution we can think of is searching for that mystical “spark” of inspiration. Eventually what we must come to terms with, is that the idea of inspiration most designers seek is really not a sustainable way of working and buckling down and getting something done is far more successful approach.
Stop Beating Yourself Up
In these situations where we are struggling to find that solution that perfectly meets the objectives of the brief, that flash of inspiration seems like the only saving grace we have however the truth is 99% of the time it will never come, and I’m not the only one who feels this way. The truth is that the only thing that is going to help you out is more hard work. Instead of beating ourselves up looking for that miraculous moment of inspiration we should just come to terms with this. This also means that searching through “inspiration” posts and design galleries is not going to help. These post may be fun to look at, which there is nothing wrong with – I even enjoy putting them together – but it is going to take more work to actually achieve something.
The hard part is that sometimes this means that we are going to fail, we are going to create something that we are not 100% happy with. As Eric Karjaluoto explains in this article “Concerning Design Superstars,” anyone who tells you otherwise is either seriously delusional or an ego maniac. It took me a long time to realize this and accept it, but in the end I realized that it is completely ludicrous to think that your work is going to be absolutely spectacular every time. Instead it is far more likely that you are going to make plenty of mistakes in the course of your career, but drawing upon these mistakes is what it takes to progress as a designer.
The harder thing to realize is that doing less than stellar work from time to time does not make you a bad designer. Clients will compromise projects, time will run out, and budgets will dry up leaving you with a solution that most likely works and is acceptable by the client but doesn’t achieve your internal goals. This is going to happen, but what is important is that you pushed yourself along the way and learned something in the process.
Some Alternatives to Inspiration
Continually pushing to find that bit of inspiration that will make the project is not sustainable, and will most certainly lead to burnout. Instead, I have devised the following list of tips that have helped me get past creative block without frantically searching for that spark of inspiration.
- Get out of the office for a while – As time continues to go on, and your deadline gets closer stress can really start to pile on making it even harder to think clearly and fueling your need for an instantaneous solution. If I can’t figure out a solution often times I try to reset my thought process by doing something completely unrelated for a while.
- Give yourself more time – Inspiration is a very compelling idea because it comes quickly. The truth is that if you aren’t able to find an optimal solution to a design problem, then you either need more information to frame the problem or more time to fully grasp it. Sometimes just knowing that a deadline is a bit in the future can help you free your mind.
- Start over – for me this means going back to the sketching process and starting all over again with a completely new approach. I make sure to clear my mind (sometimes letting a couple of hours pass if possible) and start on a completely fresh page to try and deviate as far as I can from my previous attempts.
- Ask others for perspective – If you have access to other designers they can often be of great help when you find yourself in a tough spot. The outside perspective of another designer and their thought process can often help you develop ideas that you can build from.
These ideas might not be new, but they have helped me avoid the desperate search through visual “inspiration” sites at the last minute of a deadline. If you have any tips or tricks that help you without searching for that spark of inspiration please share them in the comments below.
Preview sites in various resolutions with View Like Us
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View Like Us is a website that lets you preview sites in various resolutions, in a very convenient.
After you have finished the design of a site, you can preview how it looks on an iPhone, Wii browser, and various resolutions (from 800 x 600 all the way to 1920 x 1200).
The preview system is powered by AJAX, so switching between various resolutions is slick and easy (and requires no page loads).
It may not be an accurate representation (especially for the iPhone and Wii browser), but ViewLikeUs can help you get an idea of what needs to be tweaked. For example, I realized that lack of lateral margins in the design of Design Blurb (this blog!) makes it ugly on an iPhone (see image above) and low-res screens.
Do you use any other websites or apps to preview your site in lower resolutions? Recommend your favorites in comments.
I strongly recommend you on using this tool next time you create a website for yourself or your client. This can save you a lot of work in future, when you’ll find out that your website looks broken on some device.
A original article by Design Blurb
Three Potato Four
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We’re due for a a little eye candy this Monday morning. I love everything at Three Potato Four—an online store that sells vintage collectibles and relics. I had such a hard time picking what I wanted to post, but I think I’m satisfied. Check out more retro must-haves at Three Potato Four’s website. |DBK
Pitter Patter
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I got caught in the rain this morning without an umbrella, so now I’ve got umbrellas on the brain. This one from Veer is kinda awesome. |DBK
Texture King: Free texture downloads
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Texture King is a free texture resources website. Texture King allows you to use the textures they offer in whatever way you want, except sell or redistribute them.
Textures are neatly organized with categories, available on every page on the left side.
The collection of textures available is fairly good, with around 100 textures as of writing. They are offered at 1600 x 1200 resolution. Texture King recently changed from zip file downloads to image downloads, so that should help you some more.
A original article by Design Blurb
Best free PHP learning resources for beginners
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PHP is a web scripting language that powers many of the popular open source applications and websites. PHP was among the most used languages until recently, and although other languages like Ruby-on-Rails have been gaining users, PHP still remains useful.
I started learning PHP recently, with the aim of building my own web apps and CMS some time in the future. Finding ideal, free resources were not easy, and delayed the learning process quite a bit. This post serves as a one-stop-shop for resources that I found useful – if you have recommendations, please do so in comments.
Install PHP on your computer for local dev/testing
PHP.net has a detailed page on installing PHP for various OSes. On *nix systems, you only need to learn how to use PHP, as it is installed by default or easily available via package managers.
PHP beginner resources
W3Schools has detailed articles and even a quiz for PHP topics – describing everything from PHP language constructs and syntax to database access.
Zend Dev Zone has a beginners’ guide to PHP – categorized to 15 parts.
I should admit, while reading through the above articles, I did hit brick walls quite a few times. On such occasions, the Diving into PHP video series by Themeforest blog helped greatly. Sometimes, a visual explanation makes sense of something that you couldn’t figure out even after spending several minutes on.
That page lists only the first 11 videos, you can view the remaining videos with this search page.
Bonus tips: Use PHP.net, W3Schools forum and Google to lookup answers when you have doubts. It may seem obvious, but a lot of people waste their time thinking rather than trying to solve problems (myself included, in early days).
PHP books
These are not free, but I thought that they should be included due to one reason – if you have lots of time to spare, while on a commute to work or such, books can help. Reading books is not as effective as diving into code itself, but if you can spend more time on a book than on your computer, this might be useful.
O’Reilly has books called Learning PHP 5 and PHP Cookbook (which contains practical problems and solutions).
Also, this thread on Stackoverflow has lots of recommendations and critiques of PHP books. Stackoverflow is frequented by knowledgeable programmers, so you can be sure they know what they are talking about.
This post discussed only websites and resources to get started with PHP. Soon, I will also be writing posts rounding up useful resources for those who know the syntax and basics, and are looking for intermediate/advanced tips, security tips and well-coded PHP applications that can help you learn best practices. Click the email/RSS link in the box below to subscribe for updates regarding the same.
A original article by Design Blurb
Unofficial Twitter Widget Documentation
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So, the Twitter Search Widget has officially launched. And the installation is fairly self-explanatory (as a matter of fact, I don t think we even explained it at all??). But nonetheless, if you haven t checked it out, it s worth doing that now. The new widgets are hot! Ok. On with this.
The Big Collection of Apothecary Inspiration
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Lately I’ve been so inspired by the apothecary style design work out there. I’ve collected some links and package examples to share some of my inspiration with you. I hope you find them equally enjoyable!
Around the Web
‘IDo’ It Yourself found these free printable labels from Eat.Drink.Chic. The images above are just a taste of what you’ll find!
Brock Ray shared his photos from the National Museum of American History.
Boots Original was featured on The Dieline a while back.
Finally, Beast Pieces did this lovely promo piece for Shine Advertising and shared it last month.
C.O. Bigelow
C.O. Bigelow claims the title of “the oldest apothecary in America” and it’s probably true! They’ve been in business since 1838 in New York. Check out I Love Bigelow, too, for more apothecary style inspiration.
Flickr
Flickr is without a doubt a fantastic place to find inspiration. Each image below is linked to its respective Flickr page.
And then there’s that beauty of a book, The Handy Book of Artistic Printing. Ellie from Mint (the design blog) recently shared pictures of her copy. Amazon has this book for $26, well worth it in my opinion, if you’re into this style at all. I saw it in person and it really is gorgeous! The outside does have a gold foil on it, but none of the inside images have any foil or metallic ink from what I remember seeing (even though in some of the pictures it does look that way).
As you flip through the book, notice how the printers were always trying to break the bounds of their medium through curved text and images that made it look like pins or nails were holding a note on the page. It really reminded me of what web designers are trying to do now. How funny, huh? Talk about history repeating itself!
Incorporating the Style into Your Designs
So what are some design elements we can pick up from these packages?
Color Palette
I took a look at all of the sample images I’d collected and decided these were the most common colors I saw. I’ve left the label colors muted, even though some of that might have been caused by age. But that’s the point, right? These are supposed to look old!
The liquids were fun—and here’s where the bright colors come in! Green, red and brown were the most common colors.
Finally, there are the bottles. Most of them were clear, lightly tinted green or brown, but then there’s also that signature bright blue (like in the Bigelow Premium collection above).
Type Treatments
Many of the original labels used some form of Copperplate, and for the modern packages, Algerian seems to be a popular choice. There was also extensive use of slab serifs, mainly typewriter style fonts, in both the old and new labels.
Tuscan serifs (the really fancy serifs, check out the link) were also popular in the vintage packaging, but I didn’t see much use of them in modern stuff. It was also interesting that some modern examples use engraved text, though their ancestors (from what I saw) do not. I think the engraved fonts work though. Hand-tooled fonts would also fit the period I think.
Text on a curve was very popular, too, and I think it was a pride thing for the printers of the time (they didn’t have the Type on a Path Tool!).
Hard shadows behind the text was a popular style back then and now, as is using a red accent color for some of the important information on the label. All caps or small caps were and are also quite common.
- Copperplate
- Algerian
- Slab Serifs (like the typewriter fonts)
- Tuscan serifs (really fancy serifs)
- Engraved and hand-tooled fonts
- Text on a curve
- Hard shadows
- Red accent color
- Caps or Small Caps
Shapes
Because these old packages were printed on letterpresses, they often used engraved images with lines for shading. Ribbons or banners were (are) quite popular, as was (and is) placing text inside the ribbon. Artists and printers tried to dress up the labels as much as possible with lines, decorative borders and filigree on the letters. Dividers between text was also common; sometimes it was a simple as a line, other times it was a fancier ornament.
- Ribbons/sashes
- Simple lines for decoration
- Decorative borders
- Filigree
- Dividers – sometimes just a line, sometimes decorative
What else do you notice as you look at the images above? Have you ever studied this time period and picked up a useful or interesting tidbit about design at that time? Share it in the comments!
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2 Step Grunge Photo Effect
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Step 1 Obviously a photo effect requires a photo. I find this effect works awesome on photos of people, so here’s a photo of this funny looking surfer I know. Step 2 With the photo open, lets first make sure our foreground and background colors are set to Black & White by pressing the D [...]
