Fizzogg Blog – Graphic Design

It’s a times likes these I thank God I’m a graphic designer…

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/april/tnker

When you are in transit, at a meeting, or at lunch, having your iPhone with you affords you a chance to get some graphic design work done when away from your computer. These 16 useful apps for graphic designers will help you learn, organize, brainstorm, or research different aspects of your design work. As a bonus, most of these apps inspire creativity all by themselves. Kudos to the developers!

Yes, there are lots and lots of graphic design related apps to pick from in the App Store, but many are just not that useful—sorry! The list below represents the consensus from many different sources about the apps that are most useful for getting actual work done.

(NOTE: Any new apps are added below the numbered list)

MY 2 FAVORITE GRAPHIC DESIGN APPS FOR IPHONE

• My personal favorite on the list, which I’ll list first, is the Font Game app. It’s just great to be able to see some of these typefaces up close and learn how they look and feel. The great thing about the game format is that you get to learn and apply that knowledge right off, albeit in a game format. This does relate to work of course because it’s education. The more we know, the faster we are able to work and turn out great design for clients. Time is money!
• My second favorite on, which I’ll list second, is SimpleMind Touch. It’s the best simple mind mapping tool I’ve come across for iPhone yet. For simply getting out the way and requiring the least amount of learning curve or operational savvy (it will take you 13 seconds to learn!), it gets my highest personal recommendation.

The rest are listed in no particular order.

Since our own Font Combination App is so new, we can’t list it among the other 16 (yet), but we’d sure love for you to check it out. If you love typography, and even more so if you love the Font Game, you’ll appreciate Font Combinations. You can mix and match fonts to create over 2000 different combinations faster than you could do in a desktop app. It includes the top fonts used by graphic designers. Click below if it sounds interesting:

Now for our list of links direct to the iTunes Store:

16 TOP USEFUL IPHONE APPS FOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

1. Font Game
   From I Love Typography comes the long-awaited, the definitive Font Game for iPhone & iPod Touch. Guaranteed to be absolutely the most fun you’ll have with fonts anywhere, any time, any place. Think you know your Arial from your Helvetica, your sans from your sans serifs? Then step up to the plate. With three levels of game play from the ease-yourself-in, ‘Somewhat Difficult’ through to the incredibly challenging ‘Exceedingly Difficult’, there’s lots of fun to be had for novices and typographic experts alike.
2. SimpleMind Touch
   SimpleMind Touch is a Mind Mapping tool that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device.
   (The interface on this one is very easy to use. The lite version is free. If you are new to mind mapping, I strongly recommend trying this app and see how it goes. This link is to the paid version. Look for the free version.)
3. Palettes 2.0
   Palettes is a powerful iPhone productivity tool for creating and maintaining color palettes. Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a portable color creation tool. Now you can create a color palette anywhere at anytime. Great for creating color schemes. Grab colors from a photograph, a website, or add colors using any one of 5 color models. Quickly find matching colors with support for many different color schemes.
4. cliqcliq Colors
   Colors is an easy-to-use color picker for discovering, converting, and managing colors and palettes. If you’re a designer or developer working with CSS, HTML, Flex, Flash, Objective-C or other media-centric technologies, you’ll spend a good amount of time finding the exact colors you want to use and converting between various scales and formats. With cliqcliq Colors, you can create palettes based on colors you like best and quickly convert between RGB, HSB, and CMYK as well as integer and floating point scales.
5. Palettes Pro
   Palettes Pro is a powerful productivity tool for creating and maintaining color palettes. Great for creating color schemes. Now you can create a color palette anywhere at anytime. Grab colors from a photograph, a website, or add colors using any one of 5 color models. Quickly find matching colors with support for many different color schemes.
6. Color Expert
   Color Expert is an interactive color wheel and swatch library that helps artists and designers indentify, tranlsate, capture, and showcase color. Designers know inspiration can come anywhere at anytime. Now with Color Expert, you’ll have the tools to capture the moment, the moment a color captures you.
7. iBlueSky
   iBlueSky is a brainstorming and mind-mapping solution for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Collect and organise ideas you have at odd moments, then email the complete project in PDF and PNG formats to any contact. You can even print a hard copy of your work from the PDF file.
8. WhatTheFont
   Identify the fonts in a photo or web graphic! Ever seen a great font in a magazine ad, poster, or on the web and wondered what font it is? Whip out your iPhone and snap a photo, and WhatTheFont for iPhone will identify that font in seconds!
9. FinDaFont
   All the fonts that you’ll ever need, right just in your iPhone !!!
10. Font Shuffle
    “FontShuffle is the fastest mobile source of typographic inspiration. 650+ font families are sorted by visual similarity. Without any previous knowledge about type design, you can quickly discover 6 typefaces of similar style in just two taps by navigating the simple category menu. Choose the list view to examine up to 24 similar typefaces. “
11. Typography Manual
    The Typography Manual has several useful features and resources for designers, including a visual type anatomy glossary, a font size ruler, an em calculator, and enough content to fill a 60-page book. It has all the essentials of a desk reference in a regularly updated pocket resource.
12. Sketches 2
    Jot down your notes, scribble your thoughts and annotate your pictures using only your fingers and your imagination! Illustrate your ideas with simple but colorful diagrams, notes and sketches.
13. Pixelpipe
    Liberate your media with Pixelpipe and get your photos off of your iPhone and out to your favorite social network, micro-blog, photo/video and blog services. With over 110 supported destinations from around the world to choose from the choice is really yours. Free your media and share your life.
14. Loupe
    A color picker for your iPhone: You never know where you are going to find the perfect color. With Loupe you can capture your color inspirations so you don’t have to try and guess what that shade was when you are back at your computer. Simple and thoughtfully designed, Loupe lets you create color swatches from your photo library or using the camera to save colors as you find them.
15. ColorToy
    The color scheme generator for iPhone and iPod Touch. Whether you’re a web designer, interior decorator, artist or just a lover of colors, ColorToy can help you find your ideal color scheme. This simple, flexible app lets you generate, modify and store complementary color palettes.
16. Paper Sizes
    International Paper Sizes is an ideal resource for looking up a variety of paper standards. It’s ideal for those working in graphic design, illustration, printing, export and packaging.

Came across this site while surfing and thought it to be a MUST…

http://www.designboom.com/eng/

Logo design is fun yet hard to perfect. It demands time for planning and conceptualization, after all, logos need to represent the brand effectively and communicate at the same time. They are usually used for a rather long time, lasting years and years of use. They are vital to branding and marketing in general. Sometimes, designers and artists even come up with their own monograms and logos to represent themselves or their creative firms!

It is necessary that logos are easy to recognize and relate to the brand or organization they represent. Great logo designs help people and companies standout from competition. In fact, logos are so vital that many people rely on logos to recognize or be recognized even from afar.

We have collected 33 fresh logo design ideas that will surely get you going. Get awesome ideas for your recent and future projects. Have fun browsing through our compilation and be inspired!

A COLLECTION OF 33 AWESOME LOGO INSPIRATION

BEERS & GEARS

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CHOCOCHOKE

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PHOTOGRAPHY OF NATURE

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MAGIC GHOST

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WHERE I RIDE

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RIPE FILMS

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FROG BURGER

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HONEYLIME

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BATTERY

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NAPOLEON

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OSTROVOK

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FEARLESS

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RECIPE BOT

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VALENTINE PRODUCTIONS

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RASTAMAN 2

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SUNCITY

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WHITE RABBIT

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DONATTO

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ITEA HOUSE

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VILLAIN

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HAPPY LAMA

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SALTYDOG_V1

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FIDEON

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PGC LOGO

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HANDBRELA

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THUNDER FROG

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JUAN GESTAL V4B

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PAPETERIE HAUTE-VILLE

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EGG & CHICKEN

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CHEF BOYAR DOG

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FRIENDLY FISHERMAN

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PRE-SCHOOL MUSIC CLASS

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UGODNO

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Rocketman! No, we can’t get the Elton John song out of our heads either. At least MINI’s Rocketman concept car isn’t mind-numbingly average.

The quirky company’s centrepiece at next week’s 2011 Geneva Motor Show is a concept car that isn’t much bigger than the original, classic Mini, and it has the most unusual set of doors seen since the MINI Clubman.

Inside it’s no more conventional, with a 3+1 seating arrangement to maximise the space of a car that’s only just over three metres long.

MINI also claims that the Rocketman will achieve an average of 94mpg, largely because of its lightweight carbon spaceframe construction.

The entry doors are double hinged so that they open wider than the average door, while the luggage compartment is accessed via a pull drawer. The rear glass screen and part of the see-through roof also open up.

It might seem a little far-fetched to talk about any of this going into the next production MINI, which isn’t due until 2013 at the earliest, but you never know – MINI has a history of surprises.

The seat layout could facilitate a tiny, entry-level MINI hatchback to compete with the Toyota iQ.

Details like the grille, the headlamps and the unusual ‘stirrup’ taillight arrangement could also feature in future. And, of course, lightweight chassis architecture is always beneficial. Watch this space.

Am I the only one who think Ryan Pinnhammer Looks like Kate Middleton?

More educational than fun. Makes interesting reading. Go on… expand those little grey cells…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12244964

In this tutorial we’ll be using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (versions CS3) to create/design a beautiful radio station advertisement. We’ll just be using Illustrator to design a few simple elements, so if you don’t have it or don’t know how to use it, you can easily download some cool design bits from sites like Vecteezy (free) or Vector Stock (premium, very affordable).

We’ll be creating most of the design in Adobe Photoshop, so let’s say this is just a Photoshop tutorial!

Our Result

This is what I came up with, and hopefully what you’ll be able to design from following this tutorial:

Step 1

Step one is setting up the canvas. Select ‘international paper’ in your new file menu, then select A4. However, you can use whatever settings you want, so feel free to use something else. Here’s a screenshot of what I”ll be using:

CMYK/RGB color mode will be depending on if you’re getting it printed or if it’s just for practice. You’ll probably have more control over the colors though if you use RGB as the color mode.

Fill the background with a nice radial gradient.

Colors used for this gradient were #f9ae1a and #a42b21.

If you want, you can set up some rulers in the center of your document so you know where to place all of your elements later on. Hit CTRL+R to enable rulers, then drag two lines over our document. If you don’t want to see these lines while you’re working, hit CTRL+H.

Step 1.2

This is an optional step, it’s regarding the rulers that you saw in the above screenshot (where I added the gradient in). If you’re a newbie with Photoshop, my guess is you won’t know how to place the rulers in the center of the document. My usual method for accomplishing this, is the following:

1. Start by getting out the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M).
2. Now, set the settings near the top of Photoshop to Fixed Size.
3. Set the width to 50% and height to 50%.
4. Place this 50% selection in the top left of your canvas area.
5. Drag a ruler onto your canvas and hopefully it will snap to your half selection.
6. We’re done. If you were unable to complete this successfully, I wouldn’t worry about it!

OK, time to move on.

Step 2

Now you need to get some stock photos/elements. Start by going over to stock.xchng (sign up for an account, if you don’t have one), then download a stock or two, preferably of a speaker or something similar. I’m using these two stocks to start off with: Speakers 2, Speakers 5.

Step 3

Open up your stock photos and cut out the white from around the objects, like what I’ve done here:

Note: Use the Pen Tool, take your time to go all the way around the object, and it doesn’t matter if your path is in the inside of your shape slightly, either. After you’ve made the paths you should make a selection and delete the white.

After you’ve cut out both/all of your stock photos, copy them to your other document and position them accordingly. Before you start transforming or editing your stocks though, you should first right-click them in the layers palette and convert them to smart objects.

Converting them to smart objects will allow you to edit them freely later without losing the image quality.

Lookin’ good!

Step 4

Now we need some cool elements. For this you can either use Photoshop brushes or vectors, but most brushes most likely won’t be big enough for the size we’re working with. You can either create your own, download some for free, or buy some for a couple of bucks (credits). Remember what I said above regarding Vecteezy and Vector Stock.

Let’s start with something simple. Start up Illustrator, create a new document then enable the grid (and snap to grid).

Using the Rectangle Tool I want you to create a few small, different colored rectangles just like this:

Note: It shouldn’t matter what size the rectangles are, just go with the grid. Select all of your newly-created shapes and drag them into the Brushes palette. Select New Art Brush.

Alright, now we have a simple brush. Create a bit of a wavy path and apply your new brush to it. If any the edges of the brush look a little dodgy in some areas, don’t worry about it, we can conceal that later!

Select your path and copy it over to Photoshop. Resize/rotate and position to your liking.

Not bad!

Step 5

Over at Vecteezy I found a nice free sample pack called BySkell Free Samples. Open this in Illustrator and take a few pieces from it and place them in your Photoshop document. I started by just using the splatter.

Place it accordingly then fill it with black (as it was grey to start with). If you think some parts of the splatter get in the way, take an eraser to it.

There are some other nice elements in that free sample pack, so feel free to use whatever you need to make your design look great.

Above: After adding in the vector tree, change it’s color to white.

Above: Grunge element added. After copying it to your Photoshop document, rotate/resize it and position it at the top. Then simply change the layer mode to Multiply and lower the opacity to around 30-40%.

Step 6

Let’s add a few simple adjustments/details. Start by applying a bit of an Outer Glow to both of our speaker stock layers.

You may also like to experiment with other layer styles on some of your other layers. I added a similar layer style (as above) to the tree layer, except I lowered the opacity slightly and made it a bit larger.

Get creative!

Step 7

Add a little texture. Check out HighResolutionTextures for some nice texture packs. Select a texture, place it over your canvas and mess with layer modes, opacities and level adjustments (for the texture itself).

The last thing to add would be the text. Sometimes this takes a while to get right, just go through your font collection and find the right font combination.

The font used in the above image is called “Kozuka Gothic Pro,” and I believe it’s a commercial font (may come with Photoshop).

I think the design could do with some more floral elements or something like that, so I recommend you search the web and try a heap of different things.

This is cool and definitely worth checking out. It could be your next career!?!

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/world-of-sport/article/32403/