Another great article about wireframing resources on Smashingmagazine!

Wireframing is one of the most valuable parts of any web design project. It can save a designer tons of time by hashing out the details of a site’s architecture, functionality, and content prior to actually starting a visual design. But if done inefficiently, it can end up costing more time and can even create bigger headaches for both the client and the designer.

Click Here for more than 35 resources for creating better wireframes, including tutorials on different methods and a variety of tools available.

This unique installation by taiwanese ou studio was part of the allstars exhibition during DMY berlin design festival 09.

The installation consisted of painted blue walls and elements of furniture from an old house.

images via designboom

TypArchive.com is the brainchild of typographer RD Granados. The concept was to build an ever-growing typographic image archive featuring various disciplines, styles, specimens, techniques and oddities. The objective is to amass a high-quality, comprehensive global collection of images and to produce hard-copy volumes.

Visit Typearchive.com

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Launch Personas

Here you can see Personas in the context of the art installation for which it was made:

http://smg.media.mit.edu/Projects/Metropathologies/metro_finalcut2_web.mov

How does it work?

Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

Philosophy

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

Credits

Personas was created by Aaron Zinman, with help from Alex Dragulescu, Yannick Assogba and Judith Donath.

Source: http://personas.media.mit.edu/

What makes a good logo? A good logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic, simple in form and conveys an intended message.

There are five principles that you should follow to ensure that this is so…

An effective logo is (in no particular order):

• Simple
• Memorable
• Timeless
• Versatile
• Appropriate
  

1. Simple

A simple logo design allows for easy recognition and allows the logo to be versatile & memorable. Good logos feature something unique without being overdrawn.

While in college in the mid-70’s an instructor introduced me to the K.I.S.S. Principle of design; which translates to: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It does convey a very important design consideration. Simple logos are often easily recognized, incredibly memorable and the most effective in conveying the requirements of the client. A refined and distilled identity will also catch the attention of a viewer zipping by signage at 70 miles per hour, on packaging on the crowded shelves of a store, or in any other vehicle used for advertising, marketing and promotion. Remember, the basis of the hugely effective international branding for the world’s largest shoe manufacturer is a very simple graphic swoosh.

~ Jeff Fisher

2. Memorable

Following closely behind the principle of simplicity, is that of memorability. An effective logo design should be memorable and this is achieved by having a simple, yet, appropriate logo.

You may be interested to see some examples of bad logo designs.

Surprising to many, the subject matter of a logo is of relatively little importance, and even appropriateness of content does not always play a significant role.

This does not imply that appropriateness is undesirable. It merely indicates that a one-to-one relationship between a symbol and what it symbolized is very often impossible to achieve and, under certain conditions, objectionable. Ultimately, the only mandate in the design of logos, it seems, is that they be distinctive, memorable, and clear.

~ Paul Rand

3. Tiimeless

An effective logo should be timeless – that is, it will stand the test of time. Will the logo still be effective in 10, 20, 50 years?

Leave trends to the fashion industry – Trends come and go, and when you’re talking about changing a pair of jeans, or buying a new dress, that’s fine, but where your brand identity is concerned, longevity is key. Don’t follow the pack. Stand out.

~ David Airey

Probably the best example of a timeless logo is the Coca-Cola logo… if you compare it to the Pepsi logo below, you can see just how effective creating a timeless logo can be. Notice how the Coca Cola logo has barely changed since 1885? That is timeless design.

Update: 8/08/09 – Underconsideration has posted an updated timeline of the Pepsi vs CocaCola logo. Thanks for the tip off Jon.

4. Versatile

An effective logo should be able to work across a variety of mediums and applications. For this reason a logo should be designed in vector format, to ensure that it can be scaled to any size. The logo should be able to work both in horizontal and vertical formats.

Ask yourself; is a logo still effective if:

• Printed in one colour?
• Printed on the something the size of a postage stamp?
• Printed on something as large as a billboard?
• Printed in reverse (ie. light logo on dark background)

One way around creating a versatile logo is to begin designing in black and white only. This allows one to focus on the concept and shape, rather than the subjective nature of colour. One must also remember printing costs – the more colors used, the more expensive it will be for the business over the long term.

I like to work first in black and white to ensure that the logo will look good in its simplest form. Color is very subjective and emotional. This can distract from the overall design – say if you saw your logo in all red, that color may be the first thing that you respond to and not the composition of the design elements. I will not even consider submitting color suggestions to a client for review until they have signed off on a final black and white logo.

~ Patrick Winfield

One should also familiarise themself with the commercial printing process so as not to come into printing problems further down the track. Learn to know the difference between the CMYK, Pantone and RGB color systems. When designing logos, the Pantone colour system is recommended.

5. Appropriate

How you position the logo should be appropriate for its intended purpose. For example, if you are designing a logo for children’s toys store, it would be appropriate to use a childish font & colour scheme. This would not be so appropriate for a law firm.

It is also important to state that that a logo doesn’t need to show what a business sells or offers as a service. ie. Car logos don’t need to show cars, computer logos don’t need to show computers. The Harley Davidson logo isn’t a motorcycle, nor is the Nokia logo a mobile phone. A logo is purely for identification.

For further evidence of this, take the top 50 brands of the world – 94% of the logos do not describe what the company does.

Paul Rand also has a say on this topic:

Should a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real meaning. A logo derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes. If a company is second rate, the logo will eventually be perceived as second rate. It is foolhardy to believe that a logo will do its job immediately, before an audience has been properly conditioned.

~ Paul Rand

via www.justcreativedesign.com

Blog.SpoonGrphics have 15,000 visitors every day and 20k+ subscribers. It is one of the most popular design blog among web & graphic designers.

Chris Spooner is the guy behind Blog.SpoonGraphics. He is a freelance graphic designer and started the blog where he presents Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials, articles around the subject of design.

“For me personally it’s a great way of putting my ideas into practice through tutorials, which helps develop and polish my design skills while helping others, and to keep up to date with the design industry. It has also given me the opportunity to network and meet a bunch of like-minded designers and bloggers from around the world.”

Check out his second blog Line 25 that has alot of web related contents.

Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information.

Instead of pouring over figures and long reports to decipher data, an infographic can immediately make apparent exactly what a dataset actually means.

Find out more by going to this link: http://bit.ly/p81j7

Peter Belanger is a San Francisco based photographer. He photographs products and people for clients like Apple, Sony, Johnson & Johnson, Dwell Magazine and Macworld.

In this timelapse video of the creation of the recent MacWorld Magazine cover, he shows the process from start to finish.

“After working on the latest cover for Macworld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the  whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs.”

Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

before                                                   after

Siegel+gale applies the art and science of simplicity to create branding programs that  help organizations excel. Integrating multiculturalism, unity, strength, integrity and diversity, Siegel+gale successfully rebrands ICFJ’s new identity, giving it a more focused, powerful outward persona.

via rebrand.com

Tripp, August and Adeline

Sometimes you look at a picture and it initiates a memory, a smile, and in this case a laugh. My nephew “August” (boy in middle) just had that “ready for the world” sort of look. He was the splash of paint I needed to start this collage. His younger brother Tripp and my daughter Adeline didn’t disappoint as well. What a fun bunch they are together.

They became my inspiration for a personal gift to my mom who they call “Nana” for her 70th birthday. Everytime I can’t think of anything to give to anyone, I always go back to doing some art.

I think I always will. Happy birthday mom!