HOW TIE™
instructions included

Job Interview? Briss? Court Appearance? Yes, a necktie is definitely called for, and not a clip-on! No problem…relax, take a deep breath, remember your days in the boy scouts, and study the oh-so-easy knot-tying instructions printed right on Fred’s handy How Tie.

Thanks Design You Trust for the link. (How Fresh and Creative Ideas Rules the World)
Follow through to see other ideas too, this one was just my favorite.

Right now Smashing Magazine is holding a contest to it’s readers with a grand prize of a free Apple MacBook Air. All you have to do it write intriguing, original guest posts for them. The requirements are fairly short, 400-1200 characters.

Please follow the jump to see the entry from Smashing Magazine.
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I saw this ad on Dark Roasted Blend and couldn’t resist re-showing it to the world. For anyone who’s ever sat in traffic, this ad makes perfect sense! (I’d know, I live in Orange County, CA)

»ANNOUNCEMENT TO ALL BALLOONANCY PARTICIPANTS: I’m going to be frequently checking my page, if your balloon happens to be on my page at the time i’m checking i’ll be sure to give you a 5x boost! Good luck, and good race!

Hey look! It’s a me (the man) and a Kristen (the occasional woman) behind the ninethreestudio posts! The man, and sometimes the occasional woman, behind these lovely blog posts. (EDIT: After re-reading this, i realized this almost made it sound like i was an occasional woman. It made me laugh, so i decided to leave it in to show you just how my hamster-on-a-wheel brain works, enjoy.) Where you ask? Ohh, in a photo booth…. okay, okay. STRIKE bowling alley in Orange County had some hoopla event grand opening thing hosted by Lauren Conrad. Yadda Yadda Yadda. Lots of people, free food, booze and bowling… ho hum ho hum…. and now the good stuff. Justice, from American Gladiators… yeah, he was there. I’m not the shortest guys in the world, and he still towered over me. I got all giddy and told Kristen, “Look, there’s that huge dude from American Gladiators!”, then the glaze over of uninterest, but i didn’t let it phase me. haha.

Here’s a collection of 70 of the coolest, most unique business cards i’ve ever seen. Thanks Francesco Mugnai and Justin at Big Head Design for passing around the wealth of this list!!

66 more cards after the jump. it’s a big post, i had to split them to the single page, haha!
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Title: OC METRO BUSINESS Hot 25 2008 Logo Design

Client: Churm Media, in association with OC METRO BUSINESS

Program(s) Used: Illustrator

Time Span: 10 hours (Concept, client revisions, completion)

About: Every year OC METRO BUSINESS host it’s annual Hot 25 Event. the event honors hottest 25 people of Orange County, not a beauty contest. This includes entrepreneurs, business executives, managers, or just anyone in general making huge waves in Orange County. Every year the event is themed, and has to do with the new directions that OC METRO BUSINESS is going. This year the event, and the company, is completely rebranding itself as a web and digital entity, hence the theme “Hot Goes Digital”. The client’s idea was to show how OC METRO BUSINESS is moving into the 2.0, very web friendly.

Designer Notes: My original concept for this logo was to incorporate the feel of web 2.0. Very glossy, colorful, reflections, clean, simple and sleek all into one logo. After showing a first round of designs and color combinations the client didn’t want to stray from it’s branding and the logos went through a revision and font change. The end result is what you see above and a bit different that the original concept, but what the client wants, the client gets.

Through a little bit of link surfing I came across a page called Xpozio and tripped onto these above Playboy magazine covers. I thought it was so interesting to see how our culture has changed so much in just a short 50 years. The old covers at their time were probably considered risque and exposing, but compared to the covers of the 2000’s they seem like a child’s paint by numbers!

Working as an Art Director for Churm Media and designing covers for OC Family magazine and IE Family magazine it’s part of my job to stay up to date and current with magazine design, so when i see something as extraordinary as this national magazine undergo such huge changes it makes me take a look back at the short 10 years that Churm Media’s Family publications have been around and how much they’ve grown and evolved (to come in a later post, it’s on my to do list)

For only $9.95 each, these dioramas take me back to 3rd grade. Granted, mine usually consisted of old G.I.Joes whos mid-section rubber band had broken and then found their way under my brothers wood burning kit… a little read paint, some dirt (which we were NEVER short of in The Antelope Valley), twigs, grass and a bit of hot glue gun. BHAM! instant battlefield! Needless to say, i was a sheltered, bored little child. there’s nothing to do in the desert when it’s 117º outside and the wind is blowing dust devils into your mouth! Ohh how that brings me back to the middle school playground where half of our lunch would be chewing through the rocks that just blew into our faces… mother earth’s all natural pop-rocks; now with no trans fat! I’ll have seconds!

It was either this or stealing my mom’s cookie tins and pitting the black and red ant tribes against each other in a battle of epic proportions. ohh, how they did hate one antoher. And i’m convinced the black ants were either the gatherers or just plain wussies, because the red ants won every time. Even when we stacked the odds with a 1:4 ratio the red team was triumphant. Now, don’t flame me for ant cruelty, this was years ago, i was a little kid. Thanks again boredom!

Incredibly affordable, these diorama kits will most likely give enjoyment long after assembly.

‘Tatebanko is the forgotten Japanese art of creating amazing dioramas and scenic perspectives from paper. Tatebanko was popular and widely admired from the 17th century (Edo period) to the early 20th century. Then it all but disappeared. “It’s a Beautiful Day” has now revived and reinterpreted this simple and elegant Japanese art with two new paper craft kits. The kits feature the works from two famed Edo artists - Hiroshige’s Kambara, Evening Snow and Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Beautifully designed and printed in Japan with elegant metallic accents, the kits are nicely packaged A4 size and make a diorama that is 7 1/2” W x 3 1/2” D x 4 7/8” H. Each kit has a playful secret and interesting details that make assembly fun. With these kits, Tatebanko will undoubtedly enjoy a well-deserved renaissance.’

Hokusai (left): $9.95, Buy it here.
Hiroshige: $9.95, Buy it here.

Thanks Why Me? via Better Living Through Design.

Any designer who knows their place in the word of agency living knows that there’s that ugly separation between sales, design and management. There is always going to be someone trying to make the sale and promise aspects of design to clients at the minimal cost, because, hey, they need to make the sale. There’s always going to be management telling you that now the sale is made you have to manage to deliver in the time frame that they also promised client X. And lastly there’s the designers who have to take the foot of sales and management and deliver on the goods. In a perfect world there would be a great seamless line of open communication, but in the REAL world everyone’s “too busy” to make time to find out exactly what a client wants, which leads us to our good old friend “revision”. How ya doing buddy??

Thanks again Justin at Big Head Design. You never fail to deliver the goods! Must have been a slow morning for you.

Every designer has heard the tired old expression “form follows function”. Well, the following designers took that and tossed it out the window. This is more Function follows form. Every one of these was designed with surroundings in mind, materials accounted for and logistics calculated. The agencies that produced these must have made a buck or two in their days of glory.

To read more about these advertisements check out Big Head Design and Toxel. Thanks again for another great post Jusin at BHD.

3 more images after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but i can’t get enough of art containing shilouette birds (Hence the branding of my logo). I’m not even a fan of birds, the live ones, but when i see the artwork of a knocked-out, black dove or crow (or any bird for that matter) i can’t help but stop, stare and analyze. NOW this company, Amuneal, has gone and made wall art and laser cut metal shelving, coat racks, etc. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW!? Too poor to afford the stuff, not smart enough to not want it. haha. Thanks life, you’ve won this round! ….. quick, staring contest… you and me… GO!

“…It was a beautiful space, and with the right lighting the shadows were gorgeous… equally fascinating were their business card holders where the birds were popped out and bent as you pleased to hold the cards between them. See images of the booth on the next page…”

Sadly, there’s some things we’ll never get away with in the US. Thank you censorship and ruining of my first amendment! But actually thank you internet for giving me the power to actually spread the design wealth of ads like these. The internet is GREAT for freedom of speech! TAKE THAT HIPPIES!

Thanks Brandon Jaime for the link.

Finally! Someone has taken the sleek, intuitive design of the apple keyboards and made them even better. For anyone learning, who already knows, or wants that constant reminder that SHORTCUTS ARE THE WAY TO BE EFFICIENT (cough cough, sorry, I’m a little adamant about efficiency), here’s your solution. They come in a couple different formats, and just skin right over your current keyboard.

Available for Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro/Express, Pro Tools, After Effects & Logic Pro and on the hardware for MacBook Pro, Macbook (Black and White), Macbook Air, Apple Thin Keyboard, Apple Thin Wireless Keyboard & Apple Classic Keyboard.

Luke’s to do list: 1. Convince boss to splurge the $40 dollars…. 3. Take over the world.

Thanks SwissMiss for the link! Thanks PhotoJoJo for the product!!

Let me guess… the same people making logos like these are the same folks that are designing their logos in papyrus… right. they have to be… no designer worth their weight in that little black stuff you find on the bottom of your mouse would let something like these slip through the cracks!

So. let’s recap in respective order, in the cleanest way possible:
• Little person head-height (no pun intended) to the taller fellow… shouldn’t this the NAMBLA logo??
• Either one person bending another person over, or some seriously messed up conjoined twins.
• C’mon, really? kidSEXchange…. one more time for anyone who might have missed that… kidSEXchange.
• It’s a penis folks… a penis…. for shame!!

Thanks again to Justin over at Big Head Designs for helping to make me a bit better of a designer, and a hundred times better proof checker.