Daily Brad, the blog

I had a question that was posed of me in a potential client meeting recently that I found quite interesting, and wanted to pose it to my readers. (Sorry I’ve neglected you of late)

The question was - “What websites or blogs do you visit often to keep up on graphic design trends?”

So, how would you answer this question? Could you name a couple off the top of your head? WHO does have their hands on the edge of what’s next? Any ideas?

In a trip to Wal-Mart this evening I noticed something was different as I scanned the shelves for groceries. The product packaging on many long-familiar products was different. I even noticed some shelves with old and new product side-by-side where they had just switched to this new type of packaging. Could this obvious shift in product packaging be a graphic design or product packaging trend? I came home to do some research online, and discovered what is called “shrink sleeves” or “full-body shrink sleeves” and decided to blog about it.

There were more than 20,000 new food and beverage introductions last year and almost as many health and beauty, household, miscellaneous and pet products. With so many new products competing for a spot in the consumer’s shopping cart, marketers are turning to innovative container shapes and high impact graphics to make the sale. As I walked up and down the isles of Wal-Mart, I saw a noticeable difference because of these brightly printed plastic shrink sleeves that wrapped bottles, boxes and containers in a full 360 degrees of marketing real estate.

This reminds me of when everything started to get the tamper-proof plastic around the top of bottles of canned goods or medicines. Those seals are a type of shrink sleeve. “Full body shrink sleeves” wrap the entire bottle in brightly colored graphics with the tamper-proof top built-in for a seamless look-n-feel. Shrink sleeves can also be used to bind two products together either in bulk or attach a sample for a new product to an existing product. Shrink-sleeve labels have long been used in food packaging to lend eye-popping consumer appeal to products (I’ve noticed it before on my chocolate milk chugs I sometimes grab at lunch) but I’ve never noticed as many as I did tonight.

Here’s a sample taken from Packaging Digest:

And here’s a before an after shot taken from another article in Packaging Digest:

Hooray for the product packaging designers! Now a literal billboard of design can cover the entire bottle or box, rather than just a skinny label that wraps around it or a sticker on front and back. And it seems like the color palette is limitless as well.

This got me thinking - how do you design for something that shrinks? I found this interesting graphic on the page for a software that predicts image distortion and pre-distortion based on sleeve shrinkage for a shrink sleeve: (Notice the logo in particular)

I also found a good article that explains what shrink sleeves are.

With an innovate packaging like this, what other applications outside the food realm are there for it? I found one that packaged golf balls using a shrink sleeve. I’ll definitely add this product treatment to my library.

So next time you make a trip to Wal-Mart (”Wally world”) look around for this type of packaging, and see if it attracts you to a particular product more than the one next to it.

Here’s something I’ve been noticing a lot lately, haven’t you? I call it Pixel Wallpaper, while I think most of the web calls it “Pixel Patterns” (or even “Atari Style Wallpaper”). Forget that wallpaper of the past, you know those nasty repeated gifs cut out from a photo or grabbed from a 3D texture makers. These babies are cool. Use a pixel pattern for your blog background or website - here’s where to find some.

Here’s what they look like:

(These are from K10k Pixel Patterns Exhibition, created by Roland Peschetz).

Here’s how to make one:

Don’t have Photoshop? Use this handy dandy program:

Here’s where you can get some free Pixel Patterns (most require “credit”):

And here’s a couple sites I found that “wear it well”:

I recently altered some of the Squidfingers patterns for Therty Brand’s Temp page. A new one loads everytime you refesh the page. I find that the patterns work best when they are monotone as not to attract too much attention to them.

Why not give your “boring” temporary page some extra umph with a pixel pattern?

I’ve notice a significant increase in the “product reflection” treatment of late, have you? I see them popping up on Verizon Wireless when I go to pay my bill online, or Apple when I go to check out their latest iPod. Here’s an example from Apple’s website:

(I take my sample from Apple, noting that their new iWeb has a integrated filter for producing the reflection effect.)

Is this just an annoying trend? Or the latest and greatest in high-end graphic design? And how did every darn surface get so reflective all of a sudden?

Remember when a photo mantage was cool? Wow, what about drop shadows, or photo borders? Did you use some of those in their hay-day? Man, weren’t those were cool? It seems everything from duotones to bevels have had their time to shine and it looks like “product reflections” are finally getting their 15 minutes of fame. Enjoy it, and then reflect.

Oh, and if you’d like to try this effect for yourself, Lesa Snider gives you a quick tutorial in Photoshop on how it’s done: Photo Reflection Effect, by Lesa Snider, The Graphic Reporter (Do it while it’s still cool - I did, just today!)