Daily Brad, the blog

As you may have noticed, I don’t take my blog too seriously of late. It’s mostly a place where I put my thoughts, things I run across, latest projects and discoveries, etc. This more casual approach will help me to blog more often and get less anxiety about when I put my fingers on the keyboard.

After my blog post the other day on A Tidbit on Graphic Design Trends, I started noticing many of the people I follow on twitter talk about design trends in logos or web design, etc. Whether you agree with these trends, follow them, enhance your portfolio with them or ignore them all together, I just thought I’d share a few things that came to my attention.

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So I did a quick search on Twitter to see what people where talking about with regards to graphic design trends. One of the first links I hit is from Jacob Cass, who I follow on twitter. The article called Logo Design Trends 2009 is about a month old, but sums up what several other sites have been saying about logo trends for 2009.

The most interesting part for me was, which usually is the case on these type of articles, is a bit of a debate that the article prompted in the comments section of the blog post. Starting with a comment from Jeff Fisher of Jeff Fisher Logomotives, someone who I have great respect for, who said:

“When a graphics industry expert proclaims something a current ‘design trend’ it is a ‘breaking news’ message to designers everywhere that the specific ‘trend’ should be avoided from that moment on - rather than followed by a thundering flock of design sheep.”

He called it his “annual design trend comment.”

I’ll let you read the comments on the blog there and participate in the conversation if you’d like, but one of my favorite responses to the debate was from Fred Showker, someone who I haven’t run across online before. He mentions in one of his comments about the “acid tests” that any logo has to go through. Tests such as scalability, black-n-white, screen printing, stitching, etc. He says:

“Too many people rely on process color, and computer effects to “carry” the design — or lack thereof.”

I’ve run into problems in this aspect as well with several of my logos. Though I’ve tried to discover in advance through creative worksheet questioning on “how” my client will use the logo, sometimes they don’t always know. It’s not long until a fancy “online only” logo gets stitched on a hat.

I enjoy looking around and seeing where trends are going and what new innovative ways graphic designers are using to represent their client’s brands. But as graphic designers we’ve got to keep the basics in mind and remember that logos are as practical/functional as they are beautiful.

Join the conversation! –>Logo Design Trends 2009

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!)