Daily Brad, the blog

Repeating backgrounds for HTML have been around as nearly as long as I can remember. I first fell in love with the concept years ago while creating some for my desktop. (I had just discovered the wrap-around functionality in Photoshop and thought I was a genius). Most recently - if you call 2006 recent - I blogged about pixel patterns being used as wallpapers, as I played around with them for a couple of my site’s holding pages. (Like Tweet Sweet!)

Today I discovered a great link with a lot more resources than I had mentioned, and wanted to send you there to check it out: 27 Best WebSites to Download Free Seamless Patterns Some are graphic, a few are pixel, but all seem to be pretty high quality. Enjoy!

We’ve long passed the half-way point of 2009 (only 4 months left), and I was curious at how trends predicted for this year in logo design were panning out. After looking at an article on LogoLounge.com talking about 2009 Logo trends, I noticed links back to their previous years trend predictions. So I clicked on 2004 (5 years ago) and looked through the samples.

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I recently noticed that traffic to my blog article entitled IKEA is Coming to Utah and My Logo’s On It! increased, so I investigated why. I found it was because there was raised interest in IKEA based on this Time article The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Verdana published last Friday.

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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.

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Publication: Smashing Magazine

We Web designers are a fickle lot. We love to experiment with things. We love to observe how people interact with our work. And we love to try out unusual design approaches that might possibly go mainstream and become a classic approach. As a result, new design approaches come up, and as more and more designers notice them and make use of them, new trends emerge.

Over the last months, we’ve analyzed numerous Web designs, observing emerging trends and weighing the merits of numerous design decisions and coding solutions. In this post, we present Web design trends for 2009:

Continue Reading Web Design Trends for 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.

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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.

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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!)