I recently posted several of my new logos (a couple that you’ve seen on my outdated website) on Logospire. Their rating system and comments make it easy to find out which ones people tend to like the best.
I’d recommend visiting the site if you enjoy logos, or just need inspiration for your next design.
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.
Last week we presented 10 Web Design Trends For 2009, our review of the most promising developments and techniques in web design that may become big in 2009. In the first part we covered embossing letters (”letterpress”), rich user interfaces, PNG transparency, big typography, carousels and media blocks.
This post is the second part of our review. It presents design trends for 2009 in terms of layouts, visual approaches and design elements.
Article Includes:
2009 ushers in something new, something experimental, something outrageous. More will be the new less. Strong visibility and passion are the dictating themes.
Article includes some great examples of:
My dad was a Contractor by trade, and owner of his own business called “McCall Building Company”. Jokingly he asked me one time if I wanted to take over the family business and I can only imagine my face looking back. Though I love architecture and have considered it as an alternative profession, building is hard work. I have much respect for those folks.
My Dad was and is a great builder, a talented craftsman who’s built many beautiful homes and structures. And yet, he’s never built a home for himself.
That’s how I feel about my portfolio site sometimes. I’m always designing for everyone else, sometimes I forget to design for myself. In fact, my current site at bradmccall.com has been there since I initially launched it in March of 1999. Yes folks, that’s 10 years ago next month. I’ve updated the text content as it’s changed as well as adding this blog (still with the default template – blah!), but things are still very much 1999. (Silly little frames and all)
So in celebration of bradmccall.com’s 10 year anniversary, I’m launching it again.
But not quite yet.
I’m working on the templates, creating the designs (and recreating and recreating), and then beginning to gather the portfolio files together. Here’s a 30,000 foot view of my files as they stand right now (sorry it’s not clickable, as showing them might commit me in someway to their aesthetics!):
I’ve got probably a thousand samples of work I’ve done over the past 10 years, but have begun pulling the logos together.
This website has served me well over the last 10 years and has brought me a good amount of projects and new clients. But as with all good things, it’s time to retire it and try something new.
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’ve not been active on my blog of late, but I have been active on twitter. I’m still putting together my personal opinion on twitter and formulating a blog post in my head, but it’s not ready to commit.
I’ve also been working on a total overhaul to my portfolio website. I’ve been neglecting it for much too long. (10 years to be exact!) I’m excited to get some of the work that I’ve done over the past few years out there and hear what you think. I’ve started and stopped the redesign of my portfolio site several times, and this time I’m going to make it happen.
A special thanks to those of you who regularly follow me. If you’re on twitter, I’d love to connect. (@bradmccall)
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 just finished writing a post called I Tweet – January 2009 that included some of my favorite tweets from that month. I found a few I liked from December, so I thought I’d go back and create a post for that day. (The theme from “Back to the Future” starts playing in my head – “Gonna go BACK in time”.)
So I thought it appropriate that I announce my new iPhone by posting a blog from it. So I downloaded the WordPress blog tool, then found out the code on my blog was outdated. After updating that, I came back and typed a post and then for some reason, the post or save buttons wouldn’t appear. So after some practice, and the realization that it’s not the most practical device for typing, here it is. Expect to hear more about my new “toy” in the future, I’ve already come across a couple things of interest.
So you might have noticed that my blog postings were somewhat sparse this year (for the 2 of you who follow it on a regular basis). Beyond not having much time to present my interesting findings, I’ve been busy flipping a house I purchased in January of this year. I blogged about it through most of the process, and now it’s just time to put up all the “after” pictures to enjoy what I came up with.
I’ve got to say I learned a lot in the process about many things that apply directly to being a freelance designer. While working with contractors, sub-contractors and people who I thought were “skilled” tradesmen in their respective fields I learned valuable lessons about being on the “client” side of things. Perhaps I’ll share those in a future post. I also enjoyed being creative in a format beyond my day-to-day job of doing UI design. Picking tile, wood floors, designing window woodwork, picking carpet, tearing down walls, etc. all provided a tactile experience that the design of software lacks. From that standpoint, I’d have to say the experience was an enjoyable one.
I also wanted to mentioned that I joined Facebook recently. I had been interested in some of their use of the latest-and-greatest technologies and wanted to keep track on what changes they make overtime. (Their growth rate has been phenomenal!) I’ve already found many people I know there, and have enjoyed exchanging messages through their internal email, or their “wall” functionality.