Tag Archive for 'Design'

Lobby Cards

Published on February 7, 2008 in Design. 0 Comments

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This has been posted several times all over the web this week, but I really needed to bring your attention to it here.

When the screenwriter Leonard Schrader passed away in 2006, a friend discovered his astonishing collection of lobby cards—the gorgeous promotional posters that were a common sight in movie theaters from the early 20th century through the 1960s. These unearthed gems illuminate the golden age of film.

Vanity Fair has a pretty good story about the discovery and the cards themselves. There are 8,462 of the lobby cards, and they’ve all been digitized by the finder, David Weisman and are viewable through a slideshow at a site he created just for the cards. They’re fascinating look into designs past and I highly recommend sitting back and letting the slideshow go by. I actually don’t know how long it plays for, but it’s been running for at least five minutes here and I haven’t seen a loop yet.

The Leonard Schrader Collection of Lobby Cards –> [via kottke]

Studica Skills Competition

Published on February 7, 2008 in Design. 0 Comments

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Awarding cash, electronics, software and scholarships, students are given multiple opportunities to win monthly with a grand prize at the end of the competition. Studica Skills is a set of international design contests in 3d animation, character modeling, graphic design, page layout, web design, digital sketching, photography, and dozens more digital media categories.

Created to challenge students both technically and creatively, Studica Skills is designed as an addendum to classroom learning. Awarding cash, electronics, software and scholarships, students are given multiple opportunities to win monthly with a grand prize at the end of the competition.

The competitions can get pretty heated and are a great way to stretch your creative muscles. There are competitions in design categories as well as competitions to test your knowledge of specific software such as Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk 3ds Max, Adobe Illustrator or InDesign.

CD-ED’s Digital Arts Technology Training Institute is working to incorporate the Studica Skills competition into its curriculum to allow students a chance to compare their skill levels and creativity with that of students across North America, as well as with their own local classmates.

It is open to all students, and even if you don’t win you can post your work and have it seen on the largest social networking site on the Internet.

We encourage our best & brightest to submit (that means you!)

* All Competitions are Free to Enter
* Enter as many Competitions as you wish
Studica Skills Competitions at Facebook –>
Studica Skills Competitions online –>

Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules

Published on February 7, 2008 in Design. 0 Comments

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I actually fell entirely in love with this set of rules by Sister Corita Kent, in its original form, in all its naive beauty. I sort of wish I had a large version to print out on my wall. Michal Migurski transcribed it here, but it’s really not the same, so make sure to check out the full scan below.

  1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
  2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.
  3. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
  4. Consider everything an experiment.
  5. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
  6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
  7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
  8. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.
  9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
  10. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” - John Cage.

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

There should be new rules next week.

Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules –>

Fawnt.com

Published on January 24, 2008 in Typography. 0 Comments

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Very pretty place to find top-quality web fonts. Remember, never use decorative fonts for body copy (”copy” being a fancy word for “words” or “text”) - these should be used only to create images with text on them, for headlines, etc.

Fawnt.com –> [via hello.bauldoff]

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Published on January 15, 2008 in Design. 0 Comments

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I don’t often recommend books here, but this one has such an appropriate website I couldn’t help myself. I actually don’t even have this book, but the website makes me wish I did. When you rollover each of the principles where the navigation usually is, instead red notes appear showing actual examples of each principle used on the site itself. Genius, pretty, usable, and totally web-standards friendly.

If you don’t buy the book, at least check out the site!

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design –>

The Designer’s Toolkit: 500 Grids and Style Sheets

Published on December 12, 2007 in Design. 0 Comments

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This looks like a fantastic resource for grids and templates, which can be hard on the brain for the mathematically-challenged creatively-minded like myself.

The book is available at Amazon, but SwissMiss somehow found some pretty good photos of it, so I’ll send you there first.

The Designer’s Toolkit: 500 Grids and Style Sheets –> [via SwissMiss]

Grids & Sketching

Published on October 24, 2007 in Design. 0 Comments

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I know I’ve said it before, but computer design can be much aided by using paper first. Tara at the Graphic Design Blog gives us a great example of exactly how it works to speed up the process. Sometimes, it’s just easier to grab a sharpie.

Sketches and Grids Speed up the Design Process –>

Layer Tennis

Published on October 1, 2007 in Design. 0 Comments

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I can’t believe I have never seen this before. Extremely entertaining, Layer Tennis is a live battle by designers commentary by a writer on each “volley.” You know what? I can’t really explain it.

From the site: “Two artists (or two small teams of artists) will swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” and then we post that to the site. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action, as it happens.”

Brought to you by the geniuses at Coudal Partners, this is well worth the look. I’d love to catch it live, but reviewing the volleys and commentary afterward was an exhilarating experience when you keep in mind that each designer had only 15 minutes to create their volley. Astounding.

Layer Tennis –>

LiveSurface - product/packaging resource

Published on August 2, 2007 in Design. 0 Comments

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LiveSurface is a resource for ad/packaging/product designers. Each high-quality photo comes with pre-built layer masks, vanishing-point planes, shadows, highlights… all organized layer-by-layer. They are expensive singly but if you did a lot of product design you would do well to buy some of their packages.

LiveSurface Packages–> [via swissmiss]

Beautiful Business Cards

Published on July 18, 2007 in Design. 0 Comments

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It’s not necessary to always have a plain white card, 3.5×2″ with sharp corners. There’s a great Flickr set of some really different, really gorgeous cards. Take a look and get inspired!

Art of the Business Card –>