Design blog encompassing all forms of great design, branding, interiors, photography, visual greatness and cool stuff, from a graphic designer in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.
What are 5 things that have made you happy this week?
- Finally getting my mortgage papers so I can arrange an exchange date for my new place - woohoo!
- My gorgeous new Kurt Geiger boots.
- My cats cuddling up to me as I sleep at night.
- My best mate’s advice.
- Ben & Jerry’s ‘Chunky Monkey’ ice cream.
(*reblog your response)
Never mind just diamonds, jewellery is my best friend. As this birthday coincides with me buying my first solo property I’ve been constantly asked if I want ‘house things’ for my birthday. Umm, no! I want to feel spoiled, so instead of those exciting washer-toaster-microwave options I opted for one of my favourites: a Tiffany necklace. Happy Birthday to me (for tomorrow….I’ll act surprised) ;-)
I’m blown away by the beautiful artwork on show at www.gelaskins.com - with protective skins for iPods, phones (including iPhone), Macs and laptops they showcase a range of striking art from Hokusai and Botticelli, to some amazing modern illustrators like Aaron Kraten and Sorsdahl.
I found these interesting specimens of WWII design via the lovely www.attitudedesign.co.uk who commented:
“Obviously these were difficult years but they called for strong messages to be communicated. The simplicity and cleverness with which many of the below designs have been executed can only be marveled at.”
- and it reminded me of all the wartime artefacts I acquired from my grandmother. Ration books, identity cards and fascinating little articles that she had kept, and I always found them fascinating even before I knew what graphic design was. Now I see them also as a reminder of how succinct a message can be in the most important of times. Excellent stuff.
I’m loving the redesign of the NASA website - very sleek and shiny, but at the same time well ordered and a very clean look to what is essentially an enormous and very complicated organisation. I once read that NASA.gov was the biggest website in the world with over 4.1 million pages…I don’t even know where I’d start to design that! And it must be quite a bit more by now, considering their entire mission archive is available online. Quite daunting for any web designer - they must employ a small army of them.
I love their new icons on the right hand panel, and of course their spectacular photography is right up front where it should be, giving the whole site a very modern and striking look. Great colour scheme, great idea with the ‘tag cloud’ for popular content and the sliding content panels - all in all, it’s proof that a clear and organised website can look cool. I’ll be spending a few hours digging through the site to see what else is new!
I hope they’ll carry this through to all their branding and material - when I visited the Kennedy Space Center in 2005 in complete awe of the whole place, I was very disappointed as a designer when I clapped eyes on their poor print work and souvenirs. Here’s hoping - otherwise next time I visit I’ll be taking my portfolio and demanding a job to sort that mess out!
Not sure if the idea is entirely original (the idea of ‘Design Police’ has been going around in my head every time I see badly kerned text or a shoddy logo design!) but their implementation is brilliant - behold the ‘Visual Enforcement Kit’, an essential tool in the fight against bad design. The ‘Microsoft Word is not a design tool’ sticker is my personal favourite.
Poetry in motion, this innovative clock reveals the passing of time by rolling around your desk and telling time in one long continuous sentence. Designed in reaction to our stressed lives, where we tend to plan our daily activities to the minute, this clock simply tells you “It’s about six o’clock” or “it’s almost seven now”.
While rolling around your table, the slow but constant, almost meditative motion allows you to relax and maybe even forget about time for a few minutes.
