Just lately, we have been wondering how we could improve our graphic design studio to make it a more creative workspace. Whether it means adding a huge mural on the wall or simply designing some graphic art, we feel it could do with a bit of a change. After all, an extravagant and funky working space should give you an extra boost of inspiration! This led me to start looking at unusual and creative offices. Here are a few offices and creative spaces that take that concept to the extreme:
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Freelancing, Graphic Design
This blog article is about something that I am sure happens to all designers at some point in their career - You are asked to design something you don’t actually like. Now it’s not that what you are designing is wrong, in fact it’s perfect for the intended market. However, you yourself are not the target market and the brief does not encompass your style. Therefore, you do not like what you are actually creating.
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Posted in Graphic Design, T-shirt / Clothing design
Following the recent re-design of the Eightyone Design website we are now questioning the inclusion of some extras in the site design. First off is the RSS icon. Do wee need to have the RSS icon displayed on our website in order for users to instantly recognise they can subscribe to updates from us? Secondly is the Twitter icon and accompanying feed. Should we include our latest tweets on our blog? Similarly, should we also include a twitter style icon to allow people instant recognition that we are actively using Twitter? (more…)
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Posted in Blogging, Graphic Design
Sorry for the lack of blog posts and Twitter updates lately but we have been hard at work getting our new online graphic design portfolio and blog completed. It has taken us 7 months to develop, build and launch the new Eightyone Design website and we thought we would share with you the process we went through to design the site as well as some alternate designs, thought processes and other discussions along the way! (more…)
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Posted in Graphic Design, News, Web Design
After a conversation with Amanda from Truly Ace Design on our post ‘eightyone design christmas card designs‘ (you can see the full conversation here) I started wondering if graphic designers are ever satisfied? In this blog post I look at the design industry and how it may be the cause of our endless search for satisfaction, how online networking and commenting encourages us to re-think our designs and how our eternal pursuit of perfection could just be a mere personal trait of a graphic designer. (more…)
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Posted in Featured Articles, Freelancing, Graphic Design, Logo Design
In Our Graphic Design Process - Part 1 we outlined the research and development process we go through for all of our design projects. In Part 2 we looked into Our Graphic Design Process for Website Design and in Part 3 we will explain our print design process.
For print work we use a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator. We then bring together our elements in Indesign. Adobe Indesign is an easy tool to work with allowing us to import graphics from Photoshop or Illustrator and wrap copy around them with ease. If properly set up at the start using a baseline grid, master pages and character / paragraph styles, Indesign can make a large brochure or catalogue design project much easier. Using these tools, you are able to make quick document wide changes to explore ideas and tweak designs. (more…)
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Posted in Graphic Design, Print Design
Looking through my iTunes library, there are loads of album covers I missed out in our last post on music CD cover designs, so have decided to include them here. For me a successful CD cover is not just about how gorgeous the design is but how does that cover relate to the music? Does the art sum up the music in a concise and effective way? Here are some covers I feel not only convey the type of music, but generally look pretty cool.
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Graphic Design
In the previous blog post in this series, Lu explained the route she took to becoming a graphic designer. In this follow up blog post, I will tell you how my career in graphic design came about.
Unlike Lu, I was not always destined to work in the graphic design industry. Whilst I enjoyed Art at school, I certainly was not very good at it and could never produce the pieces of work you saw in Lu’s previous blog post. Throughout my primary and secondary education I did not show any interest or skill for graphic design and I was certain that I wanted to leave school at 16 and start some sort of modern apprenticeship. (more…)
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Posted in Freelancing, Graphic Design
I think I always knew I was going to slot into the art and design industry somewhere and am so pleased that I have a job I love. I can’t imagine doing anything else. In this blog post I share the route that led me to become a graphic designer and how I always knew I’d end up there.
Like most children I’d sit quite happily at a table colouring or painting away. My brother and sister got bored after an hour or so and would charge into the garden, but I’d continue until I was told it was tea or bed time. (more…)
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Posted in Freelancing, Graphic Design
I don’t know about you, but once I’ve noticed something I find it hard to stop! I’ve been casually bookmarking awesome website footers since our last post and noticed we had racked up another 20! And since we have had such a good response from the last posts I thought I would share with you another 20 awesome website footer designs: (more…)
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Graphic Design, Web Design
