Web Design / eightyone design / graphic design blog

What’s your favourite part of the graphic design process?

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

A client recently came to us with an excellent idea for a site and I couldn’t wait to meet with them and get stuck into designing the visual. However when I thought about building the site I could feel a mild headache coming on. This got me thinking, what’s your favourite part of the graphic design process? I realise every project is different and some projects are a pure pleasure from beginning to end whilst others are just painful from the outset. However I still think there must be one part of the process where you think “I’m really looking forward to working on that…” (more…)

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Posted in Freelancing, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design

7 essential Wordpress resources, hacks and plugins

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Essential Wordpress Resouces

As we keep mentioning, we recently redesigned the Eightyone Design website. Over the long and painful 7 months it took us to get the new site up and running, we uncovered a lot of things we didn’t know about Wordpress. Ranging from plugins to hacks, we found there were a great deal of ways you can customise Wordpress to suit your needs. So I thought I would share with you some of the Wordpress resources I found and used for the redesign of our website:

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Comments: 6 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Blogging, Web Design, Wordpress

Eightyone Design launches a brand new website

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Eightyone Design Launches brand new website and blog

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…)

Comments: 7 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Graphic Design, News, Web Design

Our Graphic Design Process - Part 2: Web design

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Our Graphic Design Process - Part 2: Web design

In The Design Process - Part 1 we outlined the initial stages of the Design process. This is the same Research and Development process we go through for every project we work on, regardless of whether the project is for print design, web design, clothing design or logo design.

We ensure we have received a brief from the client, we complete extensive research on the industry, competitors and target markets and ensure we have clear objectives and messages for the piece. We finished this process at the point where we were starting to realise our initial design sketches by hitting the computers. In this follow up blog post we continue with the design process we go through for a website design. (more…)

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Posted in Web Design

Another 20 Inspiring Website Footers Designs!

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Another 20 Inspiring Website Footers Designs!

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…)

Comments: 19 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Design Inspiration, Graphic Design, Web Design

vwcampervanblog.com featured in Web Designer Magazine

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

In this months Web Designer Magazine there is an article showcasing ‘50 trendy and inspiring blog designs’. We are very excited to have one of our own designs featured as part of the collection - vwcampervanblog.com.

This fantastic news comes hot on the heals of our double page feature in Images magazine last month for our clothing and t-shirt design work for WBR World Beach Rugby. (more…)

Comments: 3 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Design Inspiration, Freelancing, News, Web Design

Web Design Case Study - www.growwithit.org

Monday, December 8th, 2008

We love playing with textures and layering here at Eightyone Design, so when Exeter based IT Company Switch Systems called us for a website visual with an underground / above ground feel we jumped with joy at the opportunity to create such an unusual site. In this article we discuss the website design visual and the elements used to create www.growwithit.org.

The campaign that Switch Systems developed was called Grow With IT and they wanted a website to reflect the idea of natural growth. We loved the idea of using soil textures for the content section of the site with the bottom of the header being at eye level so you can see the roots of the grass and plants right up to the elements above ground and the sky. (more…)

Comments: 5 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in News, Portfolio, Web Design

Design and Development of The VW Camper Van Blog Website and Logo Design

Monday, December 1st, 2008

As you are probably well aware over here at eightyone design we have a huge passion for VW campervans. We have written a couple of articles on them (When should a graphic designer stop designing? and VW campervan logo designs) and love to tinker with our own VW T25 Camper Van. We had been thinking of creating a blog solely dedicated to our hobby enabling us to write endless articles about various events we attend, camping, plans for our van as well as featuring other peoples vehicles. We finally launched www.vwcampervanblog.com last month and we are really pleased with the overall look as well as how it has been received by the VW Community. In this article we outline the design process we went through to design the blog and where we drew inspiration from.

Overall Style

We decided upon a vintage / retro theme as the blog would feature all different vans from 1950’s and 1960’s splitties through 1970’s Bay Window Vans and also the more modern VW camper vans.

Logo Design

We started at the beginning - with the logo design. Knowing we were after a retro feel we hit the usual inspiration hot spots such as Flickr. We found some great examples of vintage and retro drinks signs aswell as petrol / oil signs which we really liiked and seemed to suit the subject matter really well. (more…)

Comments: 7 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Blogging, Branding, Design Inspiration, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Personal Projects, Web Design

20 More Inspiring Website Footer Designs

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Following on from our previous blog post ‘10 inspiring website footer designs’ I seemed to see more outstanding footer designs everywhere. I have managed to find another 20 to share with you!

Alyson Stoner

Jrojr Website Footer

(more…)

Comments: 4 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Design Inspiration, Web Design

10 Inspiring Website Footer Designs

Monday, September 1st, 2008

So you are working on your latest online masterpiece and as you’re adding the final touches you lean back and notice the typography is looking smooth and the few simple images you have used are fitting in well. Everything above the waist is near to perfection, however you’ve forgotten one thing …. your footer.

I’ve recently decided that as a designer I neglect that all important base of the site - the footer. When I leave the house I pay as much attention to what I am donning on my feet as well as my shoulders so why when it comes to designing a web site don’t I pay as much attention to the footer?

Here are some jaw dropping and inspiring website footers:

Simple Art

I love how Simple Art uses the footer to portray the office wall including a window. It leaves me with the usual “why can’t I think of something like that?!” (more…)

Comments: 15 Comments so far, click here to add your own »
Posted in Design Inspiration, Web Design