Eightyone Design Logo

Posts Tagged ‘Graphic Design’

A short lesson in colour

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

A lesson in colour

Working with colour in graphic design can be a minefield. Pantones, RGB and CMYK can all be confusing and it is sometimes a very tricky concept to convey to clients. We usually hit this problem full force during the logo design process. The clients shiny new logo design will come packaged as an eps, pantoned and ready to use.

However, due to backlight computer screens displaying RGB approximations for the pantone the colour can look very different on a monitor. To combat this, we also create a version of the logo for web, with an accompanying RGB reference. We try to explain the basics (outlined below) and emphasise that you will always have problems with colour matching across different mediums.

(more…)

Website design for AIS - The International School, Sydney, Australia

Monday, November 9th, 2009

AIS website image

AIS is an International School based in Sydney, Australia. They provide education to the highest academic standard, and have a practical approach to teaching and learning while catering to both international and local students with its integrated Australian and American curriculum.

AIS were looking for someone to re-design their website and found us through our graphic design blog. Several Skype meetings later they accepted our proposal and had a strong brief to work to. AIS already had a team of programmers in house and required us to design and build template HTML pages that they could use to build, edit and expand the website themselves.

(more…)

Logo design and development for Prioritise

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Prioritise logo design

Prioritise is a small business which was established in July 2007 and is based in Devon.  It provides administrative, marketing and planning support to consultants and businesses throughout the South West. Managing Director Lucy Ash approached Eightyone Design to design and develop a new logo design and brand identity for the marketing and virtual PA company. (more…)

How much information should be contained within your brand guidelines?

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Eightyone Design brand guidelines

A little while ago I was given a project and confidently told “Don’t worry it won’t take you long, we’ve got brand guidelines” With a spring in my step I opened the email and glanced down at the lonely half page of A5 which was their guidelines. Needless to say the brand guidelines left something to be desired and consisted of a logo, the correct pantone colours, and accompanying font. As you can imagine the project took longer than hoped as they didn’t have any consistent form of branding and I wasn’t given sufficient information as to what was required. However, we got there in the end and the client was more than happy with the final piece. (more…)

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

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Favourite part of the design process

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…)

How would you improve your graphic design studio or office?

Monday, June 1st, 2009

How would you improve your graphic design studio or office?

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:

(more…)

How do you design something you don’t like?

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

How do you design something you don't like?

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. 

(more…)

20 Cool RSS and Twitter Icons

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

20 Cool RSS and Twitter Icons

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…)

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…)

Why is a Graphic Designer Never Satisfied?

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

Why is a Graphic Designer Never Satisfied?

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…)