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
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
This is the first in a four part blog series delving into our graphic design process. Our process starts the same regardless of what sort of project we are working on. Then, depending on what the project is, print design, web design or logo design, the process tends to take a different direction for each. This post outlines the important stages before we even hit the computer and describes our research and development process which involves outlining target markets and dealing with objectives and messages. The subsequent parts in this series will be broken down into the following sections:
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Posted in Graphic Design
Happy New Year everyone!
We always try and make new years resolutions here at eightyone design. Last year we blogged about our clients new years resolutions but this year we’ve listed a few of our own graphic design resolutions. Most of them are just bad habits we need to break, but there is no time like the present to start a fresh and wipe the slate clean! (more…)
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Posted in Graphic Design
Tis the season! Yes it’s that special time of year again where vector snowflakes, christmas trees and stockings are in abundance in the design world! There’s no escape from the festive look and by now it feels like they have been around for too long (especially since Christmas seems to start in September)!
We thought we’d share our Christmas card design for this year with you and get your thoughts.
We want our Christmas card to be a reminder of us and therefore be quite strongly branded. We always have our contact details on the reverse and our logo repeated a couple of times.
Last years card was really quite simple as we wanted to really push the logo. We went with a silver snowflaked logo on white with our company green in the centre to add some spark to the card. (more…)
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Posted in Branding, Colour, Graphic Design, Logo Design
