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…)
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Freelancing, News, Web Design
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…)
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Posted in News, Portfolio, Web Design
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.
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.
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…)
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!
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Web Design
After reading David Aireys blog post ‘Why are designers never 100% satisfied?’ we got thinking about our own online presence and whether it was still saying and doing what we wanted it to. The current version of the Eightyone Design website is now about 18 months old and I wonder whether it is time for a rethink.
The branding and visual style of the site is still in keeping with our offline branding (stationary, business cards, etc) so we are not thinking about re-branding, but a lot has changed over the last 18 months so when it is time for a website re-design?
When we designed and built the flash based Eightyone Design website, its purpose was to be a very simple, basic site that would showcase some of our portfolio. We wanted to keep it simple so opted to have four sections to the site:
We chose to build the above sections into a small and simple flash based website so we were able to animate and add some depth to the simple content. The only exception was the news page which used php to pull an RSS feed onto a html page in order for google to better rank the content. (more…)
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Posted in Branding, Featured Articles, Web Design
Back in February we were approached by Wakeham, a new company in the asbestos industry who offers training and consultancy. The company required a full set of branding as well as brochure and website.
As with every design project, we start at the beginning - the logo. They felt that their industry was particularly male dominated and wanted a logo which was strong and bold yet quite simple. After an initial discussion we concluded that the logo could center around these themes:
Other than requiring a strong, bold logo, Wakeham didn’t have any other specific requirements in mind. The logo was to be used online as well as brochures, stationary, invoices etc, therefore it had to work on all types of media. (more…)
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Posted in Branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design, News, Portfolio, Web Design
It’s no secret that the online community is growing. Searching for suppliers and services through Google is becoming a common occurrence, the days of picking up the nearest 4 inch thick directory are nearly to an end.
We are now reaching the point where companies not only require online presence, everyone needs to ensure that their website is a true representation of their business (or at least how you would like your business to be seen).
The first hurdle is getting your site viewed in the first place. This can be tricky and it often seem like getting your number picked out of a giant tombola would be easier than your site out of Google. However the rewards can certainly be great if you conquer this particularly difficult obstacle. (more…)
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Posted in Web Design
