I know personal projects are important – they stretch you creatively, they allow you that all important design freedom and they can push you in new creative directions. As a passionate graphic designer you find inspiration everywhere! However, it is hard to set aside the time a personal project needs and then there’s the dilemma of which one from the list you need to choose! (more…)
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Graphic Design, Personal Projects
If you are a regular visitor to the Eightyone Design Blog, I am sure you are aware that both Steve and I are particularly passionate about retro and vintage artwork. Team this up with our love for VW campervans (we have blogged about our own and have another blog dedicated to them as well!) and you get some of our favourite adverts ever created! These retro VW adverts are clean, simple and each one sends a clear message to their audience. The sense of continuity is spot on and their word play and copy really does set the standard (if you can put up with the sexism!).
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Posted in Branding, Design Inspiration
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
Our regular readers will know that we really enjoy vintage and retro design. From old record sleeves to cars, we love the look of something that appears to have travelled in time from the past. We recently got looking at vintage and retro architecture, particular from the 1970’s. There is something so memorable about 70’s inspired architecture, the hard edges and cold concrete mixed with chocolate and cream colours. No wonder so many modern buildings are starting to take inspiration from this era. (more…)
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Posted in Design Inspiration
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
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
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
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
There is one thing that is guaranteed to make me smile and that’s hearing a thud as my favourite design magazine Computer Arts hits the door mat. Every month I am amazed at the beautiful cover art that stares back at me from the floor. I neatly file away all my magazines after a thorough read as they are always a constant source of inspiration.
I was flicking through them the other day and once again I was taken back by the fantastically designed covers. So I thought I’d post my top 10, here we go in no particular order: (more…)
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Posted in Design Inspiration, Design Resources
