Easy as ABC...

I found this while looking for graphic designers. You open up the page and find a sticky animated gif for the opening graphic that blinks and flashes and goes to the logo. The logo it's self is nice and simple, following the trend of current logos. Scroll down (yes a lot of scrolling on the index page), and you get to the menu. Very simple going along with their ABC, separated by 100% width unstyled tags. Another thing that kind of doesn't seem to work well is the amount of colors used. It seems like every other line is a different color and in a large bold text. If you want to learn about what this company does, you have to click on a small white link titled "info" under one of the horizontal lies.

You click the links to view samples of the artist's work. The main problem with these pages is their consistency. Each page has a different header graphic with the company name on it. None of the pages use the logo that we see on the main page, instead some styleized text that looks like word art from MSWord.

The last thing that irks me about the page is the address. They stay with the members.cox.com address. A lot of times when people are searching for portfolis on line and they see something like this they will just skip over it. It dosn't give a very professional look. Even if you cannot afford a monthly fee for your own web hosting and you use a free service, or are hosted by a friend, look into investing $10 a year on a domain name that you can cloak your old URL with. Domain names can be registerd with many companies, I use www.godaddy.com and pay $10 per year for it.

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My suggestions for designing your web page/ portfolio page is to study other people's pages. Look at your favorite artist or designer's pages and see what they do. If you like something figure out how you can borrow it or incorporate a similar element in with your design and make it your own Don't copy it directly, just borrow an idea and make it yours. A simple Google search will let you find numerous elements for fee that can help make your web page pop and look more professional. http://www.dynamicdrive.com has may elements that you may like to incorporate. Do not go and add a million onto your pages because you like them or want to use it. Think about it first. Does it have a purpose? Is it something that will help users navigate/ view your page? Is it needed?

Also, keep scroling to a minimum. Yes you will have to scroll on a page that lists your resume, or short biography, maybe even your portfolio. Try and keep your index/ splash page very short. Your logo, contact information and navigation links are all you really need on this page.

Keep your sub pages similar looking. Develope a nice header with navigation links and logo that will stay the same and in the same place on each page. If you want you can have a banner that works with it and change the images depending on the page you are on, but keep the logo and navigation in the same location to keep with uniformity.

Article: America's Most Fonted : The 7 Worst Fonts

LMNOP has a fun little article about the 7 worst fonts. Guess which is number 1... Our friend Comic Sans.

Ugly fonts, cutesy fonts, unreadable fonts, bad fonts . . . they have terrorized us for far too long, infiltrating our homes via e-mail, IM, and low-rent ValPak ads. Here, LMNOP presents the seven worst fonts--and the people who use them.

About Curlz MT...

Curlz MT picks up where Comic Sans left off in terms of forced casualness and raises you a big sack of illegibility. Even before this font was so totally overused, it was really only good in small doses. Anyone who uses this font today for e-mail or IM is just totally nuts, because you are basically saying that the actual content and readability of your e-mail is secondary to the real message you want to get across, i.e., "LOOK AT ME! AREN'T I WHIMSICAL? DON'T YOU LOVE HOW EVEN A BORING E-MAIL ABOUT CARPOOLING TO SOCCER PRACTICE CAN BE MADE FUN AND FANCIFUL WHEN YOU PUT CURLY SERIFS ON THE WORDS?" Curlz MT is not a font; it's a cry for help.

Common abusers: Middle-aged ex-cheerleaders trying to hold on to the magic of the good old days; women who have woken up at the age of 40 and realized they never did the fun things they wanted to do
Probable famous user: Britney Spears
See also: Gigi

Make sure you check out LMNOP to read the full article. It is well worth the read!

http://lmnop.blogs.com/lauren/2006/10/americas_most_f.html

Art Store E-Mail Ads

So, like every red-blooded American who likes the arts, I have a number of email subscritions to local art stores. These are helpful because the let you know of any sales going on, and some times them give you a few coupons.

I just this one from A.C.Moore, a popular chain of arts and craft stores.

Click to enlarge.

No offense, but did somebody just learn how to use Photoshop? How can I tell? Now I didn't design this so I dont know of the resoning on the positioning of the elements, but to some people in the field, I'm sure, it looks like it lacks thought, like some one said "Oh, I like this effect, and I'll have to use it -- a lot." and "This will look good smooshed against the side of the page.

It is an awkward size, relatively long. If I were designing this, I would keep it like 640 x 480 pixels, maybe 800 x 600. That way you don't have to scroll down all the way to see the graphic.

And what is with the stretched out pink outline text at the bottom?

What I would have done, if I had the task of creating this, would make the "Share, Dream, Create" kind of a gag line. Maybe keep the pastel colors, and lower the opacity a tad and over lay "Come see what the buzz is all about" in a flat color using auto letter height and width. I would but the "body copy" to one side in an easy to read paragraph style with the graphic of the person holding the sign to the opposite side. Lastly, I would make "Go to the A.C.Moore Forum" stand out a lot more, not like an after thought.




I tried to be constructive this time....

Logo-no-no

Here is a logo for a small and relatively local printing and copying company.

The image doesn't enlarge much more

One of the things this company offers is "Graphic Design" which is headed by a "21 year employee of the company" and offers technical skills in PhotoShop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Well... If this logo, which is supposed to represent the company, does what it is supposed to, we can tell that the designer has mastered the solid brush tool, paint bucket fill tool and render clouds effect.

It looks like they need to brush up on their Illustrator and pen tool a bit. I know it will sound cliche, but maybe splash a CMYK color swatch across the sails or as an underline of the last line of text to bring in some of the feel that they do printing...

One last thing, on their website (I won't link it to protect them) when you click on certain links on the splash, the frame set pages of content show up as "Untitled Document". Not getting a lot of points there either.

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On a side, there is a billboard near my work that I would LOVE to snap a picture of and blog about! Maybe next time I am stuck in traffic next to it I'll snap a shot with my cell.

I think it's time to re-think my header... love the screaming lady, but when I look at the title I think of Cheerios... I think it is the type for "Graphic" and the yellow...

Salute the Graphic Arts!

pjchmiel says it all. Image is (C) eschlabach. Found at eschlabach's Flickr profile.

Click above for full size.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschlabach/380291354/

Poster Woes

I thought that this would be appropriate to post here...

About 1 month ago actor/ comedian Dane Cook posted a Blog on his MySpace page about the poster for his latest movie "My Best Friend's Girl"

...let me address the fact that although I'm not a marketing major, I have a bit of a trusted reputation after 18 years self promoting. I'd like to inform you I had no say in this marketing campaign, but if I did, things would be different since it is obvious that this poster is boring / odd and has zero to do with the movie I performed in.

Here are a few things that truly blow about my upcoming movie poster to promote the release of the film opening on September 19th:

1. Graphics:
Whoever photoshopped our poster must have done so at taser point with
3 minutes to fulfill their hostage takers deranged obligations. They should have called Donnie Hoyle and had him give a tutorial using "You Suck at Photoshop" templates. This is so glossy it makes Entertainment Weekly look wooden.

Read the rest here...

I do have to agree with him about the graphics. They could have chose better pictures to use of the characters. And what is with that space between Dane Cook and Jason Biggs' head... kinda awkward...

"My Best Friend's Girl" comes to theaters September 19th, 2008.

Source

Layout Issues

At work I am currently trying to design a web page layout for a new product we are going to be releasing. So what I did was I got on the web and started looking at the web design of the competition. I like to do this, so I can get a feel of how to form our pages, what to do, what not to do, what to add, what not to add.

So I was browsing and came across this gem. It's a nice simple page for a smaller company that is less mainstream. The layout is okay... for a live journal layout. I would never think of using a layout like this in the commercial market world. It looks very page builder. Kinda like "Oh hai, I just got Geocities page builder and I'm workin' a new web site!"

Some of the things that irk me, besides most of the whole thing include, but are not limited to:

1.) The header/ banner. If you want people to be wowed by your company, you should always save the logo/ header/ banner as a highly compressed jpeg image. And to top it all off, make sure the div you put the image in cuts off half of your logo.

2.) The navigation. This doesn't bother me all too much. The CSS rollovers and drop downs are kind of the in thing at the moment. (remember the static frame to the left for navigation?) I think that this one could have used a little more styling. Maybe have normal text bold on mouse over and change color? And for the drop downs have normal text become underlined?

3.) Body content/ Colors and images. Again, this looks pretty live journal to me. The nice vector logo on the left looks nice, with decent spacing and the text next to it looks fine. Then we travel down more. Now I see why the used different colors for the paragraphs, but could I think it would be a bit better if they alternated header colors and kept the text a nice black or a dark gray.

FedEx Sign

Image (C) Maulleigh

I used to have some respect for FedEx Kinkos, until I saw this picture from Flickr user Maulleigh. Once you get past the use of Comic Sans MS and CAPITOLS, you notice the clip art. Yeah, that dark right angle squeezed in next to that widow. I guess it is supposed to be a post card of sorts, displaying the fact that they do mailings.

Now to be fair it does get the point across so it does get some points for that, but the overall the execution would definitely make me go elsewhere for to get my direct mailings done.