The interesting navigation of the site caught my attention recently. It hosts a vast array visual design inspiration with a typographic focus – check it out!
The site has an Designed by Emil Olsson and built upon Wordpress.
Ben Philp
Designer
- Loves: Fishing, Typography, A 'few' beers
- Hates: Hangovers, PowerPoint, Train Delays
- Inspired by:
- Vince Frost
- David Carson
- Jan Tschichold
- My links:
games, Venn Diagram, Google, Winner, Wave, Cancer Awareness, Trending Topics, Social Media, Fans, Full Moon, GoogleWave, Raffle, Brand, The Sandpit, genius, Tilt-shift, Facebook, Playgroup, GoogleDocs, Bart Bonte, Colour, Aero Film, Docs, Adnams, Email, simple, Waver, Playful09, Sam O'Hare, New York City
Howies is to launch TeePay.com on the May 1st. The concept is simple here is how it works...
- you design what you’d like to print on a tee shirt
- you upload your design/s to the teepay site
- you market it however you want to whoever you want
- they promote Teepay and all the tee shirts online
- if you sell 50 shirts or more, they print them and pay you a royalty for every shirt sold
They also want to know your five favourite charities, so royalty payments can be donated. It sounds like a great concept – get designing!
You can read more here
I recently came across this way finding system designed by Emery Studio in Melbourne for Eureka Tower Car Park.
The international award winning design is an incredibly simple but very effective and playful idea. From different viewpoints, the supersized letterforms can be perceived as either abstract distortions or directional information. By using an anamorphic approach the letters can only be read perfectly when standing at the right position. Very Clever! This relatively cheap transformation has changed a usually cold envirnoment into something very engaging!
Has anyone noticed the arrangements of messages created from plastic cups in Shoreditch? I first noticed these on the way home after work near Old Street station, there’s something interesting in the way they have used the wire fencing as a giant typographic grid. They seem to bring springing up all around the area ranging from the crude to the more elaborate examples as this this one from Basketball railings in Brick Lane.
Is there any connection to Big Active, who created some early examples of ‘cup art’ for Vega4’s Traffic Jam?
From the 1st of August four emerging artists work will be displayed on the labels of 27 million limited edition bottles of Beck’s beer! Their latest initiative labeled Beck’s Canvas runs alongside Beck’s Fusion – a collaborative programme of artists and Music.
Contemporary art and beer aren't two things you'd naturally pair together except for maybe the reason you attend the odd private view, but for the last 20 years, Beck's has supported contemporary British art by collaborating with leading artists to produce labels for limited edition bottles. These have included big names such as Gilbert & George, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, the Chapman brothers, Richard Long, Tracey Emin and Yinka Shonibare all of which have had there work displayed on beck’s beer bottles. Previously they were produced in small batches of several thousand and given away at events etc and becoming highly collectible items. Beck’s canvas however in the first time they have decided to mass produce these limited editions which could result in the largest art commission undertaken for the public.
Beck's have collaborated with the RCA (London's Royal College of Art) for its Beck's Canvas initiative. Graduates and present students were asked to submit work of the subject of ‘individuality’’ for the competition. There work would appear on the labels of Beck’s beer bottles, giving them instant publicity and national exposure of their work. Four of the college's graduates were selected as winners. Riita Ikonen, 27, Tom Price, 26, Charlotte Bracegirdle, 34 and Simon Cunningham will share the £24,000 prize money. More information on the artists can be found on the Beck’s website. It will be interesting to see how each of these artists use this platform of opportunity to catapult themselves to the same levels of fame, wealth and collectibility that their predecessors have.
The association of a disposable piece of packaging being used as a canvas for contemporary art is something that may have bothered the ‘high brow’ establishment concerned of cheapening art’s value twenty years ago. However times are changing and with an evolution of support for emerging artists challenging and inspiring work can now been seen by the broader public and not those just invited to the latest private view. Without the Breweries pioneering and forward thinking examples of innovative collaborations over the last 20 years we may not have had some of the most innovative projects today involving corporate brand giants with popular culture – including examples such as the Unilever series in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
Some would argue that Beck’s are using the associations of poplar culture and the Brand of the RCA solely to build on the companies branding and marketing. However even if this was the case does it matter when they giving such unique opportunities and PR to both the ‘arts’ and the artists? Personally I think Beck’s canvas is a clever piece of marketing and the relationship is one that is more of a ‘mutual exploitation’ – trading their vision for visibility.
With the credit crunch ongoing and the current negative press of increased drink related crime and violence Beck’s are facing an increasingly fierce competitive market. Alcoholic brands face new challenges and Beck’s are obviously trying to increase their market share by marketing the brand to a more discerning consumer that appreciates quality, originality and perfection. Surely Beck’s profile can only rising after this campaign and maybe even perceived as a beer with ‘class’ – that appeals to both sexes. The brand positioning of the Beck’s beer is now quite removed when compared to the ‘ladish’ image portrayed by competitors such as Fosters and Carlsberg.
With the campaign having been launched several days ago you have probably noticed elements of the campaign such as the new TV advert or even seen a bottle down the local. When I’m next stocking up the beer fridge at playgroup I know what I’ll be looking out for!
This new site allows the user to create there own word clouds by simply copy and pasting your chosen text, blog or RSS feed. I have created the one below based on the last 10 blogs from Playgroup. The more frequently the words appear in your chosen source text the bigger they will appear. You can also change the colour, typeface, orientation and even language of your word cloud to your chosen preference!
The next stage word be to create a live version that automatically updates everytime the source text/blog on the site changes – A challenge for someone like Darren! ; )
This new free font building tool allows the user to quickly and easily build their own fonts from geometrical shapes which are arranged in a grid formation. Once finished you can create TrueType fonts that are PC and MAC compatible from your creations!
Check it out @ http://fontstruct.com
I recently found a great new(ish) site Margins and Columns.
The blog is a brochure design inspiration site, which is something you dont see very often on the web. It contains some highly innovative and beautifully designed brochure examples – with few words and just great images.
This is a handy source of inspiration for designers to keep up to date within this area and also an opportunity for clients to see what can be achieved with the right budget.
marginsandcolumns.com
