High Speed Imagery

I love photography and it is something that I will do in my spare time.  Recently I have been looking at different types of photography and the different finishes you can achieve and I stumbled across high speed photography.  For those of you who are not sure what high speed photography is it is the ability to capture images with remarkably quick speed which most photographers use to catch images that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by the naked eye.  It is amazing what photographers capture and the different perspective you get from seeing a high speed photograph. read more

Happy New Year

Firstly I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year, I think 2010 is going to be a good year for DDA and design in general and to mark the turn of the new year I thought we would look at some designs that we won’t forget.  Creating a design that will stick in people’s mind is more important than ever.  So what designs caught your eye this year? read more

Christmas at DDA

Here at Digital Design Advice we are really excited about Christmas and have added snow to our design.  What do you think?  Fingers crossed for snow on Thursday if the weather people are right ;o).  So instead of the usual design post I thought we would take a look at Christmas gift ideas – we  have just picked our secret santas. read more

Inspiration For Your Design

When you are looking for inspiration it can sometimes be hard to know where to start. Sometimes you have been given a direction and requirements from the client and other times you get a clean slate. I love starting a design from new the clean blank canvas but every so often I go completely blank and struggle to get anything down and out of out mind to give me a tangible place to start. So where do I find my inspiration for design, I use all kinds of ways to generate ideas:- read more

Typekit – Next Big Thing for Font

Sorry we have not been around much lately so much, we relocated offices which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare – people should realise that the internet is a priority. We are all settled now in our new offices and have the internet – which does help. It is a lot nicer than the ones we had before and now that we have some of the major projects out of the way we thought we would return to DDA.

I thought since we came back this week we would take a look at Typekit which has just come out of beta which is great news as it provides designers with a library of fonts which you can easily integrate into your designs and best of all you can currently sign up for free. read more

Guerrilla Marketing

Hi, I love guerrilla marketing I think it is an effective marketing strategy because it is usually unexpected marketing that catches your eye and almost shocks you.

Having been around since the early 1980s it has proven it self to capture and engage peoples attention and be an inventive way to promote your brand. Guerrilla marketing can be used by large organisations or small start up companies. read more

Designing a 404

Hello,

When you start your initial design concept there are areas of the design that you don’t always consider initially, as the site is designed around what concepts the client needs to get across on the homepage.  Most websites follow the same page structure throughout having the nav and content positioned in the same place to maintain a consistent design throughout the site.  There are one or two exceptions to this consistent design where you are able to think outside the box and one of those is a 404 page.

404 or page not found is an error message that is returned when their is not a page to return with that url because of a mistyped url, broken link or moved or deleted content.

Below are some great examples of 404 pages with great designs to help enhance the rest of the users experience.  So rather than be disappointed they couldn’t access the page they were looking for they are impressed by the design and creativity.

Bluedaniel

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Doodle 4 Google

Hello

I have always been a huge fan of encouraging design and just generally being creative from a young age, afterall this is where the future of design lies.

With the finalists of Doodle 4 Google in Ireland picked for each age group from juniors to 6th year students now is the time to vote.   Contestants enter from different schools within Ireland and then the competition (I think moves to English entries)

You can vote for your favorite on Doodle 4 Google online with the voting ending on Monday 16th February 2009.

Here are some that caught my eye:-

Age 5th/6th year

Evan O’Sullivan Glynn, aged 16

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Brochure Design

Hello, I thought for a change I would look at some offline design in the form of brochure design.  It is  important to match your online and offline in quality of design and represent what you are trying to achieve.  I have seen some really good websites before and then been dissappointed when I received their brochure.    Receiving some folded A4 sheets of paper is not good brochure design.

I have found some great brochure designs for you and if you have come across any that you have seen leave me a comment with a link.  I really appreciate interactive and interesting brochure design.

The brochure below is a great use of illustrative photography showcasing Boundless’ core services.  It is also nice to see the designers have integrated into their design a functionality of a pocket folder for any additional information.

read more

Light Graffiti

Hi, I know its been a while since my last post (sorry), after new year I took a few days off and have been really busy catching up and all the latest but I have had time to take a quick look around the internet and came across some inspirational photography.   I like to find designs that inspire me and I have always really appreciated the kind of design that incorporates both photography and design.  I recently came across some light graffiti – for those of you who are not sure what that is it is a mixture of photography enhanced by light graffiti.

Although a fairly simple concept graffiti art really works to enhance and sometime even transform images into so much more – almost bringing them to life.   This design by Eric Castro is a really good example of how simple but effective light graffiti is.

To create light graffiti you need a good camera with faster shutter speed, with the exposure setting around 10-30 seconds.  Knowing your lighting will help with the end effect of light.  I gave it a go once I do think it takes a little practice to understand how the light will work in the photograph but it is great fun.

I have found some other great light graffiti:

I think light graffiti can be used to create good design online.  I have seen WordPress themes based around this design concept recently that really work to enhance the design and bring it to life.

For more information on light graffiti visit Awesome Light Graffiti or search the web.