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.

If you would like to try taking a high speed photograph, I really recommend giving it a go, you will need an SLR  camera, generally speaking an expensive camera can reach a much faster shutter speed and high speed photography is the game of shutter speed.

Here are some of my favorite high speed photographs:-

If you have taken some high speed photography and have some photos to share please drop a link in the post, I am going to try and take some this weekend.  I am hoping that I get some good quality images.

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?

Here are a few of my favorites which I came across on one of my favorite sites Web Design Ledger.

My first favorite is this one, it is the Anti Breakage Shampoo : Rapunzel.  I like how they have used a well known character to promote shampoo.

Not being a huge fan of heights, I am not sure that I would do very well with this and would have to take the stairs.

I also love the ones that can make you smile,

I have only chosen a few that I really liked, please visit the site to see more advertisements not to be forgotten.

Enjoy design in 2010.

]]> http://www.digitaldesignadvice.com/2010/graphic-design/happy-new-year/feed/ 0 http://www.digitaldesignadvice.com/2009/graphic-design/christmas-at-dda/ http://www.digitaldesignadvice.com/2009/graphic-design/christmas-at-dda/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:45:58 +0000 LucyP http://www.digitaldesignadvice.com/?p=938

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.

So here is a quick look at possible gift ideas:-

USB stick

How about a Lego USB stick, which you can make by following the instructions.

Or how about the teddy USB drive

I like this idea too, the human sleeping bag.  I am not sure it would go down very well with the receiver but the person does look snuggly warm.

These are only quick ideas and I am obviously keeping my secret santa gift top secret until we exchanged them.

Merry Christmas everyone

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:-

CSS Galleries

Are a great place to start and really generate some ideas, you can sort by colour, design styles including dark and different layouts. Usually I see something that catches my eye. I did a quick search today and found this design.

I really like this design its clean, fresh and although has the standard navigation has elements that allow the user to interact with the site in a fun way with the navigation around the tree and the featured projects.

Graffiti

I love sites that show graffiti art always suprise me as it proves that you can be creative in even the most unusual places.  Graffiti art is not always appreciated by everyone but I think that you should take a look and judge for yourself.

Design Blogs

Design blogs are a great way to get ideas and create something that you like, taking ideas and design tips are not only a great way to improve your designs but you also come across ideas that you can run with and create something more inline with your design and how you want it to work.  I recently came across a great light effect that I have used on one of my designs which looks great.

There is plenty of places to take inspiration from, where do you get yours?

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.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Typekit it is the “easiest way to use real fonts on the web”. The issue in the past has been that it has not always been legal to use some fonts as they are protected by copyright even some that are available for free. When you are limited with your typeface in a design it can be really frustrating and sometimes make you feel that you have compromised your design which is why Typekit works so well.

Typekit offers the solution, with its web only font linking license, hosting both free and commercial fonts whilst eliminating the problem of how different browsers render the font. Typekit also state that in most cases, the css and fonts will be served up faster than your own web pages.  Which is a huge step forward from what we have had to rely on previously.

We think Typekit is easy and simple to use which makes this a great tool for any designer and with the range of typefaces now available we should see some great designs/fonts appearing on the web.  Watch this space!

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.

One of the earliest campaigns was from Adidas having struggled with promoting the brand after changes in management they needed to pull something big out of the bag and their answer was to give pairs of Adidas trainers away to rappers in New York and if you are a child of the 80s you will remember Run DMC bringing out a single called “My Adidas”.  If you don’t remember the song then see the bottom of the post.

Todays guerrilla marketing has changed from the early days and is now more inventive and sometimes challenging.

Here are some of my favorites:-

The important thing to remember about guerrilla marketing as a technique is it becomes ineffective once it has been used, marketers need to keep ahead and find new ways to grab the attention  otherwise what was a surprise marketing campaign that everyone was talking once will soon something that people have forgotten and are bored with.

Whether you like this marketing technique or not you have to agree that it does make you stop and stair – it works!

Just in case you don’t remember – you’ve got to love the 80s.

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

jhuskisson.com

Heinz

Also with your design it is a good idea to utilise Google’s Enhanced Url, this enables the user to type in what they believe the page to be called to see if they can find the page.  You can also customise the 404 widget to work with your current design.

I think all in all 404 pages should be creative as someone has visited your site and not found the page they were looking for so to help keep them on your site having a great design and Googles enhanced url will help.

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


Nathan Cafolla aged 16

1st, 2nd and 3rd year

Sarah Peters aged 14

Nora Casey aged 12

Juniors and Infants

Louise Gilmore aged 8

Visit the Doodle 4 Google site to place votes for each age group.

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.

The vibrancy of this design is a good representation of what the brochure is covering.  Creating a buzz through your brochure design not only enhances your design but promotes your company in the right light.

Brochure design doesn’t have to follow the usual format as these designers have done with this design, creating not only a fantastic design but also in a fun way interactive way to really communicate their message.

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.