UK Google Doodles 2009

We covered the UK Google Doodle competition last year, it’s always a really interesting and fun idea for Google and it gives loads of kids out there chance to showcase their skills and have their logos featured on the Google Homepage!

This years theme is “My Hero”.  It centers on finding out who children really look up to and  asks them to create a Google Doodle representing one of the heroes from their family, friends, community or even world famous figures.

The final winner will be chosen by Dennis Hwang, the original Google Doodler and the winner even gets a trip for California!

Please take a look at each of the age groups and vote for a finalist, here are my choices! read more

Logo Design Tips

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to DDA, we have an excellent post today with a few friendly tips about logo design. Logo design is, without a doubt, one fo the most important areas of design from a business point of view and if you’re good at it it can be both profitable and fun.

There are certain rules however to developing a good logo, especially if you want to provide value for a business.
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Top 5 Tips for Graphic Designers

Hey Everyone,

How is 2009 going for you all so far, I really can’t believe we are a month in already! Jeez.

I really hope you are all doing OK out there during this crazy “credit crunch” time, today we are going to look at my top five tips for being a successful graphic designer.

These tips are designed to help you to prove both your ability and worth as a designer. If you already have a portfolio it’s worth going over these tips at the side of what you have, if you are yet to develop one then keep them in mind for when you plan the project.

read more

Hypnoteis Graphic Design

Hello everyone and welcome to 2009! Hope you New Years Eve went with a bang, we were all at a friends fancy dress party! The theme was music stars and I dressed up as Cher, gave myself big crimped hair and everything, it was loads of fun and some people had really cool fancy dress outfits, we had a very good Elvis and Amy Winehouse!

Anyway on to today’s post, here is some more excellent graphic design from a great designer based in the Netherlands. His name is Teis and his website is called Hypnoteis.

Here’s a few of my favorite examples of his work.

Bold by Hypnoteis

I liked this one for the colour scheme and the kitty! Seriously though its a very attractive blend, nothing ground breaking but still extremely well done, especially the blend of graphics and photos at the side of such a vivid colour scheme.

Invicta by Hypnoteis

As you have no doubt have guessed from previous examples I have a thing for shiny black work, this is a really pretty example of this. I love the theme of the piece and all the dial detials, colour choices are fantastic.

I will definitely be keeping an eye on this portfolio for future work and hoping to see more like this.

Also thought I would share this with you, an awesome little lamp design from a designer called Jamie Wieck.

Dunno why I love it so much I just do!

Fight the Sofa by Jamie Wieck

Hope you have set a whole bunch of fun new years resolutions to stick to, mine is to try to post a little more on here, I am thinking of starting some tutorials this year!

Good luck in 2009 from DDA xxxx

Fantastic Graphic Design from D.R. Hananto

Hello Everyone,

Got another fantastic example of graphic design work for you today, these come from a MR Danny Ronald Hananto, an excellent designer from Singapore.

He has quite a distinct style which you’ll see in many of his pieces but its extremely detailed and he does some really impressive colour work alongside the stylisation.

Here are a few of my choice picks from his Gallery, you can see more at deviantart.

Sanctuaire by the Design Chamber

Mystica by the Design Chamber

Certainly something special, I even like his business card!

This is definitely one to watch to see how things should be done and gleam some inspiration for work you do in the future. Although amazing I do think the design has limitation (in an application sense) but this doesn’t stop it being beautiful.

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As a further note I got myself a new graphics tablet this week, it’s an early Christmas pressie but I couldn’t resist start to sue it right away!

Specifically it’s a Wacom Intuos3 and is an excellent piece of tech, the marketing blurb says it has 1,024 levels of pen and eraser sensitivity and has advanced tilt sensitivity.

Contrast to my old tablet it has some really useful ExpressKey buttons, a great feature that I don’t know how I lived without!

The tablet itself is solid and stable and not too chunky or in the way, it’s attractive and an odd graphite/silver colour. The pen is also really nice, it has a soft texture and is a decent size and weight.

It also comes with a fairly nice optical mouse but its no where near as sharp as my Razer mouse.

Definitely a recommended product.

What pen tablets do you guys recommend and what do you think of our featured designer today? Let us know with a comment!

Inspiration Colour Work from Alexandre Efimov

Hey Everyone,

Time for my latest update in the world of great graphic design.

This weeks entry looks at Alexandre Efimov, a Russian graphic designer who has a sample of work on Behance.

I really like his style, especially the unique use of colour in some of his pieces, a lot of graphic designers would not typically use this many vibrant colours together but we can see Alexandre pulls it off very nicely.

My favourite piece has to be his poster for Renova, its very sleek and attractive and instantly intrigues me about the project.

Here’s a few examples of his work;

isoCologne by Alexandre Efimov

Renova by Alexandre Efimov

What do you think? I looked for Alexandre’s own site but couldn’t find it, if you know where it is let me know, I would love to see it!

Awesome Fantasy Art from Jacek Yerka

Hello again everyone,

Here is some excellent artwork that caught my eye, not strictly graphic design but it could give you some excellent inspiration.

Loads of clients request fantasy themed advertisements and such these days so taking a leaf out of this guys book could really get you noticed.

by Jacek Yerka

by Jacek Yerka

It’s by an artist called Jacek Yerka and you can buy prints if you like them enough

You can find his website gallery here if you want to see some more examples. His site could do with a little work though, maybe we could do it for him.

We are still organising our logo competiiton but if you have any ideas drop us an email or comment and we’ll take them on board!.

Graphic Design at DDA

Hey Everyone!

My name is Sophie and I have been recruited by Chole to help post on DDA.

I work as a graphic designer for a fairly big company based in Nottinghamshire. We have around 45 employees (including me!) and we work on advertising, web design and print design.

I am going to be going out and finding you the best examples of graphic design on the web along with recommened links tools for you to try out, if you have a site or an exmaple of your work you would like featured please email us, check out the contact page for more!

I got a starting example of what we like to see here!

This Polish designer really is something, his portfolio contains a whole host of stunning graphic and web design examples and I am sure we will soon see him working on bigger projects for higher status companies.

Stunning Jan Stanko Graphic Design

Jan Stanko Graphic Design