Amazing Interactive Design Portfolios

Hello everybody. Well we’ve all had a week now to recover from the New Year celebrations and here at DDA we are back into the swing of things with a renewed vigour. As you may have noticed we have the addition of a design resources page which will be updated on a regular basis bringing you the best in free and paid design resources from around the web.

For this weeks posts I’ve found a few unique design portfolios from talented web designers. Both of which are not only beautifully designed in each individuals style, but also highly interactive showcasing not only their artistic and creative skills but also their design usability. With the ever increasing use of widgets, and rising client expectations, designers are going to have to become much more flexible in their approach, not only having to show how it will look but also, and more importantly, how their designs work to fulfill their clients brief.

Firstly we have Miki Mottes a self taught Israli artist who works creating custom animations and illustrations.

Subscribe to Miki Mottes Picture feed on Flickr

Secondly I discovered the hilarious, if not slightly mental, portfolio of Dutch artist Coen Grift. It’s fully interactive and packed with bits of animations, sound effects and puzzles. I spent at least half and hour at home when I found it playing around and fully enjoyed every minute of it.

I hope you enjoy playing around with these sites and take away some inspiration for any redesigns you were planning for your own portfolio. And don’t forget to check out the Resources page for any updates.

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

It’s Christmas! (well nearly)

Well it’s two sleeps till Santa so I thought we’d take a look at some of the festive design work from around the net to get us all in the festive spirit.

This year Cre:Source ran it’s 3rd annual photoshop design contest and as usual had hundreds of entries. With a pretty depressing brief “Apocalyptic Christmas – The cost of living is up, our savings are gone, our jobs are at risk and the economy is in free-fall. Now all we need is a seasonal greeting card to match!” here are some of the winners and the best runners up.

There has also been some really good design work in the Christmas Ad campaigns this year a few of which I have included below.

Finally, if you’ve left it till the last minute to get your loved ones a gift and don’t want to brave the shops, why not do your bit for those less fortunate and have a last minute look at the charity sites. Oxfam as usual has an excellent array of cyber gifts with real world applications, and they have joined forces with one of my favorite quirky artists, Edward Monkton, to help promote their cause.

So from everyone at DDA, we would like to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas and hope that Santa brings you everything you asked for.

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!

Interactive Designs 08

With 2008 nearly over I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the exceptional designs we have seen this year.

The first is a showcase of photographs FlashLife.se, but the designer has created an interactive experience.  Allowing you to alter the way you interact with the photographs and images by easily altering the way in which they are displayed.  As the creator suggests it is like a “digital playground”.   I really like the way the site is designed to not only impress you with the exceptional photographs but also the creative way they are showcased.  With so many portfolio websites out there it is always good to see someone that has broke free of the norm.

One of my favorite sites for this year would have to be BrandBud, the site is fresh, bright and easy to use.  It demonstrates their high level of talent and creativity which is often lost in todays designs.  Not only is the homepage impressive but delving deeper into the site you realise how much work has gone into creating this design masterpiece.  The philosophy garden is probably my favorite page, as although being slightly different in design to the rest of the site it still completes the sites design.  They offer mainly print and corporate design work such as letterhead, business cards.

I think next year we will see more interactive flash design work like this, creating a more interactive feel and a great user experience.

One last thing, Sophie, Chloe and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas and if you haven’t started your Christmas shopping yet and want ideas on what to buy read Sophie’s post later in the week – she loves her new toy!

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!

Adobe CS4 for Design

With so many designers using Adobe for their designs it is no surprise that the new version, Adobe Creative Suite 4  available in four package bands from Design Premium to Master Collection is being released. Is it worth the upgrade and is it still the preferred favorite?  With these packages you receive Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash and more.

Photoshop is still the preferred choice for me, I like the functionality and the colour correction capabilities this version has to offer making it better than ever before.  The interface has been slightly updated but nothing that really confused me, one of the big changes that I can really appreciate is the new workspace switcher which has a range of preset workspaces which is really handy for selecting window layouts.  A few of the other benefits that I think are a vast improvement include Bridge CS4 which is for asset management which has been significantly improved and is great – I really recommend having a look.  It is useful for me because I enjoy the better functionality you can achieve with altering photos with the powerful colour correction tools from Camera Raw 5.  For me the added benefits from Photoshop alone make this a worthwhile package.

Dreamweaver again is the industry recognised html editor of choice.  With this version they have continued to make working with related files easier and instantly accessible through the related files toolbar.  The new live view command makes layout view a full on browser, even more useful is the feature that allows you to see the code the browser is rendering as you interact with page.  Dreamweaver never ceases to impress me and has continued to make itself accessible for all levels of designers with its simple interface and design.  Dreamweaver has delivered again being miles ahead of its competitor.

Although I use Flash I don’t use it to its full capabilities, having only a little knowledge of ActionScript I can only really comment on the basic interface which only gets better having moved the properties panel to appear vertically this opens up much needed space for the handy timeline panel at the bottom which I always felt was cluttered and lost, they have also tried to encourage simple animation which I think can only benefit new Flash users.

All in all I think CS4 is great and well worth the investment it is not only new and improved, it opens doors for better integrated design for all levels.

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!.

Logo Design

As this week we have covered inspirational and innovative web design from Chloe and graphic design from Sophie I thought we should take a look at logo design.  Logo design is an important area of graphic design that sometimes doesn’t get the care and attention it requires.  Logos should represent a company’s brand and gain immediate recognition.  We are looking forward to designing our own logo for “DDA”.  I think we each may design one and decide whose is best from that – like our own design competition.

An example of a great logo is the Apple logo which is simple in colour and design but recognised worldwide.  Establishing a recognised brand logo is the best way to get your company brand out there.

The Design Cubicle have invited designers to submit their logo design work, the top 40 have been showcased on their site. I would recommend that you take a look for yourself as there is a great range of inspirational ideas and concepts.

I have a few favorites for different reasons,

I like the Tiny Mouse Design as I like what it has achieved you get the impression that the text is big with the mouse illustration being a good contrast, it is clever and works.

I also was impressed by the quality of design of Arron Lock with his logo for Mountain View, with such warm colours and catching design with a clean concept it will work well to promote the Ozark Folk Center.

Sean Farrell also did an interesting take on a restaurant which specialises in drinks.  The simple design works well to promote the not only the name of the bar but also establishes what Exclusive Lounge are about.  This design follows the basic rules of great logo design, its rememberable, simple and represents the brand.

What do you like about logos and which out of their top 40 is your favorite?

I think we should have a best and worst logo design competition, name the best logo design and worst, I have just searched the internet for bad logo design but I think there must be some big brands that have made mistakes with logo design.

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