If you are ever feeling uninspired take a walk and take in nature. We are surrounded by an entire world of perfect color palettes.

A glimpse into the design process and approval processes of Saul Bass and Stanley Kubrick for The Shining poster. I can’t imagine Kubrick would have been the easiest guy to work with. If you haven’t seen the BBC Documentary “Boxes”, it is a great insight into the Kubrick’s obsessiveness. Check out the trailer.

A while back I acquired what I consider to be one of the coolest cameras available, a very early Rolleiflex SL66. I’ve only shot a couple rolls through it, and excited to finally own one.

Try following these guidelines and you can get the most out of every social media post, for your business.

Tips to Create an Effective Facebook Post

• Pick a thumbnail image which can easily be understood, especially at a small size.
• Relevant images, links, status updates, or videos which are specifically targeted to your audience profile.
• Great teaser copy. Sum it up quickly and write a great headline.
  See The Huffington Post for some great example headlines.

Tips to Create an Effective Twitter Post

• Make the text short (obviously), but descriptive
• Add hashtags which are appropriate to your tweet
• Use a url shortener
• Don’t use all 140 characters, leave space for retweets and mentions

I recently had the pleasure of working with the team at Deen Construction providing the development of a new logo for the first phase of their new brand update.

While there are many visual approaches available to a designer for a construction firm, the strategy we chose was to develop a logo which would visually define Deen Construction as a leader in the large scale commercial industry.

The idea behind this approach was to create a visual that would align itself with the aesthetic tastes of architects, engineers and commercial development firms. By using strong type, bold color and simple yet smart design, the logo provides reference to the building aesthetic and commercial leadership Deen Construction embodies.

We often hear “rules are meant to be broken”. Sure! Why not? The thing is, to break rules we first need to know what they are before we just start breaking stuff. If we haphazardly threw elements on a page as if we were rolling dice, we would not have order, we would have chaos. Though chaos, incidentally also has its place in design, but that’s an all together different subject. To keep things simple, we’ll stick some basic fundamentals of ad design.

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This collection contains 26 Color and Black & White (RGB/3400 x 2300) high-res royalty free images for use. Photographed and styled to have a classic film feel, these sky images are great to use for your backgrounds or textures.

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Dropped this image from 352kb to 86kb...not bad

I recall a user on Reddit mentioning a small application called ImageAlpha a few weeks back. It was the first I have heard of this software so I thought I would give it a whirl. If it’s new to you too…basically it can dramatically reduce the size of your png files. Hey all of us (at least the web geeks) could use this on our site designs. I was curious how much space I could save so I took a larger version of the image above which was 2285 x 2300 RGB photoshop image and did a little comparison.

Here are my results:

ImageAlpha is a standalone application, so it adds an additional step to your production process. Too bad it’s not available as a Photoshop plug-in that is accessable through the “save for web” window.

Anybody else have experience with this software?

Many took notice of the 5/20/2012 eclipse. There are some really great photos of by amateurs and pros alike floating around the web. In my opinion were the images of the eclipse projected on to walls of houses and buildings.

via Instagram - user: kcvsf8

What we are actually seeing projected onto the walls are dozens or hundreds of images of the sun itself. The the areas in the trees and leaves that allow light to pass through create nature’s very own pinholes. These pinholes focus the light that is passing though the leaves enough for the images of the sun to visible and recognizable.

Though this happens all the time, we are accustom to it and think nothing of the little blobs of light. But when a large object passes infront of the sun we get to see the crescent of the sun as illustrated in these photos.

via Instagram - user: smartboydesigns

projected onto our garage

Successful companies turn to design studios that focus on quality design for the solution to their marketing, strategic graphic design and web design needs and many other companies follow suit in an economic downturn. It’s critical for businesses to maintain the company image they have worked hard to create, especially in a tough economy.

Companies have many options to consider when researching what type of establishment to use for their graphic design needs. Many turn to independent design houses that focus on high-end strategic design.

Resilient companies maintain their industry lead through effective marketing and excellent design.

Personally, I have used my 16 years of experience to develop a strong team of outstanding business associates; we design everything from logos to catalogs to e-commerce websites. Our clients receive exceptional quality design services, resulting in unique and effective products every time.

Throughout its life span, a company invests large amounts of money, time and research to create a solid company identity and its components, including logos, websites, catalogs and all other marketing collateral. An investment in good design creates strong customer confidence and instant company credibility with existing clients, potential clients and competitors. Cutting corners on quality design inhibits customers’ confidence by raising questions about a company’s stability. The price companies’ pay in an attempt to recapture customers’ confidence far outweighs the costs of doing it correctly the first time. Resilient companies maintain their industry lead through effective marketing and excellent design.