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Archive for the ‘Graphic’ Category
Posted: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 in Design, Graphic, Web Design
At Brand Labs, we use Photoshop… a lot. We design all of our websites with it. We use it for both web design and print design. Some of our designers have used it since version 2.5! Some of us use it so much that the interface is burned into our LCD monitors.
With Adobe’s CS5 release, they’ve added several new features that are great, but they still have not addressed the shortcomings of this program, which is a standard in the design industry. Adobe discontinued Photoshop’s little brother, ImageReady, when they bought Macromedia and acquired Fireworks. Unfortunately, Fireworks is not a good successor for Photoshop when mocking up websites with a complex layer structure. After about five pages in Fireworks, it gets slow. Really slow. We’re not sure how well it runs on Windows, but it is atrocious on the Mac. Some of our Photoshop documents have hundreds of layers in them. Layer/object masks are also very difficult to use and if you attempt to open a Photoshop file in Fireworks be prepared to make a lot of fixes to the converted file. There are some things that Fireworks does very well…mainly slicing, optimizing and exporting graphics for the web. So did ImageReady.
There are enough articles out there that talk about the new features in Photoshop CS5 and how great they are, so we are going to address what’s missing. Things that we, as designers, would really like to see added to make this program even better. Yes, we’ve submitted feature requests to Adobe. Yes, we’ve posted to their forums. These features keep slipping through every new release and we’d really be happy if Adobe spent less time worrying about how Flash is not on the iPad or iPhone and more time addressing how they can make their customer’s lives easier.
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Every shopping cart has default checkout process graphics (the “cart – checkout – receipt” icons at the top of the page during the checkout process) and there are literally bazillions of free icons available all over the interwebs for those who want to customize the process a little. However, there is a certain type of compulsive design nerd for whom that simply isn’t enough. For those poor souls, every element of every site must be designed from scratch. That compulsive attention to detail is exactly what we look for in a designer and our clients get to reap the benefits.
Take, for instance, the graphic you see above. Created for Flanigan Farms (purveyors of fruit and nuts), it isn’t anything you could ever hope to find on a stock icon site. Its non-literal interpretation of the order process is a lovely bit of storytelling and it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes a custom site so compelling.
While on the one hand, this post is most certainly an endorsement of (and advertisement for) our creative services, it’s also intended to point out that in the competitive eCommerce marketplace, you have to exploit every opportunity you have to reinforce your brand. In the end, when placed head to head with your competition, your brand is your strongest weapon. If people connect with you, they’re likelier to buy from you. Don’t squander any opportunity to distinguish yourself from the other guys.
See more great examples after the jump…
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Posted: Thursday, February 18, 2010 in Graphic
 Photoshop’s 20th birthday was just last week (Feb 10) and for those of us old enough to remember a time when retouching was done with an airbrush (a real one – the kind that connects to an air compressor and is perpetually clogged) it’s an occasion worth celebrating. Yes, children, there was once a time when, if you wanted to make Oprah skinny, you’d have to hide every Twinkie in Chicago. Now, you just open her picture in Photoshop and hit the Kate Moss button (we’re pretty sure they have that in CS4).
So for every rogue nation that ever wanted to misrepresent the success of their weapons program, every Brazilian magazine that needed a carnivorous baby monster for their cover, and every one of us who owes a decent portion of their income to the ubiquitous graphic powerhouse, Happy Birthday Photoshop!
(via Webdesigner Depot)
Posted: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 in Graphic
 Every once in a while, we have a customer who believes (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary) that design isn’t important to their business. We could easily point them to studies, articles… entire books that refute their position, but we prefer to fall back on a simple truth: good design is better than bad design.
We know how that sounds. It sounds dumb. It sounds simplistic. But, it also sounds like it’s true, because it is. Good design draws you in. It makes you want to explore, to learn more. More importantly it inspires confidence. That assertion is the basis for the Dollar Redesign Project by Richard Smith.
Mr. Smith, knowing the impact that design can have on consumers’ perception, has suggested that we could inspire greater confidence in the U.S. dollar by giving it a proper redesign. While the merit of some of the designs that have been submitted to the project is debatable, the theory is sound. Corporations have known this for years, which is why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to remain not only in the public eye, but also to remain relevant and exciting. Mr. Smith suggests that as a nation, we have failed to do this with out currency. Without a dramatic redesign in almost a century, he may be right. In a world that has changed so dramatically in the last decade, does our printed currency tie us to old ways? Does it represent outdated thinking and a system in which the world has lost faith? Possibly. It’s certainly worth considering.
… plus, how totally cool would it be to have a black dollar bill?
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