Blastyle

20+ typography and logo designers & typography experiments

Today I present a list of selected logo designers / typographers. Scroll down if you’re more interested in typographical experiments.

1. A-Side Studio – (portfolio)





2. ThinkSimpleActSimple.com – (portfolio)





3. Paul Sych – (portfolio)






4. Multiadaptor – (portfolio)





5. Southsouthwest – (portfolio)





6. Toko.nu – (portfolio)






7. UNIT (weareunit.com) – (portfolio)






8. Suzy Tuxen (Afriendofmine.com) – (portfolio)






9. Robin Snasen Rengard – (portfolio)





10. Krzysztof Domaradzki – (portfolio)





11. Zip Design – (portfolio)






12. Frank Muller – (portfolio)






13. Devante Chang – (portfolio)





14. Matts Ottdal – (portfolio)





15. Alex Trochut – (portfolio)

EXPERIMENTS:

1. Sicksystems- Russian design studio – (portfolio)






2. Oh Yeah Studio – (portfolio)





3. Craig Ward (wordsarepictures.com) – (portfolio)





4. Pete Harrison (Aeiko.net) – (portfolio)





5. Lisa Rienermann – (portfolio)





6. Please let me design – (portfolio)




Making of:

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font, identity, logo, typo, typography

45 Illustrators / Designers You Should See For Inspiration

1. Michal Sycz – (portfolio)





2. Loic Sattler – (portfolio)





3. Alex Varanese – (portfolio)





4. Pawel Nolbert – (portfolio)





5. Neil Duerden – (portfolio)





6. Alexis Marcou – (portfolio)





7. Matthew Lyons – (portfolio)





8. Justin M. Maller – (portfolio)





9. Rodrigo Bellao – (portfolio)





10. Karol Lasia – (portfolio)





11. Maciej Mizer – (portfolio)





12. Andrio Abero – (portfolio)





13. David Carvahlo – (portfolio)





14. Krzysztof Domaradzki (Studio K) – (portfolio)





15. Radim Malinic – (portfolio)





16. Scott Hansen – (portfolio)





17. Peter Jaworowski – (portfolio)





18. Nazario Graziano – (portfolio)





19. Guilherme Marconi – (portfolio)





20. Rubens Scarelli – (portfolio)





21. Grzegorz Domaradzki – (portfolio)





22. Ginger Monkey (Tom Lane) – (portfolio)





23. A-Side Studio – (portfolio)





24. Julien Morel – (portfolio)





25. Sebastian Onufszak – (portfolio)





26. Nick Deakin – (portfolio)





27. Alice Stevenson – (portfolio)





28. Matthew The Horse – (portfolio)





29. Nigel Evan Dennis – (portfolio)





30. Juliana Pedemonte – (portfolio)





31. Devante Chang – (portfolio)





32. Alberto Cerriteno – (portfolio)





33. Indeepop – (portfolio)





34. Irena Zablotska – (portfolio)





35. Teis Albers





36. Jan Feliks Kallwejt – (portfolio)





37. Kacper Spala – (portfolio)





38. Alberto Seveso – (portfolio)





39. Nik Ainley – (portfolio)





40. Jimmy Turrell – (portfolio)





41. Emmanuel Prissette – (portfolio)





42. Pablo Jose Lobo Monteiro – (portfolio)





43. Andreas Banderas – (portfolio)





44. Edvard Scott – (portfolio)





45. Maciek Blazniak – (portfolio)

iPod/iPhone’s usability and interaction- 20+ pros and cons

I would like to share a few thoughts about the touch devices from Apple (that is iPod touch and iPhone). I know that most probably all of you guys already have had two or three generations of these toys. I am also aware that there were quadrizillions of similar articles and posts around the web. I will add another one then ;) I’m going to concentrate mostly on usabilty / interaction of the device.

Ok, let’s start then.

Advantages:

1. Interaction with music is easy and pleasant, compared to some other music devices which I had used in the past- other iPods, Nokia 5800 Express Music (even though the word “music” is in its name using a music player was unusable and just very incomfortable) etc. Users are able to quickly change the view modes (artist, albums, songs, playlists) and it’s very easy to suddenly decide e.g. “I like this song, let’s see what other tracks are in this album”.
2. Genius which comes together with iTunes store which generates automatic playlists of similar tracks to the one that you specify. Works pretty well if you have a lot of music on your iPod/iPhone. I must admit that Genius is ingenious! Ok, it’s not always perfect- sometimes it gives me some unexpected surprises which make frown. But still i like it a lot.
3. Touch screen works very well for me- it’s precise and you don’t have to press at all, just touch gently and that’s it
4. Sleek, smooth feeling of a physical device. I got the feeling of interacting with professional and ellegant device
5. Web browsing with multi touch is convenient. Very positive surprise as i must admit that I was quite skeptical about it at first



6. The way you can type in special characters is brilliant. press a letter button for 2 seconds and the appropriate special letters pop up.



7. “Search” function is great- you can access it either by pressing the square button (while on the main “desktop”) or by scrolling the screen to the left side. Auto-suggest makes it possible to find the track/application just within a few seconds.



8. Method of organising the icons in the menu is smart indeed. The whole menu can be organized quickly and on the spot



9. Users need to give their bank account details if they want to use the Apple Store. I was skeptical a little at the beginning (“is it safe?”), but now I see why it’s such a brilliant solution both for the users and Apple. Having to type in the credit card number, code etc everytime you want to buy a single track or a 2$ application would be a big burden and I guess it would happen quite often that I would just resign from it and say “yeah well… whatever, too much fuss”
10. The amount of applications available for download is really big. User is able to customize his/her device and try to fully utilize the abilities that it gives to him/her
11. Buying music and/or applications is really easy and convenient. With just a few clicks you can find and download the music that you want- this is much easier compared to other music shops that you can find on the desktop / mobile web

Disadvantages / doubts:

1. Keyboard might be hard to get used to at the beginning. Especially for people with big fingers…



2. Lack of pen/pointing device- this could be a good alternative, especially if working with applications where precise input is necessary
3. Silver, shiny back of the device likes fingerprints. A LOT…
4. No multitasking. I’ve just found out that users of iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd generation would be able to have multitasking after upgrading OS to the new 4.0 version (read about it here)
5. It’s impossible to delete the built-in Apple applications. Good that at least you can put all the ones that you don’t really like/use at the last, separate screen. But I guess it would be nicer to have a possibility of deleting stuff that won’t be used by you at all.
6. Memory is not expandable- the thing you bought at the beginning (8GB, 16GB, 32GB or 64GB depending on the iPod/iPhone model) cannot be upgraded.
7. Non-removable battery is worrying me. What if the battery just dies out (nothing is perfect, right?)?
8. Lack of Flash- even though it seems that Flash is slowly dying it is still quite extensively used on some of the websites. Having no Flash blocks users from using these websites- from usability point of view this is bad indeed.
9. Incosistencies of applications regarding the way it should be viewed. Some of the applications can be viewed both horizontally and vertically but some of the apps do not support it. I found myself trying to switch the view and wait for the app’s response in vain. It’s not a major issue but still annoying a bit
10. It’s not always easy to copy/move files from iPod to computer. While I was trying to copy the screenshots taken for this post I found it really hard to do that- iTunes sucks at it and since there is no possibility of “seeing” the physical files on your device I had to find some 3rd-party application for that. So incovenient!
11. iTunes is an OK tool but I guess people should not be so limited in regards to what they would like to use as their music player/ music library. I am a fan of Foobar and already have a plugin which can copy the music to the iPhone. But I have this kind of feeling that I am pressured to used iTunes and I guess that after being forced to use it many people would actually stick to it. It’s a “walled garden” business model and I understand why Apple does that- to have full control over users’ actions, applications which are downloadable, etc. For the users it means less freedom and choice. In result this means worse user experience in a long run.

To sum it up: many of the innovations implemented by Apple in iPhone / iPod Touch are really benefiting the users and add make listening to music even more pleasant. However, there are some limitations introduced by Apple which have negative impact on the usability- iTunes “dictatorship”, physical limitations (unexpandable memory).

I hope you enjoyed the article. I would be happy to hear your opinions about it- comments, suggestions?

Concept of human-desktop interaction with multitouch input

Yesterday I stumbled upon this interesting project aiming at enhancing interaction with desktop computers. It was developed by Clayton Miller. It is called 10/GUI and the main idea behind it is as follows:

• replace a mouse (a single pointing device) with a multitouch pad which would be placed on the desk.
• the fingers of both hands could lie on the pad in a relaxed position.
• Input would be triggered by pressing harder on the pad
• The multitouch combinations of two, three and four fingers would trigger different actions to the windows
• Windows would be organized in a different way than they are now- instead of windows tiled one on another they would be placed linearly next to each other.

I found it really inspiring and I kept thinking about this concept long after viewing the video. Such innovative solutions have got potential which might be an inspiration for the future projects which can be a commercial success. This project indeed has got some value and I already tried “mimmicking” the multi-finger moves. Here are some of my conclusions (and doubts) after watching the video:

• the learning curve of how to navigate using 10 fingers might be too steep for most of the users. Some of the people already find it a challenge handling efficiently keyboard and mouse at the same time. Accessibility is not the strongest point of this concept.
• Talking about the keyboard: having a keyboard and this big pad on the table at the same time would mean a lot of space needed on the desk. Switching from keyboard to pad and vice versa might also be problematic.
• The multi touch input devide might a good alternative for the professional graphic designers who use graphics tablets. The tablets could have this kind of multi touch capabilities.
• Idea of having windows tiled horizontally is quite limiting in my opinion. But maybe it’s just me and the habit of having loads of windows crammed on my desktop?

Overall, the concept has got its strong sides and it would be interesting to see what the future would bring in regards to the user interaction. Clayton Miller has definitely added to this development his inputs with this project.

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box

“Envision : Step into the sensory box” (project by SUPERBIEN, French interactive agency) is an amazing spectacle for your eyes. It’s just stupid beams of light and simple boxes and such great effect at the end- incredible! To get the most of the experience watch it on full screen.

A few screenshots:

Pleaseletmedesign.com – creative designers

Pleaseletmedesign.com is a design agency based in Belgium consisting of 3 creative individuals: Pierre, Damien and Morgan.

Those three young lads have got big imagination, head full of interesting, creative ideas and skills to develop their ideas into marvelous works.

1. jauneorange compilation #4 (packaging + pencil)

Using the concept of crosswords, mind puzzles, pencil & paper games Pleaseletmedesign created an eye-catching music album packaging. I still keep smiling when I see it- so simple and at the same time so good!

2. iQ Font (Typography & Car)

Are you already tired of all those different strange fonts? Fonts made of ketchup, toothpaste, straws etc. So prepare for the real weird-font-killer: a font made by a car. Yes, you read it correctly – by a CAR :)

Here is how they did it:

Here is the final result:

3. Ou est l’Eldorado (A poster for a documentary)

4. Experimental Tropic Blues Band (album cover)

Illustrations by Alex Varanese

Alex Varanese’s works have got all what this kind of illustrations should have: well-thought color palletes, extensive use of textures, shades and those small details that add the flavour to it. Add to it excellent graphical composition, scent of retro and industrial/urban items which often are the main topics of the works- electric circuits, music cassettes, roads, buildings. Boring, grey and everyday things that you see on the street acquire a new fresh look and make you say “wow”. I am impressed by his talent.

Alex is available for commisioning and freelance projects.

Selected works from collection “Circuit bent type”

Selected works from collection “Urban cartography”

Selected works from collection “Pavement loops”

Matthew Lyons

Matthew Lyons is a 21-year-old student of an illustration and animation course from England. For a such a young lad his style is mature and remarkable. His works have got incredibly well organized structure and composition. Matthew is very careful about the colours and colour pallete reminds of me of retro posters and graphics and is just making my eyes happy.

“The Snide of a Scoundrel Man” – (on ISO blog you can read about the creative process of this illustration)

“Polar Employees”

“Dorothy”

“Cagoule advice”

“Soggy get away”

“Hiding in triangles”

“Viking future”