Empty

For those of you who don't know there is a great design magazine around called Empty, I have only looked over the one issue but I'm assuming they are all as good as another. This particular issue, that I am doing my essay on, is full of amazing artworks and the "editorial content" basically is just about the artists, not too much bullshit advertising, at least not in the conventional way anyway.

This piece of design, is a perfect example I think of less is more, on the last page of this magazine there is just this, "Now Go Create, EMPTY". I feel it's the comparison to the rest of the magazine's wealth in flavour of detail and colour to the lack of, that makes you want to fill that space, cleverly emphasizing the point that the text is making while refering you back to the magazine's title.

The position of the text seems to be suggestively leading out of the back cover almost as if for you to fill more space with your creativity. I wish I knew more about fonts so I could crap on some more but all I can say is I like the typograpghy and it's quite obviously complimented by the white background. I like looking at the pictures in this mag, cheers for the lend Ellie.

Pre-emptive

I think everyone remembers seeing this on our excursion, the logo that they had on the wall was a lot better using 3D design with bits of metal stuff coming from the wall instead of the red line work, looked kind of spidery and was the second most interesting thing next to that really enthusiastic guy at the advertiser.

It took me until now when I've been stuck with ideas to blog about, to remember this logo but I like it's use of simplicity. It only uses three colours and the white text is complimented by the background.

It uses clean geometric shapes and line work for the main part of the logo and would appear almost off balance if it weren't for sharp ordered lines of text giving a sense of harmony. You could almost see in this design two halves or parts of a business, one being the creative side the other being the professional side, working together, this is the impression I fell this logo gives.

SOAD

This is a print from my Sytem Of A Down jacket. I freakin love this design, firstly because of it's exaggerated cartoon style, the fact that the band shown is one of my favourites, but mostly for the random factor. This design shows the four band members Serj, Daron, Shavo and John riding an elephant and a bunch of mushrooms some of which are on pogo sticks, thats just crazy.

The colours used are just reds greys and touches of black. The red border does well to emphasize the design especially so by contrast of the surface it's printed on and the more pale shades of grey. The imagery somewhat overlaps the border which is partly deteriorated gives the impression that it's crumbling away and the band is breaking away coming at you.

James Squire

This is a picture I took of a coaster at the James Squire Brewhouse on Sydney's King Street Warf, probably the second best place I have been to drink beer so far next to the Duckstein in Margaret River, freakin magical place.

The design on this coaster is pretty much type based using it to make up the picture. The name, "Golden Ale" representing the head of the beer, the flavour notes express the body of the beer and the word beer illustrates the base of the glass. The traditional James Squire hand written style of type is used for the brands name which gives an authentic feel.

The sections of white in the type and bordering the bottom compliment the dark background and emphasize the other colours. Amber and and orange cleverly illustrate the effect of light shining trough like with an actual glass of Golden Ale, this part of the colour scheme is probably what does it for me.

By this point you're probably thinking " #*@^ how many times is he going to blog about beer", but beer takes up a majority of my time and thought so, yeah. I myself don't particularly love this beer but the design is well cool.

The Red

I got this design from the Threadless Tees newsletter its called "The Red". Threadless Tees is an American based internet store out of Chicago that promotes and sells people's designs and is known worldwide.

This print uses no typography, It depicts a "Little Red Riding Hood" figure with quite violent suggestive elements but still with an innocence about it think, an almost Macabre style.

It's colour scheme is very simple using only red with touches of black and white which do very well to compliment each other. The chalky white bringing out the blood stained background which uses the shirts colour, red, to involve the whole shirt's body with design.

It's dark and bloody so I love it.

Heineken Billboard

Found this Heineken billboard while looking for another one I saw in Sydney that said "not something you can blog about", which I thought would be ironic but I couldn't find it so I settled for this one.

I like how this design seems to be being sucked in by the resident of one of the rooms like he or she realy loves Heineken. Apart from that, the advertisement is pretty basic using a monochromatic colour scheme like pretty much all Heineken advertisements do. The font is traditional to the product as well, although I'm not sure what that font is called.

I think this is a pretty original and cool way of advertising and thats why I like this design.

MSI Album Cover

This the cover for the Japanese version of the MSI album "IF" full length, found it while cruisin the net as you do and got this particular picture of from the designer's blog.

Being the Japanese album cover it seems to have a Japanese style of design with an extreme twist. It uses bold fluerecent colours that would normaly clash and with the chaotic imagery it's very disordered but somehow all works realy well together.

The only form of typography used is some form of Japenese I assume says "IF" but is just as likely to say some realy dirty word. The writing using darker colour and a 3D rendering as oposed to the rest of the design which looks 2D and bright colours, stands out over the rest like a title should.

I like this design because it's bold and very very different.

LOL

This is the the new fizzy fruit juice LOL, I saw it at my work when we decided to trial it to see how it would sell.

I like how it's bulit upon the basis of the lazy communication we use for online and phone messaging. The design for this product uses familiarity of the online world by using smily faces or emocations and abreviations to stand out. Seeming out of place on a shelf or in the fridge of a shop makes the product prominent and perhaps makes you want to try it bacause it's different.

LOL's design uses bright fluorecent colours contrasted on black and silver backrounds which makes it further pronounced. The typography used is is a pretty basic but modern style that correlates with the condensed naming of the flavours: Bcurrent, Tropkl, Razzbri and Gomango. It also uses the slogan "no bad stuff" which must be true because it sells really well.

Converse Connectivity

This is a Converse advertisement I saw in a shoe store called Platypus while I was in Sydney recently. It caught my eye because I recognized the guy from Greenday in it and I thought "hey that's that guy from Greenday". As it turns out these people are all from different bands but I don' recognize any of them.

The design only uses a black and white colour scheme but is very effective in it's originality, each person being connected to the next by the same shoe which is what I like about it. This works realy well because of the lack of colour, if the legs of the figures were in colour or different shades then the design would look dodgy and "disconnected" failing to make it's point. The message I feel this advertisement gives is Converse is a brand that brings people of all different tastes, cultures and groups of style together.

The design doesn't use any typography because it doesn't need to, another product that has established it's image well enough to be recognized with out the need to say what it is.

Americanization

The design I have chosen, plainly about Americanization , I found in Google images while looking for inspiring pictures on the subject. The design vocalizes it's meaning with the word "Americanization" typed basically across the face of the globe and uses the traditional US colours red white and blue for a major part. The more dull colours of the background give a good contrast emphasizing the major elements.

The logos occupying the lower third show the effect of product placement in many countries. The focus point is the city on top of the world highlighted by the sun representing US society. It uses a reflection of the US flag to show American society's reflection on the world, this and the surrounding images express the dominance of American culture.

This illustration doesn't look that spectacular and I'm not sure if it's meaning is good or bad but what I like about this design is that it shows the power that US culture holds over us.

Happy St Patrick's Day

This St Patrick's Day Guinness Celebrates it's 250th Birthday, in honour of this momentous occasion I have decided to do my blog on this design I found in Google images.

This advertisement depicts this tasty pint of Guinness as having an almost holy aura about it with a spotlight effect and a halo of smoke highlighting the product. Obviously a natural contrast of whites and blacks is very effective, even against the black backdrop you can't miss the fact that it's Guinness.

I think it's a quality use of photographic design it's not over complicated and only says what it needs to because it doesn't have to establish a relationship of recognition since it's already so well known. I like this piece of design because it's effective raising awareness of the event and it's relationship with Guinness and it really caught my eye, most of all I like it because it's about beer.


Happy St Patty's Day and Happy 21st Birthday to my good mate Jarryd Grover.

Firefox

This is clearly the logo for Mozilla Firefox the far superior web browser. I first saw this when I was back in school like four years ago or something, its use of colour is very effective in the absence of any typography. A good two thirds of this logo uses an analogous scheme with the oranges through to yellow, the oranges and blues used are also relatively complimentary of each other.

This design uses fluent and clean shapes, the fox figure surrounds the form of the earth giving an impression of connectivity. Its the contrast of bright and dull colours and the designs overall simplicity that I like about this logo.

The Margaret River Chocolate Company

This is the logo for The Margaret River Chocolate Company, I spied when I was there on the weekend and thought "that looks cool I should do my blog on that". This particular image uses green on a black background which is a good contrast and very effective in catching the eye. Other forms of this logo use brown or white instead of green and all work well but my favourite is the green. The typography generally displayed with the design is pretty basic not doing anything more than displaying the products name.

What I especially like about this design is it's effectiveness in simplicity, it only uses two colours and the line work has adopted a clean yet playful arrangement to display a clear representation of a figure mixing chocolate. The beret that the figure is wearing also announces to me an artistic approach to the way the company goes about making their chocolate suggesting a quality product.

Tooheys Extra Dry

This is the 6pack labeling for Tooheys Extra Dry, this design caught my eye at the bottle shop. The typography of this design is pretty basic, just a 3D effect with a shadow. This design uses complementary colours but if not for the tiny bit of red it would be pretty much monocromatic.

In the backround you can see a series of small pictures of random objects such as shoes, speakers and a person who seems to be partying. To me these portrayals seem to give a feeling of cool and fun times, and use simple, but effective shapes for the most part.

What I like about this design has nothing to do with the central logo but the imagery of backround, its diverse use of line and shape works so well with the different tones and shades of green. I dont realy drink this beer though.

Big Day Out

This is obviously an advertisement design for the 2009 Big Day Out. I found this design on the Big Day Out website but also saw it alot on gear when I was at the event this year. I like how the typography has incorporated objects into it that also flow into the backround and foreground inviting your eyes in a way to explore the rest of the image.

The quality of this design is quite good i think, a great use of the three primary colours setting a bold contrast against the backround and a generally good layout. I also like how it has kept well with the standard of designs that have come out over the past few years for the Big Day Out , realy original and imaginative I feel.

One thing I take away from this depiction is how it shows a rubbish heap, even though I've only been to the the festival once, I think its a good representation of what the actual event was like in part.

MSI Shirt

This is a shirt design for one of my favourite bands "Mindless Self Indulgence", I found it on the bands online store about a year ago and it realy caught my eye. I wear this particular shirt quite a lot because it's one my favourites and I like to advertise the music that I appreciate.

This style of design is cartoony but still has a fair bit of detail which is a kind of style I like. The font has a stencil look and it's colour compliments the colour of the slug while the blue gives a soft backround colour and helps the dominant elements of the design to stand out.

I think it's a simple original design and whole design seems to punch you in the face and say "Look at me", which is what attracted me to it. Plus it looks cool and is one of my main sources of inspiration.