A recent post I made on this blog has caused a few ripples in the Australian design community. To clarify, anything I say on this blog is the view of me alone and not Igloo nor the people that work there.

Boy have I learnt a thing or two. I was unaware that you could set pixel measurements in Illustrator to avoid the anti-aliasing problems that I’ve had when cutting Illustrator based templates. Perhaps this would be a good topic for a future post on this blog. I’ve also learnt that it’s easy to offend people with 18 point swear words in a blog post. To them, this apology is for you: “I’m Sorry!”.

“Angry?” Sam.

We receive at least 2-3 PDF or Online folios a day here at igloo. Good or bad, I try to get back to everyone (apologies if you never heard back!) but given the number of applicants I get, my feedback can often be very limited (I do have to get some work done too!). I often get asked what it takes to get in the door of a design studio like ours so I thought I would put together a list of things that may help you get in the door if that’s what your trying to do.

Maybe this will help explain why you may not be getting interviews or why that studio hasn’t called you back. Maybe it will confuse you more or maybe you think it’s all bollocks – hopefully, in some way it will help.

So here’s 10 things I (and probably a lot of other studio’s) will like about you – and a few things that annoy me along the way. (more…)

When going to a website, do you ever take notice of the banner ads “strategically” placed at the top, bottom or the side of the site? If you do take notice, good on you! If you find them annoying and see them as part of the background, well you should be paying attention to them from now on!

Out there somewhere, account managers are constantly educating, pushing and selling these media buyers to be exited about what banner ads can do for their business. You might not give a care but coming from the clients’ perspective, banner ads DOES increase the brand’s awareness, drive traffic to their site and increase revenue.

Not only that, it also takes a lot of hard work in making a teeny weeny banner ad work – from conceptualising, storyboarding, copywriting, designing, scripting it in flash and oh, testing – to ensure flash size file must not exceed 30K! If you have worked in online advertising before, you would know what I’m talking about!

Check out the best on Banner Blog. 

I’ve cut many many websites. About 200 over the past eight years last time I tried to make a list. I’m asking you, why do you continue to use Illustrator to design websites? I’ve learnt a few things in time, I no longer try and print out 600px x 600px images out on to A3 sheets of paper. It appears though mister web designer that you have not. You continue to give me templates in a program designed for print. Let me give you an example of what this looks like:

See all the wayward pixels? This is just one small section of the design. These aliased pixels extend over everything creating this horrible slightly blurred look to your design. Oh sure, I can clean them up, if you’re prepared to pay me for another 4 hours of work to fix your mistake.

Web “designers”, learn to use a proper tool for your job.

In 1948, my grandparents exchanged their vows a couple of hours north out of Melbourne. Just a couple of short weeks ago, we all trekked forth to revisit this, in celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary. Around the proceedings I got to spend a rare bit of free time checking out what the area had to offer as far as scenery, historical architecture, and antique bookshops… in between having my car egged by hicks, but that’s all part of that warm fuzzy country experience…. (more…)

Unless its a really well orchestrated scam or are SBS are really redesigning what has become an all time classic? (well to me anyway) And f&#k me if it isn’t in helvetica! At least the work experience kid will have a well known brand in their folio. Gordon Ramsay needs to get into wherever this was designed and sort it all out!

CMS (Content Management System) means different things to different people. But in its essence, it simply allows a site administrator (equipped with a login) to update and manage the contents of a site. CMS can be as simple as a basic content editor (e.g. replace an image on the home page) or it can be massively complex.

For our purposes, let’s assume you have already decided that a CMS is required (why you might need a CMS is topic for another discussion). When building a new site, should you use an open source product and make do with its features and limitations, or custom-build it to suit the needs perfectly?

Well, it all depends on a number of factors. (more…)

All of us have heard of 3D graphics, but it’s not really 3D, It’s just an attempt to represent depth.

The next massive breakthrough in TV technology, 3DTV, has been demonstrated by Philips. The technology, which will change the way TV is viewed and will deliver a massive breakthrough for advertisers and movie makers. Already Hollywood is shooting some big productions in 3D. Models could well be in retail stores by late 2010 claim the experts. People have been working on 3D without the glasses for a long time and the recent Philips demo is breathtaking. It’s on a prototype Philips TV, which won’t be available for a while; it would cost $25,000 at the moment, but that’s expected to be vastly lower when it reaches the mass market by 2010. (more…)

Went to the movies on the weekend with friends and saw Step Up 2 in an effort to gain some new smooth moves, ‘tude and bling-ed up fashion tips…

However, took notice of the motion graphics used in the end titles and thought to myself how well designed film titles really stand out compared to those that are simply re-hashing the old pre-packaged effects.

Noticeable title sequences are those that portray aspects of the film’s narrative before even reaching the main edits. They play a vital part in feeding the audience’s curiosity of currently what lies unseen on the rest of the film spool. They can instantly, if done creatively enough, suck the audience into this surreal, completely unguarded and unchartered world known as cinema.

For the record…
My Top 5 Film Titles Treatments:
1. Fight Club
2. Se7en
3. The Kingdom
4. Catch Me If You Can
5. Hostage

Some other examples of film title designs to check out:
Step Up 2 Credits
The Art Of The Title
More Title Sequences

We all know Eva Longoria, the sexy petite actress from hit TV series Desperate Housewives likes her Pepsi. Recently, she’s featured in a microsite for Magnum Icecream called Magnum Manor.

I’m a bit appalled really. (more…)