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Wired’s - The Best Album Art of all Time (Reader’s Choice)

David Bowie Diamond Dogs

This is, of course, a hard argument. So many albums, so much beautiful art, design and illustration. There are a few that stick out that in my mind that shouldn’t be missed; what about Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, or Queen’s “News of the World” ? I can think of hundreds more… Either way, this article, “Best Album Art of All Time, Readers Choice Edition” by Wired’s Scott Thill is definitely worth a look. The related article “The Best Album Art of all Time” is worth a read as well. Enjoy!

Facebook – Regain your Privacy

Lifehacker, one of our favorite web destinations, has posted a comprehensive article on regaining your original privacy settings on Facebook. If you’re at all concerned about much of the privacy issues that have surfaced via the press as of late, I’d encourage you to take a look at Whitson Gordon’s article “How to Return Facebook’s Privacy Settings to What You Signed Up For”.

Pixelube Works with Seattle Company thePlatform to Modernize the Existing Logo and Brand Design

With website design coming in an easy second, logo design is my favorite. For as many logos as I’ve created, regardless of the many years and experience, I always find myself chalk full of anxiety at the outset of a brand project. There was no exception when the folks at thePlaform approached Pixelube to update the company logo. For me, it may in fact be a bit more intimidating to modify a logo rather then starting from scratch. Why you say? There are a variety of reasons, namely:

1. thePlatform brand has equity in the market-place therefore we need to try and maintain some of the key brand traits.

2. There are a limited number of design assets to work with in the original logo so we have to use what’s already been created as a baseline

3. We needed to create a mark that was flexible enough so that it could work with some of the exiting family of graphics

thePlatform Logos From old to New

Initially, my gut told me to create something flat, in fact, I found myself pushing back on the client when the main request was to make it 3 dimensional. It, of course, is part of our job to listen to the client so for the first couple reviews, we mixed flat options in with logo treatments that were a bit more 3 dimensional. I quickly came to realize that the client wasn’t going to budge. The flat versions just were not going to work.

Of the many, many roughs that didn’t actually make the cut, we ended up presenting about 25 logos before we actually honed in on something that the client was happy with. From there we tweaked, re-worked and modified the various fonts, shapes and color to come up with the final brand.

thePlatform Print Collateral

I’ve found that we always get the best results when we’re really able to collaborate with the client. Sure there are times when one feels like x,y or z may not be the best choice a client could make but more often then not, if you listen and use your creative energy to satisfy both the client and yourself, you’re probably going to come up with a great mark that everyone can be proud of.

Microsoft OEM Brand & Logo Design—It’s Great Working with our Redmond Neighbors

Microsoft OEM Logos

Wow, get this, after 28 various marks we then honed in on the final. From there we created 192 variations of the same logo. This, of course, included localization, 1 color and print/rgb versions. Once the logo was complete we had the pleasure of working on additional collateral which helped to define the look and feel of the new brand, namely the style guide, website mastheads, a power point template and business cards, to name a few.

 

The iPad, the Kindle and the Nook, Will They Influence a Paradigm Shift in our Approach to Design?

What’s up with these new gizmos - so much buzz and hype! It may actually be for good reason. I don’t yet own one of these devices but, believe or not, I had the privilege of designing one of the first apps to launch with the iPad. We pretty much had to design blind as the yet-to-be-launched device was under lock and key… I quickly came to realize that I had to approach design in a significantly different way. They say that the approach is similar to designing for the iPhone but even that’s a reach. The iPad is 4 times larger therefore there is much more room for content, navigation, ads, etc. not to mention various new gestures have been added to the mix.

Sure, we can make pretty pictures all day - that’s easy, but what about usability and way finding? How do we create new and intuitive visual queues that help guide the user down a particular path?

Writer Steven Levy of Wired Magazine paints a picture in broad strokes but I found his article inspiring. It may be a bit apple-centric but it’s worth a look!

Pixelube Logo Design Gets Published Again – Kudos!

Intoxica logoWe’ve just been informed that one of our latest logos (Intoxica) has been selected for LogoLounge’s, soon to be published book LogoLounge Volume 6.

Not to toot our horns but this years lot was made up of an incredibly competitive judging session with over 34,000 logos entered for consideration. We’ve also been informed that your our work has been chosen for inclusion in the new book by an international panel of judges. This year’s panel included, Bart Crosby of Crosby Associates, Hans Hulsbosch of Hulsbosch, Jeannie Servaas of Saffron Brand Consultants Inc., Jessica Hische of Jessica Hische, Marius Ursache of Grapefruit, Sherwin Schwartzrock of Schwartzrock Graphic Arts, Silvio Giorgi of Latinbrand, and Tessa Westermeyer of Landor.

We love to design logos!

Does Your Website Look Good on an iPad?

Thanks to the folks over at iPad Peek you can get a quick preview of how your site renders in the iPad both landscape and portrait modes.

The web preview has a few limitations. There, of course, is no touch scrolling, ads turn into pop-ups and flash will still render in the emulator. The real-deal doesn’t support flash. Either way it’s a convenient way to quickly get an idea of how your website will look in the iPad. Take a peek: ipadpeek.com

iPad Application Design – Pixelube’s First!

BigOven iconA couple years ago we had the pleasure of meeting and working with the folks over at BigOven. We collaborated to create the new brand and web site for BigOven.com. Since then the site has grown by leaps and bounds. They’ve launched a variety of new features, released an iPhone app and over the weekend BigOven debuted its new iPad application.

I have yet to purchase an iPad but it has been a true pleasure to work on the UI design for BigOven’s application. Due to a dedicated team made up of a handful of super-smart folks, we were lucky enough to be one of the featured apps in the iPad store upon this weekend’s debut.

The BigOven iPad application has a variety of great features. The app taps into BigOven’s database of over 170,000 plus recipes contributed by a gamut of users ranging from the novice to the professional chef. Users are empowered to:

  • Look up any recipe or post your own, free, to BigOven.com
  • Create grocery lists from recipes
  • Sync grocery lists via the web, iPhone and or Android
  • Post and organize your own recipes via BigOven.com
  • Post and read user-generated recipe reviews
  • View and post photos and much more…

ipad-anim

We try not to toot our horns much over here but felt compelled to quote our big BigOven client:

“Vince, I’m such a fan of the clean, crisp look you’ve created, from the logo itself to the colors, and the brand signature that you created just rules the roost. The graphic design of this app makes it really something special. ~Steve Murch”


You can take a quick peek of the application here.

All of the hype wrapped around the new iPad has been interesting, to say the least. Especially interesting are the variety of press and reviews wrapped around our application. They started to trickle in last Monday. If you’re interested, you can see a few of them here:

Oh, and of course, if you’re interested in purchasing the BigOven app, you can do so here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/170-000-recipes-grocery-list/id364151212?mt=8

UIEvolution Website Design—Clean Corporate website with WordPress Integration

UIEvoluiton Website

Based in Kirkland, Washington, UIEvolution is specializes in creating mobile applications and solutions across multiple devices and platforms. They’ve created a variety of applications for clients such as ESPN, Disney and Microsoft Bing, to name a few.

We worked closely with the team to design simple website that would bring their work into the foreground, leverage various social media tools such as WordPress and Twitter and, last but not least generate leads.

It was a great website design project and it has been a pleasure collaborating with the UIEvolution team to create a web site that will make their brand shine! Take a look here…

Senior Designer: Tim Moser

Creative Director: Vincent Dean

16 iPad Design and User Interface Resources

ipad_blog_01
A few weeks ago a client of mine shot me email indicating that he might be interested in creating an iPad application. By the end of that week my client was oozing so much enthusiasm for creating something that I was only happy to oblige. He already had a huge web site with a substantial amount of users and he was working on the 3rd iteration of a related iPhone app so it only seemed natural that we dive right into something for the iPad.

Where to start? Everyone’s completely green. I’m fairly certain the only real experts at iPad design and development would be the folks out at Apple and even they are waiting on folks like us to help interpret and define what the iPad is fully capable of.

Once I got the official “green light” from my client. I kicked of the project by mining for as much information as I could find. As a result I’ve compiled a list of iPad resources that I hope will be of use. Read the rest of this entry…

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Pixelube is a design studio based in Seattle Washington. We specialize in logo, identity, web and print design—design that sparks interest, builds equity and generates revenue.

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