christian ross

Friend logo – Layfield Design

Loving this logo by Stephen Layfield of Sydney, Australia based Layfield Design. Not a huge fan of the all-Flash site but there are some other good finds there as well if you take the time to look around.

Can any typophiles tell me the font name of the What’s Next project under his Logos section?

A Fashionable Thursday

Admitting publicly – like I am about to do – that I follow several blogs related to fashion ultimately raises my rating on the gay-ness scale one full notch. One notch doesn’t sound like that much until you realize that the scale only goes to seven. I’m not at seven yet but I might have just crossed the half-way point.

For a while now, I’ve been following and star-ing some of the things that catch my eye in my reader and I decided it was finally time to do something with them. I can’t afford any of them so I might as well share them with everyone else in hopes that the gifts will start flowing.

We’ll see how long I can last in up-keeping a regular posting schedule of a theme. My previous attempt fell quite short.

Rules: There are no rules. If I like it, it has a chance of making the cut. Some, but not all will be higher-end dress related and most of anything posted will be looks I could only hope to attain but more than likely couldn’t pull off. Feel free to submit your finds here, they might just make this highly prestigious list. (more…)

Ampersand Faux Cufflinks

Once or twice in the last year I’ve gone searching for a pair of cufflinks. Unfortunately, these weren’t carried in any of the stores I ventured into.

At $50, I’m not inclined to order these right now but I am adding them to my when-I-strike-it-rich list. Or to my buying-something-will-cure-what-ails-you list. Either way, they’re making it on a list.

Can be used on regular sleeved shirts as well as French-cuffed. Only problem I see with them is they do have the potential to be too much if they are oversized. Hard to tell from the images.

http://www.veer.com/products/merchdetail.aspx?image=VPR0005442

Font nerds, without cheating, can you name that font?

Looking for a good burger recipe?

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board is here to help: http://www.cheeseandburger.com/

Great design. Tasty photography. One of the few places where an all Flash-based site is workable.

The design-client conundrum

Interesting thoughts from Jason Zimdars over at 37 Signals today.

Of course it is totally understandable to take the ideas of those that pay our bills as gospel. But we should also be reminded that those same people hired us for our expertise. If they just wanted someone to follow orders, they’d probably have hired someone else.

Rarely do I take the ideas of clients as gospel. And admittedly, there are times when I should be a little more open to an idea or two from a client if it is decent. But there’s got to be a market position where you are no longer just a pixel-pusher for a client and you become a partner in innovation with them. All too often, clients will choose ego over best practice and I can’t help but wonder how much it ultimately affects their bottom line.

My job is to make you look better. Please let me do my job.

Designing a logo

I don’t hide the fact that Adobe Illustrator and I aren’t necessarily friends. I’ve never been one to have the ability to draw much. And for being a related field, I feel like I should be better at logo design, but it just isn’t my forte.

Which is probably why videos like the following capture my attention so much. It’s 6 minutes long so you might just want to jump through some of it as it goes. It really gets interesting to watch once the logo creation gets started. And jump through to Mattson’s site to see the other renditions and final results.

Digital Clock

If this clock is in production by Christmas, you can add it to my list. Minimal, functional, beautiful.

Battery operated, individual pieces, set time by touching each number and auto-adjustment to light to determine white or black numbers. More design like this, please.

(via swiss-miss)

Human-Centered Design Toolkit

I need to find a laser printer somewhere so I can download and print all six parts of this free, open-source toolkit “created to assist those organizations providing services for communities in need.” Created by IDEO and the Gates Foundation among others.

At a glance it looks to be a road-map in how to setup and/or assist organizations who aim to benefit those in less fortunate countries.