I love design, especially good design. And Apple has been a part of some great design in the past 30 years, other times not so much, I’m looking at you one button mice, and puck mice. But their logo has always been beautiful (although I am partial to the older multicolored one) But i was surprised just how well designed their logo is. It is a study in the golden rule, nay a graduate study in its use in design. This makes me want to layer the grid on the left onto some of my work to see just how close my eyeballed versions of design match to true perfection.

So as a form of homage to the beautiful bits of design Steve Jobs helped bring into the world, either by his singular vision, or the culture he created I’ll just leave this here.

World-Shaker – The Golden Ratio of Apple.

Tags: apple, graphic design, Steve Jobs

Michael Deal Charts the Beatles. For a band that made a consistent hits. Its a well know fact that i have a serious weakness for Infographics and so call “infoporn” in general. I aspire to see things as these artists do.

The above chart is an example of splicing the authorship of different Beatles with color coded bars. Seeing the authorship and the control over the musical direction over the course of their run visually gives a different sense as to how the band was creatively organized. In this case it’s not just about the band, which i like, but rather the different ways of conceptualizing the information that represents the band.

Eventually this larger infographic collaboration is going to be housed at http://www.chartingthebeatles.com/ so if you’re like me and dig yourself some infographicskeep it on your radar

Tags: beatles, chart the beatles, Design, graphic design, infographics

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

An episode steeped in mystery and brewed with a dash of design love, bananas, and instant coffee

Tags: Archaeology, Caffination, cocept art, Coffee, conceptual design, Design, energy, epson, Geeks, Google, graphic design, Health, industrial design, instant coffee, laws, learning from stupid, Paul Rj Muller, podcast madness, Tea

So now you have  a blog with a great new theme, you even managed to change the header color to something you really like you are at a bit of a loss from there. Some graphic designers out there might try to kill me for writing this article but it has to be done. Not everyone has the budget for a professional graphic designer, not everyone even knows someone who is good with web design. But that doesn’t mean your content should suffer being ignored because of it.

Part 1 the Basics:

Color Choices:

When you start your blog or a redesign you might want to spend a couple of minutes considering what colors you would like to have included in the overall design of your site. Do you have a favorite color? how do you want your site perceived? Better men and women than I have spent years studying color and its affects on the human brain, but that doesn’t mean you need to. Bright active hues can make the site friendly, cool calm hues can make your site invoke a relaxed feel. With the CaffiNation I tried to pick colors that both relaxed, and gave a gentle reminder of coffee / tea with milk in it. Even though I prefer my beverages black the color of cup of coffee with cream in it is a subtle way of connecting to people via the design of the site. A cup of dark, rich black coffee is very hard to differentiate from black and is a bit too bold for how I wanted the site to appear. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: blod design guidelines, blog design, blog design guide, blog design help, Caffination, color pallete, color theory, graphic design