Archive for the 'Design' Category

Graffiti Artist Dan Thomson Paints Broad Ripple

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

The latest graffiti work by an Indianapolis artist and friend of mine, Dan Thomson. The “FAB Fairy Tale” can be seen at the former Missing Link Records store in Broad Ripple, and depicts the colorful, but raw emotion found in every child’s dreams. Well, maybe. I just made that last bit up.
You really should check […]

Download the Indy 500 Color Schemes

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

Grab the last 10 years of Indy 500 color schemes.
Download all 10 Photoshop palletes or use your color picker to grab the hex values for these color schemes. If you’re using Firefox, I recommend the Colorzilla Color Picker Extension.

Ten Years of Indy 500 Logos

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

Yesterday I was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway taking some photos for a client. It was a great Carb day; nice, sunny, a little warm, and strangely exciting.
As a resident of Indy for the last 12 years or so, I have never been able to work up any sort of interest for the race. It […]

Does Good Design Really Matter?

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

Designers note an upward profit trend as a result of good design. After taking out extra clicks between the user and the form, and cleaning up extraneous page clutter, they were able to graph some interesting results.

I find it strange that these kind of hard examples of the profitability of good design aren’t more widespread. […]

A Brief History of the Air Freshener

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Whenever I watch TV I always seem to get hung up on certain goofy commercials. Take air fresheners, for instance. Every time I see an air freshener commercial I see more “Features” packed into it - akin to software bloat.
These days it goes way beyond nice-smelling air, and I guess we can thank marketers and […]

The Inherent Value of Design

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Have you ever had a client balk at an invoice for a bit of design work that they know did not take a long time to produce? What is the actual value of design?
I recently had a conversation with a friend about hourly vs. “by the project” billing, and how we’ve had clients balk at […]

Branding Update

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Spring is a time for freshness. Like a basement carpet without Febreeze or one’s bedroom sans a Glade Plug-in, I felt that it was time to “freshen” my blog’s brand. I felt something nice and simple was in order. So I came up - all on my own- with a cool logo based off the […]

The Freelance Stratosphere

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

In every good-sized city there exists what I call the Freelance Stratosphere. It seems like every day I hear about a new freelancer, sometimes a direct competitor - someone else doing web design in Indianapolis.

Cities “Desperate to Attract” Web Designers and others of the Creative Class

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Via MomAndPopInvestors.com
The Race for the Creative Class
“…Why are some cities thriving and others are dying?”
The idea is that cities are striving to pick up sub 35 creative types who will plant their feet and bring new life to the city. So if you’re a freelance designer, keep you head high, cities want you.

Uber Designer Nerd Movie: Helvetica

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

I find this a little interesting. I will admit to nothing more.
“Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. […]