New website for creatives and marketeers

I'm freelancing at TMW, working on the new Lloyds TSB brand and direct mail campaign. On the way in this morning, just outside the TMW offices, on the King's Road, I was handed a quirky flyer for this website. Good marketing for another useful forum-based site for the creative and marketing industry.

By the way, TMW has an excellently styled Flash website - check it out!

3 Limited Edition Oyster Wallets - they're free!

For all you Londoners out there: personalise your commute with one of these beautifully designer Oyster wallets.

They're free, just click on this link, click on the name of the artist whose work you would like and fill in the form. Platform for Art will then send out the wallet to your address.

Logo Design History + 2007 Logo Design Trends

Thanks to Bex for this fabulous link detailing the stories behind many big name logo designs, from A to Z, including all the icons. This site also has vector EPS's of almost every logo mentioned.

Within the same site, this useful article predicts 11 logo trends for 2007

Which is the capital city of the world? London or New York?

"A weekend in London is like a world’s greatest hits of city living" ...so says an extract from this intriguing article today in The Times.

The feature puts forward London as being the new capital of the world.

"New York has the nostalgia, London the future. New York defines the metropolitan, London the cosmopolitan."

I couldn't have envisaged reading such sentences 10 - or even 5 - years ago.

Any reactions? Which city has the biggest buzz... Which is the coolest, classiest and most inspiring? Post your opinion below.

NB. The snapshots above comes from this video - an inspiring graphic sequence of London. Wait 2 seconds for it to begin.

Midnight font buying

Checking my emails, after a friend left my place, post dinner at mine, I felt inspired by a font e-newsletter. I've always been attracted to these types of elegant distressed fonts having seen them used in some fashion advertising, music packaging and on one or two book covers, and I decided to buy 'Heathen'

I guess I've got a family wedding invitation commission rattling around in my mind, and I think this typeface could look uber-stylish, but I have a feeling it will not be to the couple's taste at all... !

It's a little edgy but I envisage it looking fabulous with the right production techniques.

It's elegance gone ancient, old thoughts in a modern packaging.

Can't wait to use it for the right project.. I have a feeling it won't be for this wedding invitation though...

Technorati

Technorati Profile

Useful tools for designers and creatives

I have set this out in two categories: INSPIRATION and RESOURCES. Feel free to add your own to the list, and tell me of your experiences using any of these sites and tools via the comments section below.

INSPIRATION:

Worlds best advertising is an advertising archive and forum discussing all the best work worldwide. Covers all media: Print, TV, Radio, Online, and Ambient.
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Find thousands of logos for study and inspiration at Logo Lounge
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An insightful and stimulating read on the logo trends of the year, can be found here
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In opposition to today's digital fonts, this site inspires by focussing on the beauty of Antique wood type
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The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising is an amazing brand and packaging collection over in Notting Hill, showcasing 200 years of consumerism, all reflected through packaging design, brand development, poster and TV advertising.
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The 24 Hour Museum alerts to news, listings and features from 3000+ museums and galleries. A fabulous guide to UK culture.
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If all of the above fail, just pick a good selection from wine.com!


RESOURCES:

Download eps logos for free at brandsoftheworld.com Here you'll find access to all the well known (and not so well known) brand logos in vector EPS formats.
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For high resolution textures Texture Space can't be beaten for an enormous selection of 3D textures. A very useful and thorough site.
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Fontifier lets you turn scanned samples of handwriting into a digital handwriting font.
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If you're trying to name or recognise a font, the font identifier site, Identifont enables you to locate it by answering a series of questions. Incredibly useful if you want to match an existing typeface, or identify a typeface you have seen in a publication.
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If you can't find locate a font by answering the questions in Identifont, then What the font? locates it for you by allowing you to scan a sample of it in (if you've seen it in a publication, for instance). Once submitted, it will supply you with the font name – a very useful tool and a real timesaver.
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Getty Images is an excellent search facility for an enormous range of photos, illustrations and films covering every type of theme.
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iStockphoto is a royalty-free image web site with a good selection of imagery and, more importantly for low-budget projects, they are incredibly cheap to purchase
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A good site for adding customisable, royalty-free music to multimedia projects is Partners in Rhyme. Also useful for voiceovers and sound effects.
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Photoshop Support does what it says on the tin!
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For every style of font, for use on a Mac, with a great search facility, check out Mac Fonts
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Once a printed magazine, x-height is where you will find interesting and useful information on and about fonts, type design, designers and technology written by industry experts.
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Magma is the best place on the web to find the most inspiring books covering all aspects of art and design.
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NB. I will soon be adding a post of inspiring websites of fellow designers and design and advertising agencies eg. Non-format, as recommended by Matt. If you know of any that you'd like to recommend for this forthcoming post, please notify me via the comments section

Bookniks - tonight at the Royal National Hotel

A recent piece of work above: a business-card sized laminated mini flyer promoting the 'Bookniks' event, part of Jewish Book Week 2007
This event is tonight and should be really entertaining with writers, such as Etgar Keret, comedians like Adam Bloom, and a whole variety of musicians, dancers and authors performing throughout the evening, at this literature-themed event.

Review: Alan Fletcher at the Design Museum

I caught this show just before it ended at the beautifully positioned Design Museum near Tower Bridge. A colourful and very inspiring exhibition for designers and non-designers alike, Alan Fletcher was the man uniquely responsible for defining British graphic design with his witty and individual approach from the late 1950s onwards.

"If, in another fifty years, the Design Museum decides to stage an exhibition of the great graphic designer of the age, what will there be to look at? Perhaps it’s a generational thing but the joy of the Fletcher show for me was in examining physical objects – of being able to see the real thing and not just a facsimile. But with media and, therefore, design becoming increasingly screen-bound, what will the Alan Fletcher of 2056 have to display? Just a whacking great screen? And will there be any point in going to a museum to see it"?

Patrick Burgoyne, Creative Review