Art & Design

I love typography

I have great interests in typography subject since studying in graphic design course. It is amazing that by using a certain typefaces with the placement of the types can create incredible visual language even without the using of images. Typography is actually a very professional skills, because it is not just about selecting the right typefaces, but the layout, the size, the grid and many more.

According to Wikipedia, typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing) and letter spacing. Typography can be apply to anything, from displaying text as information to treating text as images. With the aid of digital fonts and design softwares, designers can play with the text freely. Continue reading

Get free stock photos at Crestock.com

As a designer, I always hunt for free stuff, especially stock photos. These free stock images are important because they are free of charge and become handy when I can’t capture the photos myself. Crestock.com provides this by supplying free stock photos daily.

All you need to do is subscribe to their daily free stock photo RSS, and sign up to download the photo. Besides stock photo, free vectors was provided too, but only comes in once a month. Overall the free stock photo is good quality and huge in size, normally at least 2000px and above.

The picture shown above is one of the free stock photo i downloaded. Until now, I had download over 30-40 photos. So get yourself to Crestock.com and download the free stock photos! If you hunger for more, you can always go to this site and this site too.

Creative packaging inspiration ~modern & vintage~

Packaging is one of the most common example of graphic design in the world. Apart from displaying the important information, the packaging has become an important sales tool. With the use of illustration, color, typography and even various packaging materials, designers can create an attractive image and build a brand identity that is eye-catchy and impactful, yet preserve the contents.

A beautiful and attractive packaging or corporate sign can boost the selling and stands out from the rack of competitors. For example the IZZE beverage packaging shown above, their sales grew 450% per year over the first two years without any TV commercials, print and web advertising. It must be its unique & simplicity of graphic approach together with clear and refreshing typeface that attracts people to buy it.

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5+ business card inspiration sites that you can’t miss

5+ business card inspiration sites that you can't miss

Business card is important. It reflects you and your company’s image and identity. Although the format is small so that it can be fitted into everyone’s wallet and card holder, but the design creativity is unlimited. It depends on how you want to make use of that small space and create the best designs.

Sometimes business card designs can be gone wild too, from transparent material to unconventional shapes. Here i present you 5 sites that will sparks your business card design inspiration and go out of the box. Business card printing is easy. Make your color business cards look their best with Ps Print custom printing services.

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7 time saving Photoshop tips for web designers

As a Photoshop user for more than several years, although cannot consider myself as Photoshop experts, but I did had some tips and guides for Photoshop beginners and fresh web designers to do stuff faster and more efficient in Photoshop. With this tips, you can know more about Photoshop and learn some essential time saving skills. Here I have 7 in total.

1. Save frequent used layer style

Sometimes we do some layer style that is quite repetitive, for example I will frame a transparent grey border for each picture posted in my blog. Because they are the same, so I save it as my Layer Style. To save, just double click the layer containing the styles u want to save, then click the Styles tab and click “New Styles”. A window prompt out, name the style and save it. So next time, instead of going to the Stroke properties to make the border, I just click the styles I just made, convenient!

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Toypography – A puzzle toy of type

Wonder how to connect an English word to its kanji character? Well, let Toypography tell you. Toypography, which is a combination of the word toy and typography, is a toy that consisting of fragments of separate letters that can be put together to either English or Japanese letters and characters.

Toypography is created by a Japanese typography creator group called Dainippon Type Organization. The unique features of Toypography is that Japanese expressions can be transformed into English expressions of the same meaning. For example, the picture shown below. The English word “Bird” and transformed into kanji “鳥”. Amazing isn’t it?

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Simpsonize me!

During the hit days of Simpsons the Movie, I stumbled upon an interesting site, which is Simpsonize Me. As what the title suggest, it lets you to upload your own picture and it will transform the real you into Simpson! I think it was a fun stuff to play with :D.

You can upload your own portrait pictures and then, select some options of about yourself like your genre, age, what kind of hair you want, color skin etc. After that, it will process the options that you had selected then, with just a click of a button, tada! You had successfully transform your portrait to Simpson style!

Actually I Simpsonize myself too, and this is how I look:

Hello everyone! Greetings from Jayhan…. As you can see, I’m quite of a normal looking person hahaha…. To be honest, I LOL’ed when I saw my Simpsonize version, it does actually resembles myself! Kudos to the team who did this, you rocks!

Please remember to try yourself too, save your Simpsonize and send it through mail or as IM avatar, cool.

Japanese kaoani & emoticon

Sometimes, small little things could cheer you up and help you communicate your feelings better. Introducing the Japanese Kaoani and Emoticon. In this cyber age, people using Instant Messaging has a lot in this world to chat…share feeling. But this emoticon can make your messaging even more cute and lively. Those emoticon can even appear in Japanese handphone text messages (saw a lot on dramas)! Their sms is really advance.

Kaoani

Kaoani is combination of two words, which is kao (face), and ani (animation). And their format is gif, since they have to move, jumping around. Most of them are cute. They can express both good mood and bad mood, hahaa. Below are some sites that has example of kaoanis.

1. The world of Kaoani
2. Kaoani msn icons emoticons
3. Kaoani 10000

Emoticon ヾ(^∇^)おはよー♪

I firstly known Japanese emoticon through a popular drama “Densha Otoko”. I was very impressive about the ASCII art (or Shift_JIS art) and the emoticons they used. Because of the emoticons is 2-byte, so you no need to tilt your head to read it, and the emoticon has way more expressions because they have more characters to do it. Basically just use whatever that can represent eye, mouth, hand etc.

Example of a popular emoticon:
キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!

I found a great reference site of compiling the Japanese emoticon which shown on screenshot above. That site has a lot! Some of them are cute! Plus this site showing the Japan’s top 30 emoticon.

That’s all. Hope you enjoy it! Use it on your IM, chat room etc. Cute stuff.

Actually, I did a kaoani too, click here to view 😛

ArtzMania Super Web 2.0 and Blog addict meter

To all web 2.0 lovers out there, great news that Artzmania released an e-book about collection of web 2.0 graphics and innovation, free for download at here. I already download and gone through the book, it shows some nice web design showcase, separated in different categories.

Plus at the back, showcasing web 2.0 logos, some useful articles that posted on the net. But sadly, these articles is not linked to the original post. A sat back here. It is not really a comprehensive book about web 2.0 (because most of them I knew already) but it worth to take a look. Nice cover thou.

How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

71%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Originally known this through Etsuko‘s blog, and I curious to test how addicted I am too. After gone through the 14 questions, I got the result that I’m 71% addicted, hahahaha. Yeah, I’m pretty addicted to blogging somehow :-D.

If you are a blogger, please try this too, it is fun mot to mention to nicely designed layout and easy to use navigation. Great! If you tried, don’t forget to post it here or spread this site in your blog hehe.

4 interesting flash clocks

A clock is an instrument for measuring time. Clock can be any format such as clock tower, wall clock and watch either in analog or digital presentation. Clock plays and important role in human life to inform you about time, or to remind you to do something. Sometimes clock can be interesting and fun to watch too.

Flickr Time

As title, this clock is Flickr based. Before seeing this page, you need to enter two keywords so that it will find the relevant pictures from Flickr and displays as clock. This is one example of mash-up and it was designed by designer Hiroshi Tazawa. Outstanding!

Industorious Clock

This is a pretty hilarious clock. The clock ticks by erasing the numbers and write a new one, then erase and write a new one….endless process. Imagine people doing this is real world. Created by Yugo Nakamura. Thanks because it gives me a good laugh when first saw this.

Human Clock

This is quite a nice clock. The clock numbers is build by using human body formation. Somehow it looks pretty photoshopped. Haha, nevermind but creative indeed.

The Timeline

This is more than a clock. It shows date, month and even year. This looks pretty cool despite the simple looking interface. Design by InsertMonkey.

Extras
Looking for more? There ya go. Head on this site which provides you a cool clock for download as either screen saver or desktop widget. I’m using the screen saver for my office’s computer and it actually attracts some attention.