Inspiration

The irresistible AXE Effect!

The irresistible AXE Effect!

AXE (or Lynx in UK, Ireland and Australia), is a world famous grooming brand from Unilever. The product line includes deodorants, body sprays, shower gels and a wide range of seductive fragrances. Their marketing campaign is always exaggerating “boys get girls” or opposite sex attraction especially the AXE Effect campaign. It is very eye catchy, naughty, seductive and tonnes of sense of humor!

After applying Axe product on a men’s body, the seductive smell will immediately attracts a crowd of women flying towards you, this is the concept of the AXE Effect campaign. According to AXE, AXE Effect is the internationally recognized named for the increased attention AXE-wearing males receive from eager, and attractive, female pursuers. The concept is simple yet effective because it hits the male’s desire of wanted to be attractive to girls. Below are the showcases of some funny, well executed AXE Effect ads. Imagination is needed.

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6 sites for brochure design inspiration & tips

Brochure design inspiration and tips

A brochure or pamphlet is a leaflet advertisement that normally used to promote latest products and services, or serves as one member of corporate identity merchandise. The new year has come and my company decided to redesign and print new corporate brochures. To produce the best brochure printing, I started to look out some inspiration and resources to aid my design process.

I had found some websites that fitted my needs, and the information provided is really helpful to read before you begin your full color brochure printing process. Brochure is not just about design solutions, it includes how you are going to fold the brochure, printing and other technical issue. Continue read to check out the design inspiration and useful tips to design a sure fire brochure that works.

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Entering the imaginative world of Aya Kato

Entering the imaginative world of Aya Kato

Aya Kato is a young female artists from Japan that has a great talents and skills in creating one of the most stunning and original artworks I have seen so far. Born in 1982, she studied painting by self-study and graphic design at the Aichi University of Education. She graduated in 2004 and started work as an Illustrator in 2005. Her works is extremely colorful and rich in details, and her level of imagination to illustrate out her idea is truly outstanding too.

In her wishes of work, it stated that “I want to wake up a lot of souls that the person is sleeping in the innermost recesses of the heart as much as possible by using my maximum imagination.” Besides, she also hope to use her artworks to connect people, and believes that wonderful world is born from love: Mind that loves neighbors. All people who live in the earth are neighbors.

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4 Japan web design galleries that worth visiting

4 Japan web design galleries that worth visiting

There is so much nice web design galleries out there like CSS Beauty, The Best Designs, Best Web Gallery and many more for web designers everyday design inspiration. They showcases the great web design examples from all around the world which displays innovative web surfing experience and design aesthetics. But recently I ask myself, is there any gallery that showcases web designs from Japan? The answer is yes!

From little research on the net, I found four sites that is worth take a visit. Most of them are in Japanese language, but with the help of thumbnails and free translation services out there, I think the language is not the barrier anymore. Let us experience the beauty of Japanese web design!

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60 horizontal navigation bar design inspiration

60 horizontal navigation bar inspiration

Horizontal navigation bar is one of the basic elements of web design. It occupy less space and grouping the menus horizontally can make page navigation easier too. Plus, it can be customize to be fitted to any kind of designs, from clean and sleek to retro wooden style. Here, I presented you 60 good looking horizontal navigation bar designs that I collected through out my web design research.

I found out that games related sites especially online games utilized horizontal navigation bar, because it can display the menus without using a large space. Navigation bars that build using flash can have cool rollover animation, however horizontal bar also achievable by using CSS list style and rollover effects if you know the ever popular sliding door effect. But in here, I won’t talk about the technique but pure beauty of navigation bar design for your design inspiration and reference. I separated into 3 categories: games related, non games related and good design examples from DeviantArt.

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Drip like Jackson Pollock … with mouse

Drip like Jackson Pollock ... with mouse

Yesterday I stumbled upon this interesting website “Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas“. It was a blank white color canvas until I move my mouse over it. Magical happened, I start to drip painting like Jackson Pollock! I move my mouse crazily over the blank canvas and change color by clicking on it, a unique composition appeared. This is the most interesting flash drawing API I had ever play!

This interactive flash drawing was built by Miltos Manetas, a Greek born, Los Angeles based artist. By clicking the red heart shape at the top left corner, it reveals a small message said that this site is under a competition for Dazed Digital 50. Vote this site to support it if you like it. But there is another secret message hiding beneath it which I found it accidentally.

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Typography + Ikebana = tenspace by WOW

Typography + Ikebana = tenspace by WOW

When the first time I watch animation “tenspace” by WOW, it was truely amazing! By mixing numbers ranging from 0 – 10 with ikebana, a Japanese art of flower arrangement to create out this masterpiece. The ikebana mainly illustrated by ink, giving a traditional ink and wash painting style, and sitting on the characters. Each set was presented with different approach as it giving a feeling that the conventional characters are growing out some beautiful plants.

Quoted from Dezeen, tenspace is a:

motion graphics installation done by WOW, a Japanese motion graphic company featuring animation of plants and typography. We’ve interpreted the space between each number in a countdown and present it to you in a physical space. Experience a virtual landscape featuring 11 digitally rendered ikebana pieces which draw you in as you speed through time. Clinging to the camera you race through three dimensions viewing each piece one by one.

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Destroy the Web 2.0 look

Destroy the Web 2.0 look

Until now, I’m still embracing the beauty of web 2.0 design: The glossy effect, the badges etc.. But the presentation of “Destroy the Web 2.0 Look” by Elliot Jay Stock has changed my perception and makes me understand even more about what is the real Web 2.0. Elliot presented this topic in FoWD event in New York and for people like me who couldn’t attend the event, there is a slideshow which I embeded below and PDF document for download.

He emphasize that “Web 2.0” is not a design aesthetic, and to encourage people to break with overused of the current web design trends. In the presentation there said that the characteristics of Web 2.0 that coined by Mr. Tim O’Reilly does not touch anything about design at all! So, don’t blindly use the style but use it with rational, and come out with own concept and design. Don’t follow the cliche and pursue something new!

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Nice Site: Urban Soldierz 2

Nice Site: Urban Soldierz 2

Last few days back I stumbled upon Urban Soldierz 2 website and was attracted by its rich textured urban environment design. Urban Soldierz is a graffiti artist collective that born in Spain, and their artistic works were displayed in both old school graffiti to new school graphic design. Now consists of 12 members, Urban Soldierz try to be an urban artists platform. Their works are magnificent, so do the Urban Soldierz homepage too.

The website was dominated by brownish, sepia color scheme giving a very old school feel, and it has a very strong urban feel in it. Layout was based on urban elements like concrete wall, metals, barbed wires, bricks, torn papers, street lights, grungy texture… very rich of raw street sense. If your monitor resolution is not big, you can move your mouse to move up and down, left or right to view the full design of it. Basically the full look of the website is shown below.

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Cute packaging: Tohato Caramel Corn

cute packaging: Tohato Caramel Corn

Last tuesday after work, I head to one shopping center to look around for magazine and other stuff. Then when I walk pass Jusco supermarket, there held a small exhibition called “2007 Japan Autumn food festival” and I decided to take a look. Well, mostly were food packagings from some well known food maker like Meiji Seika, Lotte, Morinaga and much more. Then, I met this cute packaging, it’s Tohato’s Caramel Corn.

I already knew this packaging from MILK magazine as well as this website which I had covered it before during this “Creative packaging inspiration ~modern & vintage~“. But it’s my first time to see it in real life. The packaging is very cute and attractive! It has many variations of designs for different kinds of flavor. All of them will featured a character with cute expression, together with the food images either inside the character’s mouth or hanging somewhere in the packaging.

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