Tag: Design

It would be really cool to name every single Pantone color. All 1,677 of them. Better yet, why not have a website where people can submit their own names? Colorhexa has 746 color names. Colourlovers.com blows them out of the…

Playskool Mr. Potato Head Spudbob Squarepants. The name is clever. Spudbob. But who in the world designed this mashup? They should have just simply kept the same Mr. Potato Head mold and just painted it yellow with some dots. The…

It’s amazing to me how people think graphic design is done with just one layout, and it’s done. That’s not true. Good graphic design will try different options. Graphic designers will always try different options to come to the best…

This sticky note table is right up my alley. Sticky notes are so versatile. There are so many ways to use them. I use them for public artwork. They are non-destructive and able to make a message. If a viewer…

In my past experiences of hiring people, we’ve had ranging lists of types of experiences in different areas; and we’ve found difficulty in finding candidates with the right mix of knowledge in these different areas. Which rather perplexes me, because…

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s twitter account pointed me in the direction of a “Time Out Chicago” article about their new identity, “We are here at the Museum of Contemporary Art.” The commenting is closed on the article, so I’m…

Looking for a teapot in the Prairie School Style? Good luck. I was looking to buy my girlfriend a teapot for her birthday. She lives in Oak Park the Prairie School center, and she likes that style. I looked high…

The clouds were moving very fast yesterday. I took eight shots–normal exposures, each about 30 seconds apart. Then I brought each photo into one photoshop file as a layer. Each layer got its own hue. And then each layer was…

Did you know your friends can pin stuff to your boards? Yeah! You can add contributors to specific boards on your pinterest. Ideas on how to use collaborative boards on pinterest: 1) Research at work Does your company want to…

Changing your book format preference from hardcover/paperback to Kindle Amazon wish lists are great. See something you like? Just add it to your wish list. It’s not only a handy list for yourself, but your friends and family will appreciate…

Can I get myself kicked off the Neenah Paper Facebook Page for my excitement over ASTROBRIGHTS® paper? See comments in screenshots below:

I’m looking for paper companies to like on Facebook, so I do a search for paper. It’s pretty funny that the top pages are not paper companies, but silly things like, “Paper cuts: so small, but so evil.” and “I…

This is a cool photo of Henry Blanco. It’s too bad the design of the card is covering up an essential part of the photo, home plate. It makes you wonder what the photographer thinks of this card. 2011 Topps…

Do you know about the “One of a Kind” annual show at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago? I never heard of it, yet this is its 11th year running. Maybe I never heard of it, because I’m always going to…

My friend John interviewed me for a paper he’s writing on the future of the theatre. One of the questions he asked was: What is your opinion and thoughts on the future of Stage Design in America? When you close…

HINT HINT HINT My birthday is coming up on November 20. And I have this VERY handy wish list on Amazon with 302 items listed. Is that overwhelming? It’s sorted by priority. 11 items are marked as highest. 52 has…

Blip.tv looks like it has some good tv shows about art. Here’s ten that I just hand-picked and added to my subscription. Fear No ARTDiscover the artists behind the art. Join host Elysabeth Alfano and go behind the scenes into…

For my encaustic painting class, we are going to learn image transfer. We were told to bring patterns of just b&w—no gray. This is what I’m bringing. Starting with the Gummi bear and moving clockwise:

My Spudart logo bears a somewhat resemblance to the Chicago Bean, aka Cloudgate. I find pleasure in this because when I designed the Spudart logo in 1998, I wanted my logo to function like a potato where it has many…

I was curious what would be the top result for a google search of design. The first result is wikipedia’s entry for design. I was very happy with the second result, IIT Institute of Design, aka the Bauhaus. My brother…

As gas prices rise, people’s tempers rise. Oh, our car-obssessed culture. People treat the price of gas as if it’s a human right to have gasoline flowing from fountains. People are posting sticky notes on gas pumps that say, “How’s…

Tannerman tweeted about the Arena Bowl logo challenge. I agree with him that logo competitions usually mean they are too cheap to hire graphic designers with talent. My submission was a parody of a logo submission, on a sticky note!…

A giant fireball explodes on Wacker Drive for the Transformers 3 movie, “Dark of the Moon.” Now that the trailer is out, we know that this is the location where Optimus Prime kicks some serious butt with his sword. This…

(above image is a blog post by chicagoartmagazine) Great idea to rent billboards. I wonder how effective the abstract subject matter is to the general public. Often we forget that the general public does not interpret art the same as…

I took every letter in the alphabet and overlapped them. It yielded an interesting result, as seen above with Helvetica Thin. Take a look at the entire blog post from 2006 where I also did versions with Helvetica Regular, Courier,…

The aesthetic forms of the signature are very intriguing. When I paypal’ed $1.74 to the seller, I included the following note: Thanks for selling this card. It has to be one of the coolest signatures ever. It’s like a work…

If I ever threw my office computer out the window, I would attach a parachute to it, so it wouldn’t get damaged. 11:53 AM Jan 25th tweeted by @mattmaldre (my twitter account for design, marketing, web and tech things) I…

fastcodesign tweeted: Why Do College Sports Fans Hate the Big Ten’s Smart New Logo (by @PentagramDesign)? http://bit.ly/hRIHNc My response: Because these same college sports fans aren’t smart to begin with. Note, I’m not saying all college sports fans aren’t smart,…

Two questions: 1) Do I know you? (in real life or from online) 2) Do you administer a Facebook Fan Page? If the answer to both questions are “yes” then I want to follow your Page, and actually read it…

I’m surprised that Quark is still releasing new versions. Last week I got an email from Quark saying they are releasing version 8.5. Here’s my email response to them. I like giving Quark a hard time.

I’ve been posting of all my comments on delicious since March 2009. A couple days ago I hit my 1,500th comment. It was on srhbth’s photo, 201009endofsept0060a (pictured above). On April 17, 2010 I covered my first 1000 comments. Now…