Shiel Love’s Design Blog

Introducing Shiel’s line of custom apparel and accessories at CafePress. For now, I have a series of Ambigram Designs printed on T-shirts and stickers. I am soon to introduce more designs and more product offerings.

For anyone wondering, CafePress is a site where you can upload your artwork and designs to feature on a host of products ranging from coffee mugs, t-shirts, bags, hoodies and more! It’s a great avenue to do some product testing of any designs you may be mulling over. It’s free to sign up for a “standard” shop, and a minimal fee of about $5 a month for a premium store. They print on demand which means you don’t have to worry about tracking inventory. Shipping is taken care of for you, so all you have to do is get your products visible, and watch the checks roll in.

Today, I’ve decided to cease my web design services, as I am focusing more on graphic design. This will give me lots more time to devote to creating logos, and other various graphic design projects. Come to expect the same quality, just more focused. Happy designing!

In my attempt to gain more exposure to my work, I joined another contest-driven site yesterday called 99designs. The functionality of this site is pretty much the same as with Zooppa, except 99designs is devoted to static designs such as logos, banners, and stationary. There’s a web design section there too for anyone interested.

Today was an interesting one for me as I joined a community called Zooppa. It’s a creative community that works together with major brands for advertising campaigns. Once you register (which is free, always a plus), you are given instant access to “competitions” in which users of the community submit their work in a variety of categories ranging from video to banner ads to print ad campaigns. Other Zooppa users can then rate your work, the top dog gets a prize; often times cash, but special prizes are handed out as well. I’ve only been a member for about 3 hours now, so I can’t really speak to any further details, but I’m diggin what I see so far. For any graphic designers, writers, movie makers out there looking to get exposure to your work, I would highly recommend this site!

The creative world is one that is often misunderstood, especially when it comes to art and design. I guess I really just wanted to take this time to reveal my personal creative process in the hopes that there are many more out there like me.

First off, let me begin by saying that I didn’t even consider digital media, art and design until my high school years. Before that, it was just good ol fashioned pencil and sketch pad. I’ve always battled with phases of intense creative inspiration and even longer periods of creative boredom. What I have found though, is that in my time off from graphic designing, often times when I come back after a good break, I can think more clearly anyway. I like to think of my down time as “life-experience integration”…basically the time in my life that I am gathering mental imagery to use in future designs. It’s amazing how your work changes based on your outlook on life, the things that are going on at work, at home or school…anything and everything has at least some impact on the designs that we create. What usually brings me back to designing is seeing ONE super-amazing commercial or design that ties together everything my mind had soaked in during my down time….kinda like a catalyst for lack of a better term.

The thing that irked me the most about design classes was that there was ONE set method to go about things. True, you do need some sort of process (just easier to organize that way), but in the end, every individual has their own approach. Even at the individual project level, processes are going to change slightly. Creativity is not something that can be standardized in my eyes. True, while in school, I was pumping out designs like a factory, but in the end, they all lost a certain sense of personality….know what I mean? Though I always beat myself up for going into phases of not designing any personal projects for a while, I would much rather put out a few projects a year that I am REALLY proud of than cranking out what will end up being near-cookie-cutter designs. Again, this is for my personal projects, I’m not about to drop off the map if I owe you a design :-) Purposefully deviating from my school’s “creative model”, every project gets special attention and it’s own creative procecss. There is now way to approach a design for an auto parts site and a baby clothing site in the same way (back end shopping carts and CMS maybe, but I’m talking about colors, layout, etc. A lot of this is determined by the specific industry and each industry is different). I go in to new projects completely open-minded. None of that, I-need-3-comps-that-lead-to-a-final-copy stuff! The final product is what is really important…if your client is happy with your design the first time around, then you’re obviously doing something right!

Anyway, the whole point of this is basically to say that we all hit road blocks in our personal creativity. When it happens, let it come. We all work differently and inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime. Use some of your clients’ ideas to springboard you into an area that you may not be experienced in or are comfortable with. The greatest measure of growth in my opinion is the lack of comfort. Live to learn, learn to incorporate your life experience in your designs, it will truly set you apart.

Happy designing!

Last week, Apple launched a brand new version of the Safari browser that has definitely peaked my interest. Anyone remember a quaint little browser called Google Chrome? Well Apple has taken this functionality a step further. The first thing to stand out is definitely the interface overhaul. They’ve done away with a lot of the bulky toolbar space that just takes real estate away from the thing that really matters…the web page itself. Looks like Apple took some notes on the way Google structured their interface. Tabs are now across the top, but the address bar didn’t seem to get any love. Any chance of a Chrome-type “uni-bar”, Apple?.

Another thing borrowed from Chrome is the “Top Pages” tab. If you’ve been tinkering with Chrome, you know that it keeps track of your most visited pages and displays them all for you. With Safari, you not only get this same data, you also get to customize your most visited sites, adding or deleting as you see fit. Not only that, but they’ve done a great job at sprucing up the interface. It looks more like a high-tech trade show display than anything else; when you click on a page, you are presented with a grayed-out version of the page before it actually loads. The transitions so far are seamless.

As far as rendering, Safari hasn’t changed anything, so all you designers out there, keep doin what you’re doin! So pretty much, Safari gets my vote, I loved Google Chrome and was sad to see that it didn’t gain as much usage as I was hoping. Maybe Apple will be able to pick up where Chrome’s marketing fell short and be able to produce the first TRUE next-gen browser. Until then, happy designing!

It brings me great joy to see that web designers and SEO’s are finally starting to get the idea that the two forces need to work together in order to bring truly memorable, stable performance. One without the other simply isn’t making the grade anymore; you not only have to get users to your site, you have to engage them and make them want to stick around and come back. SEO alone can’t do it. Design alone can’t do it. It’s truly a collaborative effort. What you have to remember is this: designers and SEO’s are after the same thing; it’s the implementation that differs. The best strategy I have found, at least for “ground-up” projects is to consider SEO elements while the design of the site is still in mock-up phase. Go over your mock-ups considering all Web 2.0 elements, rich media, etc. that you may be considering. A little up-front strategic planning with SEO in mind can save you hours of precious time having to re-code your pages once you find out you’re not getting ranked, your site is plagued with duplicate content, etc.

Jessica Bowman at Search Engine Land wrote an interesting article last year about the various phases at which SEO should belong in the Web Development cycle, pretty much saying that there should be SEO consideration at every stage of development for a website; mock-ups, wireframes, site changes, etc. I tend to agree with what she says. If SEO is a factor at every stage of design, then by default if you are building a “ground-up” site, you should launch pretty SEO friendly.

Hello world. I am proud to announce that my graphic design blog is now up and operational! I’ll be posting interesting findings in the world of design, as well as some personal insight into how certain projects turned out the way they did. As always, I’ll try to keep it entertaining.