Welcome to Dracula Vs. Eisenstein.
If you like what you see, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks!
Two of my favorite things in life, The Big Lebowski and motion graphics, have been combined in this translation of a popular scene from the film using only animated typography as its visual. It is a great example of how effective type can be in video when used with familiar visual traits. I especially like the animation of the word “lanes” and “click”. Animator and designer Koos Dekker was certainly successful in re-creating visual dialogue without using any images from the film. This video was created in Adobe After Effects.
Back in March, during the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, TX, the American Poster Institute presented the Flatstock 16 Poster Convention. The show featured original graphic art by more than 80 of the most popular poster artists working today. Around the same time, I had posted about a rock poster and its art history influences so I think it is fitting to give Flatstock some coverage. Below are a few of my favorites from the show.
Aesthetic Apparatus
Daniel Danger
Pedini
Small Stakes
Seattle Show Posters
For those that live in the Chicago area and would like to check out some posters first-hand, Flatstock 17 will be held at the Pitchfork Music Festival this summer in Union Park.
There are a lot of lists of color tools out there, but how many turn out to be of any use? The best tools are user friendly, easily customizable and provide you with every code or file format that you need. Below is a brief list (in no specific order) of color palette tools that I find the most useful for creating web, print and video projects and that I have actually used.
- Kuler
Adobe’s color theme tool includes a large collection of community-created color themes that you can use for your creative projects. The most useful aspects of Kuler include the search feature by which you can search by hex color code, tags or theme title. The tags are great because you can find all of the themes related to a specific keyword. Kuler is an Adobe Labs application so you can download themes to use with Adobe Creative Suite applications, making integration with your designs a cinch.
- COLOURlovers
A similar community site as Kuler, but with a bit more community. There are also a few differences that could be key to finding the perfect color theme for your project. The main focus of Colourlovers is color trends. So while you can browse community member themes, you can also check out the latest color trends found in popular and successful websites and magazines.
- Colorcombos.com
Also has user-created themes and its combo tester application can be useful but nothing extremely different here except for usability preferences. However, the one thing that I really enjoy using is their tool that allows you to enter a website url and pull all of the colors used on that site. Really love the colors I use here on Dracula Vs. Eisenstein? Go to Colorcombos.com to find the color codes I used.
- ColourMod
A dynamic, DHTML color picker that you can use for your site (small fee) or, more importantly to me, can be downloaded (for free) as a widget for Mac or PC. I have the Dashboard widget and I use it constantly when working between design applications. I used to need photoshop open to grab a swatch hex code to use in Flash or Dreamweaver and it was not fun, even when using Spaces on my iMac. I save time and RAM which makes life a little less stressful.
- Dhtmlgoodies.com Color Schemer
You might take a look at this and wonder why this is on my list. Because its simple. Very simple. And quick. When you need a suggested complimentary color in a matter of seconds, this is a reliable tool. You click on a primary color or type in a hex color code and it generates suggested complimentary, split complimentary, triade, tetrade, analogic and monotone color schemes for you.
- Colorjack
Like ColourMod, Colorjack offers a OSX Dashboard widget as well as a website color picker (this one is free!). You’ll have to compare the two color pickers to see if they are worth what they say. The site also has a color theme generator that you may prefer to others. Colorjack’s homepage is a huge block of random color themes, which on its own can offer some inspiration.
I certainly don’t use all of these sites for one project and I usually find one more useful depending on the individual task or project. If you have any color palette tools or sites that you find extremely useful, please add them in the comments below.
Milton Glaser is a legendary graphic designer, whose name may only resonate within the design community, but whose work has been seen by many. Not only has his most noted designs from decades ago had an influence on my work, but he continues to have an influence on my life. After September 11th, he updated his I Love NY logo and in 2003 he designed a “copyright-free” poster seen below for Another Poster for Peace. Funny (not at all) how five years later the posters are just as relevant as, if not more than, they were when they were originally designed.
In realizing how Glaser and other designers had influenced my work, I couldn’t help but wonder, “who influenced them the most?” I then came across an interview with Glaser from 2002, and discovered how timeless it was. Certainly I would be interested to hear what he thinks about the current state of the the Union, but even more interesting was reading about his influences and how he came to think the way he thinks. Graphic design after all is not just images and text. It is an idea communicated through images and text.
Click here to read Brad Holland’s interview with Milton Glaser.
5 Penguins, 1 Clown © Greg Stones
“Zombies, penguins, blue aliens, naked people, people flashing animals, barns, landscapes, UFOs, quiet human interactions…all these various elements of my work strike chords with enough people that I am actually able to do what I love to do every single day of my life: watch television. Oh, and paint.”
Reading the artist statement of Greg Stones is almost as fun as his surreal watercolor paintings of the above subjects. I first saw Greg’s work one summer while vacationing in Ogunquit, Maine, and it certainly struck a chord with my sense of humor. Check out some of my favorites after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Stock.xchng and Stockxpert are sister stock photography sites and both are subsidiaries of Jupiterimages. So what are the main differences between the two? Let’s take a look:
Stock.xchng (www.sxc.hu)
Pros
- Free
- Over 350,000 images
- Exposure for photographers and designers
- Tutorials
- Image contributor blogs
- Member forum
- Did I mention images were free?
Cons
- Restrictions on use
- Some images require the photographer to be notified and credited when used for any public use
- Some images are of lower quality and/or resolution
