Category: Design

WordPress has some cool featured themes at the moment. My personal favorite is Blix. Check them out. [Link]

Move your mouse around the screen, when you find the color you want click the mouse. [Link]

A former Nazi graphic designer is suing Volkswagen, seeking credit for helping to design their famous logo. Nikolai Borg, 86, who now lives in Austria, says he has paperwork that can prove his involvement in the development of the VW logo 65 years ago. He doesn’t want any cash, says his lawyer—he just wants to live to see his work acknowledged. Volkswagen denies that Borg was involved in the design. The legal case begins next week in a Vienna court. [Link]

DC Comics launched a new updated logo earlier this month. I personally don’t like it, its too swooshy for my tastes. The old logo was a classic and I think it could have lived on for many more years. Now I personally haven’t picked up and read a comic in years so I don’t know if my opinion counts (I might be too old) but I still think the new logo is soulless. The old logo was designed by Milton Glaser over 25 years ago and the new logo was design by Josh Beatman of Brainchild Studio. It will be showing up on all their comics starting June.

Here is a link to a nice collection of fonts used by Sega. [Link]

It’s not as dirty as it sounds. This website has adult and exploitation movie posters from the ’60s and ’70s for purchase. Although it might sound dirty the posters are more funny then sexy. My favorite one is the Ordered to Love poster, if only I could afford its $700 price tag.. [Link] (safe for work)

Remember when you were kids in school and if you did something good the teacher would give you a star? Well I am starting this trend at the agency. I am giving out pink and blue stars of various sizes to designers who work hard. The harder you work the bigger the star you get. Really funny stuff.. I think this should be applied to all of our offices worldwide. I also think I am gonna get fired when management comes back from their trip!

Now this is a logo done right. Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait recently rebranded and its pretty obvious its a way better logo then BKME‘s. The new BBK logo is visually attractive and friendly. The logo is very simple and clean and can easily be distinguishable from the competition. The color choice of blue is a common one among banks here in Kuwait but the addition of the 2 orange tones help differentiate it from the rest. I think at the moment, BBK has one of the nicest logos among the local banks. What I am wondering now is if Commercial Bank of Kuwait will be re-branding. There current logo was designed by a Pentagram, a world renowned agency. Actually I think I will post about that tomorrow. For more information on the BBK rebranding click here. I am not sure but I believe the BBK logo was done by Artograph in bahrain.

I can’t believe this, some guy drew venice using the stupid Microsoft Paint program! Unbelievable, some people are just to talented.. via waxy here is the link.

A handful of Firefox friends from Oregon State University went and painted a huge Firefox mural in the middle of the campus quad. The thing is huge and looks really cool. Too bad its not permanent. [Link]

Today was unbelievable, I had more work then I could handle and thats never happened to me before! I had to be at a full day photoshoot which started at 10AM, at the same time I had to be at the office at 11AM to meet a calligrapher. At 1PM I had to be at another location with another account handler to plan another shoot for tomorrow then I also had to be at the office to work on a logo that is due today and also an ad for one of our clients which is also due today. Luckily other team members offered to help me out and I was able to accomplish most of my jobs. Crazy stuff, I didn’t have lunch yet even. Now I got to finish up a quick job here and head out to another photoshoot at 6. No time for anything today.

I take a few shots during the day and at night I post them on Miskan.com. What you don’t see though is how the pictures looked before right out of the camera. I shoot everything in RAW format which basically means the pictures are stored on my memory card unaltered. The pictures aren’t compressed in any way, no white balance is applied, no sharpening, no nothing. Its pure. When I open up the pictures in Photoshop, I have to set up the Raw options before the picture opens up. Its basically a window where I can control various aspects of the picture from brightness and contrast, to exposure and the white balance. It time consuming since I have to open each image and post process it till it looks good. Each one of my raw files are also over 5MB (on older cameras they are twice the size). The advantage is I get to control the settings, not the camera. Most of my pictures are usually shot under exposed because you can always brighten a picture but you can’t darken an over exposed shot. Shooting in RAW also means I am now more picky with my shots, I don’t want to get home and have 50 pictures I need to open and adjust one by one. I just don’t have the time for it nor the computer processing speed to do it quickly. Below is a shot I just took now in the office to give you an example of the importance of post processing.

In this first picture you can clearly see the white’s are grayish, the floor is dull and the whole picture lacks decent contrast.

This picture is the first one but it’s been post processed. I increased the brightness, contrast, a bit of saturation, set the white balance to neon and then proceeded to manually set the white balance till it contained a decent amount of magenta.

So in conclusion, don’t expect to get good pictures if you don’t post process. Remember when in university you took photography? Remember how in the dark you spent time experimenting trying to get the right contrast and shadows etc.. this is the same thing. If you don’t do it right don’t expect excellent results.

update: I think from now on whenever there is a cool shot I upload onto Miskan.com I will post the original unprocessed one here just to show the importance of post processing.

I just got a phonecall from a creative director I used to work with. He is opening his own advertising agency here in Kuwait and he wants me to join him and help him build a team. In return I would get the same salary I am currently making and he will also make me a partner and give me 10% of the company and its earnings. He already has a major client waiting for us plus he has a deal with an international agecy. If that wasn’t enough, he wants nat and rampurple to join us.

All this and I think I will have to reject the offer. I am a very safe person. By that I mean I don’t take risks. I like routine and I like job security. I am also currently very happy with what I am doing. Ofcourse not everyday is a good day, there are ups and downs, but in general I am having fun where I am now. I am gonna meet with the guy tonight and get more details, I am wondering though if for once in my life I should just take the plunge and go for it..

Muthana Complex is just weird, or atleast the people inside it. This picture might look like a mirror image or something but its actually half a bag glued to the outside of the window, and the other half glued on the inside. So the bag looks like its broken through the glass. Some shop had this on the outside I guess to attract customers. Its like soo fucking strange I mean why would he even bother going through all this trouble? I doubt it will generate more sales but it probably will grab him some attention..

Does anyone by any chance have the logo for Hungry Bunny or know where I can find it? I just found this really low resolution one above.

Update: Salted Caramel gave me this link https://www.hungry-bunny.com/