Category: Design

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/

When I was in university I used to enjoy designing CD covers for my friends remix albums. My dream was when I graduate I would continue doing CD and poster designs for chillout CDs. Since I graduated though I haven’t done any.. until now. I have to design a CD and Tape cover for a very famous local singer. The problem? I have to stick with a picture of the musician (that he chose) on the main cover, I have to stick a ton of pictures of the musician and his friends on the inside, I have to use gold AND I have to do all this by Saturday. I met the singer yesterday he was cool, and this project is interesting because its for a famous singer and it will be everywhere when done. But, I don’t think there is much I can do design wise and the fact that its due on Saturday means I have to rush this.. I wish I had more time for this..

Ok, I just installed Tiger on my Mac at work and I am fucked. One of the most important softwares I have called Extensis Suitcase is not yet compatible with Tiger. This means that I am stuck with default fonts in softwares like Illustrator and Photoshop. Now I need to figure out how to go back to Panther… THIS SUCKS!

Update: Ok this is what I did to kinda solve my problem for now. I copied the fonts I need the most to Library>Application Support>Adobe>Fonts. Now my fonts work with my Adobe Products. I will keep checking the Extensis Suitcase Tiger Compatibility Chart everyday till they fix it.

I am in such a bad mood now. I had an argument with 2 other creatives at the office. I was trying to explain to them that arabic typography is difficult and they wouldn’t get it. I have 3 logos I need to create arabic type for, they want it today. I explained to them that this isn’t an easy thing. It needs time. One of the creative insisted its an easy thing and doesn’t need time at all. I went ahead and explained to them that 2 of the 3 english logo-types I need to convert are located in a box. This causes problems with the arabic since the arabic typeface will have the letter “Ya” which will have dots that will fall below the baseline. This means the hight of the arabic type will be higher then the english. I can’t change the size of the box so that will be a problem. The guy wouldn’t listen and told me he would do it. I of-course refused since I am the best guy for this job and I would be afraid anyone else who attempts it will end up killing the logos. I really hate it when people don’t get it.

Today was the coolest, I did something I never did before, I spray painted in broad daylight. I woke up early today like 10ish. Nat went out shopping so I was home alone. So to pass the time I decided to cut out a new stencil so I could spray paint it. I decided to do one related to Samir Geagea since its currently Samir Geagea week in Lebanon. When I was done with my stencil around an hour and a half later I decided to just go out and try it. I didnt have anything else to do so I was like fuck it lets just go. I went to the regular construction site I usually spray paint at and tagged the walls. When I was done I drove around trying to find another construction site when I spotted something. You know the huge sewage system they are installing all over Salmiya? Well they have these huge concrete stuff laid out all over the place so I started tagging them. I must have tagged atleast 20 different ones all over Salmiya. It was really cool plus they are gonna burry the things later so no harm done. I did learn one thing today, don’t spray paint against the wind..

Was dropping off nat to work when we spotted this picture under the traffic light. At first I thought it was a picture of a teenager who had gotten killed in a traffic accident and this was some sort of memorial for him. Turns out its an ad for this musician called Marzougaleid or something. Who comes up with these stupid ideas?

If you remember last month I posted about the new terrible BKME logo. Well since then I heard that the logo was done by an international agency (hard to believe) and I heard another story that it was designed by Horizon here in Kuwait (more believable). Yesterday I also got an email from someone called Jeeb, this is what he had to say about BKME and the logo:

The sphere isn’t only about a pearl, a BKME personnel indicated to me that two pepole reaching each other are actualy represented inside! I said who in the world would know or see that? By the way when copied, the “pearl” or “human reaching each other” logo goes white! Vanishes..

It also took me 2 days to open an account! Still confused, I received 6 e-mails with 6 user numbers bkmeonline/e-trading, which one to use? Why the guy kept telling “use another username this one is giving an error”? Now, ofcourse, i can’t use any of them, each had a password which i don’t remember now!! Bmke didn’t reply, i have to waite till sunday. Talking about making “life simple” for us!!!

I drew with a red line what “might” be 2 guys, one seems very fat. Also I can understand about the terrible service, when I tried calling them to ask about the logo 2 weeks ago it took me all morning to get a hold of someone..

There are many occasions when I need Dummy Text for my work. I might be working on a layout or an ad and I need some text to work as place holders until the final text is ready. So, instead of typing gibrish or using InDesign’s lipsum “Fill with placeholder text” option, I use an online real text generator. You tell it how many paragraphs you need and it will give the amount back. Here is the link.

For those of you who follow my Miskan posts, here are the pictures I promised of the paper pack samples. [Link]

Although many people tend to disagree, I really love the way the BMW 7 series looks like. Its big, and its different. Maybe at first it was a bit hard to absorb it but now that its been on the streets for some time its easier to understand. Since many people though complained about the look, BMW went and gave it a minor facelift. I think it looks worst worse now, check out what they did to the cars rear, it looks terrible.. [Link]