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Toyboy Convict Gets Sees the Light

Super Superficial to open a new illustration gallery | The clothing company which collaborates with artists and designers on a shared-profit basis to produce limited-edition clothes, will open a new illustration gallery in Covent Garden, London WC2, with I Married a Toyboy Convict, by Louise Zergaeng Pomeroy, who recently won the D&AD; Best New Blood Award. The show draws inspiration from real-life stories published in weekly women's magazines. The gallery, which will be in the basement of the Super Superficial shop at nd-coming and more established illustrators, with exhibitions from Hannah Melin and Matt Johnstone already planned.
Source: Design Week Online

Posted by Studiografik Design March 2009

Creative Growth Set to Bloom

Creative Industries Could Outstrip Financial Sector | There could soon be more people working with the creative sector than in financial industries, statistics from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Growth predictions show that, by 2013, the creative sector is expected to employ 1.3 million people.
The financial services, which currently 1.2 million professionals, according to Financial Services Skills Council figures. Nesta's analysis also suggests that, between 2009 and 2013, the UK's creative industries will grow, on average, by 4 per cent, more than double the rate of the rest of the economy.
The organisation predicts that, by 2013, there may be as many as 180,000 creative businesses in the sector, compared to the current number of 148,000, and the sector will be contributing as much as £85bn to the UK economy, compared to £57bn now.
Jonathan Kestenbaum, chief executive of Nesta, says, "Today's figures point to the creative industries, and specifically the talent we have nurtured within it, becoming a key driver in the UK's recovery from recession."
Source: Design Week Online

Posted by Studiografik Design February 2009

Generating G-Force

Generosity is Good | Generation G is a trend capturing the growing importance of 'generosity' as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers become more disillusioned with financial greed and its current consequences for the economy, the emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers is receiving recognition. "Me, myself and I" is being ditched by countless individuals. Giving is the new taking and sharing is the new giving. And in this business climate, can you really afford not to spend some time figuring out how to get a little closer to the people you work with and for?
Generation G is not just about giving it all away and for free, being generous doesn't always mean giving away everything you have. There's still a place for the bottom line and profitability, but the scales need adjusting in favour of more consideration for everyone you collaborate with.
Read more about Generation G here.

Posted by Studiografik Design February 2009

Creative Tension

Exhibition of the Century | Researchers at the University of Warwick and the Courtauld Institute of Art have worked together on a project which marries art and architecture with engineering. The project, Tensioned Fabrics in Art and Architecture, is based on work done by the research team led by Professor Wanda Lewis of Warwick's School of Engineering who model the stresses and strains experienced by tensioned fabric enclosures such as the Millennium Dome. The project is in collaboration with Dr Christina Young of the Conservation and Technology Department at The Courtauld Institute who specialises in measuring the physical behaviour of fabric supports such as the canvases of paintings. The results of the study including canvases, model structures and unusual images of the 'strain maps' produced during testing and computation will be on show at the 'Exhibition of the Century' at the Digital Lab, Warwick University until the 26th February. The exhibition will then be on show at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London between the 4th and 18th March.

Posted by Studiografik Design February 2009

Odd Geezer, Oded Ezer

The Typographer's Guide to the Galaxy | Oded Ezer is one of the most influential designers today, who is reinventing the art of typography. Recently published, Oded Ezer: The Typographer's Guide to the Galaxy, introduces his type art and hybrid typo creatures, including projects from his Biotypography series. In addition to these projects, this monograph also documents elegant and concise logo designs Oded Ezer has created for international brands and institutions, as well as his collection of font designs. Related Topics: Fantastic Fontstructions | True to Type at Christmas | A "Hole Less" Ink

Posted by Studiografik Design February 2009

Sustainable Visions

In a Planet of our Own | This International event sheduled for March 2009 is is aimed at creating design awareness on sustainability and simultaneously offers a platform for interaction for the design community. The events are centered around the interests of students, educationists and practicing professional designers. It should be lively, interactive and thought provoking and will provide great opportunity to converse with grandmasters of design, interact with thought leaders and listen to visions by outstanding speakers. For a few days, a spotlight will be thrown on the role of design in an interconnected global world within the context of sustainability. The event is hosted by is hosted by the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), which is a post-graduate design school at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai. The event is being organised in partnership with DesigninIndia.net

Posted by Studiografik Design February 2009

Mission Possible for Polaroid Pix

New developments over defunct instant film | Long before the digital age, the Polaroid camera was the classic tool for capturing, in an instant, the ordinary, extraordinary and explicit moments of life. Polaroid may have stopped production of its analogue instant film last summer, but a group of aficionados in the Netherlands has bought an old Polaroid factory with plans to bring the technology back into production.
The Impossible Project aims to bring back an innovative analogue material under a new brand name specifically for Polaroid cameras. Impossible b.v. backed by Ilford Photo, has taken on Polaroid's Enschede-based film-production factory, to produce film of two exposure types, each compatible with both the classic SX-70 cameras popular with artists and the more modern 600 series. The project has an experienced team of integral film experts from around the world. Among the team's challenges is retooling and modernizing Polaroid's integral film, as some of its key components are no longer available.
The new owner is the Austrian artist and businessman named Florian Kaps. Mr Kaps, 39, has dedicated the past five years to instant photography. He set up Polanoid.net, the biggest Polaroid gallery on the web, and the first ever Polaroid-only art gallery in Vienna, called Polanoir. Source: Springwise

Posted by Studiografik Design February 2009

A Classic Stamp of Approval

Royal Mail issues its first set of special stamps for 2009 | Celebrating a century of British Design and honouring some of the country's most famous design icons. The ten first class stamps feature instantly recognisable design icons from the 20th Century. From Mary Quant's daring mini skirt to Sir Alec Issigonis' original Mini and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's timeless red telephone box, the striking set of Design Classics stamps proves why British design is rated amongst the best in the world. To accompany the issue Royal Mail has produced a variety of products including, Presentation Pack, Prestige Stamp Book and Handstamps. Source: BDI

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

WWW Graphic Design

On-line graphic design school opens for virtual students | Launching all over the world with more than 28 dedicated country websites, IARC accredited The Graphic Design School, based in LA, has launched an innovative online learning solution that provides an affordable, one-on-one graphic design qualification to students from anywhere in the world at any income level. The comprehensive 12 module course covers fundamental principles of design and colour theory, typographic design, photography and graphic illustration. Students of the virtual classroom will be able to access step-by-step video tutorials for industry standard software Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, as well as the free open source equivalents of Inkscape, GIMP and Scribus. The courses are self-paced and supported by one-on-one tutelage by leading graphic design professors.
Find out more or sign up here.

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Baby Boomers

Designer-makers nurture export growth | A recent study by creative incubator Cockpit Arts has revealed that exports account for 30-40% of designer-makers' business, with the most popular markets being France, Japan and US.

Based on three years of tenant data, analysed by the Cities Institute at the London Metropolitan University, the study also revealed that almost a quarter of makers' business income came from supply of services to interior designers, architects as well as trade to galleries and retail outlets, whilst over a half was direct sales to customers and clients.

Significantly, research indicates that makers nowadays are more businesslike, as whilst three years ago only 13% had business plans, now over 70% were guided by a business plan. Cockpit Arts is the UK's only creative business incubator for designer-makers, currently housing 150 businesses. As a registered charity, it exists to nurture creative talent, from first beginnings through to international success.
Source: an Research & Media | See also: Freelance Survival Guide

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Premier Print Site Launched

Premere Print logo and website | If you are looking for a premiere print provider then Premere Print are now live with a brand new website. Offering full colour, on-demand and short run, digital printing ideal for business leaflets, promotional flyers, postcards, brochures and booklets. Premere can print from your own design and artwork, which you can upload directly. Besides there digital printing products, Premere also offer professional quality litho printing, fine arts giclee printing and a photo to canvas service. Studiografik Design created the new brand logo and produced the site content to be built by the
web development team at Firecreek.
Related Topics: Interactive Support | Newly Engineered

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

A "Hole Less" Ink

Ecofont for Green-minded Typography | A font that that reduces consumption of ink cartridges and toner is now available as a free download for eco-conscious designers. The innovative typeface called the Ecofont has been designed by Dutch creative agency Spranq. Setting out to explore how much of a letter could be removed while maintaining readability, the group found that the best results were achieved using a font in which tiny circles were intentionally left blank in the middle of each line, much like Swiss cheese. The result is based on the Vera Sans, an open source letter, and uses up to 20 percent less ink than traditional fonts, according to Spranq. Available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, the Ecofont works best in OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007 at the 9 or 10-point size.
Related Topics: Fantastic Fontstructions | True to Type at Christmas
| Oded Ezer - Odd Geezer?
Source: Springwise

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Design to Beat the Blues

UK Business Use Design as a Potent Survival Tool. | A new design survey from the Design Council reports that an increasing number of firms are using design as a powerful tool to help combat the tough economic conditions. Its National Survey of Firms 2008 showed that the number of firms who regarded design as integral to their operations had doubled in the past three years, from 15 to 30 per cent. The survey of 1,500 firms showed that design is fast tracking up the marketing agenda. Over half (53 per cent) of the businesses surveyed said that design has become more critical in helping the firm achieve its business objectives over the past three years; and the same number agreed that design is integral to the whole country's future economic performance. A new online resource is available to help business ride out the recession.
See also: Blueprint for Creative Prosperity | Designing Demand

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Best of the Best

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2009 | Wallpaper*, the international design, fashion and lifestyle bible, has announced its annual Design Awards with winners drawn from across the globe. Awards in over 70 categories range from Best Business Jet, Best Sofa and Best Ceramics to Best Women's Shoes, Best Spa and even Best Sink. The fifth annual Design Awards issue is available now. Check out the winners here.

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Future Interior Trends

Interiors Birmingham 2009 | The UK's largest interiors trade event, Interiors Birmingham, will yet again be providing designers, buyers and retailers with the perfect platform for exploring new and classic interior designs. The 2009 event will not only look at future market trends, but also consider classic British designs that have stood the test of time with the return of Design Britain. Now in its fourth year, Design Britain will be showcasing work by some of the UK's leading designers from the 1930s to present day including, Robin and Lucien Day, Earnest Race, Kenneth Grange, Jasper Morrison, Ed Barber and Jay Osgerby as well as new talents Ed Carpenter and Alexander Taylor. The show runs at the NEC, Birmingham, England from 18 January 2009 - 21 January 2009

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Bus Design Takes a New Route

New Routemaster Design Winners Announced | The competition to design a new Routemaster Bus for the London has been won jointly by submissions from the Aston Martin/Foster+Partners collaboration and Wiltshire bus maker Capoco Design.
The Aston Martin-Foster bus design envisages a highly-manoeuvrable, zero-emissions vehicle, with solar panels built into a glass roof, full accessibility, warm lighting and wooden floors. encouraging a spirit of warmth and community. The arrangement of the decks is driven by comfort and particular consideration is given to the selection of upholstery to create a tactile "living room" feel. The Capoco design combines what the company describes as "the best of the old with the best of the new". Utilising the classical design elements of the original Routemaster design with the very latest in efficient and eco-friendly transport technology. The competition included a special section for entries from children. The youngest of budding designers with winning drawings were nine-year-olds Thomas Staricoff, from Brighton, and Olivia Carrier, from north-west London. The winning designs from Aston Martin/Foster and Capoco Design, will be passed on to bus manufacturers, to develop a final proposed design.

Posted by Studiografik Design January 2009

Blueprint for Creative Prosperity

Supporting Growth in the Creative Economy | The creative industries play an important role in the UK and government is keen to ensure they reach their full potential. The Design Council has an ongoing strategy of consultation with people who work in the creative sector to address issues such as competition, intellectual property and the exploitation of new technology. This strategy is backed by 26 commitments from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in their Creative Economy Strategy document, Creative Britain: new talents for the new economy. The strategy document is intended to help all creative industries by supporting the work on improving professional standards being driven by the Design Council and Creative and Cultural Skills. One of the stated aims is to encourage firms to offer up to 5,000 apprenticeships a year across the creative industries by 2013. The stated commitments are supported by plans to improve access to finance for creative businesses and more strigent enforcement of Intellectual Property rights.
See also: Design to Beat the Blues | Designing Demand

Posted by Studiografik Design December 2008

True to Type at Christmas

Adobe Type Library Reference Book | An essential reference book that all professional designers will love you for this Christmas. A comprehensive reference guide that makes the task of finding, identifying and choosing typefaces that much easier. The Adobe Type Library has a vast selection of over 2,750 typefaces and the Adobe Type Library Reference Book not only displays the characters of each typeface, but also has useful reference charts with standard character sets for Windows and Mac OS. Fonts can be found alphabetically and by style, with an easy-to-use quick reference guide that features all the popular, original and obscure typefaces from internationally renowned foundries and award-winning type designers. From Abadi to Zapf designers can find out about the ins and outs of OpenType and MultipleMaster, ornamental type, symbols and the historical background to their favoutite fonts. A book any serious digital designer would mug Santa for.
Related Topics: Fantastic Fontstructions | A "Hole Less" Ink | Oded Ezer - Odd Geezer?

Posted by Studiografik Design December 2008

iPhone Designer Appeal

Creative iPhone apps | The team at Design Talkboard have listed 8 iphone apps which they think will go down well with designers who have Apple's iPhone 3G. Some apps appealed as useful organisational tools, others to help inspire or motivate creativity and one or two simply because they're cool. If you've hit a creative block, the Oblique Strategies app may get those juices flowing again. Color Expert, a color-based app, functions by providing a swatch library and interactive color wheel to select, showcase and identify colors from various Pantone swatches, web safe and HTML colors. PhotoWizard is a simple photograph processing application that lets users add special effects to iPhone camera photos. These and many more design related apps are available direct from the iTunes App Store.

Posted by Studiografik Design December 2008

Computer Nightmare

Win a Hawaiian holiday | Mozy the online backup and storage facilitator is asking people to put their worst computer nightmares on to video. Make and submit a video of your worst computer nightmare and get your family, friends, facebook buddies and any one you can bribe, bully or blackmail to vote for it. The most nightmarish in the top 20 could win a prize for it's producer. Voting ends midnight 16 January 2009. In conjunction with the competition Mozy is running a tasteful new t-shirt campaign bearing the legend "BACK THE F:\ UP"

Posted by Studiografik Design November 2008

Culture Crash

Huge Demand Stalls Heritage Connection | European digital library, museum and archive site, Europeana.eu was launched on 20 November. With over 10 million hits per hour the site was unable to cope and eventually crashed. The 2-year project that began in July 2007, gives users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers. Selected from existing digitised material available from museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections across Europe, the prototype site is expected to be
reopened within weeks in a more robust format.

Posted by Studiografik Design November 2008

Creative Match Making

ADC Launches Designism Connects | Developed by The Art Direcors Club in partnership with Idealist to support the creative needs of non-profits and connect them with creatives willing to give their time and talent to causes, DesignismConnects enables creatives to match their beliefs and skills with like-minded causes of their choosing.

Posted by Studiografik Design November 2008

Partners in Time

Graphic Design and Illustration heart to heart | Graphic Design and illustration were closely related disciplines in commercial art up until the 1970s, but the branding revolution of the 1980s and strategy based creativity saw a parting of the ways. Partly inspired by American innovators of graphic design and illustration such as Chwast and Glaser a reconcilliation seems at hand from a fresh generation of hybrid graphic designers brimming with energy and talent. The creative spirit of Push Pin Studios lives on with a growing number of graphic designers combining llustrative elements into engaging and visually
effervescent image-making in a new book by Steven Heller and
Seymour Chwast titled Illustration: A Visual History which
is published this month.

Posted by Studiografik Design November 2008

Newly Engineered

Studiografik Design's new website | We are now live with a new website to market our interactive graphic design services and digital art studio to SME's across the the West Midlands. The new site, launched in early November, becomes the keystone to marketing Studiografik Design's integrated print and web design services. Written in a concise and compelling manner to maximise our values and marketing messages, this is not simply a rehash of the old site, but contains fresh content that will be be updated constantly to help and address the business issues that SME's face today, the concerns they may have for the future and ways in which effective integrated, interactive marketing support services can benefit their bottom line.
Related Topics: Premere Print Site Launched | Interactive Support

Posted by Studiografik Design November 2008

Freelance Survival Kit

Maintaining your practice | With continuing gloom about the economy, the Artists Information Company offers 10 really useful tips to help freelance artists survive in a recession which can be applied to any freelance activity that's feeling the crunch.
See also Baby Boomers

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Annual Reports that outperform the FTSE

Annual report design can boost bottom line | Top FTSE 500-listed companies with strong annual report communications outperform those with weaker communications by 13 per cent, according to a new survey. The release of the survey disproves the notion that larger companies are better at communicating. Smaller companies show many examples of good reporting that larger companies would do well to learn from.

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Mail Goggles

Will you still respect me in the morning? | Prevention has always had the upper hand on cure, so Google's new Gmail Labs intervention to stop your drunken e-mail rants at ex bosses, ex partners and so called friends, Mail Goggles may help you think before you click send.

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Designing Demand

How can design make sense for smaller businesses? |
The Design Council is asking why small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are not making better use of home grown creative talents, and what could be done about it. The Cox Review recommended a programme aimed at helping smaller companies identify where creative skills could help significantly improve their performance and then take action to make this happen. As part of this process The Design Council are asking you to share your perspectives about Designing Demand.
See also: Design to Beat the Blues | Blueprint for Creative Prosperity

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Concept Design Tools

Simple tools for aiding the conceptual process | Generating more concepts early in the design project will create a more expansive understanding about the process and objectives the solution will have to meet. This article written by Victor Lombardi demonstrates three tools that can speed up the conceptual process and lead to better solutions for both designer and client.

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Fanstatic FontStructions

Create your own font designs free | Fontstruct is an online platform created by Rob Meekprovided by FontShop where anyone can quickly and easily build and share modular typefaces. You can see what designers are doing and get an idea of the digital road font design is taking by visiting the gallery page. There are some amazing and original modular fonts available for designers to use and be inspired by.
Related Topics: A "Hole Less" Ink | True to Type at Christmas | Oded Ezer - Odd Geezer?

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Suffocated By Choice?

Has 'designer' become synonymous with cynical mass branding |
In his newly published book, Deyan Sudjicexamines a world drowning in objects and led by media manipulation. His investigation of the qualities behind successful design in his new book, The Language of Things, published by Allen Laneexplores the conflicts between aesthics and mass production. Defining the visual vocabulary of our time it offers us a powerful new way of seeing the world.

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

Interactive Support

Olympic Support Live 'n' Kicking | A leading independent provider of multi-vendor enterprise support to the channel went live with a new creative impetus afforded by Studiografik Design. The new site offers users powerful functionality, expansive coverage of enterprise support issues and contains a wealth of business tools that reseller channel partners can employ to help generate their own support business.
Read how Studiografik Design delivered Interactive Support.
Related Topics: Premere Print Site Launched | Newly Engineered

Posted by Studiografik Design October 2008

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