The Book Cover Archive is an archive of book cover design and designers for the purpose of appreciation and categorization.
The Book Cover Archive
The difference between a good designer and a successful designer is self promotion. Churning out innovative, high-quality work is important, but making sure the right people take notice of it and remember who it’s by is even more crucial.
Self-promotion doesn’t mean selling out, though. Clever mailers, a well-stocked blog, quirky gifts and memorable business cards all help shape Brand You. The article brings advice from the top on how you can take some simple steps to ensure your name is the first that springs to mind when art directors and commissioning editors reach for their contacts books.
30 self-promotion tips
Brand New is a website that’s sole purpose is to chronicle and provide opinions on corporate and brand identity work, focusing mostly on identity design and a modest amount of packaging. We cover redesigns and new designs. Nothing more, nothing less, what you see is what you get.
Brand New
Update (Feb 11, 2010): New Android GUI PSD v. 2.0
Photoshop file with elements of Android GUI. You can use Android GUI PSD for all of your projects. It was made to help open-source community with Android applications mock-ups.
- More resizable phone illustration
- More basic screens
Android GUI PSD Vector Kit V 2.0
Android GUI Starter Kit is a set that comes with several button elements as well as different interface options for Android GUI. Android GUI PSD is based on elements of Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help the open-source community with Android applications mock-ups. Most of the elements and phone illustration are made in vector path so they are easily resizable. For text, Android Sans was used.
Android GUI PSD Vector Kit V1.0
Population is rapidly aging and becoming a larger share of the marketplace. Thirteen percent of the population is currently over 65 years old. In 30 years that group will double to 66 million people.
People change as they age. Sensory, cognitive and motor abilities decline. The built environment is not typically created with the needs of the aging population in mind. How does the choice of typeface in signage systems, for example, impact the older viewer who is experiencing vision problems typical to that age group? Are certain typefaces more suitable to the aging eye?
Typography and the Aging Eye: Typeface Legibility for Older Viewers with Vision Problems
The icons or baby faces used as part of user interface have now turned into a major aspect of product branding. With powerful computers, enhanced graphics capabilities, advanced tools for illustration, and professionals to advocate rich user experience, icon design has become more important and complex than ever before! Windows Vista has raised the standard of quality icons even higher. An interface design project forced the author to think about ’style’ in icon design.
What are the possible ways to overcome problems related to style of icons?
- Create sample icons which are representative of the complexity and overall range of icons required for the project. These icons should be best rendered and acceptable in terms of desired quality and style.
- Define style guidelines (all attributes shown above as applicable) based on sample icon designs.
- Sensitize the entire design team to understand the style sensitive attributes of icon design. Help them notice and feel each attribute of the style.
- Select the designers whose style of designing/rendering is naturally similar.
- Lead designer(s) to sketch and compose all icons before they get rendered.
- Lead designer to monitor and guide the rendering (This is similar to the model of key animators and in-between artists followed in animation field).
- Review the stylistic aspects as per the guidelines.
- Ask users / designers / developers to identify the misfit icons in terms of style.
Proper definition of style attributes can be helpful in evaluating the consistency of style.
- Refine
Beware of Style in Icon Design
The Identity Archives Project is a keyword-searchable database of logos and brand identity designs from around the world. Registration is not required and use of the database is free and open to everyone- be it designers, brand managers, marketing professionals, educators, students, brand identity design enthusiasts or the general public.
The Identity Archives
The website takes you through the following topics:
- Symbols: How and what they communicate
- How handwriting developed and translated into printed type
- Typographic Milestones: 1450-1960
- A condensed history of the book
- Arts & crafts and the private press movement
- The poster’s development and social impact
- The twentieth century avant-garde’s influence of graphic design
- The Bauhaus
- The origins of advertising
- The digital revolution in graphic design
- New Wave, post modern, post industrial and deconstuctionism
The History of Graphic Design
This website, which contains the material of the course VA312, taught at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey; attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.
It talks about:
- Rocks and Caves
- Ideograms
- The Alphabet
- The Art of the Book
- The Printing Press
- The Masters of Type
- Breaking the Grid
- The Avantgarde
- The Modernists
- The Computer
The History of Visual Communication
This NASA site provides a guide to color design for information visualization. It includes:
- a step by step process for designing color usage in complicated interface graphics
- two detailed examples of design of aerospace displays
- a new color selection tool to support the recommended design process
- information about color usage standards and guidelines
- information about applied color science, and reference resources
Aerospace graphics get special attention, but much of the information should be useful for other color graphics as well.
Using Color in Information Display Graphics