“A photographer went to a socialite party in New York.

As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures – they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’

He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

– Sam Haskins

An anecdote quoted from the now late photographer, Sam Haskins. If you’re a photographer, graphic designer or work in another creative field, you’ve probably heard similar comments to that of the host in this quote, I know I have.

Can you relate?

What is your craft, and how often do your tools get the credit?

P.S. Surprisingly, after posting this I’ve had to delete quite a few comments calling the photographer various colourful insults not fit to be repeated here. It’s a story people, meant to be taken with a little humour. No need to get upset.

• Want to grow your brand? Start writing guest posts (0)
• Bizarre blog comments (10)
• Tetsuya’s restaurant, Sydney. Amazing food (0)
• Creative quotes (0)

An anecdote for creative types everywhere

Not a real product of course, but rather a promotional project courtesy of The Creative Method designed to:

Create an interesting and engaging invitation to The Creative Method Xmas party. It needed to illustrate what we do but also create a high level of interest and anticipation for the party. It needed to be humorous and memorable. It was also required to work as a new business piece outside of the Christmas invitation.

We based the idea on an imaginary pharmaceutical tablet that would solve their creative issues. Initially they were emailed a doctors prescription, followed by the package in a discrete paper bag. The invitation and the tablets were located inside.

The party included staff dressed as doctors & medicinal shots… The box and invitation are used as a new business teaser.

What do you think?

I’d keep a pack in the medicine cabinet.

• An anecdote for creative types everywhere (9)
• A new way to think about creativity and creative thinking (0)
• Creative quotes (0)
• Pantone Huey Pro review (2)

Take two tablets for creative inspiration. Imaginitol.

Step 1: Take on too much work.

Step 2: Discuss colours with client A‘s for their brand identity and agree to mail them samples swatches.

Step 3: Mail the colour swatches and tell client A they are on the way!

Step 4: Realise you mailed them to client B you’re currently working with who happens to be in the same suburb.

Step 5: Sheepishly ask client A for their mailing address which you confused with client B.

Step 6: Explain to client B why red and grey pantone swatches turned up for their green brand identity.

Your work here is done.

Your turn…

We’ve all done something embarrassing before, graphic designer or not. What’s your story? Image credit.

• Trading services with graphic designers (2)
• The benefits of sketching logo ideas (0)
• Tips for freelance graphic designers (2)
• Managing charity, speculative and free graphic design requests (8)

A guide to embarrassing yourself for graphic designers

Sending out Christmas cards to clients as a little thank you is nice is its own way, but it’s going to be hard to top these Pantone Chip Cookies by fellow designer Kim Neill.

If cooking is your thing, Kim has been kind enough to post the recipe and a how-to over at KimCreativeStar.

If cooking and logo design are your thing, maybe you should give this a try…

• Bizarre blog comments (10)
• Creative quotes (0)
• Does your logo work in… pastry? (3)
• All things Pantone – Colourful accessories for graphic designers (2)

Pantone cookies

It’s an unfortunate reality with many packaging designs, that however excellent the design, there is a boring, old, block of a barcode waiting around the corner to wedge itself into the mix. Perhaps no more…

An interesting twist.

This is something I hadn’t seen before, but will definitely keep in mind for the future. Thanks to Vanity Barcodes for the barcode designs shown above.

• A pocket full of business cards (4)
• Google logo designs for 2009 (0)
• Graphic design is a glamorous life… (2)
• Norway blows its new logo design (0)

Creative barcode design

Now, I don’t know exactly what Google bases it’s auto-complete suggestions on, but presumably it’s built around popular search terms. If this is the case, the graphic design community may be harbouring a dirty little secret.

When you’re all alone…

Do you use Comic Sans?

P.S. Here are some more favourites from Google:

• assume the chicken is a sphere.
• amish online dating.
• computers are about murdering you in a lake.
• what if grass hoppers had machine guns.
• who can keep his head in a chicken coop the longest.
• why do walruses go to tupperware parties.
• i killed the president of paraguay with a fork. how’ve you been.
• onions are my husband.
• penguins are my favourite sort of frogs.
• do you find it painful when i get funky.

It’s good to know people still find the time to ask how you’ve been after they’ve just killed the president of Paraguay with a fork.

• The bucket list of a graphic designer (4)
• 50 rebrands of 2009 (23)
• Sans typefaces for graphic designers (7)
• Google logo designs for 2009 (0)

Using comic sans in secret: Disturbing revelations

Sooner or later, later preferably… we’re all destined to be pushing up daisies. Before that time comes however, there are a few things in both my business and personal life I want to see accomplished. Here is my list to date.

Complete a project in each continent of the world.

• Australia.
• Asia.
• North America.
• South America.
• The UK.
• Europe.
• Antarctica ( can probably just cross that one off now…

Goals for my work.

• Run a blog, get work through it.
• Have my blog in the top 25,00 websites ranked by Alexa.
• Have my work published in a reputable book/magazine.
• Write / publish my own book.
• Get flown somewhere exotic by a client, anyone in Hong Kong need a designer?
• Design a Google seasonal / anniversary logo.

Personal hopes.

• Restore a classic car. If you happen to have a 67 Shelby GT500 or 69 Ford Charger lying around…
• Build a house.
• Sky Dive, the surgeon who did my hip replacements seems to think this is a bad idea…
• Go to Hong-Kong again…

How about you?

What’s on your list?

• Does your logo work in… pastry? (3)
• The freelance graphic designer 9 to 5 (2)
• 60 brand identity redesigns of 2010 (8)
• 100 habits of successful graphic designers (9)

The bucket list of a graphic designer

Gathered from around the internet, here are 40 quotes from graphic designers, a few artists, a scientist or two and some odds and ends.

A little inspirations for your creative career.

Paul Rand

Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.

Without aesthetic, design is either the humdrum repetition of familiar clichés or a wild scramble for novelty.

Without the aesthetic, the computer is but a mindless speed machine, producing effects without substance.

Form without relevant content, or content without meaningful form.

The designer does not, as a rule, begin with a preconceived idea. His idea is the result of subjective and objective thought, and the design a product of the idea.

In order, therefore, to achieve an honest and effective solution he necessarily passes thought some sort of mental process … Consciously or not, he analyzes, interprets, translates … He improvises, invents new techniques and combinations.

He coordinates and integrates his material so that he may restate his problem in terms of ideas, pictures, forms, and shapes. He unifies, simplifies, eliminates superfluities. He symbolizes … abstract from his material by association and analogy.

He intensifies and reinforces his symbol with appropriate accessories to achieve clarity and interest. He draws upon instinct and intuition. He considers the spectator, his feelings and predilections.

Sol Sender.

The strongest logos tell simple stories.

Sol was also the head creative behind the Obama 08 logo development, check out this post for a 15 minute video interview with Sol and some great insight into the project.

Milton Glaser

To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.

The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows.

Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.

Scott Adams

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.

Daniel Boorstin

An image… is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.

Emil Ruder

Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty.

Primo Angeli

A great trademark is appropriate, dynamic, distinctive, memorable and unique.

George Santayana

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.

William Bernbach

Advertising doesn¹t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

John Ruskin

It’s unwise to pay too much, but is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little – that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot, it can’t be done! If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.

Salvador Dali

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.

Freeman Thomas

Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.

Albert Einstein

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

Roy H. Williams

In marketing you must choose between boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you want?

Vincent Van Gogh

Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together.

General George S. Patton

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn¹t thinking.

George-Louis De Buffon

Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience.

Samuel Butler

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Charles Brower

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person’s brow.

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Creativity often consists merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?

Michelangelo

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Douglas Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

John Updike

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

Picasso

Picasso was in a park when a woman approached him and asked him to draw a portrait of her. Picasso agreed and quickly sketches her. After handing the sketch to her, she is pleased with the likeness and asks how much she owed to him.

Picasso replies: “$5,000.”

The woman screamed, “but it took you only five minutes.”

“No, madam, it took me all my life,” replied Picasso.

Unknown

The creative ‘act’ is a process, not a moment.

Got any more?

If you know any other interesting quotes I’d like to hear them. Image credit.

• Creative barcode design (0)
• Take two tablets for creative inspiration. Imaginitol. (0)
• 10 beautiful bottle designs (9)
• Does your logo work in… pastry? (3)

Creative quotes

@issue have posted their latest quiz, the know your brand alphabet featuring a letter from 26 brand marks and logotypes. A few of the brands no longer exist so don’t feel bad if you miss a few.

How many did you get?

17 for me, how about you?

• New Good Humour logo design, where’s the heart? (0)
• Pepsi’s latest brand identity, 11 and counting (0)
• Choosing a memorable brand name (3)
• What colours suit your brand identity design? (4)

The brand alphabet quiz

So you have a bold colourful logo design and you display it with pride. Your logo also works well in black and white, as every logo should.

I believe a logo needs to work beyond these simple applications. A good logo must work, as apple strudel.

I’m joking obviously. Seriously though, give me a free hour and this is what you get, my personal logo stuffed full of apple and wrapped in pastry. I’ll admit the grey pastry doesn’t look terribly appealing but I promise it tasted good.

Yummy.

Have you used your logo anywhere fun that you’d like to share? Or maybe you can suggest a new hobby for me…

• Apple may take legal action against Woolworths for logo similarities (12)
• A collection of monogram favourites (0)
• A logo by any other name (7)
• Keep it simple stupid – Logo design 101 (5)

Does your logo work in… pastry?

We all know some people love their typography, but wow. If it’s not enough for you to sit at your typographic chair and table you can always give yourself a good scrub with this soap.

Read on for more typographic accessories to satisfy your designer cravings.

Wooden table by Crate and Barrel.

A range of pillows by Bonjour Mon Coussin. There are 8 to choose from.

No more boring green canvas bags from the grocery store for you.

Prop your drinks up in style with these coasters

Not quite sure what you’d store in those centre diagonals but i still want a huge M to keep my socks in.

Relax in style with this chair.

If you have to lug around a huge handbag it might as well look good.

What takes your fancy?

I’ve got my eye on that wooden table, how about you?

• 10 top typographic portraits (0)
• Alphabet keyrings (0)
• The Periodic Table of Typefaces (0)
• The play more more more notepad – Turn scrap paper into sport (2)

Typographic treats

I knew Pantone made more than just ink and swatch books, I’d seen a few bags and what not around the place. I just found these over at Fubiz, Pantone bags, badges, cups, shirts and even muffins.

If your looking for some design related goodies check them out, the sites in French but you’ll find a link to translate the page to English at the top.

So much to choose from.

Hopefully they do a button in my red.

• 0 to 255. Colour finder tool for web designers (5)
• Pantone rainbow to promote design books (0)
• Pantone paint cans (7)
• Pantone cookies (6)

All things Pantone – Colourful accessories for graphic designers

If you love your food and/or live in Sydney you might have heard of the restaurant Tetsuya’s. A few years ago we celebrated my birthday there and thought we might do the same again in a little over a months time.

I expected there to be a wait before a booking was available, Tetsuya’s has won countless awards and is considered one of the best restaurants in Australia, if not anywhere. Hoping for a booking in late March I was told the first available table was in September… a mere 7 month wait. It must still be good…

Tetsuya’s serves a 13 course degustation menu, which changes from night to night. When we dined we received 3 entrees, 6 mains and 5 desserts, and I managed to take a photo of each course. If you love your food or are looking for a special night out in Sydney, read on, hopefully you’ll get to enjoy it as much as I did.

You’ll have to forgive the poor descriptions, they don’t do the courses justice, they’re all I could muster from 5 year old memories. Enjoy.

Entrees

A single oyster in a sweet marinade with chives.

I think the glass on the left was along the lines of bread-pudding with caviar, while the glass on the right was a blood orange dish.

A small selection of treats for the third entree course.

Mains

The first main served was Tetsuya’s signature dish, herb crusted ocean trout.

Lobster ravioli.

Snapper carpaccio.

I think this was a quail.

Beef fillet with spinach and mushroom.

Another beef dish served with eggplant, tomato & watercress.

Desserts

Cheese platter.

Vanilla bean ice cream with figs.

Vanilla panacotta.

A chocolate mousse.

I forget…

A finally an extra dessert for the birthday-boy. A flourless chocolate cake with gelato.

What a night.

If you’re looking for a wonderful dining experience ( in about 7 months time… ) I don’t know of anywhere better than Tetsuya’s.

• The freelance graphic designer 9 to 5 (2)
• Bizarre blog comments (10)

Tetsuya’s restaurant, Sydney. Amazing food