Sheer, complete, unadulterated brilliance. Make the barcode an element of branding and design!

I’ve designed dozens of packages from toys to food and, I must admit, it never occurred to me that the barcode could be a cool part of the packaging. You pay for the damn thing, you download the image, and you paste it [...]

I did not make this picture up. Some designer and ad agency thought it was a good idea to make “raw water” look caca brown like this.

In today’s “I wish I thought of that department,” we present for your amusement and bemusement . . . raw water.
At a premium price, no less. What, as the [...]

This designer is pretty lousy at kerning. Can you see the problem? You’d definitely notice it on a sign.

Back in the 1990′s, the design world was roiled by the widespread use of digital design tools, which brought down significantly the barriers to entry in the field. Any designer, logo designer or otherwise, would have cost [...]

Normally a stock photo like this will cost you $50 (Web) to $200 (print). At Dreamstime it’s selling for the everyday low price of . . . free.

Perhaps one of the most significant bummers of running a shoestring venture is that “free” is often the highest price you can swing. And in those rare [...]

I normally don’t go for humor at the expense of people who are trying their best but don’t really know what they’re doing, so I would normally pass on passing on a link like this. But the grim reality is this: if you’re launching a new business on a shoestring, then it’s not like you [...]

Okay, so I’m on a packaging roll. My default mode as a designer — you might say it’s the hand I catch with as a designer — is minimalism. Because I have a pretty hefty background in cognitive science, I’m absolutely certain that “focus” is better than “lots of stuff.” Again, one of the challenges [...]

Although I spend most of my days in marcom and marketing consulting, I used to be a professional designer (the real kind, with formal training, not someone who learned Adobe Photoshop one weekend). Of all the challenges in marketing design, nothing is more difficult to do right than product packaging. And there is nothing in [...]

If you’re in the market for logos of any kind, you should hear Sol Sender’s two-part video interview on how his team created the Obama ’08 logo. Now, most of you can’t afford someone of Sol’s stature and ability, but if you listen carefully, you’ll learn much about what separates an effective design from an [...]

LogoLounge’s yearly roundup of logo design trends. Here’s the thing: for small businesses and entrepreneurs, the designers they can afford are a couple years behind the trends. Why are most of these logos and trends kind of sucky if not a whole lot sucky? First, nothing beats simplicity. Second, the best logos are the ones [...]