Before the entry to the new year, I was asked to design for a campaign about New Beginnings (Nuevos Comienzos). It was to take place throughout all of January. New Beginnings, is about a fresh start to a new year, a reinvention of one’s image and lifestyle. In order to communicate these ideas I felt it was necessary to use Earth. What a new beginning looks like on our planet as a metaphor for the start of a new year.

In the seasonal aspect, new plant life comes in the spring. Its is the turning point of life. Dormant plant life comes back to life and animals come out of hibernation. Imagine green meadows of grass under a bright blue sky. This was the image in my head when I started this design. In fact, it is from that image that I extracted the color scheme from.

I thought it would be interesting to include a plant leaves somehow in the design, but the question was how to do it with out making the design look too busy. I tried many things with pictures, until I decided to draw a leaf myself. After playing around with it for a while I came up with two leaves that formed a V.

As for the font choice, I went with SF New Republic with a few tweaks of my own. The reason I decided on this font was the roundness of the characters. If you take a distant look at nature you won’t find a perfect square. Often you will find that things have curves more than they have sharp edges and points. Just take a look at the shape of the planet. For these reasons I felt that a round font was a good way to portray the earth.

The final addition to the design was the image of the tree branch. Do note, this is a stock image. I chose this particular image  because of its simplicity. It had that message of new plant life that I was looking for. So with a little color adjustment, the image fit right in.

The many uses this design was given: Newsletters, invitation cards, Power Point presentations, and video introductions.

It’s been a while since my last post. For this new year I figured, why not start talking about what I have been up to. I am honored to have been chosen again by CCE to design their website. Though the old design was good (not just because I made it) and suitable for them at the time, but there comes a time when re-invention of one’s image is necessary in order to move forward. I must say that this was not just a redesign of their web site, but a revamp of their web presence and capabilities.

Let me start off by mentioning that over the past years CCE has grown a large amount. The organization went from having branches in a few cities in Massachusetts to having  8 branches in different states. I mention this to give you an idea of why a more suitable website was needed to accommodate the growth.

At first glance you may be able to notice a projected style of elegance. The use of a solid color in the logo was a better fit than the original blue and red design of the logo. I found that a dark blue radial gradation in the background really made the logo and text pop in the Flash intro.

The Flash intro was created to guide the site user to the corresponding branch in their city or state. Once in the section of the site specific to the city or state, a slideshow is displayed showing information specific to the branch that was selected through the intro page.

The site also includes automatic user registration. In the registered area of the site users are be able to view content available only to them. In the registration process users are also offered a subscription to the CCE Newsletter. Joomla is my CMS of choice to accomplish all of this and more, it’s truly an amazing tool.

There is also a flash sub-navigation below the slideshow area. A more interactive approach to selecting a destination while viewing information about it.

Overall this redesign was intended to give CCE an elegant, more professional face by keeping things simple and improving web capabilities.

Visit the new CCE site at emanuelinternacional.com

Lets face it. Sometimes there is nothing more intimidating than a blank piece of paper to a designer. The situation is that you’re stuck and have a huge task at hand. You have to create something and it must be your best work, better than whatever you have previously done. The problem is that your mind is as blank as the piece of paper in front of you. Your design is stuck and lucky for you I may be able to help if you read on.

The reason you’re in this position might be because you have not followed a design process. For this I recommend an excellent article by Jacob Cass on the logo design process of top designers on justcretivedesign.com. Though it’s focus is on logo design, I find that it can work for just about any design project.

Now, if you’ve tried to follow the process and still feel like you cannot come up with a good design concept, then welcome to my world, the population is now 2. That’s right, this is a situation I often find myself in. But do not worry my friend, I have been to the edge and back.

So here are some tips that will hopefully get you inspired and help you get the wheels in motion:

1. Reduce the clutter

It’s hard to focus when you can’t put a piece of paper on your desk because there is no room. So reduce the clutter, remove old papers, Cd’s, folders, coffee cups and yesterday’s lunch leftovers! Trust me, clearing up your physical space will help clear up your mental space. In fact while you’re at it, just do us all a favor and clean up your office (or room)! You’ll find that once you do this you’ll have piece of mind, your ideas will flow and you will be productive.

2. Feed your eyes

Sometimes it may be that your eyes have just not seen enough to get that spark of inspiration. Many designs are ideas inspired subconsciously by things we have seen before, whether we like it or not. They don’t just materialize out of nowhere. So feed yourself some candy, some eye-candy that is!

This is a good thing to embrace as you need to have seen good design in order to produce good design. I should explain that by design, I’m not specifically referring to websites, logos, or advertisements. I’m referring to art galleries, architecture, sculptures. To me, anything that is well made is inspiration.

Treat yourself to a day off, visit an art gallery, museum, or go to the city. There will be a flow of new creativity embedded in your mind, whether you’re conscious of it or not. If you don’t have the luxury of going out, then you need a new job. In the meantime you can subscribe to a design or art magazine. Here is a small list of my favorites:

Layers Magazine

Photoshop User Magazine

Create Magazine

How Magazine

DG Magazine

Computer Arts Magazine

3. Listen to music

Music is powerful. Try watching an epic movie without the epic music. Not quite the same eh? In fact it doesn’t seem epic at all. Music isn’t only pleasing to the ear, it creates a mental and emotional environment. It’s good to listen to music while designing for the same reasons it’s good to do so while exercising.

Try listening to the Rocky theme song “Gonna Fly Now” while doing something. Makes you feel like a champion doesn’t it? Well if that music doesn’t make you feel like you can conquer anything, then you probably haven’t seen the Rocky movie. Quite possibly you just have a different taste for music, so I guess whatever floats your boat will work.

Final note:

If these things don’t work for you then I suggest you look for a local church, find the pastor and let him know you need a miracle. Just kidding! But seriously, these are things that work for me when I’m stuck, it may be different for you.

Feel free to give me your thoughts on this or just let me know what works for you. I wish you well!