Computer arts magazine

The Computer Arts Projects magazine is a monthly magazine that has branched out from Computer Arts Magazine and this months edition revolved around Illustration. The magazine showcases the work of designers who have developed new techniques of illustration. Illustration in combination with other media is becoming hugely popular at the moment and is an area I am completely facinated with. I feel the most visually stimulating work is illustratively based and find it a hugely flexible medium when combined with new software and digital applications. It is this revitalisation of the role of illustration in design that is swaying me to consider it as a dissertation topic, either that or find a different way of combining illustration with a digital media.

Hand built by robots

I bought this album recently and was really intrigued by the cover illustrations. They're very elegant and delicate, in a historical, old-fashioned sort of style although the characters seem to have no connection to each other. I have struggled to find a concept behind this design or any information on the art director and designer Steve Stacey which is a shame as I would have liked to have seen some more illustrations by the same artist and this random collection of figures really makes me want to find a reason behind this design.

This is a really clever site that makes you think about the way you interact with websites. It highlights the extent to which we are used to clicking when using a website. The website is easy to navigate and uses rollover buttons so there is no need to click. Can you resist the urge to click?

Logo Design That Works: Secrets for Successful Logo Design

This a great book for investigating why successful logos have worked and giving insight into the process behind creating effective logos. It is really useful as it describes the brainstorming behind certain logos and also provides rough drafts and experiments that led to the final designs. Here are a couple of the logos that i was most attracted to:

Kinetic

I love the visual language of this site. It is completely handrawn and other than the body copy it is constantly in motion. It is also incredibly easy to navigate and the constant movement of the illustrations make you want to view the whole site. It is clever and visually stimulating yet relatively simple. It also uses the media creatively by using it in the way animations were achieved before such programs as flash. You'll find the site here.

Web Design

I was given this book a couple of months ago and have found it a fantastic resource for providing examples of experimental and inspirational creativity in flash design and navigational systems. Its a great starting point for any research into successful and imaginative flash based websites. It acts as an encyclopedia of interesting websites and as with any such resource one must go and look at the sites themselves to understand how they work and the full concept behind each site. I have found it particularly useful as I was struggling to find such creative examples of flash in the massive number of sites on the web. It has opened up to me what sort of things you can acheive with this media and looking through the websites has begun to spark off several ideas for my own website showcasing my work.