Posted by Kyle Ruane on Jan 2, 2009
Mood boards can be a helpful design tool in helping control client expectations and mapping out the direction of a project. There is a great article at webdesignerdepot.com about mood boards and their benefits:
Why Mood Boards Matter
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Oct 28, 2008
Wondering what to get the person that has everything this holiday season? How about a box full of trash? No, really. Over at nycgarbage.com, they sell tiny sculptures made of actual garbage from NYC streets. They even have limited edition boxes from special dates like New Year’s day and such. Pretty interesting concept.
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Oct 22, 2008
Artists and architects have been using the golden ratio in their work since the renaissance to help convey a sense of balance and beauty. Using it in different ways in our layouts can help things seem more cohesive and look “right.” I find the whole concept really interesting. Smashing Magazine has a really good article [...]
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Oct 14, 2008
At this year’s In-Howse Design Conference, there was one theme that really struck a cord with me, one that I think we have trouble with from time to time here at Solid Cactus, communicating the value of design to our clients. The issue was touched on in a number of conference sessions, most notably those [...]
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Oct 13, 2008
Last Weekend, Chris P and I were lucky enough to attend How Magazine’s In-Howse Designer Conference ‘08 in San Fransisco. I gained a lot of insight into some issues in the industry and heard a lot of concerns of fellow designers across the country. Here is a quick rundown of the conference:
The conference kicked off [...]
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Sep 29, 2008
In the spirit of the upcoming Fork and the Cork event near our headquarters, and because I’m a huge packaging nerd, here are links to some cool concepts and designs of wine labels and packaging.
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Posted by Kyle Ruane on Sep 23, 2008
Here’s 2 tutorials on how to resize rectangles with rounded-corners in photoshop while keeping the arc of the corner in tact. They’re short, but real helpful.
vector shape method
raster method
Why do we like rounded corners anyway?
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Sep 16, 2008
Here are some products that I came across that I thought were brilliant. It’s nice to step back from the computer screen once and a while and see great design and creativity show itself in other mediums. These kinds of things really get me thinking and inspire me, maybe they can help someone else too. [...]
Posted by Kyle Ruane on Sep 16, 2008
Has anyone else seen the hilarity that is cakewrecks.com? It’s a blog/gallery of celebratory confections gone horribly wrong. To think that a lot of these disasters were made by professionals, makes it that much better. Next time you’re having a bad day, just remember that, unlike the poor bastards that made these cakes, at least [...]