Chester Santa Dash 2011
Chester is this year having it's own piece of festive Santa action, the very first Chester Santa Dash! A 4km run around the city on 11th December 2011 dressed as... you guessed it, SANTA!
The Santa Dash is a festive family event open to all ages. It starts at 9:30am on Sunday 11th December and the course is 4km long... it may sound like a like but it's fantastic fun and a great experience. If you're looking for that incentive to start running and want to start off with something light hearted and a bit of fun then the Chester Santa Dash is the perfect place to start.
The event will be raising money for 2 fantastic local charities Hospice of the Good Shepard and the Countess of Chester Hospital so please, dig deep and do all you can to help raise as much money as possible!
E-mailers – Do we have to sacrifice the design?
E-mailers, every time they are mentioned panic sweeps across the room. Will there be too much imagery, will the branding be lost, will it even get through at all or lost for all eternity to the mighty Spam Box?
One of the major limitations of e-mailers is a lack of consistency between email clients and their support of CSS, after all CSS is the only lifeline designers have when working with web to prevent all of their creative dreams being shattered. Take for example something as simple as "background-image:", it's a simple command, it's widely used across the web on almost every website. However, because email clients such as Outlook (post 2007) and Windows Live Hotmail we can't use it. I understand there are security implications and measures in place to avoid virus' attacking the recipients computer but there really must be a simple action that could prevent computers being brought down with a terrible illness whilst still remaining aesthetically pleasing to the user!
I recently came across an article which, quite clearly, laid out the varying rules and regulations when using CSS in email design. So, what this would suggest that the task of juggling the dos and don'ts is ever increasing and should you wish to design and implement a stunning, yet compatible e-mailer then the task is much larger than you first thought. I know from personal experience that the approach to designing e-mailers is much more basic than designing for websites and it actually hinders the creative look of the design as well as making it a challenge to follow through the branding of the client (unless they very helpfully have a solid block colour as their website background!).
So with all of this information on board, go, go and create beautiful emails but remember... Outlook (post 2007) WILL ruin all of your hopes and aspirations!
Mr Bang Tidy
I have just submitted my first T Shirt to the website Quertee. A website where member's submit their designs and users vote on whether to have these designs made into a T Shirt.
The T Shirts that are then chosen are put up for sale, normally for 24 hours, at a very reasonable price of £8.
This seems like a fantastic idea to me to get cool designs onto T Shirts for cheap. Also, it is nice to wear a T Shirt that has very little chance for someone else to have that T Shirt!
My design is a Keith Lemon inspired novelty T Shirt inspired by everyone's favourite ladies man and his infamous hand bandage. The simple description for this T Shirt would be Bang Tidy!
So please click and vote and get my design made into a T Shirt!
LIVERPOOL SANTA DASH
It's getting towards the end of the year and that can mean only one thing for me, the Liverpool Santa Dash! Each year a group of us run in the Santa Dash for our chosen charities to try and raise some money for well deserved causes as well as have some fun at the same time.
The Liverpool Santa Dash is a 5km run around the streets of Liverpool. On the morning of Sunday 5th December I will be limbering up preparing for what is usually a very cold run around Liverpool. So cold in fact that 2 years ago the temperature was -3°C and there was a very tricky coating of ice everywhere but on the course itself. Good motivation to keep running to keep warm!
This year we are running the Dash in aid of Alder Hey's Image Appeal which helps providing care for the health of around 250,000 children and young people per year, a fantastic local charity who we are proud to be supporting and this is where we appeal for you help, we have set ourselves the target of raising £200 for the Alder Hey Image Appeal by running in the Liverpool Santa Dash so please sponsor us anything you can, anything you can spare will help.
You can sponsor us at Just Giving who will claim gift aid on your donation for an extra 28% on your donation.
Please help us reach our target but most importantly help us support this fantastic charity.
Thank you 
COMIC SANS – NO THANKS
Comic Sans is well known worldwide yet it is widely hated by creative designers, especially myself!
My other half is a primary school teacher and obviously loves this "fun, rounded and childish" font and is the cause of much hurt inside when she suggests that work I do to help her should be in Comic Sans!
The BBC has written an interesting article on the infamous font and it's history:
COLOUR AND IT’S IMPORTANCE
Colour is the fundamental design approach to reach and grab your target users. It's key in a design's non-verbal communication and creates the all important physical and mental reactions of the user. Colours, if used well, can instantly convey the right tone of the site as well as convey key important messages to the user. Colour can be used to bring out all kinds of emotions whether it calms, excites or gives the a user the all important feeling of trust. Because of these reasons colour is a fundamental tool to create powerful graphic design.
One of the first things to look at when starting any new design project is to look at a colour scheme. It is fundamental to do this right, and designers, guided by the main principles of colour theory, and of course professional experience.
The Theory
Most people choose colours according to their own taste and end up with something that features the colours that they think look good and work with each other. This is fine if you have a good 'eye' and you can successfully choose colours that compliment each other. However, not all people succeed in their choices.
There are basic theories in colour which are very clear and easy to understand. It is easiest to start with the Colour Wheel.
The Colour Wheel
Invented by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666, he took the bar of colours, or spectrum, created by the passage of light through a prism and transformed it into a circle dissected into various segments, each segment a different size according to his calculations of it's wavelength and it's corresponding width in the spectrum.
The Colour Wheel is used by many designers and artists across the world. The Colour Wheel allows you to pick the colours that compliment each other. The wheel is made of 6 basic colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple. There are also mixes of the basic colours that are in addition to these.
The theory is that two colours opposite each other on the Colour Wheel will be harmonious. As well three colours equally spaced around the Colour Wheel in the shape of a triangle or any four colours from the wheel that form a rectangle. These colours should compliment each other regardless of the rotation angle of the shape when selecting the colours.
Further Reading
You can read more into colour and in detail the differences between RGB and CMYK.
WHAT IS GRAPHIC DESIGN?
I always get asked by people when I say I am a Graphic designer "What is graphic design?", and to be honest it applies to so many disciplines that I struggle to give a simple answer. Graphic design is all around us every second of every day. It's the box of cereal on your breakfast table, the leaflet on your doorstep, it's the side of your bus on the way to work. Graphic design is everywhere!
Dictionary.com describes graphic design as:
"The art or profession of visual communication that combines images, words and ideas to convey information to an audience, especially to produce a specific effect."
Now if I described graphic design like that the majority of people would be none the wiser as to what graphic design is. A graphic designer's role is to arrange and use different elements on different types of media, for example posters, branding, website design, packaging. With the introduction and wide use of computers the vast majority of people in the industry will now use computer software to create their design work such as Adobe Creative suite, a wide range of programs to cover most creative needs.
In my job I create a wide range of visual communication pieces such as:
- Logos / Branding
- Business Cards
- Advertisements
- Websites
- Brochures
- Menus
- Packaging
- Posters
I pretty much enjoy designing anything and everything and I find it fun, which is a big plus! So next time you find something pretty to look at, just think that in front of you is somebody's hard work, their pride and joy, their life for the duration of time that it took them to create what is in front of you!
CUFÓN – BRING ON THE FONTS!
For years now Web Design has been limited in it's use of web safe fonts and because of this designers were forced to either work with these limiting fonts or use images for their type. This is not good for the user or for search engine's to view the text in aid of SEO for the site.
Over recent years there have been a few fixes and work arounds for displaying custom fonts on websites. One example is using sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. I have tried to use this in the past and it was very awkward to implement and the end result wasn't as required.
However, after recommendation, I came across a modern day savior to web designers everywhere. Cufón enables users to implement any TTF (TrueType Font) or OTF (OpenType Face) into their website creations. The type is still readable by search engines while remaining extremely simple to install.
So if you are looking for a way to install a stunning and beautiful font on your next website, Cufón is the answer!
