Inspiration
25 Fun and Colorful Electronic Music Album Covers
Hello readers! It’s been a while since my last post but I’m back to share with you my two loves – art and music! A lot of the electronic music that I enjoy has some really awesome and colorful album…
WMC Fest Insider’s Guide: John Boilard & the 300 Hand-Printed Posters Coming to a City Near You
An Interview with John Boilard of the National Poster Retrospecticus I can only assume you’re familiar with my friend JP by now. He’s not only my new-found friend, but our new partner in crime here at Go Media, as he’s bringing…
25 Art & Design Speakers that Will Leave You Completely Inspired this Summer
Introducing the Weapons of Mass Creation Fest Speakers Inspiring talks on subjects like design, creativity, entrepreneurship, community activism, and pursuing happiness as a creative go-getter, WMC Fest speakers are known to bring a tear to the eye. Let’s meet this…
How We Made Our Dream Job a Reality and the Tools We’ve Used Along the Way: An Interview with The Bubble Process
Thoughts from Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 5 Designers, The Bubble Process (written by Rez. added to by Sean) Written like a voice over from the Wonder Years. Hello! We are The Bubble Process, an ongoing, 8+ year, dream job…
50 Inspirational Posters from the National Poster Retrospecticus
Inspirational Posters like Whoa Today’s inspiration comes to us from someone you’re going to be seeing a lot of in the next few months. Meet JP Boneyard: designer, front-end developer, producer of art and music events, and new member of…
Weapons of Mass Creation Fest Interview with Designer: Scott Williams
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for my life to be changed. I need a breath of fresh air, like now. But until then, I have a friend or two I’d like you to meet. Let’s start with one of the designers who will be struttin’ their stuff this year at Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 5, Mr. Scott Williams.
An Interview with Rock Star Designer Tad Carpenter
He’ll be the last to tell you, but for us here at Go Media, WMC Fest 3 alum Tad Carpenter is a rock star. Designer, illustrator, author and teacher, Tad balances good stuff like brand identity, packaging and book design, illustration and interactive along with his role as Professor at University of Kansas. Surrounded by design (his parents were artists and his wife Jessica a designer, too), Tad creates whimsical, smart and all-around fun for clients like Macy’s, Chronicle Books, MTV, Adobe and Hallmark Cards.
Packaging Design Inspiration: 50+ Awesome Examples
Here at Go Media, we’re passionate about all aspects of design: web, print, branding and illustration.
Some may say we have too much fun, but we’d disagree. It’s just that we believe it’s really important to love what you do.
Recently, we were tasked with yet another awesome project – packaging design for Dirty Energy, a brand new energy bar packed with all sorts of goodness. We enjoyed building upon its core theme, “built from the ground up,” incorporating earthiness into our design.
Witness 20 Creatives Sharing their Struggles and Successes: the WMC Fest 4 Videos
Jeff Finley, founder of WMC Fest, said it best: “Something about the WMC Fest stage, people stand up there and start spilling their guts. It transcends career. They took off their band-aids and showed us all their wounds, and it’s okay because they know they’ll be supported and taken care of. They will be loved.”
Why Working from the Beach Could Double Your Income
So recently I took a couple of months out from design to go travelling around South East Asia. Get me. I’d love to peg it as an adventure where I was searching for the lost city of whatever to find the hidden treasure of something something, but this was really just a straight up holiday.
I really don’t do holidays that often. I don’t really feel the need to – I love what I do for a living so why would I ever need a break? That being said, I’d had one too many big projects with tight deadlines in a row and even I was starting to feel like I was getting worn a little thin.
However after just maybe a week of exploring the Orient I genuinely started to pine for my wacom. I missed designing. I’d told myself that this was going to be a proper refresh for me, so I’d brought no laptop, no drawing pads, not even a pen! “Anyway”, I told myself “Bangkok really isn’t the kind of place you could sit down a get a really productive days work under your belt”, and so I tried to put it out of my mind.
Comic, Creature and Character Illustration: 4 Pro Tips
Dei G of Deisign is a master of comic design. A provider of unique character and creature designs for the entertainment industry, as well as a generator of character driven covers and promotional illustrations, Dei has won numerous awards and has produced work for Paramount Pictures, Stone Circles Pictures and ToonBox Entertainment, to name a few.
His work is captivating, his characters jumping off the page with a refreshing sense of life, movement and vitality.
Just how does Dei animate his illustrations so exceptionally? Here are some of his pro tips:
100 Top Resources for Typography and Hand-Lettering
Some of the questions we hear asked often around the design community are:
What is the best way to learn about typography?
Where do I find the best hand-lettering/type inspiration?
Who are your favorite letterers?
What are the best typography and and lettering tutorials?
We decided to pull together some of our very favorite resources for you today. Here’s what you’ll find below:
Some of our favorite hand-letterers and typographers (some modern day experts on type, you might say!
Online educational resources
Awesome type and hand-lettering tutorials
Best sources of type and hand-lettering inspiration we’ve found
Super inspirational found-type collection posts
Books about type and hand-lettering
Off we go!
20 Excellent Examples of Retro Logo Designs
The logo is the visual face of the company. It doesn’t just tell you the company’s name; it helps to give you an idea of the style, tone and personality of the brand behind it. The way in which a logo is designed can affect how the company is perceived – even on a very subtle level – and great designers can make use of that brilliantly.
I’ve always been impressed by logos that manage to create an elegant, stylish and retro look. A vintage style logo can be such a difficult style to pull off, and usually involves a tremendous amount of work around getting the typography just right. This is where hand-drawn scripts come in really well, as retro logos often make use of custom, hand-written lettering – or heavily adapted typefaces. Other elements that are common to retro logo designs include the use of textures to add a level of grain or noise to the artwork. Often, shapes such as ribbons and circles to create a badge effect can help to add a nostalgic air to a design.
Go Media’s 100+ Must Have Design Resources
One of the top questions we’ve been asked recently is: “What tools, resources and programs do you use in your everyday lives over there at Go Media?”
Our creative studio here in Ohio City is filled with awesome, handy tools that keep us cranking out creativity, programs that keep us organized, and treats that keep our energy pumpin.’
Here’s a list of our favs.
Fears, Dreams, and Success with Jessica Hische
We are totally obsessed with Jessica Hische.
Letterer, illustrator and self-proclaimed crazy cat lady, Jessica oozes talent, crafting simple characters into candy before our eyes.
We probably don’t need to share with you all of her accolades: Forbes 30 under 30 (cough, twice), Print New Visual Artist, ADC Young Gun, GDUSA Person to Watch. We probably don’t even need to list her notable clients (Wes Anderson, Penguin Books, The New York Times, Target, Nike, Samsung, etc. etc. etc.!)
All we need to say is this:
Stunning Album Artwork
I do a lot of website design work, but I often find that looking at different mediums can help to fuel my creativity a bit further. I find that looking at product packaging design, physical print design and posters can all help to improve how I look at and work on design for the web, and helps me to come at design decisions from a different angle. Album artwork is one of my favourite things to look at when I need to give my creativity a boost. There are so many different design directions that you can go in when crafting an album cover that it’s refreshing to see how different artists have done it.
Comic Book Illustration Inspiration: 50+ Examples
We slept with “How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way” underneath our pillows.
The Adventure of Art with Jon Burgerman
Jon Burgerman is not just an everyday artist. Armed with Amsterdam paints, Posca pens and Sharpies, Jon can be found at the spot where art and improvisation collide. On any given day, you can find Burgerman on the streets of New York City, doodling, drawing and delighting in art and life. Recent works including Hot Girls and Hot Dogs, Tumblr Girls, My Great Movie and Hungry Games, illustrate a sense of humor and talent as sprawling as his imagination.
I chatted with Burgerman, of whom I am a huge fan, about life, craft and the adventure of art.
Modern Gigposter Design: 100 Stunning Examples – Volume II
Two years ago we put out a post showcasing some of the best posters of the previous few years before that.
Today we are doing the same thing. This article contains 100 stunning posters made in the last two years.
This second collection highlights the trends and changing styles in the gigposter world. If you go back and compare the previous selection to the ones I have gathered today, there are some clear differences. Now I know that there are still posters that get produced in the same styles as they would have two or more years ago, but overall, as a scene, and as a group of designers and illustrators, you can see the evolution of the gigposter. It might not be a dramatic and sudden evolution that is crystal clear to everyone, but for the most part it is slowly and subtly changing. There are certain dynamics that have changed or appeared which you will be able to see if you go back over the years and see this evolution in play.
40+ Excellent Hand-Lettering Inspirations
What’s better than pencil on paper?
We love to drool over the work of talented hand-letterers we stumble upon on sites like Pinterest and Behance.
Here is some work that struck our fancy as of late. We hope it inspires your own creativity.
Handmade Love: Update
I received many kind words in regards to my recent post, Homemade Love, about my mother’s annual Christmas cards.
These cards were completed each and every Christmas beginning in 1972, the year she and my father were married, up until last year. This year, my father, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephew finished the Sakai family Christmas card on her behalf, as she, the glue to our family, passed unexpectedly on October 22nd.
5 Gigposter Process Videos You Need to See Now
There is an ever growing haul of poster process videos being uploaded online. Slowly, we are seeing many designers shed some light into the way they create some of their latest work. In this article, we will focus on gigposters only, but don’t be fooled; there are plenty of process videos for other posters out there.
I have selected these five videos as they show some of the variety of different ways in which you can create a gigposter. There are other great examples out there which I hope this article inspires you to seek out for yourselves, as well as view all the other videos these designers and illustrators have uploaded themselves.
The Fundamentals of Great T-Shirt Design
What makes a good t-shirt design?
Sometimes it just feels like, well, you know it when you see it. But how do you quantify that feeling?
Despite a good, solid understanding of design, many are stumped and come looking to Jeff Finley, partner here at Go Media and author of Thread’s Not Dead, The Designer’s Guide to the Apparel Industry, for answers.
Jeff shares some not-so-obvious fundamentals of great t-shirt design in Thread’s Not Dead, so we’ve decided to share some of them with you today. We’ve also asked a few of our friends, t-shirt greats Brandon Rike, Dan Mumford, Glenn Jones and Anthony Hall to weigh in.
15 Stunningly Beautiful Landing Page Designs
It’s particularly difficult to design and build landing pages because they often need to appeal to several different types of people, as well as fulfil several different goals. Often they need to inform visitors, get them excited and interested in a product and help to show off the product in the best light possible. Not everyone looks at a landing page in the same way – some are extremely visually oriented and will respond better to imagery and bold headings, while others want to get down to the nitty gritty and will study everything you have to say. An effective and well-designed landing page will be built in a way that appeals to everyone. Of course, that’s significantly easier said than done.