Safe Ways to Release Frustration (More fun than Yoga)

After a hard day’s work or dealing with rambunctious kids sometimes you need to release some stress and frustration. There are lots of negative ways to do this but there are also a lot of great positive ways to release that stress. Here is a list of positive ways to release stress that is healthy for your and some of them are fun as well.

Paintball

Yeah, you heard right, paintball can be a great stress reliever. What better way to get some of that frustration out than to run around the woods and shoot your buddy’s with paintball guns? The exhilaration of running around and planning your team strategy in paintball can take your mind off your problems and relieve the stress of the week. Getting hit with a paintball can hurt, but hey, no pain no gain, as they say.

Punching bag (workout )

A great reliever of stress and one that can also get you in shape, using a punching bag for 20 to 30 minutes a day or doing an hour workout can greatly reduce your stress and have you feeling healthy and rejuvenated again. In addition to a punching bag, many people like to set up a little corner in the basement designated as a stress free zone where they can do crunches, use the punching bag or do other physical activities to relieve stress. I think it’s a great idea and it can be very effective and fun.

Writing/drawing

You don’t even have to be good at writing or drawing, but simply expressing yourself creatively can help to release your frustration and stress that you’ve been holding in. You could be keeping a journal or you should write a fiction story, no matter what type of writing it is it can be beneficial to helping release stress. The same with drawing, focusing your mind on positive creative forces is a great way to forget your troubles and let your frustration wash away.

courtesy of: Articlesbase.com

I think this is a great way to create some art that has some feeling and passion in it. Taking the paintball technique and using it in an art sense could be amazing. For example, gathering a large canvas/paper/wall/any surface and some tools to shoot paint with such as a spray bottle or straw would be a good start. Instead of channeling the energy into actual frustration and maybe hurtful words or actions, it could be put to good use. Create a nice, meaningful piece of art when you’re angry.

courtesy of: MDEart.com

courtesy of: MDEart.com

courtesy of: Fine Art America



How to Frame Your Artwork Basics

Make Your Art Look Great and Protect It for the Years to Come

You’ve done the hard work of painting or drawing your artwork, now display it with the right frame, supports, and more.

Many artists put so much work towards their paintings that when it comes to displaying it they are at a loss. That’s too bad, because a good frame can make the difference between selling a piece or not. It is also important to frame a piece correctly so that it does not deteriorate over the years.

Choosing Archival Framing Materials

Since you put so much hard work into your paintings you want them to last, right? That is why you want to only use archival quality framing materials. Archival means that the materials do not contain acids that can break down your painting.

Since you really won’t be able to find a frame that is stamped as “archival”, you will need to find a mat that is. Mats are pieces of cardboard or rag board that separate the painting or drawing from the frame and glass. You can cut them yourself, or buy them precut.

Artwork can be damaged by sunlight, so you may want to choose glass that has a UV protecting coating.

All quality framing materials can be bought through art suppliers such as Dick Blick or through professional frame suppliers.

How to Choose a Frame and Mat

“Why is it that one framed image looks stunning and another just ‘ho hum’,” asks Suzanne Gallagher in her book The Fine Art of Wall Design. “It could be the image itself, but then again it might be the framing design.”

Gallagher bring up an interesting point. A painting relies on a great frame to make it a complete package.

So how do you choose a frame to bring out the best in your painting? In her book, Gallagher suggests using very simple and classic mats and frames to highlight your art. Try not to match the color of the frame or the mat to the colors in the painting. You want the colors in the painting to stand out, not blend in. Choose a frame and mat that has neutral tones that complement the art. Black and white art will probably look best with a white or black frame and mat.

Proportion is also important. Mats should be wider than the width of the frame, with four inches being the average mat width. The mat should be a little wider on the bottom (this is called “weighting”) to create an optical balance that will be pleasing to the eye. Small paintings or drawings can look very striking with very wide frames and/ or mats.

You will want to measure your art and how deep your painting is to determine the size of your frame. Many canvases will not fit into store bought frames because they are not deep enough. The depth of the frame will usually be listed on the frame.

Tying it All Together

Once you have the frame, mat, and framing supplies it is important to put them all together into a professional package. Make sure not to chip the frame, damage the mat, or put the artwork into the frame crookedly. Remember, the framed piece is a reflection of you as an artist.

courtesy of: Suite 101

I think that making your own frame not only allows you to make sure the elements are up to par with what you want, but they also add personality to the entire piece. When the artwork is created by you and then the frame is also, it makes everything more unified. Not to mention, the cost. When custom framing is out of your price range, this is a good way to save that extra money. Great article.

To learn more about framing and matting your work see Choosing Mats and Frames For Your Artwork and Sell More Paintings.

It may be a little more work for your designers and programmers to figure out, but the final product has the ability to be appealing and functional. Many of the sites we design incorporate both Flash and HTML for this reason. Our clients desire the chic and appealing feel of a Flash website but also want to rank high in search engines. It all comes back to balance. Balance the appeal with the functionality and your website will contain all the tools necessary to be visually stunning and highly marketable online.

You can however incorporate the best of both worlds. The functionality and marketability of an HTML based site and the appeal of a Flash based site by using both wisely. If you make sure all your text areas are HTML based, then you are able to take advantage of search engine optimization. In image areas or with navigation you can use Flash movie clips. Since these contain little relative info for marketing search engines and instead could be better used to help capture the attention of a wandering visitor, why not employ both Flash and HTML into your web site design?

“HTML vs. Flash Web Site Design”
-Michael Neubauer

The question of whether to use Flash or HTML when building a website comes up constantly. This article will hopefully clear up a lot of questions so you can decide which option is better for you to employ when developing your website.

First let’s look at HTML. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) has always been the standard coding language of the web. There are many other markup languages that work in conjunction with HTML such as javascript, .php, .xml, .asp, etc.

HTML is the most basic and standard platform for designing web sites. HTML is supported by all browsers on all platforms of computers. So whether you are using Internet Explorer 3.0 on a PC or Safari 1.3 on a Mac, an HTML website is easily understandable by all browsers.

But the biggest upside of HTML is its ability to be configured to take total advantage of Search Engine Optimization. What this means is that by being smart with the layout of your website, the wording on it and the meta tag information, you’ll be able to generate more traffic to your site by placing higher in search engine results. The more keywords you use in the text of your website helps to solidify the relevance of your product or service. By showing search engine spiders that your site is a good source of information on your particular product or service, the search engines will look at your site as being more relevant than a web site without as many keywords or pertinent information. Thus in turn your site should rank higher and receive more traffic than your competitors when a potential customer searches for your product or service on a search engine like Google or Yahoo.

A prime example is this website. Look at all the information on this site, from the articles like this one to all the descriptions of each client’s projects. All that information helps to rank us higher in certain search criteria. This article is about the fundamentals of web site design. Because “web site design” is such a common search phrase with search engines we try to take advantage of this by using that term throughout this article and in whatever relevant places we can throughout our website.

OK, now let’s take a quick look at Flash. Flash is a platform which can be used to add a lot of interactivity to your website. You’ll often notice animated websites with funky intro pages or navigation. These are sites designed in Flash. When you see something moving across the screen or animated in any way, chances are the site was designed with Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash.

Flash is a great tool to add interactivity and animation to a web site. It can be used to show movement or really capture the viewer’s attention. With the release of Flash 8, Adobe has added the ability to integrate video with website design.

The ability to create a stunning website in Flash is at a designer’s fingertips. Another nice thing about Flash is its creative potential. Since it is not confined by the rules of HTML, Flash websites can be designed to do just about anything and be laid out in any way the client desires.

The downsides of Flash though are as extreme as its up sides. It doesn’t work seamlessly with all browsers. Older computers with outdated web browsers often have a hard time loading flash web sites. And speaking of loading, Flash web sites can easily reach very large file sizes very quickly. What this means is that anyone with a slower connection is going to be waiting a long time to see a large Flash based website.

When a Flash based web site is created, it is exported and uploaded to the internet as essentially a movie clip. This means that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. can’t read the text that’s in your movie. By not having the ability to have a search engine rank your site your chances of being ranked highly are going to be highly impaired.

courtesy of: Dragyn Studios

courtesy of: gurtle.com

Sounds to me like the most efficient and logical way is to incorporate both, like they said. If one were forced to choose one or the other, I would choose html.  Sometimes the most important thing is getting the information out there, and Flash may cause problems with some browsers. Sometimes the simplest designs can be the most successful, and Flash seems to complicate things a bit too much if not used properly.

Biography

Pierre Bonnard gave up law school in 1885 and began studying the works of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet and Gauguin in 1888. Between 1889 and 1902 he produced approximately 250 lithographs for billboards, wall and theater decorations, plus illustrations among others. He was the founding member of the famous group of ‘Post-Impressionist’ painters and artists, ‘Les Nabis.’ Influenced by his experience with commercial art, Bonnard’s first solo exhibition took place at the Paris  in 1896.  Initially Bonnard found his motifs in the city of Paris: small, instantaneous everyday scenes, often depicted from an unusual angle. His streets scenes were gradually replaced by pastoral, idyllic scenes, nudes and interiors.  Over the years, Bonnard traveled to England, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Italy, mostly accompanied by his friend Vuillard.  In 1925 he got married and one year later moved to the southern French town of Le Cannet for good. He considered himself the last of the impressionists and he died on January 23, 1947. His most famous painting “Dining Room in the Country,” dates back to the year 1913.

“Dining Room in the Country”, which is currently held at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is an oil painting on a large canvas,64 ¾” X 81″ inches.  It is an interior of the dining room at Bonnard’s house, ‘Ma Roulette,’ (my caravan) captured from a corner. In 1912, Pierre Bonnard bought a country house at Vernonnet, a small town on the Seine. Bonnard’s wife Marthe de Méligny is leaning on the window. The painting is from that phase of the Bonnard’s life when he was greatly inspired by his wife in various domestic settings. It is a work of small, yet bold brushstrokes, extremely rich in Japanese style color scheme. Bonnard emphasized the expressive qualities of bright colors and loose brushstrokes.

In this piece, Pierre Bonnard has meticulously combined the animate and inanimate elements. For example, at the right side, there are objects of still life – the three plates with edibles on the dining table, the brown wooden dining chair, and the set of jug & glasses on the wooden rack in the background, lit by bright sunlight. The left side features a small white cat on the lawn chair, and the trees & grass outside. A remarkable aspect of this painting was that Pierre did not capture the scene live. To add the ‘Symbolist’ subjectivity of the piece, he preferred to paint based on his memory. It is said to be “One of the most spontaneous, most strikingly original temperaments.”

7 Keys to DIY Graphic Design on No Budget

Everyone talks about starting a business, launching a website, doing what you love, quitting your job, etc. That’s great but regardless of what you may read, people do indeed judge a book by its cover. When you start that business or website, you will most likely need a logo or some kind of graphics to accompany your text.

For those of you that have the ideas and not the skills to design a new logo, poster, or cover page for your business plan, you can either dish out some money to have a pro do it or you can give it a shot yourself.

Clearly there is a time when a professional needs to get involved. However, I like doing it myself and I have a learned a lot in the process. Take these notes into consideration next time you have to get a creative project done on no budget:

1. Think few and simple: A highly-trained, experienced graphic designer can integrate a mass of disparate material into a good-looking whole. I can’t, so I go minimalist. With the words, too. Less is more. Most people overwrite by 10%-25%; try cutting a tenth to a quarter of your text.
2. Every element you choose must reinforce your theme: An old-fashioned font on a technology announcement? Pink for something aimed at lawyers? Grey for something aimed at little girls? No. Just no. If it doesn’t reinforce the theme, no matter how much you like it, don’t use it. You can always use it for something else another time.
3. Get one, or maybe two, really strong graphic elements from one of the many sites where artists more skilled than you make their work freely available. My favorites are:
   • stock.xchg. Stock photographs like you’d get from a pay site, well organized and easy to search.
   • flickr. Thousands of mostly amateur, but often very skilled, photographers post here, and many of them let you use their photos.
   • the Open Clip Art Library. Usually well-drawn and often completely without restrictions on usage. Unfortunately, the site isn’t searchable. You can download the whole library for free, but it’s large.
   • deviantART. More emphasis on painting, drawing and digital art and less on photography.
   • everystockphoto and PicFindr, which are search sites that search a number of different free photography sites. I find everystockphoto to be the more useful of the two. (Often, though, the best photos I find turn out to come from stock.xchg or flickr anyway.)

   Make sure you check the usage conditions before you use a piece from these sites, as they do vary both between and within the sites. Familiarize yourself with the various Creative Commons licenses and what they permit, require and prohibit. Stock.xchg has its own usage terms, and individual contributors sometimes add other requirement such as attribution, linking to them, informing them or even asking permission from them before you use the work. Look underneath the photo to be sure. Flickr uses the Creative Commons licenses, and you can search by CC license either on Flickr itself or on flickrCC, which presents the pictures in an easy-to-view format.

   For deviantART you will usually need to contact the artist to ask about usage. It’s always courteous to let the artist know you’re using their work in any case. And if you leave a comment on the piece of art you used, you have the opportunity to link back to your own site and promote it.

4. Use two, or maybe three, clean, legible fonts: A lot of amateur graphic design looks like an explosion in a font factory. One font for headings, one for body text, and maybe one other for special elements is the rule to go with. Look on your computer first – you probably have dozens of fonts already. If you don’t have quite the right one, though, there are plenty of free font sites around. Two that are easy to use and well-organized are urbanfonts and better fonts.
5. Use three, maybe four, well-matched colors: Hands down the best site I’ve found for harmonizing colors is EasyRGB. It’s for web designers, but there’s no reason you can’t use it in other projects too. Pick a main color and then get EasyRGB to show you good matches for it.
6. Use Inkscape to bring it all together: Inkscape is free software, and fairly easy to learn. You can do pretty much anything you need with it for basic graphic design.
7. Align the elements with each other so that the viewer’s eye moves through them naturally and they seem related: I’ve used these principles to design several logos, a book cover for my novel, and a poster for my stop-smoking clients (using an image from stock.xchg).

If you can afford it, of course, use a proper graphic designer; they’re worth it. But zero-budget graphic design isn’t as hard as you may have thought.

courtesy of: Dumb Little Man, Tips for Life

I think there are certain instances where anybody can create graphic design, and there is definitely a time and place for all of that.  BUT, I also think there is a time and place for a professional to step in.  Its not very often that the average joe has the design eye and sense of layout that a professional designer does.  When the event or project is major, seek a professional.  When you are doing simple tasks, try doing it yourself!

Print This: the secrets of screen printing

“Screen-printing lies somewhere between mechanical production and a hand-made artefact,” says Ric Blackshaw. “So for the artist it offers flexibility and the chance to experiment.”

courtesy of: digitalartsonline.co.uk

Sunday 13 Dec 2009

Now that you can get great-quality prints from many good desktop printers, and where high street stores offer speedy, affordable, full-colour printing onto everything from CDs to T-shirts, you would have thought that a time-honoured but messy and intensive technique like screen-printing would be on its way out. You’d be wrong.

Screen-printing is enjoying cult status right now, as more and more creatives wake up to the benefits of getting their T-shirt, poster, and even snowboard designs professionally screen-printed – or even pulling their own prints.

In an age where digital glossiness and immaculate finishes are the norm, screen-printing offers something different: a tactile, handmade and unique product – no two prints are completely identical. It also offers exceptional colour quality and a broad range of inks, from glow-in-the-dark to self-inflating ink that forms a raised surface.

“Screen-printing offers a depth and richness of colour unmatched by giclee [inkjet] reproductions,” says Gerv Havill, who runs Mission Print (www.missionprint.co.uk) in Birmingham. “Screen-printing can also be used to apply spot colours and varnishes that an inkjet can’t handle.”

---

“The reason screen-printing is good is it allows you to produce relatively small numbers of high-quality prints, using unusual materials like metallic inks, glittery inks or varnishes,” explains Sebastian Lester (www.seblester.co.uk), a typographer who has recently branched out into producing prints.

Sebastian Lester explored custom-made paper for the limited-edition version of his Home Sweet Home print. “I’m really pleased with how it turned out… It changes colour depending on the angle it’s viewed at.”

Beyond that, screen-printing has its own special demands that challenge your design skills, forcing you to think about how you’re creating images in a way that you don’t when you’re knocking them together on a computer. A successful screen-print is almost a designer’s badge of honour, showing that they can work creatively within the format’s constraints.

“There is virtually nothing a skilled printer can’t screen-print,” says Ric Blackshaw, who runs screen-printing collective Scrawl (www.scrawlcollective.co.uk). “Gradients are easily achievable through halftones and quarter-tones… Most cinema posters are still screen-printed on huge industrial beds.”

Designing for screen-printing
It’s best to leave the advanced gradients and quarter-tones to the professionals, though: many of the most successful prints have a limited number of flat colours.

benefit to limiting your palette, too: as each new colour has to be printed separately, if you’re paying someone else to print for you, you’ll be charged for each one – which can quickly get expensive. If you’re printing your own, of course, you’ll be spending more on inks.

Above Sebastian Lester explains: “Flames is about big concepts. Love, life and eternity. I’ve drawn on powerful symbolism and our rich calligraphic heritage to develop this work… The aim was to try to create a dynamic, majestic, and hopefully beautiful piece of ‘type art’ that truly stands the test of time… I’m really proud of Flames. Below “I like to think that almost anyone can achieve almost anything in life. It’s all about passion, focus, and commitment. I wanted to design a dynamic, inspirational poster that referenced this self-help adage. It’s a three-colour screen print with a very nice metallic silver ink.”

Many find that working within a limited palette is part of the fun – and it’s certainly part of the skill. A solid knowledge of colour is key: being creative with halftones or selecting a clever colour for the paper (or whatever you’re printing onto) that becomes an integral part of the design can make all the difference.

The key thing is to have an image that’s fully thought-out in terms of how it will be printed. This takes careful refinement: don’t expect to arrive at your image in a couple of sketches.

Sebastian Lester says: “There are limitations in screen-printing and you should take them into consideration from the offset. I think screen-printing works best with strong graphic images with bold, flat colours.”

Above Yeti Mount Fuji by Phil Ashcroft. Below Han Double by Ryca.

Like graffiti, screen-prints benefit from clear strokes and a strong colour palette; many artists also have success making use of negative space or blank backgrounds, a la Banksy.

“Technically it’s possible to achieve a photographic quality, but you’d have to work with a dozen colours and it gets very expensive very quickly,” says Seb Lester. “You need to think in terms of supplying the printer with artwork in separate layers for each colour so he can prepare screens that can easily be aligned when he comes to print the job.”

limited editions, mass appeal
Screen-prints – particularly posters – are cult products for consumers too. It’s not hard to see why. Limited-edition, screen-printed posters offer design and illustration fans an affordable but pleasingly exclusive way to resist the IKEAfication of home decoration: with prices as low as £30 (although upwards of £60 is more normal) and small print runs, you’re unlikely to see your chosen print anywhere else.

“There’s still a feel that you’re buying something that the artist has had a hand in producing,” explains Ric Blackshaw.

And with many leading illustrators taking up the squeegee (or getting others to wield it for them), it’s an easy, affordable way for fans to own a piece by their heroes. Even for creatives who haven’t reached Jon Burgerman levels of renown, some good prints in short runs, sold through local boutiques, can be a way to spin income and get your name out there – but they do have to be very good.

Sebastian Lester cautions that screen-printing is unlike digital printing: typically you print your whole batch at once, rather than being able to print as many as you need, when you need. This means that the more you print (and sell) the more affordable it becomes: “You have to take a financial risk and hope you sell a significant number of the edition just to break even.”

The versatility of screen-printing – and the ability it gives you to produce professional but hand-crafted artworks – make it a great tool for digital illustrators and artists to have in their creative toolbox. If you’re good enough, it offers a potential source of income and then opportunity to create something lovely.

This article has shown me what an awesome tool silkscreening can be for any time of media. It is an easy way to utilize the tools you have and combine it with other media. As a graphic designer, I am very into combining handmade aspects to my work, and most of them are on the hand-drawn side. This technique is a more subtle approach to the authenticity of handmade art. Great article!

When is a bad logo design actually good?

I’ve seen it around a lot, that phrase to tell us there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I’ve often wondered just how true the statement actually is.

From time to time a logo design will come along that really gets people talking. More often than not, it’s because the design causes contention, and has some designers bending out of shape around the agency in question. In their defence, agencies responsible for contentious logo designs might say that the publicity gained simply adds to the effectiveness and memorability. But in saying that, do you want to be remembered for a logo that receives more bad remarks than good?

Presented here are logos that surfaced over the past year, and ones that got the design industry talking.

Italy logo

Almost a year ago to the day, Italy launched a new national logo. The design agency who won the tender was London-based Landor Associates, and they came in for a fair amount of criticism. Do you think it was justified?

What others are saying about Italy’s logo:

• Opinion on new logo for Italy?
• Not IT my name: Italia logo
• Italia: Like you’ve Never Seen it Before

London 2012 logo

We’ve certainly not seen the last of the London 2012 logo, designed by Wolff Olins, considering it’s another four years until the event. When first revealed, the TV ad campaign caused some people to have epileptic fits, which didn’t help the Olympic Committee’s cause, but not all designers are speaking out against this design. Can you see the positives here? Has the negative publicity lead to greater memorability? Indeed, is there such a thing as negative publicity?

What others are saying about the London 2012 logo:

• London, How do I Hate Thee? Let me Count the Ways, 1, 2… 2012
• Change the London 2012 logo
• Olympic chiefs under fire for ‘puerile’ logo
• Olympic logo triggers epilepsy

Animal Planet logo

Whilst only changing their logo for US-based audiences, the British design firm Dunning Eley Jones have conjured the Animal Planet a strange looking design that appears awkward and squeezed together. I have an idea what the designers wanted to portray, but I don’t think the finished logo meets the initial concept at all. International rollout of the new logo is expected this summer.

Armin at Brand New initiated an interesting discussion about this one: new Animal Planet logo on Brand New. One comment, from Danny Tanner, is picked out and quoted below:

The signature seems conceptually sound. Wild unorganized, chiseled, sharp, and unpredictable. Kinda like what would happen if you put ten monkeys in your apartmentand then left for the day.

Formally it leaves a lot to be desired.

What others are saying about the Animal Planet logo:

• ‘Animal Planet’ bares its feral side
• Animals gone Wild… Sort of
• Dunning Eley Jones creates new identity for Animal Planet

Wacom logo

Wacom’s new logo was created by Wolff Olins, the same agency who brought us the London 2012 logo shown above. It’s original, I’ll give them that.

What others are saying about Wacom:

• Wacom’s new logo
• Wacom Rebranding
• Wacom’s Icky New Logo
• That Wacky Wacom

Xerox logo

Striving to be seen less as a copier company, and more as a total solutions organisation, Xerox (with Interbrand) redesigned their logo completely in line with latest trends. Whether there actually is no such thing as bad publicity, this is one I’d not want to be associated with, and I’d love to have seen the other designs that were put forward.

What others are saying about the Xerox logo:

• Xerox Unveils Beach Ball As New Logo
• New Xerox Logo
• Xerox Hopes Its New Logo Doesn’t Say ‘Copier’

courtesy of: logodesignlove.com

These kinds of logos that are displayed above really make me wonder how many of these companies sought professional help. I recognize just about all of those names or companies and feel like their image is way too important to have not consulted someone who knows what they are doing. I am a student still, not a professional, and I feel like I could do a better job that most of those designers did. In my book, a good logo design consist of originality, legibility and versatility. It should leave an impact, and be memorable.  The Italia and 2012 logos both disobey one of the most important rules of logo design, which is legibility. They are not easy to read, and people are not going to work really hard to read it. The Xerox icon that is part of the logo has nothing to do with what the company is all about. I particularly like that comment stating “Xerox unveils beach ball as new logo”. Not enough thought and preparation went into this design process. Especially when two heads are better than one, my work would not go without revision, revision, and more revision.