Here’s a great article on Slate about Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2019. The author brings up some really salient points regarding the insipid act of nominating a color of the year in relation to ongoing worldwide catastrophe. As far as having a favorite color, I’ve always felt that work does not allow for a favorite color – all of them have a place and serve a purpose. However, this year’s color – Living Coral – is one of my personal favorites.
The body is a semi-hollow Masonite and plywood Flying V loaded with lipstick humbuckers. I bought the neck used on Ebay and finished the headstock to match the body. I pretty much set out to build the most un-metal Flying V I could imagine. The mid-century kitchen yellow was the most obvious choice for me. Oddly enough, I think that cutting the pickguard was the hardest part of the build.
El Cometa is our first attempt a designing a complete bass guitar. Inspired by the designs of DanElectro Guitars, Rickenbacker and Gibson basses, this bass combines design elements from may different styles of guitar. The result is an instrument with a look and feel all its own. Continue reading
This month we have the new Hot Cherry Overdrive from Dang! Creative Services! This overdrive is the second stomp box in our Funktronic line of effects pedals. A clone of the classic Marshall Bluesbreaker, this pedal is a great example of a somewhat transparent overdrive. I brings a nice, natural sounding distortion with out bringing too much crunch to your tone.
These pedals were also finished in bright red by a friend of mine using a really fantastic automotive-grade two-stage polyurethane finish. Coupled with the cool, retro graphics, brought to you by Dang! Creative, the results, again, are absolutely stunning.
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for band flyers – after all, I got my start as a graphic designer by doing band flyers. I always played in bands as a teenager and young adult, and luck would so have it that I was usually the guy in the band with a visual arts background. Back in the day, we didn’t have Adobe Creative Suite, so I had to make use of things like black construction paper, dry transfer type, old newspapers and magazines to create elaborate collages that would reproduce well on a black and white Xerox machine. I remember my friends and I hitting the streets armed with a staple gun and a stack of 500 fliers the thick, black toner still warm on the paper. We’d plaster all of the telephone poles downtown, only to come back the next day and find them all covered or torn down. Oddly enough, I’ve seem some of these old flyers for sale on Ebay for $10.
I’ve been getting a lot of requests for band flyers these days, largely because I recently started playing music again in a local band. Today, I’m pretty much doing the same thing – using old photos and setting type to create a visually engaging piece that exudes cool and says just enough about the music to make people curious enough to remember the name of the band. Photoshop hasn’t changed flyer design much, however, most of these flyers designed to be posted on Facebook or texted on a smartphone.
Band flyers I have always considered the fun part of my job. If you play in a local band and need poster for the gig or a cover for your upcoming CD, feel free to contacts us here at Dang! Creative Services. We’re always happy to accommodate musicians and work with various budget constraints.
Last year we made a CD cover for our client, Dawn Drake and Zapote. The image on the cover was illustrated by Dawn, and we took the image and altered the colors to fit the look of the new CD cover. The results were great and the cover looks fantastic.
We set the type in Nexa, a nice, readable font that is easy to read at small point sizes and had many typefaces to choose from.
Once upon a time, before the we knew of of such things as .pdf, .jpg, InDesign or Illustrator, graphic design was an artistic discipline largely done by hand. All designers had to refer to a design manual to find the clear rules for safeguarding corporate or brand identities. Although design and identity guidelines continue to be published today, like everything else in the universe, they are now distributed digitally.
This month, Unit Editions releases Manuals 1: Design and Identity Guidelines – the first comprehensive study of corporate identity design manuals, and features 20 examples from the 1960s to early 1980s – the golden era of identity design. The book includes manuals created for institutions and corporations such as NASA, Lufthansa and British Steel.
Click here to view full article at www.californiareport.org
A pair of California-made hot sauces is the main course of a “spicy” exhibition that opened last week in Los Angeles. “L.A. Heat” explores the culinary and pop culture impact of Sriracha and Tapatio — two “hot-to-handle” condiments with very different origins that somehow managed to be a unifying ingredient in LA culture and cuisine.
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Union Jewlery packaging by Red Design
Laura Hussey, partner and creative director at London-based SomeOne writes about the influence of color in brand identity. Color is one of the most overlooked and underutilized piece of the brand puzzle, and for some reason, the power of color to convey mood and define a brand is often completely forgotten.
Hussey writes:
A study of the world’s top 100 brands (defined by brand value) saw 95% use only one or two colours. 33% of those top brands would like to think they own the colour blue, and 29% think red is their colour. It suddenly becomes irrelevant, it’s what you do with it that counts. Why be limited?
Click here to view original web page at www.davidairey.com
It’s a quick read and a good primer about color and how color relates to building a recognizable and memorable brand. I recommend it for those of you who are considering designing a logo for your business.