Orange Element HOW Giveaway Part 2!
UPDATE: We’ve now contacted the 5 winners of our poster contest–thanks for your support! It’s time for Part 2 of our 2009 HOW International Design Awards giveaway! This time, we’re doing things a little differently. To give more people a chance at winning a poster (shown below), all you have to do is post a comment [...]
Orange Element Receives Two HOW Awards!
UPDATE: We’ve contacted the 5 winners of our wrapping paper contest, but keep an eye on the blog for a poster giveaway in the coming days! Thanks for your support… Aaron was thumbing through How Magazine’s 2009 International Design Annual this morning, and noticed some familiar work! Two of our favorite self-promotional pieces won merit awards, [...]
I Can Read Movies!
Check out these cool retro book designs by Spacesick. Inspired by 60′s book covers, these designs are based on fictitious novelizations of classic films and movies. Some are more believable as actual books, and some are a bit unexpected–Space Jam and Ernest? Either way, the attention to detail and quality of illustration in these pieces is outstanding. [...]
Paula Scher: Serious Play
Paula Scher of Pentagram is one of the Industry’s most respected designers, and has been designing innovative identities, packaging, publications, and environmental graphics for over three decades. She has worked for everyone under the sun, including countless high-profile companies and organizations, CBS records, and non-profits. Recently, she spoke at the Maryland Institute College of Art [...]
We are the Champions
Post-Superbowl day usually leads to one topic (excluding the clothing malfunction year): COMMERCIALS. So tell us what you think. We’re waiting on your feedback–loves, hates, indifference–we’ll post the leading contender later in the week. In the meantime, here is a little Steeler logo knowledge for ya. As most of you know, Pittsburgh is known as [...]
Design Your Own Snowboards
It’s cold here today in Baltimore. And when it starts turning cold, the folks here in the shop start thinking about snowboarding. So today I wanted to share with you a snowboard maker that has a pretty cool Web site where you can download a template and literally design your own custom snowboard. With Prophet [...]
Obamabats
Today is a new day. The American people have spoken and elected Barack Obama as their 44th President of the United States. His encouraging words of “yes, we can” are providing hope for multitudes of generations and uniting the American people on both sides of the aisle. As he makes his transition into the presidency, [...]
Rapid Change In Design
I wanted to share a really well-done slideshow that was passed along to me by Chris Wilson from Hester Designs out in Oklahoma City. I think it speaks to the importance of design in a rapidly changing environment. When you’re done, go join the Facebook group HERE.
Good & Coffee
I went to Starbucks this past weekend and saw something that I found pretty interesting, useful and innovative. It was a mini newspaper published by GOOD. The piece itself was very small–about the right size for reading over a cup of coffee–and it covered only one main topic. The one I picked up covered the [...]
You Need To Go To Pulp, Ink & Hops
The Baltimore chapter of the AIGA will soon be hosting its 11th annual Pulp, Ink & Hops show on October 23rd at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (What a cool place, by the way). We’ve been and highly recommend attending this event. Here’s a description from their promotional materials: Journey through 250 years of graphic culture while [...]
Will Body Shops Be Extinct Someday?
Check out this new concept from BMW. It was truly an exercise in thinking outside the box and using design to solve a problem. I’m not sure if it will ever make sense to produce, but it is pretty stunning and innovative. Read more here at Wired: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/bmw-builds-a-ca.html Garret Ohm http://www.orange-element.com
EJ Hooks Us Up With A New Blog Header
Thanks to EJ, the Orange Element blog has a sweet new header for the month of June. It’s awesome, and very summery (is that a word?). Nice job EJ! Oh, and don’t forget that you can check out all the previous blog headers in the “Header Design Archive” which you’ll find in the links to [...]
Design Process
As the marketing director for design and communications firm that does work all over the country, I work to extend our brand to clients and prospects every day. In doing so, I see part of my job as making these clients and prospects understand that great creative work isn’t the result of pushing a few [...]
Where We Do What We Do
Yesterday was a great day off, but I know you’re all missing all the juicy information that I usually host on this blog everyday, so….here I go. Thanks to EJ again for passing along another winner. Now many of you know that with any luck we will be moving into a beautiful new office space [...]
Role of Design In Social Media
Social media is an explosive new medium that is changing the way consumers interact with brands. Wikipedia defines it as: various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. Among the countless examples of social media popular today are MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, bulletin boards, Wikipedia, blogs, [...]
Design Can Change
Our good friend Rachael from Tilt sent me this link about how the design community in Baltimore and beyond can band together to support positive global climate change through sustainable design. Pretty good stuff, so check it out and take the pledge: http://www.designcanchange.org/ Garret Ohm http://www.orange-element.com
Vote In Our Sweet Poll!
As you can see at the bottom of the navigation at right we now have the ability to add a poll to our sweet blog. This week’s poll touches on something that I think about quite a lot. At Orange Element, we’ve always had this dream of developing our own custom designed product line. But [...]
New Header
Thanks to Beth Brady for designing the May version of the Orange Element Insights header. It looks amazing. I never thought I’d look so dashing as an astronaut petting my dog sporting “The Jessica.” Good work as usual, Beth! Garret Ohm www.orange-element.com
A Good Day…or a Great Day?
I thought everyone here at the Orange Element office would be able to relate to these prints…mainly because of my poster obsession! They are a set by artist Ian Millard and the title is “Good Day/Great Day”. In case you haven’t figured out the message, it’s always a good day when the mail carrier brings [...]
Designing For Renewable Energy
Nearly a year ago, The US Department of Energy asked us to create a Myspace Page for their Solar Decathlon competition. In addition, we also volunteered at the event and further realized what an important cause we were working for. Shortly after the competition, we also created a Myspace Page for the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen [...]
Font Hour
Yesterday was a really exciting day for our crew at Orange Element. It was the inaugural monthly Font Hour. Font Hour was an idea of Aaron’s in which we each vote on a Font that we’d like to see added to our collection. Each team member was asked to bring an idea for a font [...]
Maryland Film Festival Poster
Hi all, Here’s some more poster love, this time from me instead of Andy. You might remember my post about winning work with The Maryland Film Festival to promote their Friends of the Festival program. If not, click HERE. With the Festival itself set to begin tomorrow, we’ve just finished our first project with them. [...]
Adobe Guy
Every once in a while something that I have probably seen 5,000 times but never noticed catches my attention. That’s exactly what happened to me just recently when I opened an Adobe PDF document on my office computer. Here is what I saw: The design of this ‘welcome’ screen irritates me. What is the deal [...]
May 20, 2008 | Categories:Blog Posts | Tags: Bad Design, Commentary, Design | 4 Comments »