Initial Ideas

For my initial ideas I write down 3 or 4 keywords that I would associate with the company and what they do. I then uses these Keywords to create a base for the logo and it also help me evaluate if the logo sends the right message. I learnt this from a graphics designer Andy Higgs he has a great keynote on logo creation.

Development

The next step is to review the logos and choose my favorites or the best fitting. Then see if I can add to them or vary them, possibly from something that worked in other logo ideas. I sketch these ideas out and review them again.

Final Idea

I then select the best idea from the pack and digitize it. I play with font placement and colour combinations. For this logo I started with pure red, blue and green as the colours for the waves because they are colours used to create images in projectors and TV’s. I then tried a few modifications of more modern and softer colours.

After this the final idea emerges to be the best variation.

The business card

For the first step I created a few shape and layout variation and narrow it down creating modification where necessary much like the logo process. A great site for inspired business cards is businesscard24.com.

Conclusion

I hope you learnt something about how to design logos and business cards. If you have any suggestion for changes to the logo I would love to hear them and if you have any suggestion on how to improve my process I am open.

How To

After you have made your HDR and clicked on the tone mapping and adjusted to you liking, then you go to the lower half (the bit circled in the blue box on the image on the left) and choose the colour tab. Then there is the option to change the saturation of the highlights and shadows, if you have a very distracting foreground which is in shadow a good way to make it seem less distracting or even make it add to the image is just to simply reduce the saturation. Here is an example of an image that I personally believe it looks better.

I really like this not so obvious feature and thought that many of you would appreciate me pointing it out.So go ahead and try it out and tell me what you think.

I would really suggest looking at different techniques of photography and trying a few out to see if you like them. When you are about to snap away at something look at the shading in the image and look left and right to see if there is any other detail that would be good to include. Not only is it important to think about you image it is also very important to play with the settings on your camera.

Even if you don’t have your camera keep on the look out for good photo’s even if you are not able to capture them you will be able to train you eye into looking for the right things to make a good photo so when you do have your camera you now what you are looking for to make a good camera.

I know training your eye sounds silly but it really does help because you are able to translate the image better from what you see to what a viewer sees such as if you were to think of putting a back and white filter on something can change it radically and the only way to know what looks good to to try!!

I have a giveaway of Picturesque for two licenses click here, and there are more to come.

In this post we will discuss web browsers on mac os. Many of you will be users of firefox and I was on my windows laptop and one of the first things I downloaded to use on my mac, but found myself using safari more and more and It is in my opinion the best web browser for the mac at the moment. Firefox for mac has a very windowsy feel to it and has a horrible UI and that is one of the reasons I don’t use it, but of course I keep it installed as safari doesn’t work with everything.

Step 1. If you have your bookmarks in IE you can export them and you can also do this with Firefox. If you can’t launch the app IE keeps it favorites in the favorites folder Firefox does not.

Step 2. OK now you have your bookmarks install the web browser on you new laptop if its Firefox open it and choose the import bookmarks under the bookmarks menu and that will do it. If you are using safari open up to view all the bookmarks and then drag the bookmarks file into the desired place in bookmarks for safari.

In this post we will cover how to get all your photos from your old windows machine to your new Mac. I also believe if you already have an iPhoto library you can do a similar thing to what we did to move iTunes.

Step 1. Backup all your photos on to a external drive.

Step 2. plug your external drive in to the new machine.

Step 3. Open iPhoto click file and then import to library.

Step 4. Go to the top folder ( the folder that contains all the photos) and press import.

Step 5. Let them import and then go through making sure you got all your photos and renaming events.

Step 6. Your finished now that was easy!!

That was one of the easiest ways I have ever found for getting your photos on to a new machine and in to a program. If you don’t know already the new iPhoto “08 displays its library as a package, so as to reduce accidental damage if you want to see your originals just right click and choose show package contents and then under originals and modified are your photos.

This is the first in a series of how to move to Mac or just moving PC. Where I intended to cover all the things you need to do to move to Mac, but could apply for moving from an old PC to a new PC. Today we are going to discuses iTunes and how to move your library without having to rip all those hundreds of CD’s again.

Step 1. Open iTunes (dur) Then go to the advanced menu and chose consolidate this will move all your music into the one library.

Step 2. Go to the new computer and install iTunes and run it. When it says scan for music say NO!

Step 3. Go to the iTunes folder under Music and delete it.

Step 4. Copy your old iTunes library to a Hard Drive/Removable Storage and plug into new computer. Open and copy to where the old iTunes folder use to be.

Step 5. Open iTunes at it should all be there!

Now that is allot quicker than ripping all the CD’s again.

As my MacBook Pro approaches (Friday or Saturday more on that at the end). I thought I would do a series about “Moving to Mac” so I thought I would put down some ideas and this is what I came up with.

Moving to Mac – Preparation (basics and an explanation)

Moving to Mac – iTunes (How to move you music over)

Moving to Mac – iPhoto (How to move you photos over)

Moving to Mac – Web Browsers (which browser, why and how)

Moving to Mac – Thoughts (the summary)

Its a 5 part series and you are reading the first part called “Preparation” I will probable break it up with some other post about initial thoughts about the MacBook Pro and Leopard but we will see. So back on topic I have started to prepare to move to my Mac. One of the first things that you can do to save time is to download all the app’s you know you are going to need to use, so I have done this here is a list of what I have already downloaded.

1. Skype

2. Pownce (alpha)

3. Twitterific 3

4. Firefox 2

5. Mailplane (beta)

6. Pixelmator

7. Quicksliver (Leopard one)

8. Flickr Uploader

9. MarsEdit 2.0

These are what I think will be my key app’s because I can go get less important app’s later. Another thing that you can do is BACKUP I know you have herd it enough but it really is the best thing just copy all the stuff you will need on to a Hard Drive and then place it in the right place on you Mac and you are off. I have sorted out all my files and am ready to backup to my new Hard Drive.

OK back to the actual Mac it has being delivered but I can’t get it till Saturday or maybe Friday because I am at school and it is a hour away and my parents would rather go to choir than see me (boohoo). The Unboxing Video will be coming probabxly on Monday and I will space the “Moving to Mac” series out with other posts about Leopard and stuff.