Graphic Design Portfolio

Do you own an American or Australian Blog?

Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, December 14, 2007 – 4:07 pm

Aussie American

Judging from my stats, the majority of my readers are from America however I wish to help you few Aussies out there as well. If you own an Australian or American blog, there are communities out there that help you out!

Australia: I want to bring awareness to Blogpond - an Australian Blog community as they are there to help you out in your blogs pursuit of happiness. I have actually just recently been added to this community and in the short future wish to be in the top 100 Austalian Blogs. At the time of writing, they have 236 Australian blogs listed in their community.

And just so you know blogs are ranked by:

AU = Alexa Rank in Australia
X = Global Alexa Rank
T = Technorati Rank

America: I also want to bring awareness to a similar service based in America called Best American Blogs (though it doesnt seem to modereated to me). You can submit your site to be part of the American community and get your own ranking. At the time of writing, they have just under 450 American blogs listed in their community.

Other Communities:

There are heaps of other communities out there that are generic such as the ones I am a member of below.

Anyway, I just wanted to help the communities that support you.


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FUNNY Graphic Design Jokes and Humour

Written by Jacob Cass on Friday, December 14, 2007 – 11:23 am

 Funny Graphic Design

Below is a list of the most humorous video clips, pictures, jokes and parodies from around the world wide web, with most of the list being courtesy of AllGraphicDesign and the rest being added myself.

:D My favourite ones have a smiley face

Funny Graphic Design Videos

:D Original Design Gangsta’ - Great Rap Video

:D John Stossel 20/20 - Short & Sweet Humerous Clip

:D Enter The Serif - An Asian fight between Serif & Sans Serif.

:D Make My Logo Bigger - Parody of clients asking for their work to be the way they want.

Trust Your Graphic Designer - The Graphic Avenger - A video parody.

South Park - Mac vs. Pc - Computer Commercial

PC vs Mac Spoof - Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs

:D Holiday Photoshop Advert - A very humerous photoshop.

Paint Shop Pro vs Photoshop

:D How Not To Use Powerpoint - A parody of how people use Powerpoint in the wrong way.

Humourous Graphic Design Jokes & Parodies

8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad
As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them are communists. So to do my part to save the world from them, i made a list of things you can do when working with a graphic designer, to assure that they have a burn-out and leave this business FOREVER.

Graphic Designer’s Judgment Clouded By Desire To Use New Photoshop Plug-In
The aesthetic judgment of Paul Gaskill, a graphic designer working on a brochure for Valley View Apartments, was “severely clouded” by a desire to use a new Adobe Photoshop plug-in, coworkers at Blue Moon Design said Monday.

Hillarious Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine Front Page Graphic Design Error
This really ‘rights’ itself. The major magazine of Fort Smith, Arkansas’s partners in education issue that just came out has the following front page. Partners in Education help our local public schools educate (indoctrinate) our children often working with an elementary school or other individual school. Try to find the huge typo.

:D 25 Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer
A list of signs that you might be a hardcore designer. A lot of these signs can overlap other professions too. From my experience, the following list contains mostly truths, mixed in with a little humor.

Another You Know You are a Graphic Designer When
Another list of ways to know that you are a graphic designer

:D You Know You’re a Graphic Designer When
A list of ways you know that you are a graphic designer.

Mac / PC Commercial Parodies
A Parody of the well known Mac / PC commercials.

You Know You’re a Font Fanatic If
A top 42 list for font fanatics.

:D The UnSpoken Rules of Graphic Design
37 funny rules for being a graphic designer.

The Patron Saints of Graphic Design
A humorous and beautiful page about the unknown saints of Graphic Design.

The Way Graphic Designers Used to Work
Pictures of the tedious way graphic design and layout used to work. Not funny, but put a smile on my face because I’m so happy that things aren’t like this anymore.

Ad-Agency Print Buyer Can’t Believe They Want To Add A Perf This Late In The Game
A fake news story by The Onion.

Area Man Knows All The Shortcut Keys
A fake news story by the Onion

Indexed
Makes fun of his life as a graphic designer.

AdVerbatim

Pay attention, professionals –or not- in Communication, Marketing and Advertising. These things happen almost every day; sometimes we don’t even notice them. But they’re here to stay. They are verbatims. And yes, they’re REAL.

Murphy’s Graphic Design Laws
A cute set of laws for graphic designers.

This is What Happens When Your Dad is a Graphic Designer
Look to see what this baby’s dad does to her pictures. Cute.

Worst Company URLs
Want a laugh? Look at these web site URLs that spell things a bit different than what the owner was hoping.

Logo Design Humour

Redesigned Logos 2.0
Redesigned Logos in Web 2.0 Format

Make The Logo Bigger Song

Listen to the song made for logo designers.

:D Most Unfortunate Logos Ever

Hmmm…some of these logos are um…just look for yourself.

Flickr Photos Tagged with yay2dot0logoparody

Well known logos redesigned for web 2.0 for fun.

Ironic Sans

Logos designed for terrorists

How to Fake a Web 2.0 Logo

Web 2.0 sites are all the rage and if you’re lucky enough to be bought out by Google or Yahoo there are millions of dollars to be made, but how do you fake it as a Web 2.0 site? Well, all Web 2.0 sites have one thing in common … they look the part.

:D Fake Google Logos

Like fake google logos?

KFC’s Logo First to be Seen From Space

KFC Created a logo to be seen from space. Not that funny but still cool.

The Worst Logo Ever Gasp

Gasp, this is the worst and most shocking logo ever.

Rejected Google Holiday Logos

Here are some funny rejected holiday logos.

:D Naughty Logos

Logo design gone wrong.

The Worst Logo Ever

Really seems like it is a joke, but this logo is for real.

Corporation’s New Logo Changes Everything

A fake news story by The Onion.

Font humour

America’s Most Fonted

Ugly fonts, cutesy fonts, unreadable fonts, bad fonts . . . they have terrorized us for far too long, infiltrating our homes via e-mail, IM, and low-rent ValPak ads. Here, LMNOP presents the seven worst fonts–and the people who use them.

Type Obituaries

During a late night online conversation with another black, white, and orange website fan, it was decided that certain fonts should be retired. They’ve had a good run, but some things must come to an end. Whether, by overuse, obscurity, or just plain ugliness, here are some that just don’t make the cut.

Extra-Slanty Italics Introduced For Extremely Important Words

A fake news story by The Onion

DT&G Typography: Ask Yourself How it Will Read

Choose font and kerning well.

Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys

A fake parody news story by The Onion.

:D A List of Design and Fonts Jokes

Another list of design jokes and fonts jokes

Song Parody: I Like Big Fonts

A parody of the song, ‘Baby Got Back’

Alpha-Bits Now Available In Serif Font

A fake parody news story by The Onion.

Fontly Speaking

Another fake news story by The Onion

:D 2 Cheesy Font Jokes

These are cheesy jokes, but enjoy anyway.

Another Cheesy Fonts Joke

Even cheesier fonts joke than the one above it.

You Know You Are a Fontaholic When…

Much of the following has been ‘floating around’ the USENET comp.fonts list for a couple of years.

Your Monkey Called - White and Sajak on Fonts

Not really so funny, but cute.

Adobe Photoshop Jokes & Humour

Black Guy Photoshopped In

A fake news story by The Onion.

Photoshop Jokes

It all started with this, the hilarious Marquis de Sade picture, which was made in a flash of inspiration at work, one day. Within minutes of sending it to friends, jpegs started coming in thick and fast, as everyone began jumping on the comedy bandwagon. T

:D You Know You’re Addicted to Photoshop When

A list of ways to know that you are addicted to Photoshop

Fark

Photoshop Thread on Fark

If Leonardo Had Photoshop

A comic of what Leonardo Da Vinci Would have Been Doing if he had access to Photoshop

Acquired Paint Shop Pro Syndrome

The Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta today announced the identification of a new disease.

Jokes for freelance designers

Difference Between Freelance Designers & Onsite Designers

The difference between working in-house and freelance…

Gaping Void

This smart entrepreneur thought of this great idea, putting cartoons on the back of business cards to be remembered. They are called ‘blog cards’ and some of the cartoons are funny…and if you ask me, a great idea for freelancers.

Printers Humour

Guide to Using Printers

A very funny document giving advice on printers that will just make things much worse.

Aggression Against a Printer

Have any of you ever reacted this way?

Xerox Commercial

Cute Xerox commercial

A New Way to Print

A picture that will make you smile.

Hope you enjoyed the list, there is many hours worth of humour here so don’t view it all at once :)


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101+ Places To Get Design Inspiration

Written by Jacob Cass on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 – 5:43 pm

Design Inspiration

I have recently noticed a multitude of blogs and websites offering design inspiration and I have decided to collect a list of the best posts and websites out there that really got me inspired.

If you have limited time, I would tell you to check out these picture based posts that load all the images on one page. Inspiration from 2007 and 32 Inspirational graphic design pieces. ShinyBinary and 57Even and UrbanCowboy and DeviantArt are also good choices.

Inspirational Collections

DesignFlavr - A gallery full of hand chosen design. 100% quality.

60 More Places To Get Design Inspiration - A list like this of 60 more websites where you can get design inspiration. All quality.

34 Places To Get Design Inspiration - 34 more websites of where to get design inspiration.

12 Links for Web Design Inspiration - A great list of where to get web design inspiration.

Great Illustrator Designs - A great pictured post of great illustrator designs.

32 Inspirational graphic design pieces - Another great pictured list of great graphic design.

The Best Inspiration from 2007 - A huge collection of awesome graphic design pieces from 2007.

Thinking For A Living - This is an awesome collection of only high quality websites and resources that have been broken down into smaller categories. Not so much visual inspiration but a list of good places where to get it.

Design Inspiration Galleries:

Design you trust

Siti webdesign

Best web gallery

Unmatched style

One star gallery

CSS Artillery

CSS Vault

Link Creme

Splench

Muse

FormFiftyFive

CSS Creme

Netdiver

AIGA Design archives

Cool Homepages

Pagecrush

Beautifully

Moluv’s Picks

FWA

CSS Beauty

Light on dark

Stylegala

CSS Mania

Design Shack

Faveup

HOWDesign.com Design Inspiration Directory

Design Studios / Artists

OkapiStudio

Cecilia Lindgren

Robert Scully

Shinybinary - Nik Ainley - Must check this guy out.

ISO50 - Scott Hansen

Non-Format

Hulsbosch

Transistor Studios

Faceless

Adhemas Batista

Antonelli

Edwin Tofslie

Kouri Design

IN8 Design

Frost Design - Vince Frost

57Even - Must check this guy out.

UrbanCowboy - Must check this guy out.

Syrup Helsinki

Build

Pioneer10

Jop Quirindongo

GrandPeople

Gui Borchert

Spike Press

Blogs (Resourceful Articles + Inspiration)

Design Inspiration Blog

Freelance Switch

You The Designer

Abduzeedo

Spoon Graphics

The Tutorial Blog

Web designer Wall

N.design Studios

Silentbits

Smashing Magazine

Blogperfume

David Airey

My Many BookMarks

Check Out My Del.icio.us Bookmarks (You will find HEAPS more there).

The Obvious (or not?)

Try Googling ‘Design Inspiration‘. or anything else that tickles your fancy.

Use Digg and their design search

Use StumbleUpon and their design search

DeviantArt - A quick search will find many results.

Have you got any other REALLY good links?


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Can’t Figure Out Why Your Drawings Suck? Try this.

Written by Jacob Cass on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 – 7:21 pm

Drawing

I was just reading a uni friend’s blog and he mentioned this interesting tip about drawing and tunnel vision. This really stood out for me as I am not the best drawer and any tips wouldn’t go astray…

When you’re working on illustrations and drawings, and find yourself stuck or unable to put your finger on flaws, try viewing it mirrored. Both on the computer and on paper.

By holding the design in front of a mirror, and viewing it afresh you can easily pick up flaws - especially when drawing the human body. The proportions between differents parts of the body often tend to get out of line, even though it seems perfectly correct when drawing it.

Have a go for yourself.


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Customise Your Wordpress Login Screen

Written by Jacob Cass on Thursday, November 29, 2007 – 5:30 pm

Customise Wordpress Login

Did you know you can customise your Wordpress login screen? Above you can see my modified version or you can check out the live version here.

You may be looking for the Wordpress 2.5+ version?

This is more important for blogs with multiple authors or blogs designed for clients.

The process is way to easy - You create two images (login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif) and then put them into your wp-admin/images/ folder from your wordpress installation.

For a full tutorial on how to do this visit Asara Myshan or BinaryMoon.
For some inspiration visit this Flickr photo album.

It’s the attention to detail in your work that makes all the difference when you deal with your clients. If you have designed a wordpress blog for a client I would highly recommend making this small, yet important, inclusion. For myself, its not as important as I am the only one who writes on this blog, however for those with multiple authors it surely is a must.

Have you got any login screens you want to share?


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