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Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

4 Tips for Effective Business Card Design

April 5, 2010

In today’s day & age, many paper products are slowly heading the way of the dinosaur. The Yellow Pages have long since been replaced by search engines; newspapers are begrudgingly focusing on their online content; eBooks are growing in popularity thanks to devices like Apple’s iPad and the Kindle. However, one item that is holding fast in the realm of paper is the business card.

I suppose one day the business card might become extinct; however, for now business cards hold fast as the main way to quickly & effectively trade information between two individuals. Because of this, business card design still remains as important as ever. But like everything, for every well-designed business card out there, there are 10 horrendous designs. In this article, I’ll touch on a few tips to help you effectively design business cards.

Hit the jump for the full article! Read the whole article >

Rebranding 3rd Street Beat Entertainment

March 3, 2010

Recently, Paper Leaf Design was offered the opportunity to rebrand 3rd Street Beat Entertainment – a group that offers hip-hop dance instruction, as well as show promotions and other related services. It’s always a nice break to get away from corporate design and be able to work with a company based in the arts, whatever branch of the arts that might be. New challenges present themselves, and it’s a good way to avoid getting into any sort of design rut, so we were all over it.

With art direction & project management from RY2 Design Inc., the challenge with this redesign was to make an identifiable & timeless logo for the overarching “parent company” of 3SB, as the gents behind 3SB also run Hip Hop for Hope, Santa’s Kids, Artists Emerge and more under this brand. We needed a logo that maintained a professional look-and-feel, but still spoke a bit to the nature of what 3SB does (without being too literal). The goal was to create something that balanced strength & confidence with movement.

The old logos made use of the easy-to-remember acronym 3SB. However, the design suffered a bit with the combination of a harsh radial gradient in the background, along with a dated 3D effect and questionable typeface choice (I would show them to you, but apparently we don’t have the rights to do so).

Here is the new logo, (art direction: RY2 Design, design: Paper Leaf):

Hit the jump to see the black on white version! Read the whole article >

Top Web Design Bookmarks of 2009

December 18, 2009

I read a lot of design-related articles & blogs online – I mean, really, what else can you do when you live in Edmonton, which was the coldest place in North America on Dec 13 at -58C with windchill? Anyway, I’m constantly bookmarking items I think might be useful for me as a designer in the future – some I never end up using, but some I definitely do! This year, I found some great articles on web usability (always good to be able to effectively communicate why you made a particular design choice to a client), WordPress and jQuery, as well as a few others. Here are my Top Web Design Bookmarks of 2009, with thanks to everyone in the design community who keeps openly sharing their knowledge.

Perfect Full-Page Background Image

CSS Tricks is a great website – a web designer’s goldmine, if you will – and this is but one of a ton of great articles on Chris’ site. I have yet to implement it myself, but I hope to soon!

10 Usability Findings & Guidelines

Smashing Magazine is well-known in the design community, and the main reason is its well-researched and written articles pertaining to web design. Check this one out for usability tips, like where viewers look most on a website (above image – I felt it needed an explanation or else it just looks like someone’s website caught Athlete’s Foot).

Hit the jump for more! Read the whole article >

10 Awesome Free Hand-Drawn Fonts

December 14, 2009

Every once in a while, a design calls for a somewhat sketchy, hand-drawn font. Perhaps it’s a gig poster; perhaps it’s for an !!ENERGY DRINK!! company; perhaps it’s something completely different. As a designer, chances are you usually have a ton of work on your plate and can’t always hand-style lettering unique to each project. That’s where hand-drawn fonts come in.

Some are sketchy; some are based off of well-known fonts; all are great. Check out this list of 10 Awesome Free Hand-Drawn Fonts! If you like it, don’t forget to check out our list of the 10 Free & Amazing Display Fonts too.