Blog.Exxcorpio » Graphic Design

500 Custom Greeting Cards Giveaway From Digital Room: Winners Announce

Luis Lopez — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:39:41 +0000

Is time to announce the winners of the first giveaway here on Blog.Exxcorpio. After this announcement two lucky readers who left a comment on the giveaway article, will receive each 250 Custom Greeting Cards by Digital Room.

The winners are:

Lauren
Miguel

Congratulations Lauren and Miguel!!!!! You will be contacted by email!

The first giveaway on Blog.Exxcorpio is gone, Now thanks again to Digital Room part of the UPrinting Network for giving my readers a chance to win these Custom Greeting Cards thanks to everyone who participated on the giveaway and those who helped me to spread the giveaway. I hope you guys enjoy this kind of prizes, because I want to do some others.

Watch out for another giveaway in next days. Make sure to Follow me on Twitter and Subscribe to my RSS Feed so you will be updated.

50+ HD Desktop Wallpapers For Your Inspiration – Abstract and 3D

Luis Lopez — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:53:03 +0000

Don’t you love when you turn on the computer and you have a beautiful and inspiring image as wallpaper when starting the day , that brings to you motivation and why not inspiration for the future work.

Some people are crazy about having different images every day or even every X set of time, that is not my case, I normally have it at least for a week and then change it, for something new that I carefully picked from internet or maybe one made by my self, that’s what I have in this moment, that way you can really appreciate the Wallpaper.

As my first collection of Desktop Wallpapers I choose an excellent round of abstract and 3D images because rendering this kind of images is something really interesting and the result inspirational, I hand picked all this wallpapers for your pleasure and delight from some of the best artist, so if you like it, let me know what you think with a comment.

Here you have 50+ HD Desktop Wallpapers For Your Inspiration – Abstract and 3D

fish taco 001

Rainbow

Electron Digital

The cubes2

Time

Gods Tetris

deVINE WP Pack

Rip This

Christmas Imperfection

The Hand of God

Two of a Kind

Number 3

Higher

Antiseptic

Fifty Percent Grey

Classic Love

Opposites Attract

Cingular

Arrow Directional

Angiospermae

AquaCube

Splice

AB

Piano

Rubix

Vanilla Arrangement V3

Plastique

Pollinate Digital

Space Metal

Space Oyster

Computer Plastic

Vortex

Olympic

Nuke

Transfraction

Fancy

Hyperspace

Gold Cell

Return to Earth

SPLAT

Wormhole

Bubblegum

Drop

Computer Love

Infinite Protection

Blender

M3 Duality

Noodley

The Art Of Freelancing

The Pinksplosion

bl00min

peppered 001

Puddle Of Blush

EveryWhere

As The Sun Sets On Mushroom

Fly Agaric Fly Hawaii

86 aka Feed Me Seymour

bl00m 004 a wall redux

Peachy

Twistaculariffic

Now that you’ve seen all this great HD Wallpapers what do you think. Would you be interested in another kind of collection? Let me a comment and tell me what style or theme you like it.

30 Excellent Logo Design Galleries For Your Inspiration

Luis Lopez — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:05:52 +0000

Every day there are more and more sites where we can showcase our work as Designers; Logo Galleries, CSS Galleies, Wp, Joomla, Drupal, Flash, Vector galleries etc, all this places are a collection of designers work with the idea to promote themselves as professionals on the field they are.

But I think their principal visitor type for this kind of galleries is, in most cases, other designers in quest for inspiration, not really to much clients searching for a designer who makes logos, are going to this places, only Us the designers community, we found in those sites so much inspiration that sometimes we can spend hours and hours, seeing the talent of our colleagues, and grabbing some little ideas for our projects, with that, I’m not talking about copying other designers logos, I’m just saying we found inspiration in this places, and we share our best work to the world.

I’ve put together a list of 30 of these such sites that showcases great logos. If you’re in the process of creating a new brand for you or for a client, then these sites can really help you, any time you need a bit of inspiration you just can make a little tour and get new ideas.

So let’s see the 30 Excellent Logo Design Galleries For Your Inspiration.

1. Logo Pond

2. Logo Galleria

3. Logo Faves

4. Logospire

5. Creattica

6. Logo Fury

7. Logo of the Day

8. LogoMoose

9. Design Dosage

10. LogoGala

11. Logotwo

12. Logolog

13. Logoed

14. Logo Lounge

15. CarbonMade

16. Logo Sauce

17. Identity Archives

18. Logo From Dreams

19. Deviant Art Logo Category

20. LemonFlip Logo Category

21. Stationary Style

22. Logo Gallery

23. Sport Logo Day

24. Logofi

25. Logo Orange

26. Brands of the world

27. Lo8os

28. Logo Design Love

29. Design Guide

30. The Design Inspiration

Do you go to Logo design galleries for inspiration? or do you show your work on these kind of websites?

Share your thoughts with a comment

50 Best Examples Of Select Your Language Pages

Luis Lopez — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:21:08 +0000

Select Your Language Page is that single page you see when you arrived for the first time on a website like cocacola.com or nintendo.com, a pre-home page, with a list of options: language, country, region, etc, normally related to a big brand or name with presence all over the world or some many others sites with the idea of being seen in any country, like mini-sites or promotional sites even personal portfolios.

There are many sites who redirect you automatically to a language by your physical location, and this could be easy in normal cases but in some cases this not the best option. Let’s say you are from South America but you are in a pleasure travel by China and you don’t know a single word of Chinese, but for any reason you want to go to whateveryouwanttoputhere.com and… Taraaa, is in Chinese.

The reason, if they track your location they can know where you are and intermediately redirect you to the Chinese version of the site… three seconds later you just quit the site because you don’t like the Chinese version. But if they have givento you a Select Your Language Page, you would have made just one more click and you’d be stay much longer on that site. That’s what we all want on our site keep our visitors.

I know this kind of options are normally related to flash sites and I know the design community is not a big fan of this sites, for problems like SEO, keywords, google rank, etc.. I personally love this kind of sites, because they are impressive and interactive, and normally it means: beautiful sites with big loading times for most of them. But their objective is totally different than a blog, or forum. And designers have worked on, to create this pages like any other page on the site even if is not the most visited, so they deserve to be shown and appreciated.

Just after I finished my post about Best Coming Soon Pages, I have the idea for this post and after some time digging deep on the net and after a big list with more than 200 I finally choose the 50 Best Select Your Language Pages that could inspired you. Must of people don’t really give them to much attention; so they hopefully give you some ideas for your next project or for your personal site, if you are thinking on making in different languages.

There are not ordered by preference, only by themes.

So let’s see this collection of 50 Best Select Your Language Pages.

1. Cirque du Soleil

2. Nintendo

3. Coca Cola

4. Pepsi World

5. Oakley

6. Disney

7. Elg

8. Smirnoff

9. Havana Mojito

10. Absolut

11. Coors Light

12. 26000 Vodka

13. Ferrari

14. Lamborghini

15. Audi R8

16. Bentley

17. Hummer

18. Mini Worldwide

19. Dsinside Citroen

20. Kamaz

21. Prototype Experience

22. Smamot

23. Xperiment

24. Mcq Momies

25. Bank of Imagination

26. Nike

27. Nike Troupe Battle

28. Nike Store

29. Nike ID

30. Wee-Mee

31. Reserved

32. Greenpeace Weather

33. Disney Tower of Terror

34. Digitalic

35. Sukiland

36. Grzegorz Kapias

37. Generation Movie Project

38. Hf3 Coca Cola

39. Halo 3

40. Forza Motor Sport

41. Resident Evil 5

42. PES League

43. Fifa Ea Sports

44. Fifa Street 3

45. Fifa 09

46. Riddick

47. The Sims

48. Spore

49. Touch Generations DS

50. Simcity DS

What do you think after all this good examples, if you think I missed some you may like just let me know.

Do you like Select Your Language Pages? or you hate them?

Video Of The Week #04 – Subprime

Luis Lopez — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:52:01 +0000

Here we go with the video of the week section where I bring to you a great inspirational video found on internet throughout the work week, it could be a motion graphics or an animation, 2d or 3d, even a trailer or music video with some great design or animation techniques.

This week I have one excellent video made in 3d talking about the crisis of subprimes, I know the subject is maybe a little old now, but the animation worth to be shown here as can explain to us, in a little spiral evolution, the process of owning a house from the first block until you loose it thanks to the bank.

The author is Mike Winkelmann, he’s a graphic designer and he also makes short films and music videos in his spare time and also his films have been screened at a few festivals and rejected at even more. He is also a member of the multimedia collective donebestdone, based in Milwaukee. He even performs live visuals for a variety of bands including NOBOT. (If you are reading and you don’t see the video you can click here to view it in the web.)

Made by Beeple

Music of Nobot Sound Design FX by Kyle Vande Slunt

Did you like this video? Or have you seen and amazing inspirational video on the last week?
You can share it on the comments section below, or if you have a video you want to be featured here, just drop me a message.

7 Things You Dont Learn In Design School

Luis Lopez — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:43 +0000

I think I had a great education on my design school, as some of my best partners, I had good teachers, good subjects to work on and a good source of inspiration on my library. Every day I learn something new, something important for my professional life or for my development as graphic designer. However, after my first year in real world, working as a freelancer in my country, I learnt so many things, that nobody on my design school told me ever, and my design knowledge increase on a really new way, in some subjects that I’d never heard about on my student time.

For that reason having a design school background is really important if you want to be a designer, but the experiences you make in professional life are worthless, so here you have only 7 of those things I didn’t learn in design school.

1. Your Diploma Is Nothing.

Only a great portfolio will find you a good job on your design future, when you are a freelance, your client only wants to see what you have done for other clients, or what they said about your work, they do not care about you knowledge on history of art, they are interested on what you can really do or not for them.

Obviously an educational background is a good base for and artist and a diploma is a proof of it, but until now I never had to show my Graphic Designer Diploma to find a job, nor even on the agencies I’ve worked.

2. A Great Design Is Not Made In One Night.

Deadlines in design school are basically made for you and your other tasks (family, student jobs or even hobbies) so the teachers give you enough time to make a good final design, because they know the creating process, they know how to get great design.

But your client works on his own time and you must learn how to work on his time, normally; he will need the job finished ASAP (as soon as possible), because they do not have time to lose and they are normally in a hurry.

When I accept a work with an unrealistic deadline, I know it will not be my best design, so now I try to take only projects with realistic deadlines, or I just say no to the client.

3. You Are An Artist, But They Don’t Know It

As a designer you can create great things from scratch, just having an idea and the domain of some techniques you can bring a great design piece, that is what an artist makes, it could be a logo, a painting, a website, whatever you work on, but for your client you just help him to sell more and more, he doesn’t care about the artistic touch you give a that piece, he is more interested on what he sees right now, not the process behind a great idea and the artist behind.

When I have a client with this problem, I am patient and explain how a design proces works and what things can be most important in the creation of a design.

4. He Will Criticize Even Your Best Design

When you make a great design in your school most of the people there, are going to recognize it, your teachers or your classmates, even if they can disagree with some point of your piece, because they have with you something in common, and that is: you all have at least basic design knowledge about it, because you are all in a design school.

But your average client doesn’t have any design education and he bases his critics on personal likes, trends of the industry or even comments from others and you have to be able to handle this kind of issues all the time, be prepare if your client doesn’t like your work, this moment can be hard to pass on.

I am sure you hear a lot of things that can disappoint you, but don’t forget, they call you for your designer skills, if they were designers they would’ve made the design by themselves.

5. Save as/Backup As Often As Possible

When you are close to finish your work, it’s late or the deadline is really around the corner, the probability that your computer crashes, are higher than at the beginning of the project, that it’s Murphy’s law. This one is also learn in university, but there you can just bring out with an excuse to your teacher and you have another week to present it but in real life is not like that.

So don’t wait until the last opportunity to have a copy of your progress, every time is a good time to save your work, don’t wait until the last moment, it could be so late then.

6. Becoming A Designer Is A Never-end Process

When you obtain your diploma you should be able to make some good things with what you learn in design school for the last years, but 6 months later you can be out-of-date if you disconnect of your field evolution. As a designer you must stay up-to-date with the latest software updates, new trends on the market, news and web blogs, magazines, artists, etc.

If you don’t, you can quickly be lost in a new whole world. The design community goes really fast, every year you have a new release of design software, so if you still work with Macromedia Flash it’s time to change, you must improve your design skills also to became more productive.

7. Networking or Nothing!

After you get your diploma you must start the promotion of your name to get that dreamed first job. You can be the best designer in earth but if nobody knows about you, no one is going to hire you.

So the last advice is: Be sociable, be active on art communities, write in forums, post on blogs, create a blog, use Social Media Sites to promote what you do, don’t lose the opportunity when you think someone could need your skills on a job, but don’t try to oversell yourself either, find a middle.

When I finished school, some years ago Internet wasn’t such important, but in this time, Internet is a great source of jobs all over the world, opportunities and inspiration, use it all you can, because is the principal tool of a designer, in the processing of marketing your self.

How To Be Prepare For The Change?

You have to stay awake all the time if you want to became really good in your work as a designer, the process is never finish in this area, and the best you prepare your knowledge and skills to this change better you’ll do after.

All this things come from my experience as a designer but are not the only truth. You can have different aproach about this subject, so let me know what else you learn only after your design school or what other subject I forgot in this post