centre{source}
INTERACTIVE AGENCY
Posts Aboutdesign-development
CentreSource sets future trends | Smashing Magazine
When Jason O’Brien created http://BountyBev.com, he did it as a labor of love & it shows his passion for beautiful design & layout. Well, it seems that Smashing Magazine also agrees - they feature his design as one of the design trends of 2010 (Design For Delight). Check it out!
Hope for Haiti: CentreSource launches new site for Trinity/HOPE
Devastation. Tragedy. Hopeless. Those were the words used to describe the recent earthquakes that struck the island of Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Prince. To a nation that that was already struggling with poverty and trying to meet the basic needs of its people, the earthquake magnified the crisis for the world to see. Like many companies in Nashville, CentreSource matched its employees’ donations to give $500 to the UNICEF organization to help with relief efforts.
Minimal.
Even in the design community, there’s confusion and sometimes arguments over what minimalism really is. Everyone has their own opinion on where you draw the line, but common indications include liberal use of white space and limited decoration. Wikipedia describes minimalist design as a something “reduced to its necessary elements.”
Which elements are necessary and which are fluff is itself a gray area as design is often concerned with creating an experience. Only a seasoned designer with a good grasp on a project can say whether a light sheen or gradient helps cater to the experience or is needless noise.
Kuler than ever
One of the most difficult things for me is color coordination. Picking the right color combinations for the right task or job at hand is not all just having a good eye. You can mathematically get the right color sets. If you are not a designer this can be daunting and can make your application or website be a complete flop. I know a few online sites such as http://www.colormatch.dk and http://colorblender.com can help you make the right choices. I wanted to throw a spotlight on Adobe Kuler. It has a variety of delivery methods to the user. An Adobe Air application, a Mac OS X widget and http://kuler.adobe.com are all available. The website provides an image upload where color combinations whether it be analogous to complimentary colors. Upon arriving at the right color theme set it will give you a full complement of HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB, and HEX information. The widget and Adobe Air application are both great for viewing and downloading user created themes.
Create an Album Cover
Since centre{source} is a interactive strategy firm based in Nashville, Tennessee or affectionately known as “Music City, USA”, it’s only appropriate that we share this fun exercise with our blog / designer audience.Every guitar picker in Nashville will eventually need a CD Album Cover. Here’s a fun 10-Minute Graphic Design Challenge:
Create an Album Cover
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
Food for Thought: How to live happily with a great designer
Seth Godin never has a scarcity of interesting thoughts to say about marketing, interacting with customers and the use of the web. Looking back at his articles posted at his blog regarding web design, he is challenging our thought processes on how most us approach design and custom web design work. Some designers agree; others call his work heretical. You decide.Let’s start with “How to live happily with a great designer”
Seth asks: Why do some organizations look great… and get great results from their design efforts and ads… while others languish in mediocrity? I think it has little to do with who they hire and a lot to do with how they work with their agencies and designers.
If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers!
Observation of the day:
“Client’s don’t realize how difficult it is to make them happy.
Designers don’t realize how much work it takes to actually reach consensus.”
Dear Mr. Architect:
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.
The Color Purple?
Vandelay Website Design has gathered together a tremendous resource for website designers for understanding and implementing effective color schemes. If you’re a newbie or an old timer, you’ll want to add these links to your toolbox.
Articles include:
The Psychology and Meaning of Colors
Choosing Colors
References for Color Glossary, Basic HTML Colors and Color Harmony
Online Tools such as Sample Color Shemes/Combinations
Find the Perfect Colors for Your Website
CSS and the Human Body
So you are looking to finally take those steps to advance your web design skills to the next level… or maybe you are a newcomer interested in making CSS/HTML/PHP your entry point into the web design world.
Either way, HTML has come a long way since the days of IE and Netscape, when the World Wide Web was a newborn and no standard practices were in place at this time. The obstacle of overcoming either original concepts of this time or the mass of incorrect/irrelevant information on the web is tremendous, but not impossible.
Ellie’s Run for Africa
At CentreSource, we do everything we can to stay connected to the community around us. Recently, a great opportunity arose for us to donate our time to work with Ellie’s Run for Africa (ERFA), a 5k Race and Family Fun day that is taking place in Nashville at the end of June, that has an amazing story behind it.
