Today I sent my girlfriend an ecard. Not something I do everyday but none the less a pretty simple action. The card was designed by Kidrobot* and there were around 8 designs.

Those familiar with Kidrobot will undoubtably recognise the smokin range they do which tend to be smoking creatures, mainly a rabbit. I refused to send her a smoking one as neither of us are smokers and I quite avidly avoid it anyways so I end up sending a banana with a moustache (see above) and it got me thinking about detering audiences through design.

Another example I wonder is if a model advertising jeans holding a can of Coca Cola, and you hate Coca Cola does it automatically apply a minor resentment towards the jean brand?

Now I’m sure that is a fairly tame example but it does make me wonder how many sales are lost by brands and products due to their associations with other brands or habits.

Not a big quibble Im guessing but it does happen, and I still love Kidrobot.

*if you haven’t checked out Kidrobot… Sort yourself out and have a peak. Great apparel and toys http://www.kidrobot.com

Design is something that is applied to everything, with the best examples of work having a little gem of excellence embedded in it somewhere.

Design to me is not a process of nit picking until it is seen as perfect to one or several sets of eyes. design is not perfect.

Design also isn’t pre processed, regeemed templating. I believe in creative processes and formatting, but disagree with the strictness some large corporations add to there already formatted, overly uninspiring guidelines.

It’s the few little insanity/genius moments that really make the difference and they should learn to give their designers more freedom to do so.

Rant over.

Today I completely re-designed the blog and themed it all together myself. Big Win! It needs a lot more work but i’m very please with it so far. It aligns the design more with my website design and how my new one is going to layout so stay tuned. It work time for this including learning the wordpress kit was about 5 hours. Next I need to carry on working the colour pallete in the CSS and re-work the navigation as currently there is none what so ever.

So I finally decided to set up a labs for my website. It works, this is a joy.

Over the next month or so, I will be updating my website and adding the widgets i create for work to it. Not sure I’m allowed to do that really but who cares, i need more work in my portfolio.