Monsieur Formidable

TerraCycle founder Tom Szaky explains how his company works.

[via] Creativity-Online : Top News

I’m a great believer in giving credit where it’s due, even if the following 10 logo designers could be viewed as my competition. Here I give a very brief mention of 10 talented creatives from across the globe, showing you a couple of logos from each of their portfolios.

(listed in no particular order)

1/ Roy Smith

“I decided to go it alone in September 2007, after many years working for leading design companies.”

2/ Raja Sandhu

“My name is Raja Sandhu, and I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I was born in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, on August 1st, 1974. I think it was a Tuesday.”

3/ Bojan Stefanovic

“My name is Bojan Stefanovic and I am all about logo and corporate identity creation.”

4/ David Pache

“dache is a creative studio founded by designer David Pache in 2005. Located in Switzerland, dache serves clientele locally, nationally and internationally.”

5/ Kevin Burr

“Creating a successful brand relies on visual recognition, creativity, originality, and most importantly, an enjoyable experience.”

6/ Bart O’Dell

“Brand / Logo Design, Corporate Identity, Print Design, Multimedia, Web Design.”

7/ Cris Labno

“Hello. I’m Cris Labno. I’m a freelance designer from Poland and I would love to work with you.”

8/ Dale Harris

“I am a creative type bloke living and working in my hometown; Bendigo, Victoria, Australia.”

9/ Ivaylo Nikolov

Not much info on Ivaylo’s website, but there are some excellent logos.

10/ James Cullen

“Hello, my name is James Cullen and I am a graphic designer living in Dublin, Ireland and I have just graduated this year from The National College of Art & Design.”

Coming soon

I’ll soon be providing more of an insight into these designers (where possible). Definitely worth looking out for.

Do you have a favourite design from those above?

[via] Logo Design Love

By Jacob Gube

Design portfolios come in various forms. Traditionally, they have been print-based and something you would carry to a client pitch or meeting to showcase what you’ve done and how you did it. Today, many designers take advantage of the Internet to publish and showcase their work via their online portfolios. Having your work displayed online removes the geographical restraints that traditional portfolios impose on you.

With many portfolios online, it’s often hard to stand out from the sea of competition out there. It takes a creative design to grab the user’s attention long enough for him or her to enjoy sifting through your work. Adding rich interactive elements, framing your work in a unique way, and concocting a means of providing a unique experience can not only get the user’s attention but also show your capabilities as a designer.

In this showcase, you’ll find a variety of beautiful, unique and highly creative portfolio designs. The aim here is to stimulate your creativity and inspire you to create your own portfolio or re-think your existing one. You’ll see portfolios from a wide range of fields, including Web design, product design, illustration, photography and even animation. So, we now present to you 50 beautiful and creative portfolio designs.

You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:

• Creating A Successful Online Portfolio
  In this article, we review five pitfalls that commonly plague portfolio design. Then we’ll offer portfolio tips that, if carefully considered and well executed, will deliver quality results for your portfolio.

50 Beautiful and Creative Portfolios

Pikaboo
This portfolio showcases a creative navigation scheme; use the scroll button on the mouse to navigate up and down the showcase. Alternatively, the designer gives you a columned view of the showcased work if you click on “Overview.”

Lyndon Wade
This portfolio effectively integrates the interface of the design. Clicking a category link of the portfolio expands a “film-strip” view of the thumbnails in the section. Upon clicking a thumbnail, it expands to a full-screen view; clicking on the left or right allows you to navigate through all of the showcased paragraphs in full-screen mode.

Jesse Willmon’s fall 2008 DESIGN-TACULAR
Jesse Willmon presents his portfolio in a unique fashion, through “doodles,” giving it a memorable user interface.

Daniel Stenberg
Daniel Stenberg frames each of his works beautifully and allows users to navigate through them horizontally. The result is a clean and simple but effective portfolio design.

Domenico Tedone Design
Unconventional navigation schemes can be a great way to leave a lasting impression on users (but they can also make users leave in an instant); Domenico Tendone capitalizes on Flash’s strength of being responsive to user events by showcasing his work via a revolving 3-D wheel. Use the scroll button to scroll through his work.

Marc Dahmen
Marc Dahmen gives us a creative user interface by showing his projects as business cards. Clicking on a business card gives you a nifty animation as it enlarges. To make navigation easier, the portfolio provides keyboard shortcuts (you can see them at the top left of the page).

SuperLover
The excellent selection of colors in this portfolio complements the showcased artwork, and the organization of each piece makes it stand out.

Aline Caron Portfolio
The presentation of the thumbnails in this portfolio gives it a unique interface, reminiscent of the chemical table of elements.

chris woods

Minimalist portfolios focus the user’s attention on the works being presented, as seen in the portfolio of Chris Woods.

Deep
Deep’s portfolio gives users a unique navigation interface; the plain solid background and text make the showcase the highlight of the home page.

Dave Werner’s Portfolio
Dave Werner’s portfolio gallery is shown as an artistic collage; clicking on a piece in the collage expands it.

Booreiland
Booreiland’s portfolio gives users a “breadcrumb” navigation scheme so that they can easily jump through sections.

vivified
In this showcase, the projects dominate the entire page, and a thumbnail gallery on the right-hand side gives you a way to browse through the projects.

nisgia.com
Interactive designers can show off their creative skill in user interaction by having a portfolio with distinctive interactive elements, as shown by nisgia’s portfolio.

Rob Young
Rob Young frames his projects in a MacBook Pro laptop, alluding to the nature of his job as an art director and designer.

Sid Lee
This clean and simple portfolio gives focus to the active work being viewed by allowing it to take up a large part of the viewing area. Hovering over the right-hand side of the page opens up an alternate navigation menu.

Nile Inside
Artwork is displayed in a “film-strip” view, and clicking on a piece expands it without navigating away from the film strip. Even with the rich interactivity of the portfolio, it doesn’t rely on Flash.

Les illustrations de Lapin
Illustrations displayed side by side beautifully showcase the illustrations made in the artist’s sketchbook, giving the portfolio an unprocessed, raw, natural look.

Contrast
Conventional design portfolios are visual, but that isn’t the case with Contrast’s portfolio, which displays its “thumbnail” gallery in a text-based format.

sroown
sroown effectively uses its logo to frame its design gallery. Note the red “Jump back to top” element along the right-hand side that follows you along as you scroll down the page, a subtle enhancement of the interface that gives you insight into the small details they pay attention to in their designs.

OnWired
OnWired showcases its design process by taking us from conception to final product in each of its projects.

Michael Muller Photography
Michael Muller’s portfolio directs the user’s attention to his photographic work by making it the focal point of the page. Hover over each piece to navigate through his work.

EveningLab
A creative interface makes EveningLab’s portfolio stand out.

Die Neue Modern
Irregular shapes and sizes of the thumbnails in this portfolio give it a unique and “systematic disorder.”

Made Like Me
This portfolio shows the typical way of displaying thumbnail galleries; but by leveraging the artwork’s vivid colors and placing the art against a dark background, each piece pops out of the page and the gallery achieves a unified look.

Marius Roosendaal
An accordion user interface gives Marius Roosendaal’s portfolio a nifty way of showcasing his work while allowing it to remain compact, thus maximizing valuable screen real estate.

Jason Reed Web Design
Jason Reed’s portfolio features a horizontal accordion menu, which minimizes the need to scroll and, again, makes the design compact.

Thibaud’s portfolio
Thibaud’s portfolio uses color swatches as interactive elements, which not only hints at the nature of his work but also effectively showcases his skill, experience and creativity in interactive design.

standardimage
Standardimage features a unique navigation scheme that auto-scrolls down the page when you click on a menu item. The portfolio design is clean, simple and minimal, which makes each piece stand out.

bcandullo.com
Brad Candullo beautifully frames his creations with worn notebook pages, giving them an organic look and feel.

James Lai Creative
James Lai Creative’s portfolio sits on the front page. Each thumbnail is in a frame, and you can navigate through them horizontally.

formrausch
This portfolio puts each project in a beautiful frame, showing the designer’s meticulous attention to detail.

Serial Cut
Another minimalist portfolio design that focuses attention on the artwork.

Dawghouse Design Studio
Dawghouse Design Studio displays its projects on a notebook paper background. The hand-drawn concept is carried through with each graphical element, including the “View site” button and the “Next” and “Previous” buttons.

Hot Meteor
Eye-catching, smooth animation that uses horizontal and vertical movement creates a memorable user experience.

Oneover.com
The unconventional 3-D showcase seen in this portfolio provides a great user experience.

13 Creative
13 Creative houses its portfolio on a steno pad. A beautiful navigation scheme and subtle, fluid animation make this portfolio a memorable design.

TROZO GALLERY

Eduardo Valdivieso’s style of art transcends the canvas and works well as part of a Web design, allowing the two media to complement each other.

Danny Blackman
Danny Blackman’s animated navigation makes navigating through his projects a pleasant experience.

Frisk Web
Frisk Web displays thumbnails of its projects as taped-on Polaroid shots, giving the portfolio design an uncommon and remarkable layout.

foxie’s graphic design

This creative portfolio interface uses books sitting on a bookshelf for navigation.

Visualbox
Visualbox takes advantage of the vivid colors of its work by placing its portfolio against a plain dark background, effectively emphasizing the “Visual” in its company name.

Ed Peixoto
An unconventional layout for a thumbnail gallery and subtle yet memorable hover-over animation make this portfolio design impressive.

Odd Web Things

Odd Web Things stays true to its name by showcasing its work in an unusual fashion. You just might think about the design long enough to remember the company’s name, or even explore the rest of its website looking for an explanation.

NANAMIart
NANAMIart integrates its portfolio in the design by displaying it near the header, giving users access to it at all times.

Vault49
This portfolio is text-based until you click on the name of a project; the name then expands to show a preview of the artwork.

SKINS INTERACTIVE
Fluid, smooth 3-D animation makes browsing through Skin Interactive’s portfolio an enjoyable user experience.

adncom
A rotating display that revolves around an illustrated sheep gives adncom’s portfolio a unique twist.

SeymourPowell
The deck-of-cards introduction gives users a sense of what SeymourPowell is all about in a matter of seconds.

hellokarl
hellokarl combines subtle, fluid animation along with great large-scale product shots to create an engrossing mood.

Related posts

You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:

• Creating A Successful Online Portfolio
  In this article, we review five pitfalls that commonly plague portfolio design. Then we’ll offer portfolio tips that, if carefully considered and well executed, will deliver quality results for your portfolio.

About the Author

Jacob Gube is a Web developer/designer and author of Six Revisions, a blog on Web development and design. If you want to connect with the author, you can follow him on Twitter.

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[via] Smashing Magazine

Here are a few alternatives to the paper Christmas garlands you may remember making in elementary school.

I look forward to seeing how this faux bois chain garland will look on my tree. This gift wrap is from Elum, available here. Each link in this chain looks almost seamless thanks to using double layers of paper.

Take two sheets of paper that are 4 1/2 by 16 1/2 inches. On the wrong side of one piece, measure out and mark a line lengthwise a 1/2 inch from the edge, it is this 1/2 inch edge that will not be glued. Using a glue stick or double stick adhesive, glue the two pieces of paper, edge to edge and wrong sides together, leaving that one half inch edge unglued. Let dry and flatten if needed with a heavy book or two.

Now, measure and mark faint pencil lines lengthwise a 1/2 inch from each edge. To cut out each rectangular link, place paper on a grid cutting mat { or mark lines} and, with an x-acto blade and ruler, cut the first line 1/2 inch from edge from the top pencil mark to the bottom pencil mark and repeat 1/2 inch from that line. Cut the space between the two lines at the top and the bottom, cutting out the center of the link. Cut the next line 1/2 inch from the previous line. completely cutting the link from the paper. Repeat this process for the rest of the paper.

You should be left with links that are 4 1/2 inch long rectangles with 1/2 inch sides all around, with one of the short ends having two layers of unglued paper. On that short unglued end, take your blade and carefully cut through the top layer only from one edge of the opening to the edge of the paper, and do the same cut { on the unglued end} in the opposite direction on the other side. This should create 2 L shapes that overlap when you pull the link open.
Repeat this process for the remainder of the links.

Take two more sheets of paper, also 4 1/2 by 16 1/2 inches and glue them together, putting adhesive over the entire surface. Repeat the rest of the steps above to create the ‘closed’ chain links.

To assemble the chain, take one of the open links and thread two closed links on it, then glue the open link closed, lining up the seam on each side as close as possible. Continue by adding an open link to each of the closed, making sure to thread the next closed link on before gluing. Phew, I hope that makes sense - it is harder to explain it than to do it.

This folded paper garland is surprisingly sturdy and couldn’t be simpler to make. Cut out 1/2 or 3/4 inch strips of paper that is the same on both sides. Glue the end of one piece at a right angle over another piece, next, fold the piece on the bottom over the top piece, still at a right angle. Continue crossing each piece over the other, creasing each fold and keeping the paper at a right angle.

As you reach the end of a strip, make your last fold and cut the end so that it is half way across the other strip. Glue another strip onto that tab in the correct direction and continue folding.

A small length of the folded garland can also be used to create tree ornaments. Follow the instructions above to create enough garland to encircle a small glass Christmas ball. Glue both ends of the garland down and then with the ribbon hanger of the glass ball between them, adhere the two ends together.

This no-glue paper ring garland has turned up in a number of my vintage paper craft books- I can see why, it’s simple to make and looks good with all sorts of different patterned paper.

I traced this pattern with my circle guide, but you can also download a template here http://dsharp.typepad.com/dsharp/paper-ring-garland.html to cut out and trace. Fold a strip of paper { that is the same on both sides} in half lengthwise and line the template up with the paper on the fold. Trace and cut out as many as desired. Unfold each piece and reverse the fold so that any tracing lines are on the inside. Connect the links by folding one closed and slipping another link through the circle in the center, close that second link and repeat with a third link.

[via] Design*Sponge

Avec l’avènement des réseaux sociaux type Facebook, Myspace, Twitter ou Pownce, de plus en plus de nos relations deviennent virtuelles. On discute, on échange avec des gens que l’on n’a jamais rencontré… et qu’on ne rencontrera certainement jamais.

Heureusement, il y a des relations virtuelles plus amusantes : inspiré du Air Sex qui lui même est issu du Air Guitar, Durex a lancé récemment le “Safe Air Sex contest” pour promouvoir son action dans le cadre de la journée mondiale de lutte contre le sida le 1er décembre prochain. C’est un concours d’envoi de vidéo sur la thématique du Air Sex.

Que penser du concept ? Rien ! En fait le vrai problème avec les concours participatif c’est…. la participation ! et le moins que l’on puisse dire dans le cas présent c’est qu’il n’y en a (presque) pas (les rares ne semblent d’ailleurs pas être très amateurs d’ailleurs). Une bonne intention qui, faute de buzz, se prend les pieds dans le tapis (ou plutôt dans la descente de lit).

[via economy.fr]

Every now and again we showcase beautiful favicons, tiny pieces of art you’ll find in your browser’s address bar or when searching through your bookmarks. Favicons are important because they provide visual indicators to visitors and help them easily associate content with a bookmark in their browser. Besides that, favicons are just nice to look at, and there are way too many websites that don’t make use of them. We want to change that, which is why we are presenting the 8th episode of our favicons series — for a change, a small article with very small images and a quick loading time.

An independent film, traditionally speaking, is generally referred to as a movie created entirely outside the traditional Hollywood system. It is usually the kind of production where the actors double up as camera men, friends and family provide the bankroll and the director’s mom is in charge of craft services.