Posts tagged graphic design

Winners of the Giveaway: 10 x New Colossal Bundles worth $10,063 Each!

March 27, 2014 3 Comments read News

The time has come to announce the winners of the Giveaway: Win 10 x New Colossal Bundles worth $10,063 Each! It’s been an exciting and joyful week at the Inky Deals headquarters, due to your wonderful comments. We read some of them out loud and smiled, gushed and even laughed – you were really funny!

On behalf of Inky and the entire team, thank you for your heartfelt comments. We sent a surprise today to everyone who participated, so keep an eye on your inbox!

The Awesome Winners

Now, let’s meet the lucky winners who each got a free copy of The New Colossal Bundles: $10,063 worth of Top-Quality Resources – From $49:

1. Prabhakar – “Inkydeals gives lot of Inspiration.”

2. Joy Davidson – “Inky Deals’ products are so sublime,
With bundles designed to save you time.
Elements galore!
And so much more!
For what’s worth a dollar they charge you a dime!”

3. InkyFan – “Love Inky, your designs are never stinky

Your sales save me money, You’re sweet like honey”

4. Aerynx – “Inky, your deals are fabulous! You give me the chance to buy resources I would otherwise never be able to afford. Thank you so much for your generosity!!”

5. Rich – “I work for an indoor climbing wall in Manchester England, your stuff makes my life sorting out all their multimedia needs a doddle, Thank you Inky!”

6. Mirys – “I can find awesome resources in every deal.”

7. Ldmp.co – “I would love to have that bundle. It may help me learn more and achieve more. Thank you very much for the freebies you give everyone always.”

8. Vadims – “Inky deals provide us with everyday tools we can’t live without. Keep up the good work! Thank you Inky!!!”

9. Chuck – “Whether it’s using a graphic or vector for our website or a vintage style logo or brand for Indesign projects, Inky has what we need at a great price. If you haven’t signed up or if you have and have not purchased one of there deals go ahead it’s worth it.”

10. Ian V – “Inky’s bundles are amazing. And this one is surely the most amazing of all.”

Help a Fellow Designer: Send Him a $9 Coupon and Get One in Return!

September 27, 2013 2 Comments read News

Today we try to raise awareness of a one of a kind campaign from the design world that we just launched. You’re probably asking yourself “What is this?”. Well, it’s an initiative to support the talented creative professionals in the community. Take a look below to learn more.

Who does it speak to?

– Graphic designers
– Web designers
– Developers
– Marketers
– Any other kind of creative professional looking to improve himself and his work (and, at the same time, help a friend do the same)

How does it work?

Follow this link to the page of the campaign and follow the instructions. There we offer you an exclusive $9 coupon to send to your friend, and then one for yourself. You can then use the coupon to get our $9 design deals for free, or as a discount towards our more expensive deals.

Be a great creative professional and an even better friend. Help a fellow designer!

Illustrator Tutorial: How to Create a Vintage Car Service Logo

September 18, 2013 2 Comments read News

Logo design is the process to create simple, recognizable images that represent a company. For a designer going through this process, it is very important to understand the field of work of the company, as well as the message that it wants to give to the viewers. Logo design appeared from the companies’ and organizations’ need to have a simple, easy-to-remember image that represents their work. For large companies, the logo has become an important part of their tradition: for example, the Coca-Cola logo is now quickly recognized all over the world.

Image source

This is a reason why companies’ logos don’t change very often or too radically. Logos are one of the best sold products on the Internet. Anyone who starts a new business needs one, and a designer’s task is to create a very simple and commercial element that can be used throughout the years.

Usually, the ‘old’ and ‘vintage’ looks give off a traditional feeling; people tend to trust something with tradition rather that something new. That is why I chose to create an auto-related logo. I wanted to give a retro touch to a modern subject such as car service logos.

This tutorial is a preview of an upcoming premium design bundle from Design TNT called Logozilla #2 that will soon be released exclusively on Inky Deals.

Final product

Program: Adobe Illustrator CS6

Difficulty: Intermediate

Completion Time: 1 hour

Process

In the process of making a logo, you usually need to follow a few steps. First of all, you should search for inspirational images; in this case, the used keywords were ‘auto’ and ‘logo’. After searching for the best images and picking up on the general trend, you’ll start sketching. I noticed that in the field of car service, logos tend to be dynamic, to give the message of speed and power. That is why I chose to draw the car from this angle; this way, the viewer can see both the side and the hood of the car and it gives a feeling of movement. Also, the side stripes give the same feeling because they build diagonal, dynamic shapes which symbolize the blurred area behind a fast moving object.

To separate the text from the other shapes of the logo, you need to use an ellipse with a thick black stroke on the inside and a thick white one on the outside. The round shape is a very retro one and, at the same time, makes a transition from the angled shapes of the exterior to the round fluid shapes of the interior.

So we move on to the next step, which is finding the general phrases that are used in car service logos. I decided on ‘Premium Quality’ and ‘Car Service’ because this combination of words gives a feeling of professionalism and explains the field of work at the same time. Not only this, but also the word ‘Premium’ represents the best things in every area of work. You can use it first to give right from the beginning a feeling of top quality product. These are the 2 sketches I made. I decided on the second one because it has a simpler, more commercial look to it and it’s easier to remember. Also, the second one looks more professional because of the horizontal text instead of an arched one.

Given the fact that the logo included a car, the next step was looking for pictures of different types of cars. It was hard to choose a car model, but in the end I combined a few models. Then, to increase the feeling of speed, I extended the hood of the car, making it look more powerful.

So let’s start building the actual logo in Adobe Illustrator CS6. To open Illustrator, click File- New and open a new document. The shortcut for this command is Ctrl+N.

Set both the width and height to 800 pt, the color mode to CMYK, and 300 ppi.

In this new document, the first thing you should do is drag and drop the final sketch and the picture of the car. This will help you trace the image using the Pen Tool . Before you begin drawing, make sure you have two layers: one for the images and the other in which you will draw. The first should be over the pictures layer. To do this, go to Window-Layers. In the Layers tab, click on Create New Layer.

Selecting all the items (shortcut: Ctrl+A), make sure they’re all in the bottom layer. If they’re not, simply drag the colored square (blue here) from the top layer to the bottom.

In order to see more clearly while are drawing, reduce the opacity of the images you want to trace. Go to Window- Transparency and set the opacity to 70%.

Also, you should lock the layer that contains the images, clicking on the right of the eye icon.

Clicking on the top layer, begin tracing the car, making sure I keep the drawing simple. When drawing a logo, always keep in mind not to overdo it and not to use too much detail or too many fine lines. Using the Pen Tool (shortcut: P) set a stroke of 1 pt. After finishing the drawing, you can shift each shape to fill (shortcut: Shift+X) and begin to model them, adding white strokes where necessary.

At this point, we’ve added black fills and white, 4 pt strokes to some of the shapes:

Opening the Stroke panel from Windows-Stroke, set the weight to 4pt and press Allign Stroke to Outside.

After adding black fill and white stroke to all the shapes you’ll notice that the drawing doesn’t look quite right. The reason is that the arrangement of the shapes is not correct. So, selecting the shape you want to work with, use the shortcuts Ctrl+[ (Send Backward) or Ctrl+] (Bring Forward). In the example below, the shape has been brought to the front:

When you’re sure that the car is finished, select the whole object, go to Object-Expand Appearance and then Object-Expand. This allows you to delete the white strokes without changing the object’s appearance. So choose the Magic Wand Tool (shortcut: Y), select the white and hit Delete. The next step is merging the object. From the Windows panel, click on Pathfinder. After selecting the whole drawing, hit Merge. This will make your drawing a singular object although it’s made from different pieces.

To make sure your drawing has no errors and that is has a single color, go to Object- Path and hit Clean Up. This is how the final drawing looks like. I’ve created rounder shapes after expanding, merging and deleting the whites. Also, on the front wheel I have added a few lines to give a little more motion to the car.

At this point, you can begin working on the other parts of the logo. Picking the Ellipse Tool (L), make an ellipse like the one in the sketch. Make sure that it has a white fill and a black stroke and then, from the Stroke panel, increase the stroke size to 7 and choose Align Stroke to Inside.

Then, by selecting the ellipse, send it to back by pressing Ctrl+Shift+[ simultaneously. Finally, expand the ellipse. Then, add a white 7 pt stroke to it and press Align Stroke to Outside.

Now moving on to the stripes on the sides of the ellipse. When drawing repetitive elements like these stripes, keep in mind that it’s not necessary to draw all of them; you can build only one object and then copy it. By choosing the Rectangle Tool (M), draw a rectangle and then select the upper left corner with the Direct Selection Tool (shortcut: A) and drag it to the left, resulting a shape like this:

Select the Line Tool (shortcut: ) and draw a line on the left of the shape. Then, by pressing Shift+Alt, drag and drop the copy of it to its right. You should make sure that the lines are white and that the left one is thicker than the right. They should look something similar to this:

Select the whole object, expand and merge it and delete the white lines. After doing this, repeat the process, copying the whole object below and moving it 20 px to the left. Do the same thing again and after you have three stripes, hit O+Enter (shortcut for Reflect). Select the vertical axis and hit Copy.

Now, by right clicking on the 6 stripes, press Ctrl+Shift+[ to send them to the back. After this step, the drawing should look something like this:

Now it’s time to add the text. For the upper text I will choose a thicker font because it’s a bigger space to fill. Another reason for my choice is the fact that in this drawing, most of the lines are thick ones and massive shapes so I want a font that looks like that. For the bottom text I am searching for a lighter font, but not too light, so that it can blend in with the thinner lines of the logo. So, for the ‘Premium Quality’ text I choose 4 font types with a more massive look. The fonts are Elephant, Anchor Jack, Chunk Five and Louisianne Black.

Finally, I decided to use the fourth font, Louisianne Black because it has a more retro look, being at the same time a thick, easy-to-read font. Also, it blends very well with the other shapes of the logo.

For the ‘Car Service’ text at the bottom of the logo, I picked 3 lighter fonts that are also very easy to read and have rounder shapes. These fonts are: RiotSquad, Lobster Two and Mabella.

I used the second font, Lobster Two because it has rounder shapes and very few thickness variations. To make it blend even more with the rest of the logo, apply a warp effect to the text by selecting it and going to Object-Envelope Distort- Make with Warp

or by pushing this button on the bar on top of the document:

Choosing the ‘Arc’ style, set the bend value to -30. You now create an Illustrator object called ‘envelope’.

Then set the size of the envelope by pressing Shift+Alt and dragging one corner of the envelope. This helps you keep the text shape as you resize it. After this last step, the logo is finished! This is how it looks like:

Artist Bio: Tatiana Cociorva is a 24 year-old artist and drawing enthusiast who enjoys drinking coffee in more-than-enough quantities. She also likes to watch random cat videos during breaks.

The Basic Principles for Great Character Design

September 11, 2013 10 Comments read News

Wondering what we’re working on? Well, we’ve convinced the talented team behind Design TNT to offer us an exclusive, discounted version of their upcoming Super Premium product called Characterzilla: Super Premium Character Bundle. Character design is always a lot of fun and its uses are extremely diverse, almost every area of design can benefit from it, so we’ve decided to publish this Basic Guide to Character Design.

-Sample from Characterzilla (Coming Soon to InkyDeals.com)

How to Use the Super Premium Character Bundle

Characters can really represent the “human” element in illustrations. They can add an entirely new way to present your infographics like in the example below –either complementing the background or acting like a virtual guide to the information presented. They are extremely versatile as they fit in in almost any design or illustration. Thus the possibilites are infinite, only up to your imagination.

So maybe you’re wondering how the guys from Design TNT created their amazing character bundle. Read on to find out how character design actually works with some basic information and great guidelines that are essential in the creation of any successful character.

What Is Character Design?

Characters are something we learn to love since we are children, through animations and cartoons. Characters are wild, unpredictable and unrealistic, we grow attached to cartoon characters and most of the time that bond never truly disappears from our hearts. That’s why even as adults we can spot a character that reminds us of ourselves, how we wanted to be or how we are now, and fall in love with it.

Thus creating a good character implies that you must design that character in such a way that people will love and relate to it on a very intimate level. It’s all about the personality that you empower your character with, and that unique personality can derive from the way it looks, talks, walks, thinks, etc. Character design creates lovable or memorable characters, whether they are good or bad, cute or weird, happy or sad.

Simply put, Wikipedia’s definition of Commercial Character Design is ”is the process of creating a character and utilizing it to enhance or publicize a commercial entity through design”. Designers use characters in commercial settings specifically because of the way people relate to them. By using a well designed character as your brand mascot you are more likely to get people to have an emotional relationship with your products or business. Characters are friendly and appeal to almost all age groups. They attract attention with their wacky behavior and can instantly make your designs interesting.

Basic Principles of Character Design

Taking into account that a character must be designed and not magically summoned into existence, there are a few basic principles or guidelines which one can use as the base for creating a successful character.

1.) Function

One of the most common theories in design is that form must follow function, and this applies to all areas including character design. A character with a logical, clearly understandable form is more easily perceived and understood by the human brain. Simple shapes like circles or ovals often work best as the wireframe for a character because of their versatility and visual straightforwardness.

Simplicity in the character’s overall shapes is also great if you need to draw your character from various angles. When rotating or viewing your character from another angle, all the planes within the character’s design will change their appearance in proportion to the angle which makes it harder to maintain consistent proportions and scale for each characteristic. Thus starting off from a more basic, generic shape requires less effort in accurately representing the character in different positions.

Image source

2.) Style / Aesthetic

What can make or break a character is the style or general aesthetic used in its creation. Adding to what we’ve established before about simple shapes as a starting point for character design, the style of a character comes from the way in which the shapes that compose it blend together in a visually stimulating manner. Contrast of shape, form or proportion is a great way to balance shapes and make your character interesting. For example, Wile E. Coyote has a large, long snout, narrow shoulders, thin legs and big feet and hands. Not to mention the large, expressive eyes. Just as how in humans they say the eyes are the window into the soul, characters’ eyes can be essential in defining their personality.

Image source

Because characters are – like I said before – wacky and zany, you have the freedom to play around with proportions and features as much as you want, sometimes the most interesting character designs emerge from extreme visual contrasts. Exaggerating features also adds expressiveness to your character. Tiny eyes, huge ears, just go wild and see what results.

Image source

3.) Personality

The personality of a character is composed of many aspects but a large part of comes from the character’s physical traits and features since those are the first things you notice when coming into contact with it. Depending on what you want your character to be like you can choose to exaggerate certain features. For example rounded, plump shapes always seem to imply cuteness because of the way they are generally associated with babies in our visual consciousness. Big eyes set very closely together towards the center of the face also enhance this effect. Sharp, hard angles seem harsher, combined with narrow heads or faces.

Whatever character you want to design, always think of its personality in relation to its features. Another defining thing that some designers may forget when creating a character are verbs. Have your character do something, move, dance, have a certain facial expression or a certain posture to add to its personality. In the example above, you can tell that the young apache is a very confident little man from his stance. Below are examples of round shapes and harsher angles to show how they impact the overall aesthetic of the characters in question.

Image source

The Devil’s in the Details

Even if you do intend on animating or drawing your character from a lot of different angles, never forego the details entirely. Like in all aspects of design, the details are what makes characters interesting. A certain type of eyes, shirt buttons, clothing seams, anything can help define your character and make it visually stimulating as well as uniquely designed.

Examples

Now let’s take a look at the characters from the Characterzilla Super Premium Bundle and see how the theory can be applied in character design.

Take one of the doctors for example. The first thing that you might notice about him is that he has a really oversized nose. This big nose adds character and personality to his facial features which without it would be rather generic in appearance. His body is curvy and rounded to seem friendly and flowing. Tiny hands and feet in contrast with these rounded shapes of the body balance it out and add humour. The arm that loops around itself makes him interesting and fun, like I said before characters are zany and wacky, don’t be afraid to add elements like that to your character.

Now let’s have a look at one of the classy business women. I’ve tried to keep a consistent look throughout the character packs in such a way that they look similar but are also unique from one another. The big nose, tiny hands and feet, as well as the looping arms are features that I’ve kept but modified slightly to fit the character. Being a female character, I’ve gone for straighter lines and angles at the waist in order to highlight the feminine hourglass shape of the body.

In both cases, I gave the characters “life” by drawing them in action, in a dynamic position – always remember to use “verbs” in your characters and not draw them just standing still.

About the author: Ioana Șopov is an illustrator and graphic designer with over 4 years of experience in her field. She has worked with brands like Vodafone and collaborated with numerous ad agencies like Ogilvy and Cohn&Jansen JWT. Check out her work on Behance and keep in touch on Twitter.