Your Brain on Design: A Graphic Design Blog | Leslie Tane Design » Links

Parlez-Vous Designer?

Leslie Tane Design — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:26:53 +0000

From my blog entry on the Digital Space blog

RGB. CMYK. Pixels. Serifs. Running heads. Resolution. Wrap-around. Sometimes designers speak a language for insiders only. This is fine when we’re talking to each other, but what about when we’re talking to our clients? Are we expecting them to break the code?

When presenting to a new client, I try to look at the work I’m showing them with a non-designer’s eye. Designers are communicators by profession, but all too often we forget the basics that need to be communicated to our clients so that we’re all speaking the same language. more at Digital Space>>

Color Palettte Goodness: Coraline

Leslie Tane Design — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:14:55 +0000

The creepy/cool animated movie Coraline is not your average animated movie. With its fabulous graphics and retro color palette it’s a graphic designer’s dream. No bubblegum pinks and unicorn, glitter purples here. A selected color palette from the movie looks more like this:

and this:

Hats off to visual designer Tadahiro Uesugi for his amazing and inspiring work. For more color palettes, please see:

Color Palette Goodness

Color Palette Goodness: Met Home

Is Direct Mail Dead?

Leslie Tane Design — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:17:01 +0000

From my blog entry on the Digital Space blog

It’s the age of the Internet — e-mail marketing, social networking, blogs. So why would you do printed, direct mail marketing? No one reads that stuff…do they? more at Digital Space>>

Designing for NonProfits

Leslie Tane Design — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:15:57 +0000

From my blog entry on the Digital Space blog

One of the things I most enjoy is working with non-profit clients — it’s especially satisfying to do design that makes a difference. We specialize in this type of work and our clients include a range of organizations, from those who work with troubled youth, to those who provide food and services for the disadvantaged, to those that work with the disabled, and more. Each organization has different design needs, but there are some things that are almost always true when working with non-profits… more at Digital Space>>

Color Palette Goodness: Met Home

Leslie Tane Design — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:11:44 +0000

Color inspiration can come from anywhere. In December’s Metropolitan Home (RIP. Sob) there was a feature about an apartment with an amazing color palette. My favorite image is above: gorgeous, unexpected color.

I ran the image through CSS Drive’s Image to Colors Palette Generator and was rewarded with this mouthwatering color palette:

Yum.

For more color palettes, please see:
Color Palette Goodness

So much to say, so many blogs to say it in

Leslie Tane Design — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:54:13 +0000

I am flattered to report that I was asked to blog for Wausau Paper’s new blog: Digital Space. Check it out at http://www.wausaupaper.com/DigitalSpace/post.aspx?id=7841&blogid=298 I’ll be posting all original posts over there, and I’ll let you know when they go up.

A paid writing job! My diploma is kvelling.

Play this Game!

Leslie Tane Design — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:19:04 +0000

This is what the internet is all about. I’m warning you, though: This font shooting game is completely addictive.

PS: Note the last two daily high scores. BOO-YA!

Color Palette Goodness

Leslie Tane Design — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:07:33 +0000

One of my work-related New Year’s resolutions is to work on my color selections. I tend to go back to the tried and true of primary colors and clear hues and this year I’m forcing myself to expand my repertoire. A fantastic tool for this is CSS Drive’s Image to Colors Palette Generator. There you can upload an image to generate a color palette based on the image’s primary colors. This, of course, works well when you already have an image that you want to use and you want to create a color palette to complement it.

Lately, though, I’ve started using it at the beginning of a project to help me decide on a palette. I’ve been building a lightbox at iStockPhoto.com with color inspiration (go ahead and use it, too, if you’re in need of some color therapy). For a recent project I decided that earthy browns and greens would be appropriate. I visited my lightbox, chose a couple of images which seemed to contain the colors I was looking for, and let CSS Drive do the work. Here’s the palette I chose:

Of course, I could just open the image in Photoshop and use the eyedropper tool to pick colors myself, but I find that I unconsciously choose the clearest, brightest colors in the image. Using the generator, I am presented with a much wider spectrum to choose from.

This is the first of a series of color palette posts. Please feel free to use the palettes in these posts for your own projects. And let me know if you have a fail-proof method of choosing the colors for your projects.

Good Work

Leslie Tane Design — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:58:39 +0000

One of the things we most enjoy is doing design for non-profits that we support. This is our new website redesign for The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. All websites eventually get to a crossroads: revise the current website or start over again from scratch? The Food Bank’s previous website was fairly typical: the site was designed a few years ago on a shoestring budget and it worked well for a while. As the organization expanded, though, and as internet standards changed, the site started to become unwieldy. There wasn’t an obvious place to add to the site and the updating had to be done manually, requiring a staffer at The Food Bank to know a sufficient amount of HTML.

This site redesign was inteded to do the following:

Reorganize the site content to make the site easier to navigate
Update the look and feel of the site to reflect the level and scope of services that the Food Bank provides
Integrate the donation form, allowing The Food Bank to add and change form fields
Add an advocacy form, which automatically sends cause related email to state and local representatives based on the submitter’s zip code
Create a download management system for Food Bank related information and press clippings
Include an east to update calendar for the organization
Install a content management system which allows Food Bank staffers the ability to control all of the content of the site (We used WordPress as the CMS)

According to the client, we succeeded. They say: “Really happy with the site! Loving the CMS – very easy to use!”

This was a fantastic project for us. Not only was it a real pleasure to work with The Food Bank, but we feel that the final site looks great and meets their needs, with the ability to expand in the future. It’s also gratifying to help a local organization that provides so much for so many. To help them in their mission, we gave the Food Bank our non-profit 10% discount and made a donation through their online donation form. If you’re looking to support a fantastic organization, please consider making a donation today.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Talented Friends

Leslie Tane Design — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:51:24 +0000

I’ve been very lucky to work with some amazingly talented people over the years. One of my favorite surprises is to have my path cross with someone’s that I used to know and find them going well.

Through Facebook, I recently got back in touch with Teafly, and I was thrilled to see the beautiful work she’s selling at Etsy. If you’re looking for some colorful, whimsical art, check her out: http://teafly.etsy.com