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

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

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

2010: Still Judging a Book by Its Cover

Leslie Tane Design — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:37:01 +0000

Long time readers (hi, Mom!) may remember my round up of book covers for Eat, Pray, Love. During a recent trip to the bookstore my design snobbery raised its ugly head again. This time, after looking at shelf after shelf of mysteries, I literally chose a book by its cover.

Interesting lettering, quirky artwork, classic looking limited palette, background texture adding depth to the design. Not only did I think this was a winner, but I saw that there was a whole series of books which carry through this design:

These books were published by Bantam Paperback, and kudos to them on the excellent work.

Would I have bought this book, though, if it looked like this?

(Bantam 2006 mass market paperback). Probably not. The cover isn’t terrible, but isn’t good, either. It certainly doesn’t stand out to me in any significant way. The art strikes me as a much too literal interpretation of the mystery inside.

This one would have been a contender, but compared to the recent paperback designs it pales in comparison:

(Bantam 2005 hardcover)

(Bantam 2005 paperback) This cover feels very discordant to me. I really hate the top, very classical, type treatment of the author’s name (Shàngó) with the deco feeling treatment of the title. And the colored woodcut look of the art seems to match neither style.

(Doubleday 2004 hardcover) Does the art match better here? Maybe. The type still aggravates me.

And then we have the audiobooks:

Nothing horrible here, but nothing setting me on fire either.

Not only did I buy the book because of the excellent design, but I was more willing to give the book content the benefit of the doubt as well. Design makes a difference.

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.

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

20 designers in 20 minutes

Leslie Tane Design — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:39:35 +0000

I’m late to the party on this, but I just found 20/20: 20 designers in 20 minutes from AIGA. From the site:

About this video

Debbie Millman introduces 20 designers who were invited to show in their own unique way—and in just 60 seconds—how design and business intersect in their practice.

The designers, in order of appearance: Rodrigo Corral, Moira Cullen, Kristina DiMatteo, Julia Hoffman, Kenna Kay, Michael Ian Kaye, Chip Kidd, Josh Liberson and Ethan Trask, Vernon Lockhart, Christine Mau, Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit, Bennett Peji, Brian Rea (represented by a papier-mâché doppelganger), Petter Ringbom, Craig Swanson, Lucille Tenazas, Khoi Vinh, Petrula Vrontikis.

The different approaches the designers take, from serious to sincere, amusing to avant garde, are so interesting. Watch now!

Newsweek covers the Presidential race

Leslie Tane Design — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:46:36 +0000

These selected covers are from the table of contents from Newsweek’s post presidential issue. Here are some of the things that are fascinating to me about this selection:

Hillary Clinton’s portrait cover is fairly close to the camera, followed by Michelle Obama’s slightly farther away portrait, and Cindy McCain’s most remote portrait. Sarah Palin’s portrait photo is so large/close up that it’s actually larger than life.
Once Sarah Palin entered the race, she appeared on no less than three covers.
John McCain is rarely smiling in his cover photos. Barack Obama is smiling widely in three of his covers.
John McCain is significantly taller than Sarah Palin on their joint cover. However, most photos show the two candidates as much closer in height. For example:
The cover of Barack Obama is the only one completely in black and white (emphasis mine)
The symbols shown with the candidates are: McCain: Naval uniform; Palin: Rifle; Obama: Flag.

Is there a discernible bias here? I find this especially interesting because I designed covers for Newsweek in 1995 during the Clinton/Dole race. We were tasked with remaining absolutely objective, including not retouching Bill Clinton’s cover photos (he had noticably bad skin and bloodshot eyes with dark circles underneath), and making sure that the matching covers of the presidential/vice-presidential teams were the same size. I am sure that those directives remain today.

I think this collection shows how hard it is to design in a completely neutral way, especially when the subject is so loaded for the designers. I think the Newsweek designers are excellent. I also think that there’s a lot beyond what meets the eye.

See more 2008 election covers: http://www.newsweek.com/id/166340

November Desktop

Leslie Tane Design — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:32:09 +0000

I can’t seem to resist designing these desktops. My “Thanks Gratitude Wonder” is up there with 49 more free desktop designs from designers all over the world.

Thanks again for including me, Smashing! www.smashingmagazine.com

Kudos CNN

Leslie Tane Design — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:07:21 +0000

via cnn.com

Now that’s what I call an information graphic. Clear, concise, easy to read and understand, and it includes all of the information you need. CNN really nailed it with this Flash-based design.

And it’s a total sign of how geeky I am that I was so blown away by graphics on one of the most historic nights of my life. I try not to be political on this blog, but today is a good day.

Black and white and Altman all over

Leslie Tane Design — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:55:43 +0000

Do Robert Altman’s films inspire unusually good design? It seems so. The promo fliers for the local Altman film festival caught my eye recently:

That’s what I call excellent one color design! If you know about design production, you can tell that there must have been some severe constraints put on this project: one color printing, no bleeds, an unusual size and apparently no budget for artwork. However, nothing about this piece feels forced to me at all. It’s arresting, easy to read (a real feat considering how much information is on there), and memorable. I wish I knew who the designer is, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find out.

While researching this poster I came across a couple of other back and white Altman posters which were beautifully designed. It’s always nice to be reminded that great design doesn’t require large printing budgets or fancy computer tricks.

Polish poster design for Altman’s Three Women by Mieczyslaw Wasilewski, 1978. Via theartofposter.com

A poster concept for the Robert Altman Film Festival by julyanne. Via contentshot.com