At An Event Apart – Austin 2013, Samantha Warren shared about her new idea: Style Tiles. Here are my take-aways: Design is art without clients – and in-house designers still have clients Creating 3 fixed-width pixel-perfect Photoshop comps encourages ‘Frankencomps’ – where client will request pieces of each to be put together to make a […]
JazzFest Poster Design Process
This is the coolest project I’ve worked on in a while. It’s a poster to advertise the annual Jazz Festival at Mineral Area College, where my Creative Improv counter-part, Michael Goldsmith teaches music and leads the jazz ensemble. Why did I love this project? I could combine my love for jazz music, art and design […]
Designers don’t make things look ‘pretty’
What do designers do? Make things ‘pretty’ and ‘put a new coat of paint on something’, right? Wrong. A designer is someone who communicates visually through various mediums. This could be through print design, web design, and especially wayfinding design (the design of directional signs in our environment). The end result is hopefully something that […]
StephenEmlund.com through the years
It’s been almost 6 years since I originally launched StephenEmlund.com. This October, I redesigned my website for the first time ever. I have been surprised how well my website has held up to all the design trends in the last 6 years. Of course, it’s because I made the website very minimalistic. Although orange was […]
Still life photo – before and after
So, I’m pretty new to still life photography and photography in general – but I’ve found some techniques/processes that seem to work for me – allowing me to create a technically sound image that is sharp and in focus at 100% I was especially excited with the recent photos of these fake grapes. I basically […]
l’art pour l’art
Leafing through an old magazine, I noticed a small ad about a design course by mail. The headline read, “Art for pleasure and profit!” I have never found a better definition to describe my profession. Of course, at times it is more the pleasure and less the profit, at times the contrary. But if one […]
Branding, Clients, Creative Improv, Design Concept/Ideas, Logo Design, Print Design, Redesign, The Design Process, Website Design
Parallax View Band design process
A few months ago, when Creative Improv was in it’s infancy, the Parallax View project came our way at just the right time. I had wanted to work on this project since high school. I knew Ben & Seth in high school and thought it would be cool to do a website for them back […]
My thoughts on design to be published
I got an email today from someone named Armin Vit. I was hovering over ‘mark as spam’ until I read the subject line. Brand New Mystery Product Now, for some reason this caught my attention as not being exactly spam (don’t ask me why). So I opened it. If I have contacted you it means […]
Questions: Design Style
I recently had a conversation with a good friend about design styles. The question was posed to me… That begs the question….is it better to develop your own “style” that you become recognized by, or have an arsenal of styles to draw from to please your clients? Both have valid arguments… That’s a tough question. I think […]