A Small Typography Lesson

At K-Squared Designs we eat, sleep and breathe typography:

For those with zero-knowledge of typography, Noodlor created an infographic ‘A Quick & Comprehensive Type Guide’ that covers the basics: common typefaces, typestyles and type anatomy. Noodlor also lists out the ‘messages’ some types send: Arial as neutral, Serif as timeless, and Comic Sans as “Oh God please don’t!”
Just a little bit of info for you today! Like this infographic? For any of your design needs visit www.k-squareddesigns.com or call us at 270-761-K2DS.

17 Things You Didn't Know About Your Morning Coffee

K-Squared Designs bringing you a little coffee trivia information.... because we drink a lot of coffee.

Just a little bit of info for you on this dreary Tuesday, now go have yourself a cup! Like this infographic? For any of your design needs visit www.k-squareddesigns.com or call us at 270-761-K2DS.

The Evolution of Corporate Logos

K-Squared Designs presents The Evolution of Corporate Logos from inc.com:

Apple
Probably few remember the original Apple logo, which featured Sir Isaac Newton sitting under a tree with the inscription ‘“Newton … A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.” Thankfully, within a year, Jobs was introduced to Rob Janoff, a young designer based in Palo Alto, California who was assigned to help market the clunky Apple II, a far cry from today’s sleek MacBook. “For inspiration, the first thing I did was go to the supermarket, buy a bag of apples and slice them up,” recalled Janoff in an interview with Sync Magazine. “I just stared at the wedges for hours.” Eventually, Janoff created the polychromatic Apple logo which survived until 1998.

BP
Founded in 1909, British Petroleum’s (BP) original logo was designed by an amateur who submitted his emblem in a company-wide competition. “A Mr. AR Saunders from the purchasing department won an employee competition in 1920 to design the first BP mark, a boxy ‘B’ and ‘P’ with wings on their edges, set into the outline of a shield,” the company notes on its site. BP, which is now officially incorporated as BP p.l.c., updated its logo in 2000, incorporating green and yellow, perhaps as a means to associate a “green” mentality with the company. Lauded by marketing gurus at first, the logo was later scrutinized (and lampooned) in 2010, when BP became responsible for perhaps the world's worst oil spill.

Ford
Perhaps one of America’s most recognizable brands, the Ford logo has retained its familiar oval shape since the company’s founding during the turn of the 20th century. In 1909, the first logo with the distinctive lettering was designed by C.H. Wills, an engineer and draftsman who was with the company since its incorporation. Though Wills passed away in 1940, the oval emblem he created lives on. In a press statement announcing the company’s most recent logo update in 2003, Jan Valentic, Ford’s vice president of global marketing noted that "The oval is a memorable visual symbol that conjures up great images of the storied experiences people have had with their Ford vehicles…Ford, the oval, is a thread in the fabric of our culture."

IBM
Tracing IBM’s logo back to its origins brings us back to 1889, when the International Time Recording business was founded. In 1911, ITR merged with the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company — the forerunner of IBM. About a decade later, the tongue-twisting Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company simplified its name to the International Business Machines Corporation. “The ornate, rococo letters that formed the "CTR" logo were replaced by the words "Business Machines" in more contemporary sans-sarif type, and in a form intended to suggest a globe, girdled by the word "International,” according to the company's site. The company’s current logo was design by Paul Rand in 1972, and “horizontal stripes now replaced the solid letters to suggest ‘speed and dynamism.’”

Shell

Shell, one of the world’s oldest oil companies, traces its humble roots back to a shopkeeper named Marcus Samuel who sold antiques and decorative shells and wanted to expand his business. After a merger in 1907, the Royal Dutch Shell Group was formed with the shell, or “pecten,” as its official emblem. According to Shell, it’s not exactly certain why or how the logo came to be. One explanation comes from the original business of selling shells as decorations; however, some within the company disagree. Some evidence points to an investor named “Mr. Graham” whose Spanish family coat of arms bore a shell emblem.
 

UPS
In 1907, 19-year-old Jim Casey borrowed $100 from a friend to start the American Messenger Company, which, using the help of his two brothers, made deliveries on foot and by bicycle. Fast-forward ten years, when Casey merged his company with a local competitor, and created its first logo, a shield with an eagle carrying a package. Paul Rand, famous for designing some of America’s most notable corporate logos including IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, and ABC, designed UPS’s third logo in 1961. In 2003, UPS, along with marketing consultancy FutureBrand, spent two years designing the most recent logo.

Walmart
Walmart first opened its doors in 1962. Founded in Arkansas (where its headquarters remain today), Walmart began to experience significant growth in the 1970’s, when the first Walmart distribution center was opened. Walmart’s logo has gone through several iterations since the company’s founding. Perhaps the logo with the most significant departure was the “Discount City” emblem, which was only used in print advertising, on company uniforms, as well as in-store signage.

For any of your design needs visit www.k-squareddesigns.com or call us at 270-761-K2DS.

K-Squared Designs bringing you a great article featuring book cover designs from the casualoptimist.com

Favorite Covers of 2011
by Dan on December 13, 2011

After posting my long overdue picks for 2010 last week, here are my selections for my favorite book covers of 2011. I’m currently reading Where The Stress Falls a collection of writing by Susan Sontag published in 2001. In an essay about art she quotes Paul Valéry on the painter Corot. “One must always apologize for talking about painting” he says. I know just what he means. I feel the same way about book design. Perhaps even more than a painting, what you see is what you get with a book jacket. If you have to explain why it works, it probably doesn’t. Or you’re talking to the wrong crowd. But there’s something else too. I also feel like I need to apologize for not knowing more; for producing reductive lists like this one; for being, well, so presumptuous…

The 2011 list has changed a few times in the last few days and would likely be different again if you asked me tomorrow — not for lack of quality you understand, but simply because narrowing the list down to a manageable number and deciding which should be in the final 'top 10' was just plain hard. This isn’t a definitive survey of book covers in 2011 by any means (sorry!) it’s simply a list of the book jackets that caught my eye this year — designs I thought that were beautiful, a bit different, audacious, a bit out of the ordinary, a bit worthwhile… I’m grateful to all the designers who created these covers, who gave me suggestions and helped me source the images. Once again, I’ve been struck by their generosity. Nevertheless I have surely I’ve missed some great covers. Tell me what they are in the comments.


1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, designed by Chip Kidd (Knopf)
Art of Immersion, by Frank Rose, designed by Jason Booher (W. W. Norton)

The Best American Comics 2011 Edited by Alison Bechdel, illustration by Jillian Tamaki (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The First Husband by Laura Dave, designed by Jaya Miceli (Penguin)

The Mystery Vase by Andrea Gibson, designed by Amy Thompson (Write Bloody)

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, designed by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton)


The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, designed by Matt Dorfman (Riverhead Books)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt, designed by Dan Stiles (Ecco)

This Will Be Difficult to Explain by Joanna Skibsrud, designed by Michel Vrana (Hamish Hamilton Canada)

Vault by David Rose, designed by David Pearson (Salt Publishing)
Series:

Penguin Great Food by various, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin)

James M. Cain series, designed by Evan Gaffney (Vintage)

Kafka series, designed by Peter Mendelsund (Schocken)

Le Carré series, designed by Matt Taylor (Penguin US)

Vintage Oliver Sacks, designed by Cardon Webb (Vintage)

Steven Jay Gould, designed by Sam Potts

Maybe these designs have given you inspiration for your own work, or maybe you just want to read a couple of them now. K-Squared Designs loves keeping up with current design work and book covers go overlooked sometimes. As always call us with any of your designs needs at 270-761-K2DS or visit www.k-squareddesigns.com.

The 15 Minute Makeover: Photoshop Beauty Retouching

K-Squared Designs bringing you a very informative article from dpreview.com:
A split image showing results both before and after my 15 minute makeover.

Skin needs to be retouched. Even beautiful skin with great makeup. The problem with most of the Photoshop techniques I’ve experimented with over the years (burning & dodging individual pores, Surface Blur filter, Dust and Scratches filter, etc.) is they take too long, aren’t very convincing, or - worst of all - make the subject look like a victim of plastic surgery gone bad.

In this article I’m going to show you a combination of techniques I regularly use that results in beautiful, smooth skin that still looks totally real. Best of all, it won’t take all day to accomplish. From start to finish, an experienced Photoshop user should be able to do this in about 15 minutes.

Our workflow follows three basic stages.

1. Manually retouch big flaws and wrinkles via a separate retouching layer

2. Merge the retouching edits into the image layer

3. Use the Red channel of the merged layer to smooth the skin

Before we get started I want you to beware of and avoid what I call Photographer’s Tunnel Vision - that compulsive desire to do the fun stuff first. Making things perfect comes at the end, not the beginning, of the retouching process. Keep your eye on the big picture (no pun intended).

The first tools we'll be reaching for are the Clone Stamp Tool and Spot Healing Brush. With these we can retouch major blemishes, flyaway hairs, and any other texture/color irregularities.

Stage 1: Retouch Obvious Blemishes and Imperfections 
Create a new, empty pixel layer above the Background layer to receive the retouching. The trick here will be to choose the Sample All Layers option while using the Spot Healing Brush and the Current and Below option for the Clone Stamp Tool. This ensures that your chosen tool will copy pixels from the Background into the new layer above it.

Go to Layer>New>Layer and add a new, empty pixel layer.

Start by retouching the most obvious problems first. Then tackle progressively more subtle issues.

Turn off the visibility of the Background layer to see the edits of your retouching layer in isolation.

Here you see the appropriate sampling options for the Clone Stamp Tool and the Spot Healing Brush.

Why not retouch right on the Background layer? If you make a mistake, and don’t notice right away, you have to start all over again! Well, couldn't I just duplicate the Background layer, you may ask? That's better than nothing, but it’s still not a great solution: any retouching you do this way is interwoven into the image pixels, so mistakes can often be more complicated to correct.

By contrast, using a separate 'retouching layer' is elegant. It avoids destructive editing, keeps file sizes small, and allows you to easily change your mind or correct mistakes. Since there’s nothing in the retouching layer but retouching edits and transparency, mistakes are easily dealt with; just delete or erase problem areas without touching the rest of your work. Of course, if you like the adrenaline rush of working without a safety net, be my guest. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Cloning and Healing

The Clone Stamp Tool (S) has been a standby for retouchers for many years. To use it, make sure the Aligned Sample box is checked and set the sampling option to Current and Below, which allows you to match tone, texture and color. Option/Alt+click to set the source from which to copy. Then click or brush to remove the blemish.

The Spot Healing Brush (J) is a more recent addition to Photoshop that does a remarkable job of automatically matching tone, texture and color. To use it, enable the Content-Aware and Sample All Layers options. There's no need to set a source point, just click or brush to remove the blemish. This tool can often seem like magic, but it's not infallible. If your first stroke with the Spot Healing Brush isn’t perfect, undo (Cmd/Ctrl+Z) and try stroking from a different direction. To be certain your work is perfect, always view your file at 100% magnification when retouching. If texture, tone, or color do not match, undo and try again. Our goal is for each brush stroke to be invisible - even to you.

With either tool, you will find that some blemishes call for a single click, while others are best removed with a series of short brush strokes. Initially you may have to experiment to find which situations calls for one or the other, but with practice, this will become second nature.

How do you know when you're ready to move on to the next stage? Retouch as I've described above until you’re satisfied that no flaws bigger than a freckle are visible anymore.

Tip: You can use more than one retouching layer. At left you can see I used three separate layers to retouch this file; one for skin blemishes and such, another to retouch the model’s hair and a third for the area under her eyes. For even finer control, you could make separate retouching layers for working underneath each eye, on the neck, or anywhere else.

Pay Attention to the Eyes

I always use a separate layer when working on the eyes because it allows me to adjust the opacity of the retouching; striking a perfect balance point between enhanced and overdone. Allowing a bit of the original image to show thorough keeps everything real. It’s up to you how much. If you’ve never done this, you’ll be amazed at the control you can exercise by adjusting the overall opacity of an under-eye retouching layer.

Yes, I know… You can achieve the same result by varying the opacity of the brushes. But with brushes you have to get it exactly right the first time. There’s no experimenting. No changing your mind later. It’s so much easier (and more powerful) to smooth away folds, bags, or dark circles under the eyes, and then dial back the opacity until it looks believable. Take a close look at the examples below.

Here is the image with only skin retouches applied. The eyes could use a little help.

Here is the image with only skin retouches applied. The eyes could use a little help.

Here is the image with my 'retouching - under eyes' layer at an opacity of 100%. The result is far too strong and looks fake, but this is actually by design. I've purposely overdone the retouching here, knowing that I can always reduce the layer's opacity. Remember, you can always go below 100% but not above it.

Here is the same retouching layer but at an opacity of 50%. Perfect!  

Stage 2: Merge All of Your Layers Into a New Layer

Now we're ready to merge all of our working layers into a brand new layer. Why a new layer? Because in a moment we’ll be using the Red channel as the basis for our skin smoothing, and we need that channel to include all of the visible information: the original pixels and the retouching.

Furthermore, we don't want to lose access to the hard work we've done up to this point, so we want to copy all of these layers into a new layer, rather than simply flattening the image! The Merge Visible command is found in the fly-out menu at the upper right of the Layers Panel as well as in the main Layers menu. But here's where a keyboard modifier is a must. Holding the option key when choosing this menu item tells Photoshop to merge into a new layer. Otherwise, it's virtually the same as Flatten Image. The keyboard shortcut for merging all visible layers into a new layer is Opt+Shift+Cmd+E (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+E on Windows). This shortcut is affectionately known as 'The Claw'. Try it with one hand and you’ll understand why!

Since the merged layer will appear above whichever layer is active at the time, highlight the top layer in the stack before merging. Hold the option key when choosing this menu item, so Photoshop merges everything visible into a brand new layer. The merged layer appears here (on the right) as Layer 1.

As you can easily find yourself with multiple retouching layers, now is a good time to get them organized by using layer groups. Select your retouching layers in the Layers panel and choose New Group From Layers in the panel's fly-out menu. Give the group a name, like oh, I don't know, 'Retouching' and hit OK. This is a great way to keep your layers manageable and easily accessible.

This post will be continued on Monday! K-Squared Designs wants you to learn Photoshop tricks! www.k-squareddesigns.com 270-761-K2DS

Inspiring Website Designs

K-Squared Designs offers many forms of website design. To give you a little inspiration for your future website here are a few designs we really found interesting from fromupnorth.com:

Hopefully some of these designs stood out to you or gave you some inspiration for your own website design. K-Squared Designs can help you get started with a new professionally designed website. Visit us at www.k-squareddesigns.com or call us at 270-761-K2DS today!

A Little Monday Morning Humor

K-Squared Designs bringing you a little laughter to your Monday morning...

Visit us at www.k-squareddesigns.com or call us at 270-761-K2DS, we can help you with any of your design needs!

Ten Steps to Becoming the Designer You Want to Be

K-Squared Designs bringing you a little designer help article from www.good.is

An open letter to the next generation of designers, part 1.
Everyone has moments in their career when they look back and think, "If I had only known then what I know now...." After 15-plus years as a designer and design researcher at places like IBM, Trilogy, M3 Design, and now frog design, I know I certainly have. Which is why, now that I'm a veteran, I'd like to give share some advice with young designers just starting out. If I could be your mentor, this is what I would tell you:

1. Get the book
We all have a book that grabbed us by the throat and never let go, forever changing how we look at our profession. For me, that book was Sparks of Genius, The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People. The design process is, ultimately, the ability to creatively solve problems-and in our profession, we need to be better at it than most.

2. Get the obscure book you've never heard of
While it's an older book, The All New Universal Traveler – A soft-systems guide to creativity, problem solving and the process of reaching goals is still juicy today. It was written by architecture professors from California Polytech and the School of Architecture and Environmental Design, and presents a ton of research condensed into a tightly packed form.

3. Choose a topic that fascinates you and learn it inside out
This is how you become an expert. Your topic might be as broad as sustainability, or as narrow as a specific method like body storming. Over the last 10 years, I took on three provocative topics-emotional design, design research, and participatory design-and I just recently look on another: synesthesia.

4. Write, blog, and speak on that topic
You're an expert once you feel comfortable calling yourself an expert. Take Jakob Nielsen, who began blogging about usability back in the late 1990s. He became recognized as the source on usability because he was consistently churning out information on the topic. Were there other experts on usability? Sure. But Nielsen developed the early point of view, and wrote provocatively about the subject.

5. Learn Something New Every Day
Every designer should be on a quest to see the world with fresh eyes every day. This might be learning something-a bit of trivia, perhaps-that helps you see the world a little differently. For example, today I learned that cats can't taste sugar. This may sound trivial, but it could lead to a whole host of ideas. And so could the fact that they have hooks on their tongue to lap up water.

6. Create a New Idea Every Day
At one point I was twittering a new idea every day. (Example: "Product Idea #1: Skin Pens > did you ever write notes on your hand? i still do. i want a pen for skin writing on the go.") Now I file them manually. People will say that ideas are a dime a dozen, but I think they're wrong: I think the first 10 might be worth a dime, but the last two could be worth their weight in gold. I would suggest that the designer without an idea isn't a designer. Record them, capture them, and go back to them.

7. Experiment
Good designers experiment. One of my favorite examples is from fellow frog Michael McDaniel, who conceived of portable housing after Hurricane Katrina. When he didn't get immediate interest from government agencies, he built a full prototype in his backyard. I've experimented with measuring emotion through sound, and a scent alphabet, to name a few. When you do experiment, push the edges.

8. Learn as many frameworks as you can
In 2008, a design team at M3 (where I was working at the time) went through 400 design research methods, reduced the redundancy, and then sorted the remaining 250. This exercise, while daunting, was incredible: For the first time, a designer could see the research methods, or "frameworks," that existed in the design space. The point is, you should get comfortable moving beyond just brainstorming and start structuring data in such a way that it drives insight and innovation. When you get comfortable with many frameworks, you'll start creating your own. The only caveat is not to rely on them, because not everything can be modeled in a framework that already exists.

9. Choose variety over anything else
I turned down an offer that paid more to come work at frog. I've never regretted that decision. If anything, frog has made me crave variety in such a way that I doubt I'll ever be able to commit to just one industry. I've done everything from cell phone interaction design to social networking strategy, and from the future of electric vehicles to emotional medical identification. I would recommend to anyone that when you stop learning, it's time to move on.

10. Model or draw (all the time!)
To be good at anything, you need to do it a lot. And to be really, really good, you need to do it all the time. I don't care how great an idea is, if you can't model it, prototype it, or draw it, then you're screwed. If you learn nothing else from this blog post, please find a way to learn how to make your ideas tangible. This can be through graphic design, sketching and rendering in Alias, a flash prototype, photography, video, whatever. Just learn the tools of the tangible.

 This is just the first part of Laura Richardson's article the second part will be coming in a day or two so check back! As always if you need any design ideas or work done please give us a call at K-Squared Designs 270-761-5237 or visit us at www.k-squareddesigns.com.