And a little video bonus from the artist: speed painting video for a traditional character illustration.

See more in the collections of digital illustrations about childhood by Pascal Campion, awesome animal illustrations by Therese Larsson and other D4U Inspiration posts.

Сообщение Illustration Art: Cute Childhood Illustrations by Raíssa Bulhões появились сначала на Design4Users.

Just to briefly remind, minimalism is a word of broad meaning used in various spheres of human activity. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity”. Being applied to more and more fields, it saves its core traits: meaningful and simple. Minimalism as a direction of visual design got especially popular in the 1960s in New York when new and older artists moved toward geometric abstraction in painting and sculpture. The movement found its impression in the artworks associated with Bauhaus, De Stijl, Constructivism, and so on. In diverse spheres of visual arts, a key principle of minimalism was leaving only an essential part of features to focus the recipient’s attention as well as support general elegance. Lines, shapes, dots, colors, spare space, composition – everything should serve its function being thoughtfully organized. Today we can meet minimalism in a variety of life spheres: architecture, arts, photography, all kinds of design, literature, music, and even food presentation. “A shape, a volume, a color, a surface is something itself. It shouldn’t be concealed as part of a fairly different whole. The shapes and materials shouldn’t be altered by their context”, said Donald Judd, an American artist associated with minimalism. Working in this style, designers seek to make the interfaces simple but not empty, stylish but not overloaded. They tend to use negative space, bold color and font combinations, and multifunctional details making the simplicity elegant. The line dividing simple and primitive is very thin. That is why not all the designers take the risk of trying this direction: some may think it looks too decent, the others don’t find enough ways to show much with fewer elements.

So, welcome to get inspired with a fresh D4U collection devoted to elegant and sophisticated minimalism in design for books and editorials.

By Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers

By Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers

By Katharina Schwarz

By Katharina Schwarz

By Lucas Blat

By Serafim Mendes

By Julia Kuba

By Lucas Blat

By Tim Bisschop

By Tim Bisschop

By Fons Hickmann m23

By Naranjo — Etxeberria

For more inspiration, check other D4U Inspiration posts, for example:

• Drone Awards photos 2021
• examples of awesome wine packaging designs
• impressive food photography and food styling
• realistic 3D portraits, 
• logo design examples
• captivating 3D animation concepts
• funny 3D characters

Сообщение Less Is More: Elegant and Minimalist Editorial Designs появились сначала на Design4Users.

Graphic design broadly covers all spheres of human life which deal with visual communication, from books and posters to sophisticated mobile applications or 3D animation. Today’s post presents 15 creative concepts by Tubik which we gathered to show you the diversity of graphic design.

Character concepts

Girl and Flowers

The first concept introducing this set is an illustration of a girl with flowers. The work is a representation of flat design which is seen in the simplicity of shapes and visual elements. Despite the minimalist style the illustration accurately transfers the bright and warm feeling of the springtime. The designer applied the color palette which shows a little girl’s sensitivity and purity. And, the final accent was made via shadows giving the flat picture more vivid look.

Underwater Explorer

The next concept is a flat design illustration presenting a character of underwater explorer. The designer applied various techniques combining classic and new approaches to flat design. Along with minimalistic shapes, there are noise textures across the illustration which are unusual for the direction. The dark background and bright elements, including the character’s costume, create deep contrast and enhance visual perception. One more detail complementing the illustration is the light lines which are barely seen still they make the picture complete.

Character design is used for different video and mobile games, the reason why designers often need to create more than one character for the particular project. The trick is that all the characters should be made in one original style so that they would be recognizable for gamers. Let’s look at the Wild West set of characters by Tubik.

Sheriff Foxx

The first character created for this set was a sheriff named Jimmy Foxx. The designer has chosen the unique style of drawing putting accents to the details which transfer character traits. Creating the sheriff personality, the designer aimed at illustrating fearless and fair man with a sense of humor. The prominent mustache makes Jimmy look serious still there might be the smile hidden behind it. The main attribute is the big hat with the star signifying sheriff’s power.

Indian Dreamcatcher

Good stories require the presence of cultural spirit, so the native American character was an obvious choice continuing this set. The designer sticks to the style applied to the first character. The character wears typical attributes such as a feather and a painted mask. His eyes are closed which makes a character look wise. The circle around the character, which by the way is shown in the first illustration too, is decorated with a skull of a bird. Such an item usually serves for magical rituals so the character seems mysterious.

Wild West Bandit

It’s hard to imagine a wild west story without a bandit terrorizing the citizens. The designer presents us a bad guy through the well-thought details. The bandit has a massive chin with a dimple and the dark straight hair. The cigarette and the golden tooth give him a brutal look. The hat and scarf are embellished with the skull signs to show that he’s a dangerous man.

City illustrations

There are many paintings and drawings illustrating the beautiful sights of various cities. Today designers have an opportunity to show cities from a different perspective – as digital artworks. Here is the set of city illustrations by Tubik.

Hallo Lofoten

The first illustration presents Norwegian city Lofoten. Beautiful colors, nature, bright buildings and amazing mountains of this city have inspired the designer to create the illustration. The unique idea of this set of concepts is that they are framed like post stamps. The illustration is another example of the flat design which is created with simple geometric shapes. Lines on the water presents the reflection of the building so it feels more natural. Bright colors and various tones transfer the atmosphere of the city.

Buongiorno Roma

Next city chosen for this set was Rome. The designer applies the complementary scheme of colors mixing blue and yellow, which makes the illustration full of contrasts similar the bright Italian city. Famous buildings are formed with simple shapes so the viewer can easily recognize the city. The designer creates lights and shadows on the landmark via different tones sticking to the minimalistic style.

Guten Tag Bavaria

The last concept of the series illustrates Bavaria. The Neuschwanstein Castle, the nineteenth-century palace known all over the world, is presented as a magical place full of spring vibes. The mild color scheme is pleasant for human eyes enhancing visual perception.

Posters

Nowadays, graphic designers experiment a lot with poster creation following modern design directions such as flat design and applying various techniques. Digital artists design original posters which accurately bring people into the atmosphere of the films, cartoons, and other performances or events.

Star Wars Rouge One Illustration

No matter if you’re a fan of Star Wars or not, you obviously know what they are. This graphic design concept is devoted to the recent episode of Star Wars (Rogue One) which inspired the designer to create the original poster. The illustration presents the main characters of the movie in a minimalistic style. They are shown as focused, strong, and brave heroes ready to fight for the better. Dark blue background creates an atmosphere of the deep space. Small but bright details such as characters’ clothes make this poster contrasting and interesting for the viewers.

Pikachu Poster

Many people will associate last summer with the hype about mobile game Go Pokemon. Designers couldn’t stay unaffected so there are various design concepts devoted to the topic. Here is graphic design poster featuring one of the favorite pokemons Pikachu. The character’s body isn’t highlighted with lines still people can recognize the pokemon’s silhouette due to face parts and the yellow color of the background. Unusual presentation of the character is complemented with white lighting which is the special power of the little creature. Pokemon’s shadow is performed via repeating a word, “Pika” to be more specific. Such a creative idea will definitely strike a fan right in the heart.

Suicide Squad Poster

Continuing the topic of the mainstream, here is the poster for Suicide Squad movie. One of the brightest and deepest characters of a film is Joker who’s well-known for all DC comics fans. Creating this poster, the designer tried to catch and transfer the character’s features by means of digital graphics. The poster is dark transferring character’s mood still with the original lettering which presents laughing. Moreover, if you take a closer look at the poster, you’ll find small Joker’s signs hidden everywhere.

Covers

The cover illustration is a substantive art direction which deserves great respect. Graphic designers usually work long and hard to create one single composition that will do its function best. Let’s look at the cover designs by Tubik.

Muscles Magazine

The first example presents a cover page for the magazine devoted to sports and active life. The issue shown here is about relations of sport and business. The idea behind the central illustration featuring the athlete was to immediately introduce the topic and at the same time add some fun and style. Graphic elements fully replace the photos creating the original look for the magazine.

Tales of the Jazz

Many graphic designers secretly dream to create the cover design for their favorite book. Here is an interpretation of cover page for a collection of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald called Tales of the Jazz Age. The girl on the cover looks like a typical lady of the jazz age setting the right mood for the viewers. The mild color scheme and noise texture are nice to the visual perception.

Stickers

Today stickers are everywhere, printed and digital, especially popular in mobile apps. Tubik designers constantly work on original sticker packs for apps, websites and promotional campaigns.

Healthy Stickers

This design concept presents stickers of vegetables and fruit. They are meant to stimulate everyone to follow a healthy lifestyle and add energy to people as well. Bright colors make vegetables and fruit look juicy and yummy so it’s hard to resist the desire of tasting one of them in real life which means the stimulation works well. This flat picture is good for both printed and digital use.

Animated Stickers for Mood Messenger

Today stickers are popular in various messengers. This concept shows stickers designed for Mood Messenger. Each sticker presents a different emotion so that the users could chat quickly showing their friends how they feel. Detailed faces on this concept are able to transfer any emotion clearly. Attractive illustrations can make applications interesting and fun for users setting great benefits for the owners.

Reviewing creative graphic design artworks is always inspiring. These fifteen concepts are only a few examples but there are many more of them waiting for you to look. Stay tuned and get inspired!

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Functional Art: 15 Creative Graphic Design Concepts. появились сначала на Design4Users.

To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master. (Milton Glaser)

Illustration has been a great way of communication between people for many ages. No surprise: it is so flexible to transfer the message, the mood, the atmosphere, the time, the style and even the feelings. For artists, illustration is often another way to relive and retell the story by means of visual arts, somehow adding their own creative power to the story told by the author.

The beginning of March is the time when, among the bunch of bright holidays, people celebrate the World Writers Day. It has been celebrated annually on March 3 since 1986, when it was established by the International Congress of PEN Club. Our today’s inspiring collection of artworks is devoted to the theme and features a bunch of creative illustrations for a variety of stories. Seeing them separately, not knowing the story behind is another piece of interesting experience: some of them will be so precise that you’ll catch the sense and mood of the story at once, while the others will require long and attentive examination, opening many senses at the same time. Seeing them, we believe that thoughtful and harmonic illustration is a powerful tool, strengthening the story many times, giving it a face and a place.  Enjoy and get inspired!

By Genevieve Godbout

By Tubik

By Dung Ho

By Tom Haugomat

By Tom Haugomat

By Tom Haugomat

By Dung Ho

By Dung Ho

By Benedetta Capriotti

By Gemma Román

By Anna Lomakina

By Atelier Sentô

By Oriol Vidal

By Dung Ho

By Gemma Román

By Happycentro Design Studio

By Marc Martin

By Hilly Kushnir

By Gerald Guerlais

By Renan Porto

By Amélie Fléchais

By Gediminas Pranckevicius

By JI-HYUK KIM

By Emilia Dziubak

By Emilia Dziubak

We wish you many bright stories!

You may also like the collections of love illustrations, spring illustrations, winter illustrations, summer illustrations, autumn illustrations, and other D4U Inspiration posts

Сообщение World Writers Day Tribute: Fabulous Illustrations for Various Stories появились сначала на Design4Users.

One of the productive and highly professional ways to inspiration is TED. Perhaps you remember the collections we have already suggested watching: 20 TED talks for designers about diverse design issues and 10 TED-talks for creatives from different spheres. Today we’re going to recommend you a new set of informative and insightful TED and TEDx-talks presented by recognized international experts.

Here is the collection of 10 TED-talks all with the descriptions given on the TED website or YouTube presentations. This time they are focused on the issues of graphic design. Most of them are already classic, sometimes even could be called legendary, and that makes them even more precious as they have been successfully checked with time and practice. The ability to analyze take the best from the past usually broadens the creative horizons and becomes a solid foundation for innovative thinking. So, enjoy watching and feel the energy of great masters!

My life in typefaces by Matthew Carter

Pick up a book, magazine or screen, and more than likely you’ll come across some typography designed by Matthew Carter. In this charming talk, the man behind typefaces such as Verdana, Georgia and Bell Centennial (designed just for phone books — remember them?), takes us on a spin through a career focused on the very last pixel of each letter of a font.

Intricate beauty by design by Marian Bantjes

In graphic design, Marian Bantjes says, throwing your individuality into a project is heresy. She explains how she built her career doing just that, bringing her signature delicate illustrations to storefronts, valentines and even genetic diagrams.

The art of first impressions — in design and life by Chip Kidd

Book designer Chip Kidd knows all too well how often we judge things by first appearances. In this hilarious, fast-paced talk, he explains the two techniques designers use to communicate instantly — clarity and mystery — and when, why and how they work. He celebrates beautiful, useful pieces of design, skewers less successful work, and shares the thinking behind some of his own iconic book covers.

Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is. by Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd doesn’t judge books by their cover, he creates covers that embody the book — and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In one of the funniest talks from TED2012, he shows the art and deep thought of his cover designs. This talk is from The Design Studio session at TED2012, guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell.

Can design save newspapers? by Jacek Utko

Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might.

Why write? Penmanship for the 21st Century by Jake Weidmann

What is the future of writing in the digital age, and why does it matter? In this surprising talk, Master Penman Jake Weidmann explores the connections between the pen and how we learn, think, and carry our cultural heritage at a time when the very act of writing is being dropped from school curricula across the country.

Jake Weidmann became the youngest person to receive his Master Penman certificate in July 2011. He works across several mediums including drawing in pencil and charcoal; pen and ink; painting in acrylic, airbrush, oil and gouache; sculpting in wood, bone, antler and clay; and is versed in numerous forms of calligraphy. He is best known for the integration of flourishing and hand- lettering in his art. Jake also designs his own hand-made pens. He, like his pens, travels the globe, reintroducing this Old World art form and cultivating its relevance in the world of today, of tomorrow, and forevermore.

The beauty of data visualization by David McCandless

David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may just change the way we see the world.

Wake up & smell the fonts by Sarah Hyndman

Sarah shares with us a story of type and invites us to consider our emotional response to the printed word. Each font/typeface has a personality that influences our interpretation of the words we read by evoking our emotions and setting the scene. We all understand this instinctively but it happens on a subconscious level. Sarah shows us that conscious awareness of the emotional life of fonts can be entertaining and ultimately give us more control over the decisions we make.

Designer Sarah Hyndman explores typography as we experience it in our every day lives under the banner of Type Tasting. Since the launch in 2013 she’s curated an exhibition at the V&A for the London Design Festival, been interviewed on Radio 4’s Today, taken Type Tasting to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas and has been commissioned to write a book.

Sarah has been a graphic designer for over 15 years, working in agencies before setting up design company With Relish. After studying an MA in Typo/Graphics at the London College of Communication she was invited back as a guest tutor.

Typography – now you see it by Shelley Gruendler

Dr Shelley Gruendler is a typographer, designer, and educator who teaches, lectures, and publishes internationally on typography and design. When she is not traveling the world as the founding director of Type Camp International, she is proud to live in the Canadian Typographic Archipelago.

The art of kinetic typography by Dan Boyarski

Dan Boyarski is professor and former head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has been for thirty-two years. His interests lie in visualizing complex information, interface and interaction design, and how word, image, sound, and movement may be combined for effective communication. In the spring of 1999, the Design Management Institute awarded Dan the Muriel Cooper Prize for “outstanding achievement in advancing design, technology, and communications in the digital environment.”

Check out the updates here, new collections of wise creative thoughts are already around the corner!

Originally collected for Tubik Blog

Welcome to check 20 TED-talks for designers, video speeches for product designers, and a set of books for designers

Сообщение Inspiring TED-Talks for Graphic Designers появились сначала на Design4Users.

Halloween is an opportunity to be really creative. Judy Gold

Although Halloween is definitely not aimed to be the most positive celebration comparing to other holidays, still its popularity is amazingly wide and spread all over the world. Today even the countries far from the historic background, which brought Halloween and its traditions to the list of holidays, are keen to take the best from the day. And also it’s not a secret that Halloween has a great impact on business: the only fact stated by history.com and mentioning that one quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween looks really persuasive.

Halloween has also grown into the great source of inspiration for designers who try themselves in various styles, techniques and materials working over new concepts devoted for the holiday: perhaps, there is no design direction that would avoid participating in this movement. Posters, costumes, home decor, invitations and cards, toys and packaging, food decor, illustration, digital art for websites and applications – everything applies powerful creative force fighting for users and buyers attention. And in this process sometimes great art works with immediate wow-effect are created. No wonder that the week before this bright celebration, D4U Inspiration post will be fully devoted to the theme: today we offer you the extensive set of diverse artworks with bright and ominous Halloween spirit!

Background and history

A bit of history won’t do harm to get deeper into details surrounding this famous holiday and preserving people’s beliefs and traditions.

Roots of the custom of celebrating Halloween are hidden in the ancient Celtic festival Samhain (pronounced sow-in) and it marked the beginning of New Year which Celts started from 1 November. The day celebrated the crossroads between the summer ended with harvest and start of the winter with its gloomy cold mood. There was a strong belief that the night between old and new year pushes the boundaries between the world of live and the world of dead. So, Samhain was celebrated as the day when ghosts can come to people while Druids can get their support and predict the future. The day was full of bonfires, sacrifices, specially made costumes and the like. Later, along the line of historic changes and cultural interactions, the tradition mixed with the customs of Roman Empire to commemorate the dead at that time of the year and honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees.

The holiday went through multiple transformations and found its followers in different countries, still America became perhaps the most fruitful ground for it to get deeper roots. High diversity of cultural background of the immigrants from many countries coming to the New World added new features and interesting points making Halloween celebration even brighter through history. Now this is the time when lots of children and adults are open to the mysteries and fun, bright emotions spiced with little pinch of horror.

Certainly, this day is still linked to numerous superstitions that strongly support its mysterious and scary image. People often leave spare places and dishes on the festive table for their dead relatives that could visit them. Black cats are avoided with specially high attention this day due to ancient beliefs of their connections to witches and spirits. People born this day are believed to have superpowers and forseeing abilities. Anyway, whether people really believe these superstitions or just take another chance of celebrating bright moments of life, Halloween becomes a great part of modern culture and annually ignites designers and artists to present the world new and new pieces of creativity. Today Halloween motifs are featured at everything that felt designer’s touch, from traditional illustrations, posters and cards to digital art for computer games and user interfaces. Many samples of design for Halloween show the childish style and nature, as children are directly involved in the process, especially via “treat-or-trick” tradition.

So, let’s look at the variety of visual artworks grounded on the ancient traditions mixed with innovative forms and design techniques and catch some spooky and mystic vibes.

Halloween Design Gallery

By Inkration

By Mauricio Abril

By Icons8

By Caley Hicks

By Caley Hicks

By Alexey Tikhonov and Natalia Plotnikova

By Daria Danilova

By Agatha Carelus

By Tim Verhoeven 

By Julia Molchanova

By Denis Krasavchikov

By Tad Carpenter

By Anna Paschenko

By RADIO

By Justas Galaburda

By AomAm

By Junissa Bianda

By Kate Frolova

By  Hyoju Park

By Pamela Barbieri

By Dmitry Stolz

By Victor Evsyugin

By Gev Marots

By Natalie Smith

By Julien

Bright and shaky Halloween to you! Stay tuned!

For more inspiration, check the sets of other posts from our D4U Gallery, where we gather impressive creatives to share their art with you, for example:

• people illustration gallery
• wine packaging design
• captivating 3D animation concepts
• Procreate illustration tutorials
• realistic 3D portraits
• impressive packaging designs 
• artistic portrait collages
• childhood illustrations
• 3D illustrations
• book cover designs
• sunny digital artworks

Сообщение D4U Inspiration. Halloween Design Spirit появились сначала на Design4Users.

To support this idea, here at Design4Users, we launched a new section called “D4U Expertise“. It will collect diverse ideas, talks, cases, and tips from expert designers presenting various directions of design to help users. Ultimately, we are going to have here the set of materials that will be helpful and inspiring both for experienced professionals and for those who only start their path in any of the design directions.

This post aims to draw your attention to a worldwide known and recognized graphic designer, Chip Kidd, a person of great talent and amazing humor.

Biography

According to his personal website presenting the incredible variety of his works, Chip Kidd is an award-winning graphic designer and writer in New York. His groundbreaking book jacket designs for Alfred A. Knopf have elevated the form for close to three decades. He’s worked with hundreds of writers, including John Updike, Katharine Hepburn, Cormac McCarthy, Henry Louis Gates Jr., James Ellroy, Karen Russell, Michael Crichton, David Sedaris, Sharon Olds, Orhan Pamuk, Paul Simon, Neil Gaiman, and Haruki Murakami. His first novel, The Cheese Monkeys, was a national bestseller. His most recent book, Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, is the first book to teach graphic design to children and has over 60,000 copies in print.

As an editor and art director for Pantheon Graphic novels, he’s worked with and published some of the very best cartoonists in the world, including Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Dan Clowes, David Mazzucchelli, Charles Burns, Michael Cho, and Alex Ross. He is the recipient of the National Design Award for Communications, and his TED Talk has been viewed over 1.3 million times.

He has produced so many recognizable graphic design ideas for book covers that plenty of people worldwide know those images, although they have never heard the name of their creator. he deeply believes that the cover is a piece of functional art, the chance to attract readers with a memorable first impression given to the book by the designer. Even more, the book cover should give a mental and emotional message from the very first seconds of its meeting with a reader via its title and cover.

Let’s take a look at some of these famous covers that have become a great blend of art traditions, careful analysis of the book itself, and creative experiments that brought the world new “Kidd’s philosophy” of book cover design.

Book covers by Chip Kidd

The designs, featuring some of the huge collections accomplished by the designer over the years, are presented in random, non-chronological order.

Ted-talks

Ted-talks by Chip Kidd inspire a huge number of artists transferring precious practical tips and personal experience. They definitely differ from usual lectures or public speeches by means of his humor and non-standard performance. However, with him this trick works and the jokes create a good contrast to highly serious messages he transfers to the audience.

This is one of the funniest talks from TED2012, where he shows the art and deep thought of his cover designs and also makes you smile and laugh all the time.

The stories can be anything, and some of them are actually true. But they all have one thing in common: They all need to look like something. They all need a face. Why? To give you a first impression of what you are about to get into. A book designer gives form to content but also manages a very careful balance between the two. (Chip Kidd)

So even though we love publishing as an art, we very much know it’s a business too, and that if we do our jobs right and get a little lucky, that great art can be great business. (Chip Kidd)

In this hilarious, fast-paced talk, he explains the two techniques designers use to communicate instantly — clarity and mystery — and when, why and how they work. He celebrates beautiful, useful pieces of design, skewers less successful work, and shares the thinking behind some of his own iconic book covers.

Clarity or mystery? I’m balancing these two things in my daily work as a graphic designer, as well as my daily life as a New Yorker every day, and there are two elements that absolutely fascinate me. (Chip Kidd)

Lectures and interviews

Here we have also collected several videos giving more insights of Chip Kidds life and professional path and containing a great deal of useful tips for designers based on extensive practice. Enjoy!

Lecture at Hammer Museum

Chip Kidd interview: What the Stories Look Like – Conversations from Penn State

Chip Kidd Insights Lecture

Chip Kidd’s speech at OFFSET 2009

Shelf Life 2: Chip Kidd

Image Credit: Hammer Museum

Get inspired, stay tuned, don’t miss new stories about inspiring experts!

Recommended links:

Chip Kidd’s official website
Chip Kidd: Go Ahead and “Judge This” (interview)
Chip Kidd on Twitter

Сообщение D4U Expertise: Book Cover Design by Chip Kidd появились сначала на Design4Users.