Japanese art and design has always been a major interest for me. When I was younger I would decorate my room with tapestries and Asian décor, incense, and paintings. Today I’ve collected quite a bit more Japanese art and have come up with some ideas of my own Japanese themed décor that I would like to create. I’ll enjoy discussing selected works from five creative Japanese designers and illustrators today.

Japanese art, for the most part, has a very modern and minimalistic quality to it, yet at the same time there is much to say about how the designs make you feel. In such an overpopulated area of the world, simplicity and creativity are essential to communicate. If a message can’t be communicated in a short amount of time, it is looked over, and if that short message isn’t creative, it’s forgotten.

First on my list is Japanese artist Yoshi Tajima. He a prime example of an artist who utilizes simplicity and creativity in every piece of art. This design, called “Voices,” is a very elegant yet dramatic design. Black, cyan, and magenta are the main colors used in this image, which is interesting because they are three of the four pure colors used in print design. The symmetry also creates an interesting focus. Take a look at more of Yoshi’s art at RadioGraphics.jp.

Shun Kawakami (a.k.a. artless) designed this wonderful piece. I’m an avid lover of typography, so when I first saw this I was very impressed. The Bonsai tree fits in seamlessly on top of the O and the mono-black coloring gives the entire design a nice minimalistic touch. There is so much going on in this illustration, but not enough to make it look busy. You can check out more of Artless’ designs at pingmag.jp.

Feebee here really knows how to draw Japanese girls! There are so many intricate details in her illustrations but yet again there is a very simple yet creative edge to it. Her style is very unique in the world of Japanese illustration, though, as it is a blend between traditional Japanese art, and modern art and technology. Feebee’s official website is in Japanese, but you can visit her MySpace for an English experience or friend request.

Chiho Aoshima takes a more busy approach to her designs. She uses vector art to imply a traditional style that has no shading, which is very unique. Chiho has a tendency to mix very warm colors with very cool colors, yet they blend nicely. My favorite part of this design are the little extra details she’s hidden in various parts of the picture – little faces and animals and such. To learn more about Chiho, visit Kaikai Kiki Co, Ltd.

I, for one, look forward to trying a few of these creative approaches to graphic design in future work. I hope to one day be able to employ simplicity in art and still make it look amazing. Japanese art has always been the cutting edge, from painting and printing, to architecture and interior design. If you’d like to study some more Japanese art, I’ve supplied a book list below, all available from Amazon.com. Feel free to leave your input, comments, or thoughts below.

Book List:

Japanese Graphics NOW!

Japanese Design

Japanese Prints

Crazy for Kanji

Japanese Tattooing NOW!

Japan Style: Architecture Interiors Design

So here goes nothing – first, let me say that the tutorial that I’m covering is for advanced users of Illustrator.  If you don’t know how to adjust the settings for opacity, don’t know how to use the pen tool, or aren’t confident with your skills on the brush tool, start with some easier tutorials.

So how well was this monochrome vector portrait tutorial written?  I would say so-so.  The tutorial begins very well, though the estimated time of completion is off by about 2 hours or so.  It took me about 6 hours from start to finish to make this portrait, but mostly because some of the steps were confusing.  The tutorial begins well by showing you how to manipulate an image before taking it to Illustrator, but once you begin layering colors, it can get confusing.

Quick tip:  Make sure you layer the initial pinks in this image in a very specific manner that wraps around the face completely.  It’s hard to describe, and probably illegal to show, but you’ll know what I mean.

Beyond that, it’s a massive amount of laying with opacity adjustments until you reach the lips section of the tutorial, which is fantastic.  Drawing the eye in Illustrator is much more difficult that I would have expected, but I altered the instructions for myself in order to make it easier on myself — especially when I got to the eyelashes.  This was another “foggy” area of the tutorial that deals with width profile brushes in Illustrator – not a fun thing, but very useful once you understand it.  I may do a tutorial on this myself.

So, what it all boils down to, I suppose, is “was the article written well enough for the average user to figure out?”  Well, no.  I consider myself an intermediate, near advanced user of Illustrator, and I had to experiment quite a bit with parts of the tutorial.  The next question that should accompany any tutorial is “can I use this knowledge in another fashion?”  Most definitely.  I learned quite a bit about drawing portraits in Illustrator with this tutorial.  As a matter of fact, I used a different picture than the one intended for the tutorial, and I’m very pleased with my results.  Just take a look.

So, with all that said, I would highly recommend this tutorial to intermediate or advanced users of Illustrator.  Beginners – stay away until you do some of these tutorials — 20 Basic Illustrator Tutorials Every Beginner Should See.  Now go get your premium membership from Tuts+, you won’t regret it.

The tutorial being reviewed was written by Sharon Milne.  If you would like to see more of her work, check her out at deviantART.

So, what’s the deal with Starbucks, anyway? A naked siren is sure to grab attention – due to massive brand recognition, you would probably immediately think of a $6 cup of coffee if you were to look at a naked mermaid woodcut. But did you know that the logo has evolved to a PG image because the original logo was too “sexually suggestive.”  Such a controversial image can definitely leave an impression, which could be one of the reasons why Starbucks is so successful today.

Let’s take a peek evolution of the Starbucks logo over the past few decades.  As we’ve pointed out, the original logo was a Nordic woodcut showing a very naked mermaid (about as naked as a mermaid can get), or siren, holding up her dual fins.  The sister-company of Starbucks was Il Giornale, an espresso café that the original Starbucks owners wanted no part of.

Howard Schultz, the owner of Il Giornale, eventually bought the Starbucks franchise and melded the two logos together – throwing his stars and green color into the Starbucks logo, but leaving the name of the company as something more recognizable.  After a few revisions to the logo over the years, the original nude siren became more of a symbolic representation with a face and two fins – something that still suggested luring people to the franchise, but more family friendly.

But what about the quality of the logo?  We think that the brand recognition is strong enough at this point that a major redesign would be a huge mistake.  The logo is a very busy image even though it has been simplified.  At the very least, the large, all-caps, bold text on the logo does help with recognition.  If we were to redesign this logo for a startup Starbucks, we would probably go more minimalist with the imagery, maybe a silhouette of some sort, then focus more on the typography.

For some more great analysis of the Starbucks logo and the history behind the company, be sure to check out Brand Autopsy’s “The Evolution of the Starbucks Logo” and the “Our Heritage” section of the Starbucks web site.  Both are very insightful and explain quite a bit more of the history that we covered briefly in this article.

What are your thoughts on the Starbucks logo?  Should it be more typography-focused or is it perfectly fine the way it is?  Leave us some feedback and give us your thoughts.  Also, don’t forget, we do take requests.  If you know of a killer tutorial that you would like us to review, a brochure that got slipped into your door, or a business card that you think is horrible, let us know on the Contact form and we’ll do a new Design Review.

If you are a particularly lucky designer then your client has already conducted the necessary public interaction and acquired as much information as possible on their prospective clients.  If not, then the ball is in your court.  You have two options at this point in time:

1. Outsource the work to a marketing firm to get the information.
2. Go talk to real people.

In the end, it’s up to you to decide, but we think it’s a bit more interesting to do the work ourselves.  Finding these elusive people that are being targeted is the tricky part, especially if you’re a designer in a rural area.  We would like to point out that we are both originally from small college towns, so the University is always available to pass out surveys.

The first step would be to hit up your current network of people – immediate friends and family, extended family, old acquaintances, etc.  Find as many people as you know that fit the demographic that your client wants to appeal to.  Or anybody close, for that matter.  Once you’ve gone through that list of people, see if they know anybody, etc.

Once physical acquaintances are drained, move to the internet.  Social networking is viral at the moment, so take advantage of it while you can.  Facebook lets you send out surveys and questionnaires. MySpace has bulletin boards, mini-blogs, and friends.  Twitter has 140 character posts…but with bit.ly you can make a tiny link to a survey that your followers can click and complete.

Sometimes this isn’t good enough, either, so move on to third party research.  We have never had to resort to third party research, but we have managed to find a few resources that look promising.  eMarketer.com looks promising, but requires a paid subscription in order to access the best market research.  If we were to go this far, then our clients would most definitely be paying for the temporary subscription as part of the research fees.

Unfortunately, every audience is different.  We cannot tell you what to ask your audience, just use good judgment based on the product or service your client offers.  Throughout this entire process, you still need to be taking your own notes and sketches, just as in steps 1 and 2.

Before any final logo, design, or illustration is created you need to organize all of the information somehow.  Our suggestion is to scan over it all with a highlighter in hand, mark anything that looks particularly interesting, then mark strong trends.  Pay extremely close attention to the audience data, as that’s who the client is trying to please, and ultimately who you are trying to please as well.

Once that is done, take a break.  Not just a 5 minute stretch – go ahead and take a nap, take a day, or take a weekend to just think.  The brain is most creative while at rest, so keep a sketchbook nearby to doodle when you feel like it.  You cannot force the creativity needed when you are trying to make a lasting and unique design.

Now, breathe a sigh of relief – the research is complete.  The hard part is over, now the harder part is yet to come – creativity.  There are numerous resources available for this, far too many for us to cover, but we will definitely try to tackle it at some point in the near future.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this 3-part mini chapter.  Leave some feedback and let us know what you think.

Knowing the enemy is a bit different and more difficult than knowing the client.  Usually, knowing the client simply involves asking for information.  Knowing the enemy is searching for information, and we are going to help you figure out where to search by telling you how we do it.

First – USE Google! Google is currently the largest search engine on the internet.  With such a vast index of websites, it would be downright dumb to not look for similar companies on Google.  For example, if we had a client that wanted a web 2.0 logo for an economic development company, we would simply go to Google and search for “urban economic development” or “city growth planning.”  The first four or five results on any Google search will be typically be the largest competitors in any given market (other than the ever-present Wikipedia result) or similar companies that may not be threatening.

Now that Google has been used, take a few peeks around each website and take notes about how seamless they are.  Is every page completely different or are they consistent in the basic elements?  I’m hoping that they are consistent, or they’ve probably spent thousands of dollars on a website that was poorly designed.  The most important part here is to take notes on everything from the color scheme to the logo, the text used and the article headers.  This is an examination of the competition.

During your detective work, keep an eye out for a link that says something along the lines of “Corporate Identity” or “Design Guidelines.”  If you can find a link that says “Corporate Identity Design Guidelines” then you’re definitely in business.  These lengthy PDF documents contain every last detail about how a logo design is supposed to be used, and how any other element in any given design is supposed to be used.  This includes, but is not limited to, web design, brochure design, business card design, billboard design, advertising design, vehicle design, etc.

Corporate identity manuals are the essence of a company image.  Designers slave over these books to cover as many graphic possibilities as they can imagine, and typically get paid very well for doing so.  Reading through any company’s identity manual is usually very enlightening as to how everything fits together, and it’s worth taking notes on these as well.  Sometimes it’s difficult or impossible to find these manuals though.

If you can’t find any manual for a given company, take a look around the internet (via Google Image Search) for older company logos.  If you can see how a logo was redesigned, you can typically harvest some information about when and how the market changed.

Knowing the enemy is essentially doing your research on market trends based on the competition.  As with knowing the client, it’s important to make a big sketchy file filled with notes and information.  Organize the information floating around in your head, then move on to the final step of your research – Targeting the Audience.

The New School has been a strong collection of colleges since the end of World War I, but each of the schools and universities had no direct connection to another.  This was one university with 8 different schools that had no visual connections to each other.  Bob Kerrey became president of the school in 2003 and decided to make some changes.

The new logo had to be versatile enough to fit into 8 different existing names, be representative of the school’s wide variety of students, as well as the dynamic nature of the classrooms.  That was just the message, but the image was to be edgy, creative, and nonconventional, while still retaining clear readability. (Yes, it is a word.  Legible and readable are two different things.)

After a massive 2-year study (involving surveys to students, faculty, staff, and the higher-ups) Siegel & Gale created the new word mark logo along with an extensive but easy-to-read identity guidelines manual for The New School.

The main logo mark is a bold sans serif typeface that appears to be airbrushed in and out of focus throughout the logo.  The new brand for The New School includes three visual variations for the main logo mark, along with three available colors to choose from.  The three visual variations are simply blurred in different areas of the type, while the color variations are red, orange, and yellow.  With three variations of each to choose from, the logo is very dynamic, making for a total of nine separate but unified logos.

Nascent admires this logo mark, as it was quite successful in pulling an entire group of school together under one parent identity.  Our kudos to Siegel & Gale and The New School for collaborating to create a unique brand identity.  What are your thoughts?  Feel free to leave comments or criticism below.

P.S. If you want us to review a design, just send us a message via our contact form, and we’ll see what we can do.

We recently read an article by Jacob Cass (Just Creative Design) entitled Why logo design does not cost $5.00, and it piqued our interest as to exactly why designers have it so hard.  Close to the end of this article he has a list as to why professional designers put more work into logos than amateur designers, and what makes those professional logos better.  The first two items on this list are:

A. The Boring Stuff

Knowing a client goes far beyond a basic design brief, though this is typically the first step.  Our studio has a questionnaire for new clients to fill out either on the web, or we can interview them over the phone.  We’ve covered how to get through an introduction while conducting a design brief and creating thumbnails at the same time in our article A Unique Approach, but the research does not stop there.

After our first sit-down with a client, we like to get to know the company we are creating for a bit better.  If at all possible, make sure you get:

B. The Fun Stuff

Once the dry reading is completed it is time to move on to the next step – surveys!  While it may not sound “fun” exactly, it can be very informative or humorous.  We tend to suggest putting together a standard list of questions for employees and any important people in the business.  Paper can be messy and very difficult to sort through, so an electronic questionnaire or survey to send to an email list.  You may need to find a programmer or a piece of software to help with this, but you’ll be saving trees, and most of the responses can come back to you already sorted into a database.

Once you have received this information, it’s obviously time to start reading.  Keep an eye out for the funny people, as their humor can be very inspiring.  Also, keep an eye on strong trends in certain answers, such as “Where would you like to see this company in 5 years?  10?”  These are the questions that will help you create a timeless design rather than a trendy one that might be outdated next year.

C.  Wrapping up the Company

Now, with so much information overload, it’s time to sort it all out.  If you’ve made it this far with a client, we hope you’ve been taking notes and drawing all them until you can’t read your original notes anymore.  Well, not really.  It is important to take notes and keep drawing, though, but try to be organized if at all possible.

Once you have some notes that catch your attention, some thumbnails from the client, and some doodles on napkins, it’s time to put it all together.  It doesn’t particularly matter how you do this, but try to organize your thoughts before you move on to Step 2 – Knowing the Enemy.  The more organized you are, the easier it will be to create a project strategy or creative brief for your client.

What if the client was more involved in the thumbnail process? I’d like to encourage designers to do a little experiment, whether online or at a face-to-face meeting – try to get the client to draw something for you. It doesn’t matter if the client can’t draw, because that isn’t their job, just get a pencil or pen in their hands. Let them be the artist, you can be the brush.

Under normal circumstances an introduction, project brief, and thumbnail sketches can take up to three hours if done separately, but bringing an extra pad of white paper to a meeting and handing it to the client while you’re going through a project brief can really get ideas flowing, it opens up more direct communication in regards to what the customer wants, and you may even be able to pick a concept on the spot.

If you are doing business online, use an online meeting tool that allows users to draw back and forth. Something as simple as Windows Live Messenger is capable of this, though I highly recommend Queeky. Queeky creates a shared canvas between users, and you can have as many people in a ‘room’ as you’d like. The only downside is that new users must register (for free) in order to use the service. If your client would rather not have to register for anything, a much less feature-filled option is Imagination Cubed by GE.

The point here isn’t to make the client do your work for you, but to get their ideas on paper as well. Seeing what the client wants is better than reading it or hearing it. After that, it’s just a simple (or extremely complicated) polish-up in Illustrator or Photoshop.

Every Sunday we will be posting a Design Review, whether it be logo design, graphic design, web design, or reviewing one of our favorite tutorials.  Hopefully we will be able to provide some insight on these various aspects of the design community, and everyone involved can learn something new.

Our first Design Review is going to focus on the Amazon.com logo, one of the most recognized logos on the internet today.  Amazon.com is currently the internet’s largest online store, so it should be interesting to take a closer look at their logo.

While the amazon.com logo is very simple, almost to extremes, it has been established as a corporate logo that nearly everybody knows.  I personally look forward to the mail man walking up to the house with a smiling brown box in his hand.  The amazon.com logo is unique, though simple.

The meaning behind the logo might be lost on people who don’t know exactly what it means in the first place, but it is quite memorable.  The bold ‘amazon’, and slightly more narrow ‘.com’ both emphasize the brand more than the website itself.

A cheeky grin that doubles as an arrow from “a to z” seems to simplify everything that amazon.com stands for to this point, though the meaning is lost on some.  Most consumers would not stop to think about a logo, or understand what this particular logo is communicating on a conscious level, though it probably does make a subliminal appeal.

Though some of the letter forms have been altered, particularly the ‘z’ in amazon, the sans-serif typeface is very legible and easy to read, and the slightly rounded corners on every letter really soften the logo and make it appear more ‘friendly’ in a very subtle way.  The Turner Duckworth Design Firm also created an entire alphabet to use on international sites, so the amazon.com brand is now universal with this typeface.

The logo is a two-color graphic that would translate well into a completely black and white logo (just turn the yellow smile/arrow into a black line).  It is quite versatile and has appeared on web advertisements, boxes, business cards, letterhead, envelopes, etc.

We hope this review was insightful.  Feel free to leave comments or your own insight on the review or the logo itself.  We want to know what you’re thinking.

Nascent Studio is a new establishment in Austin, TX.  We offer a wide variety of Creative Services, and we are seeking to build long-term relationships with clients in the Austin area.

Nascent Studio is currently building relationships with local printers that have an eco-friendly attitude, so you can rest assured that your new business cards didn’t destroy a rain forest.

So what can we do for you?  Just ask.  Most of our services are based around the broad categories of graphic design and photography, but we are always expanding our horizons.  By the end of the year we will be offering Illustration services, and by the end of next year (2011) we should also be offering interior design.  It’s always important to have a corporate identity, so when your walls match your business cards (if you can stand your walls to be THAT color of green), your corporate identity will be complete.  Just look at how Cingular did it before AT&T took over.

Make sure to keep checking up on our portfolio to see new and old projects.  During our transition to the new studio and new site, we will be slowly uploading our old content, as well as some new art.  If you’d like to contact us, check out our contact page.