simple - Graphic, Web Design and Marketing, London

Using vector illustrations in designs to deliver your message

Do you ever wish you didn’t use stock photography so much? Recently I’ve found myself trawling through pages of stock images from sites such as Shutterstock, iStock and Fotolia, usually looking for a well-presented young professional smiling to camera. These sites contain some good photography but I’m always worried that the stock approach lacks creativity [...]

Doing eye-catching designs in Illustrator

I’m always on the look out for simple eye-catching ways to communicate a message. I think this is a great example of a visually appealing background that could be used when there are no images, graphics or other ways to improve the typography. This is especially useful in direct marketing (email or mail shot). How [...]

Simple design idea for corporate marketing

I was asked to come up with a visual to portray a corporate bank’s image. This was one of the largest banks in the world, one that prided itself on coming up with intelligent solutions and, whilst it wanted to evoke reliability and gravity, it also wanted to be known as innovative. The tag line [...]

How to design water reflections in Photoshop

“Reflections are the new drop shadows!” If that’s the case, here’s how! Copy the text layer – or layer – that you want to reflect (Cmd/Ctrl-J). If the layer that you want to reflect is a text layer then you should Rasterize it. To do this, right-click on the text layer in the Layers palette [...]

Designing different vector logo options

I was asked to come up with a logo for Toby Beresford an application developer that specialises in third party apps for Facebook. The client wanted something neat, simple and modern that could have a shiny web 2.0 effect put on at a later date. I find it better to start off with Adobe Illustrator [...]

Freelance graphic designer’s picture quiz #4 – spot the logo

The above picture is made from 17 logos of the most famous brands in the world. The question is very simple: which letter comes from which logo? Please leave your answers in the comments section of this post.