This Site has Moved to SonOfFiveRivers.com
Click Here to Vist NEW Site: www.SonOfFiveRivers.com
I’ve been blogging for several months now and I’m glad to have recieved the feedback I have. I’ve enjoyed the experince and for that reason I’ve decided to take blogging to another level. I’ll be self hosting my blog and that means you’ll see a lot more creativity in the design, functionality and layout of the new blog.
Check it out: www.SONofFIVErivers.com
Cheers
Retro & Vintage Design
So I woke up pretty early this morning (5:30am) and thought lets work on a project that I’ve been postponing for a while… So I collected some vintage and retro art design for this long overdue project and thought some people might find it inspiring. I enjoy the branding side of business and I think this look can help a business stand out by giving it a unique and distinct flavor.
As an individual whos all about requirements gathering I find it very difficult to sit with a designer and just explain what I need. I’ve about diagrams, charts, brief statements, pictures etc. So this collection should help me with that process and also provide me with a single place to store all these pictures. Hope its useful for whatever you need it for, enjoy!
Some of these pics came came from http://www.smashingmagazine.com, an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
- illustrations from old posters, movies, newspapers, CDs, vinyls, ads;
- old-style typography (e.g. Roman typefaces);
- script fonts and handwriting;
- old radio devices;
- old TV devices;
- old cars;
- old packaging;
- old photos;
- vibrant rainbow colors (high contrast, neon-style);
- torn, used paper with stains (often yellowish paper);
- dark, dirty colors (brown, dark red, dark blue) and textures (e.g. paper);
- scrapbooks;
- pop-art elements (see also Pop Art Is Alive: Classics and Modern Artworks);
- retro illustrations;
- old-style signs;
- vintage and retro are often combined with a hand-drawing style and grunge style.
~ The Statement ~ The Official Blog of The Old State
ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen
The Ernest Hemingway Collection
The Dollar Dreadful Family Library
Renaissance-Designs
Free Online Photo Editor
Okay Photoshop costs an arm and a leg and microsoft paint just sucks!
Here’s the that is fantastic. Its free and its online. http://www.aviary.com
How to Copyright You Photo’s and other Images
A friend of mine who is a event and wedding decorator in Vancouver BC, asked me to show her how to copyright her work for her company R Squared Decor & Design.
This post should show you how the steps to watermark our images in an open source (free) graphic design program called Gimp, I hope other small organizations can use this method as a cheap alternative to copyrighting there images.
THE PROBLEM: Although the Internet is an amazing tool for sharing your work, it also means your work can be used against your will in all manner of ways, so a means to make sure your work remains yours is required. Here I’ll show you how to place a logo using a general method that works in all graphics programs but for this example I will be using Gimp.
Download Gimp (Free) www.gimp.org
Step 1. Open your image in your graphics program and select the Text tool. Set the colour of the text to white and the size and font to anything you like. Now you are ready to add the text.
Step 2. Click in your image where you want your text to start. In GIMP check the box in the bottom left that says Use Selected Font, most programs don’t require this type of confirmation however. To add a Copyright sign in Windows we need to open the Start Menu, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map, or if you have Vista just type the charachter map in the search bar and you’ll find it straight
away. Once the character map is open change the font in the top bar to the one you are using in your image editing program and then a few rows down in the main area of the window you should find the Copyright symbol. Left click it and it should enlarge then press Select and it will appear in the bottom text bar, then press Copyto place it on your clipboard
Step 3. Return to your image and the text box you opened. Then press Control and V to paste in your Copyright symbol. Type your choice of words afterwards and click OK/Close to insert your text.
Step 4. Press Shift and T to activate the transform tool and drag your writing to the size you would like it. You can now move your writing to wherever you’d like it on your image.
Step 5. Now open Filters, Distorts, Emboss and change the settings so that it appears as you’d like it to. The options in GIMP dictate the direction of the light source; Azimuth is the direction from which the light is illuminating the words, Elevation is the height of the light source around the text (imagine the sun in the sky as a rough analogy for these two controls) and the Depth determines the size and intensity of the shadows created.
Step 6. Now that you have embossed your image you can reduce the opacity until the writing no longer distracts from the image too much but at the same time still remains visible. The setting required, as well as the positioning of the writing will depend on each image but you will always be able to protect your images from theft by using this method. You can now look forward to a (hopefully) piracy-free future in photography, congratulations.
For Love or for Business? (Polaroid Film)
You may of heard that this year, Polaroid will be selling it’s final stock of instant-photo goodness.
I’ve never had polaroid camera but there seems something nostalgic about them still!
But here is the news, the Polaroid film is already making a coming back?
The Impossible Project is an idea by Polanoid.net’s Florian Kaps has recently signed a 10-year le
ase on the original Polaroid factory in the Netherlands, and plans to start producing polaroid film again as soon as the old stuff runs out.
Visit the wesbite and you’ll see more. And with the thousands of fans of Polaroid, I think Kaps could be onto a good thing. But he was quoted as saying that
“The project is more than a business plan; it’s a fight against the idea that everything has to die when it doesn’t create turnover.”.
Props to him!