Design Trends

Recently wine bottles have become a medium of choice for Orange County graphic designers. Whether they’re taking label design out of the box, or putting the wine into a box (literally), the days of plain, rectangular labels seem to be over. With more regions around the world producing better and better wine, the marketplace is becoming more and more crowded. And you know what that means: people want to stand out. And what’s the best way to stand out? You guessed it. Great design. read more

Over the years, just about everything has been called art. A whole litany of items could be listed, including garbage and Styrofoam. And although this isn’t the first time it’s been transformed into something more aesthetically pleasing, it is so unique it deserves having attention brought to it. read more

Lots of people, including some of us in the design industry, sometimes forget exactly how far design permeates our everyday lives. Many of us think of design as the ads we see, the websites we visit, the logos in our newspapers. In reality, design reaches into nearly everything we interact with on a daily basis. From your office chair and the layout of your car’s dashboard, to your running shoes and television remote control. read more

Every now and then, you might run across articles that feature “design trends for 2009” or “hot web design trends”. Design trends change from season to season, from year to year, based on what’s cool, different, or new. The question is, are design trends something to embrace or ignore? read more

Our entire society has been slowly moving away from paper for some time now. First with the proliferation of e-mail, now e-books, and the availability of nearly anything on the Internet. So many people do online research before they purchase anything that product brochures are becoming more and more popular as PDF’s. The question is this: will the day come where the entire world has gone paperless?
Sure, there are going to be purists (ourselves included) who’ll have a difficult time giving up the wonderful tactile sensations that come from thick card stock,embossing, and raised ink. But that may end up going the way of the horse and carriage. Some may say that there’s nothing like riding a horse to get from point A to point B, but in today’s world, there isn’t any room for equines among our millions of automobiles.
Will there come a day when each and every piece of designed material that we produce today will be exclusively digital? Business cards, letterhead, brochures, catalogs, posters, banners, you name it. Realistically, each of those could exist paperless today and many of them do. On the other side, is a completely digital and paperless design realm a brave, new world with unlimited possibility?
Perhaps. Printed design is static while digital media can be dynamic. A printed piece will inevitably end up being tossed away while digital media can simply be erased. Each outlet definitely has its strong and weak points, and we’re not choosing sides (not really, at least), but as forward thinking members of an ever-changing industry, we need to admit that the possibility exists. And if we ever get there, we’ll push those boundaries, too.

At Urban Geko, we like to think that we can see good design in everything. All the way from Nola, Italy, is a perfect example of fantastic design and ingenious execution. Constructed near Mt. Vesuvius, the Vulcano Buono, or “good volcano”, is a multi-purpose commercial center that exemplifies cutting-edge 21st century design. read more

Creative block. It happens to all of us eventually, and to some more often than others.

So, what happens when the creative juices are clogged, choked, plugged or otherwise stopped up? The obstruction needs to be cleared by whatever means necessary. Here are some ways to thwart the beastly block of creativity. read more

Graffiti can be defined as “unauthorized writing or drawing on a public surface” and has been in existence in some form or another since before the days of the Roman Empire. read more