Fresh Dave | For all things fresh

Vintage Stussy Adverts

2011-11-09T16:30:00.010Z

Ampersand web typography conference

2011-06-20T16:29:00.007+01:00

Last Friday 17th June I went to the brilliant one-day web-typography conference Ampersand, in Brighton.

The conference focused on all things type for web designers and type enthusiasts keen to get the industry low-down on the future of web typography. The speaker’s varied from type engineers, type designers, developers, and self-confessed type geeks. The general buzz was that the future is very bright for web typography with CSS 3 leading the way for exemplary creative web typography and font embedding. The site voltagefashionamplified.com beautifully demonstrates the excellent design and typographic flexibility of CCS3 with live text (remember to scroll horizontally – not the best interactive design!).

Mark Boulton spoke about the challenge of designing for so many screen sizes. He suggested that we should be designing outside of Photoshop and within the browser. He was leaning towards liquid layouts and responsive web design. Mark Boulton suggested that we should be designing pockets of content rather than the whole canvas; so that with a liquid layout our designed elements are preserved and repositioned to the desired screen size. The current trend for responsive layout tends to be around repositioning the core layout at 4 specific screen sizes. This is where we need to be designing in the browser otherwise we will be designing 4 potential layouts for each page! See some examples of liquid layouts / responsive web design here

Jason Santa Maria was another standout speaker for me. His talk was very inspirational and he knows his type, I recognized a few of the 8 simple ways to improve your typography in his presentation, such as hanging quotes, correct emphasis, and clean rags. His words and
polished presentation were very inspirational, with such words as –

"You’re the luckiest people in the world…
you get to spend a whole day talking about type!"

"This is a fantastic time to be a designer,
because someone has opened the door again."

Jason Santa Maria described how much of the identity of a brand is tied up in their logo and typography. Making an example of The Guardian by covering up the logo and asking “Who’s site is this and why?" To which an audience member replied – “The Guardian, because of the grid”. The point here is that if The Guardian utilized their typographical design throughout their site then we would immediately recognise the brand. Jason Santa Maria then used the New Yorker as an example of how to do it. A lot of the brand identity and style of the New Yorker is tied up in its typography; embedding the New Yorker font and using this distinctive typography design takes the brand to another level newyorker.com

Aisle One. 8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography In Your Designs

2011-06-14T14:59:00.012+01:00

These 8 simple pointers on typography are simple, easy to follow, and a good reminder of best-practice. Most are fairly obvious for designers. However, having just worked on an information-heavy grid layout project using InDesign, i think Vertical Rhythm was an especially important reference for me. Will Photoshop bring out a setting for viewing a baseline grid in CS6? Why have it in InDesign but not Photoshop? I know InDesign's a print tool but it would be amazing to be able to set and view a baseline grid in Photoshop.

The below images are all from Aisle One's website. View the article here

Fildefer.com. Fresh photography site.

2011-06-06T11:14:00.006+01:00

Really like the look and feel this site. Simple grid layout, nice menu, neat social media integration and good layout to focus on photography work. Great colour scheme too, and a nice big chunky footer. View site here

Design with Circles

2011-06-03T11:08:00.008+01:00

James Morgan Photography

2011-05-05T16:35:00.004+01:00

I recently stumbled across this image from James Morgan. What a brilliant photo! See more of James' work here.

Burton Snowboard's site

2011-05-04T10:58:00.010+01:00

Burton Snowboard's site is brilliantly designed; the current weather widget suggests the perfect product - very smart. See it here global.burton.com

Girlfriend's letters to American Apparel

2011-04-28T10:34:00.003+01:00

"Extra bold. Regular. Bold. You've been around the block with Helvetica. In catalogs. On shopping bags. making out in the parking lot. You're together. We get it. But look, she asked us to write this. It's time you thought about seeing another typeface". Brilliantly written letters from Girlfriend to American Apparel.

Collages done!

2011-04-23T18:20:00.001+01:00

Hoping the handmade style and fun photos will be a hit at Mum's 60th birthday bash

Simian Mobile Disco Synthesise. Directed by Kate Moross & Alex Sushon

2011-01-12T17:08:00.008Z

Kate Moross & Alex Sushon recently directed the Synthesise video for Simian Mobile Disco. They illustrated and animated in Flash then projected their work onto a warehouse wall. They also flashed a strobe light onto the projected wall to get rave-real textured look.

The video and the song are F-F-F-F-F-Fresh!

Watch the video on this link
Watch the making-of video on this link

Sam Hanner

2011-01-04T14:06:00.002Z

http://samhanner.wordpress.com/

Andy Gilmore

2010-12-29T17:54:00.002Z

http://www.birdbrid.com/

Simple fun eLearning apps

2010-11-23T10:48:00.005Z

http://www.topthatpublishing.com/app-promo

Check these apps out. Really simple design and interactivity for children's eLearning - lots of drag and drop functionality. Very intuitive and fun for kids. Plus the illustrations are pretty sweet too!

Fresh

RFRM Jewelry site - very clever masking!

2010-11-17T13:34:00.002Z

Check out the clever masking on the main image bit - resize the window - very smart! Very clever idea. Note to self - use this if ever possible! What do you think?

View site here

Oipolloi.com

2010-11-10T17:56:00.002Z

Really enjoyed viewing this site. I like the use of the grid to display images in diffeent sizes; especially uses large image further down the page - which encouraged me to scroll and check out more of the site.
Check out this site here.

Aaronrobbs.com

2010-11-10T17:46:00.006Z

You might have seen this site from Site Inspire? However i'm blogging about it anyways. The grid used on this site forms the main design structure. The images appear to hang off the grid. The effect it fresh, clean and structured and i like it. What do you think? I also like the large image of the designer on the About page - it's good to put a face to the name - more and more designers are using images of themselves on their sites.
View the site here.

Supakitch & Koralie wall painting.

2010-11-01T17:34:00.006Z

Really enjoyed watching this video of the process of drawing, painting, spraying, and cutting out all the beautifully detailed elements of this wonderful wall art.
Watch the painting being created here

View his site here

Tomokazu Matsuyama

2010-10-29T17:04:00.005+01:00

Wow love the vibrant colours and abstract fun shapes in Tomokazu Matsuyama's work. View his site here

My Flash Work! Sky Spengler's campaign

2010-09-28T19:28:00.014+01:00

I just finished designing and building the Sky Spengler's online campaign. It's taken me a month and a half of designs, redesigns, animatics, amends, and resizes to get it done but its now online; phew! You might have seen it? I was quite pleased with my designs for this campaign, the monster characters were a lot of fun to design concepts around. Bringing these characters to live in animation was great fun too. For 40kb banners i think they look pretty good! Click the below images to view animations.

My Flash Work! Sky DSO campaign

2010-09-13T12:24:00.004+01:00

I was very pleased with the realistic water effect in this banner, not bad for a 40k banner!

My Flash Work! Sky Broadband OSM campaign

2010-09-13T12:16:00.003+01:00

It was a lot of fun to design and animate this flying carpet banner. I wish i had more time but was pleased with the work. Click the below image to view my animation

Uffie "ADD SUV" feat. Pharrell Williams

2010-07-30T12:34:00.013+01:00

This video directed by Nathalie Canguilhem is awesome. I love the Americana style motion graphics which intertwine with the video footage. Really nice illustrative design work. The video and song aren't great but the visuals on this video really caught my eye. What do you think?

City of Melbourne logo redesign

2010-07-28T17:53:00.005+01:00

Last week the city of Melbourne, Australia revealed their new logo and id. The Sydney office of Landor got US$74,000 for research, and US$120,000 for the design itself.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle unveiled the new logo for the city, saying:

“Old logo was "a bit daggy" and Melbourne needed a new design to reflect its cool sophistication on the world stage.”

I really like it. What do you think?

My Flash Work! Sinclair animation

2010-07-06T17:19:00.004+01:00

I created this image a while ago as an experiment in photoshop to see how i could burst to life an image of a calculator. Sinclair has always been space and cool since their C5! So i made this calculator into a space-ship - come - planet, which i have animated in Flash to see if i could bring it to life. This is the animation;
http://www.david-healey.co.uk/sinclair.html

Nike SB Icon x Icon minisite

2010-06-21T15:57:00.009+01:00

Well worth checking out this very well designed Nike Flash minisite. Have a look at the videos which show Anderson painting the art boards and shoe boxes for this range of shoes - inspirational stuff!
http://www.nike.com/nikeskateboarding/kostonxanderson/

My Design! Ryvita Mailer

2010-06-01T12:07:00.003+01:00

To carry out this design for Soup I used a variety of different PSD's and the Ryvita website to create a new and exciting mailer design. The emphasis with this design was to really push the product and so I zoomed right in on the product shots.

Flash Tutorial! Creating Star Wars opening credits text in Flash CS3

2010-05-28T10:56:00.007+01:00

1. Open Fireworks and put your chosen text into a text field.

2. Select your text field then select the Skew tool.

3. Now Skew your text to your desired perspective.

4. Now convert your text to paths by selecting your text then clicking Text on the top toolbar and selecting Convert to Paths.

5. Now copy and paste your text into Flash. Flash will ask you for your import settings. Select import :Current frame as movieclip", "keep all paths editable", and "keep all text editable".

6. Now Control Click on your text and select Break apart.

7. Now control click on your text and select Convert to Symbol. Click Okay on the pop up window.

6. In Flash go to frame 100 and control click (right click PC) on it, from the drop down select "Insert Keyframe".

7. Now go back to frame 1 and create a new Layer called "Guides". On this layer use the line tool to draw out guides for your text along the edges of your text field. This is important later to make sure we retain the correct perspective in animation.

8. Now select Layer 1 on frame 1 and move your text field off the bottom of the stage and press "Q" to resize it to fit to your guides (make sure you hold shift when resizing to retain proportions of text).

9. Now go to frame 100 and move your text off the top of the screen and resize to fit your guides, again make sure you hold shift when resizing to retain proportions.

10. Now Control Click on frame 50 on Layer 1 and select Create Motion Tween (CS3), or Classic Tween (CS4).

11. Now export your movie to check it over and tweek it according to your style!

12. Hide or delete your guides layer once your happy with your work.

Flash CS4 Inspiration! Y Axis 3d Star Wars text

2010-05-24T23:02:00.002+01:00

I recently had the task of creating 3d Star Wars text. Luckily through google it was very quick to find a very straight-forward tutorial explaining exactly how to do this. Click the link to view the tutorial.

http://jojopops.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/flash-cs4-star-wars-text-scroll-tutorial/

Flash Design Inspiration! Erky Perky

2010-04-29T16:55:00.001+01:00

This is a really fun and interactive flash site. I love the characters and the animations are fast to load. Awesome work.

http://www.erkyperky.com.au/#

Flash Design Inspiration! Wishbone Design

2010-04-29T16:38:00.004+01:00

This charming website is very heartwarming. The character animations really give a boost of personality and individuality. Lovely work. I'd love to work on Flash websites like this.
Wishbone design

My Flash Work! Banner preview page now online!

2010-04-23T11:57:00.011+01:00

I've just published this banner preview site which acts as a quick reference to my best design and animation work for web banners. It's good to have an easily up-datable website where i can add and change banners as and when i do them.

Click here to link to my flash banner animation pages

Pictobrowser

2010-04-13T11:58:00.005+01:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Stumbled across Pictobrowser being used on a blog. So used it and its so easy and effective - i love it! It pull in images from a Flicker account. Now to research Lightbox and Thickbox!

My Design! Ryvita additional page

2010-03-17T13:36:00.004Z

Soup recently gave me the task of designing an additional page for the Ryvita site.

My Design! Aviva mailer

2010-03-17T13:27:00.007Z

With this design Soup gave me more of an interface task. I started with a 600px canvas and worked a grid out with 10px gutters. Then designed. I was especially pleased with the look of the bottom left widgets, and the bottom right layout.

My Design! Sky+HD promo graphics

2010-03-17T13:19:00.005Z

Soup recently gave me the task of designing a suite of adverts for Sky+HD. The result was a glossy set of adverts which utalised the brand identity of Sky+HD and sold the benefits of the offer well.

My Design! Jordans CCAS promo graphic

2010-03-17T13:17:00.001Z

Design Inspiration! New Creative

2010-03-04T16:50:00.003Z

Really really really like the colour scheme used on the New Creative site. The Cyan / Blue colour looks great against the grey and beige colours.

Design Inspiration! Twit Chirp

2010-03-04T16:03:00.002Z

Great fun use of illustration for site design.

My Design! Twitter Background

2010-02-15T22:59:00.010Z

Soup gave me the awesomely fun brief to design a background for Jordans Cereals Twitter page - click here to view. I initially researched into the styles and colour schemes of the brand to get a strong grounding on exactly what the strongest elements would be for this project. After studying the brand guidelines, web site, cereals packets, and fruit bar packets i came up with the above design.

My Design! Branding Virgin Media Business Extranet site

2010-02-10T10:13:00.011Z

This was a fun project in which i was able to explore and learn more about interface design. I was briefed by Soup to redesign an extranet site based on the current look and feel of www.virginmedia.com. The bold and simple colour palette of the brand gave me good foundations to build the design upon.

My Flash Work! Revlon interface

2010-01-06T18:00:00.006Z

I did the animation for this Flash interface for Soup Digital.

As this campaigns no longer live; click this link to view my mockup interface;
http://www.david-healey.co.uk/Revlon.html

My Flash Work! Kingsmill Oatilicious toast button

2010-01-06T17:37:00.004Z

For Soup I designed and built a new Kingsmill "Oatilicious" button. I initially designed the layout in Fireworks then took it into Flash and got it poppin! Check it out on this link www.kingsmillbread.com/campaigns/oatilicious-campaign/

My Design! 2UP emailer

2010-01-06T15:00:00.006Z

I did this design whilst working for WeAreVi. A lot of the styles and graphics i created were inspired by a lot of the Nike work i'd seen in print and online. I especially liked designing the "1,2,3 step" section in the middle - which uses a lot of clever and good looking photoshop skills to make the imagery appear as if within a football pitch environment. The background and misted glass effect looked wicked and the grass was fun to design!

My Design! Twinings mailer

2010-01-06T14:52:00.003Z

This mailer design was designed to a tight and specific brief. However the end product was visually exciting and fun to view. The imagery used throughout the mailer really brought it to life - especially when breaking out of their boxes.

My Design! Promo Banner

2010-01-06T14:44:00.002Z

I designed this promo banner for Soup. The brief was to create a banner promoting joining Twitter and Facebook groups. I was pleased with the end result.

My Design! Jordans CCAS layout design

2010-01-06T14:37:00.004Z

I created this design for Soup. Most of the CCAS minisite had been designed and built. I just had to take a couple of previously designed layouts and work in my new copy and design a new promo section - "Be on the box".

My Design! Jordans CCAS mailer design

2010-01-06T14:31:00.004Z

This mailer was one the first interface design jobs i've been given at Soup. The header and footer were set but all the information design and layout other than that was my call. I love working on Jordans Cereals there branding is so fun and colourful - a great bonus when designing. Their brand guidelines is awesome!

Actionscript Inspiration! How to control when a Flash object is and isn't active

2010-01-06T10:56:00.005Z

To control when an object is active you can place activation code on the _root timeline. So when your Flash movie gets to a certain point your objects become active. Which is useful for sections on a Flash site where you have objects sitting behind a menu which needs clicking before you can get to the other interactive objects. The splash intro on my site uses this code (the objects which drop into shot are inactive till you click through. Click here to view my site and how this code could work for you.

Put this the the timeline where you want your object to activate.

_root.container.OnestartActive();

Within your Movieclip put your actions inside a function

function OnestartActive()
{
trace("IN MAKE ONE START ACTIVE");

one.onRelease = function (){
gotoAndPlay("starttoonetransition");
}
}

HTML Inspiration! Search engine friendly Flash sites using offset HTML copy

2010-01-04T14:11:00.003Z

Whilst building my portfolio site i've had to learn a lot of new things. Specifically HTML and making my site search engine friendly. A friend suggested offsetting a load of descriptive copy of my site by -100000 pixels. Which after some trial and error has worked a treat. The beauty of this method is that it's simple - great for a designer / animator like me. And more importantly that the text is hidden from the user but not from Google!

I applied this paragraph style to offset the body copy;
"p style="text-indent: -100000px; width:200px"

Design Inspiration! Nike SB Debacle imagery

2009-12-01T17:07:00.008Z

Nike SB have been releasing very cool designs based around each of their Skate videos or promotions. I like them so much i have them as my desktop background changing the picture every minute! This set went alongside the promotion of the Nike SB Debacle video.

My Flash Banners! Sky+HD Sports Jose

2009-11-26T11:56:00.006Z

I did the design and animation for this Flash banner for Soup Digital. Although this flash banner is only 30k i wanted to animate the closeup of Jose's face to illustrate the detail of Sky+HD. To implement this effect i used some smart flash masking between two JPEG's - 1 closeup, and 1 small to maximize quality and minimize file size.

Click this link to view this banner animating;
http://www.david-healey.co.uk/Sky+HD_Sports_Jose.html

My Flash Banners! Sky Value 4

2009-11-26T11:48:00.003Z

I did the design and animation for this Flash banner for Soup Digital. I developed the design and animation to focus and showoff the quality of programmes on Sky. I designed and then later animated this carousel style mechanism to show the programmes off in a slick and stylish way.

Click this link to view this banner animating;
http://www.david-healey.co.uk/Sky_Value4.html

My Flash Banners! Sky Sports

2009-11-26T11:32:00.008Z

I did the design and animation for this Flash banner for Soup Digital. Being a big football fan it was great fun to work on this banner. I chose to use the image of Robin Van Persie as it is very vibrant and exciting. I then used fast and exciting animation to bring the banner to life in a modern and sports like way. I especially like the effect at the beginning of sliding the players in from the side as if they are alive and sliding into the banner! The throw-in animation on frame 2 of "92" adds a nice football effect.

Click this link to view this banner animating;
http://www.david-healey.co.uk/Sky_Sports.html

My Flash Banners! Sky 11 Reasons

2009-11-26T10:57:00.008Z

I did the design and animation for this Flash banner for Soup Digital. This flash banner was designed and animated to run alongside the ATL campaign. The aim was to animate the 11 reasons to join Sky. I especially enjoyed animating the skittles on frame 2 and like the vibrancy they bring to this banner.

Click this link to view this banner animating;
http://www.david-healey.co.uk/Sky_11_Reasons.html

Flash Inspiration! The Oleg

2009-11-23T11:50:00.007Z

The Oleg - is a 23 year old freelance designer who's work is incredible! His visuals are super slick and beautiful. His way of working is briefly visually explained in his "How its made" section. Check out these images and the link below.

http://theoleg.com/

Flash Inspiration! Quake Quiz

2009-11-20T14:31:00.006Z

I really love this Flash site! It's an earthquake awareness quiz. The illustrations are very fresh and funky and Flash has been used to create a fun and exciting website to educate about Earthquakes. Have a look on the below link

http://quakequizsf.org/

My Flash sites! Vauxhall Collective

2009-11-18T11:24:00.004Z

I did a lot of the little Flash animations on this site which inhabit the Flash environment. It was great fun creating and animating elements such as the cow with subtle yet realistic gestures - such as having a fly buzz around his head and his ears twitch in reaction! The hot air balloon was also a lovely challenge as it has to be redrawn in vector in Illustrator by myself to cut down on file size of heavier PNG's. It was well worth it tho - they look fab!

http://www.vauxhallcollective.co.uk/

My CV

2009-11-18T11:16:00.005Z

My Flash sites! Best Days of our Lives

2009-11-18T11:09:00.009Z

I designed and built this Flash promo site recently for a university reunion event in London. The site is based on my illustration of a graduate "party boy" utalising his features as elements of Flash animation i.e. buddy holly glasses used as loader and then as a spinning transition later. The mouth of the character also open to reveal the image gallery. Take a look at the site on the below link now to see how i used Flash to create a fun and exciting club night web site!

http://www.bestdaysofourlives.co.uk/fullpage.html

Flash Inspiration! Honda Blue Skies site

2009-11-18T10:56:00.005Z

I recently visited the new Honda Blue Skies site and thought it was fantastic. The colours are very vivid and the design is done in a very modern Flash style, making use of large images and creating a free navigation system so far improved and better than the constraints and standards of regular HTML design. Great site and great inspiration for any of my future and present projects. Good to see Flash being used in such a fresh and funky way. The colour palette is more CBBC than Honda! But it gives the brand a cool fresher and younger look and feel.

http://www.hondabluesky.ca/

My Flash sites! My new Flash folio site is finally online!!!!

2009-11-06T11:53:00.010Z

http://www.david-healey.co.uk/

David-healey.co.uk is a full flash portfolio using a liquid layout to always have the header, container, and footer always at exact positions whatever the users browser window. I developed david-healey.co.uk as a full flash site to make the most of my knowledge of flash outside the constraints of a client brief. Which has been fantastic! I can design and animate according to my own style and trends. As the site david healey.co.uk is full flash i designed and animated in the mindset of a flash animator to make the most use of rollovers and interaction. Flash is such a fun tool to use and it's been great to utalise my design, animation and code knowledge for something unique and indepentant like this. Click the below link to view my site now and let me know what you think.

http://www.david-healey.co.uk/

Threadless T Shirt! Sinclair Calculator Spaceship White

2009-09-04T11:36:00.003+01:00

http://www.threadless.com/submission/229915/Sinclair_Calculator_Spaceship_White

Threadless T Shirt! Sinclair Calculator Spaceship

2009-09-03T17:49:00.002+01:00

http://www.threadless.com/submission/229774/Sinclair_Calculator_Spaceship

My Illustration! New Rave Wayfarer Sunglasses

2009-08-19T17:35:00.008+01:00

I made these pictures after talking with some mates about going to see Frankmusic play. And what we'd wear etc. So i thought i'd make a little New Rave homage to Wayfarers for my blog

My Logos! The Constitution F.C logo

2009-08-11T10:24:00.003+01:00

My sunday league team The Constitution F.C is in need of a shiny new logo for the coming season. This is my first effort off the bat. I've gone for a retro MLS style look - which i think could be ideal as we are a FRESH! new club - and it sound be cheap to print because it only uses 3 colours blue, red and black and it's very simple.

What do you think?

My Illustration! Buddy Holly Party Boy Illustration

2009-08-10T11:54:00.008+01:00

I created this image in illustrator for a party invite website i designed and then built in Flash. The party was for a reunion so i based the concept and design around the idea of a party boy graduate but jazzed it up with cool illustrative effects and Buddy Holly Sunglasses. Check out the website for Best days of our lives at the below URL. The mouth actually opens to reveal the image gallery - its pretty fun!

www.bestdaysofourlives.co.uk

Fresh Things! Tilt shifting helicopter film by Keith Loutit

2009-08-10T11:33:00.006+01:00

Check out the below link to view the great Bathtub IV by Keith Loutit. It's an amazing helicopter rescue film using a camera trick called "Tilt shifting" to create a model village like effect on 100% real footage. The effect of tilt shifting is incredible.

www.vimeo.com/3156959

My Illustration! CMY Comb

2009-08-10T10:35:00.007+01:00

CMY Comb is an idea i had for a potential T - shirt design. I liked drawing the retro comb shapes.

My Photoshop Work! Sinclair Calculator Spaceship

2009-08-06T12:24:00.006+01:00

I created this image recently as an experiment in photoshop to see how i could burst to life an image of a calculator. Sinclair has always been space and cool since their C5! So i made this calculator into a space-ship - come - planet, which i later animated in Flash to see if i could bring it to life.

Fresh Things! Elmysterioso logo

2009-08-05T20:38:00.002+01:00

I really liked the logo from Elmysterioso. Its a really cool graffiti style new look. And the site isn't too shabby either - great use of colours - new rave neos.

http://www.elmysterioso.com/

New Blog

2009-08-05T17:18:00.000+01:00

Have just set up my new blog. How exciting!