Feeling Moody - Essential Mood Board Training

Great design don't always just pop out of nowhere. Mood boards cultivate ideas, and when trying to develop, nothing helps bridge the gap between the idea person and person who creates like a mood board can.

Mood Board Essentials :

 1. Name - give your mood board a name that excites you about the project, and what it can become.  If you start with a boring name, the project will be come boring.

  2. The Hunt - Finding objects, colors, tones, language, lines, photography, filters, applications that inspire you for the project at hand.  Specifically identify the aspects of these items which you would like to bring into your new project.  The idea is not copy, but to use items from all aspects relating to the project to inspire you to create something new.

  3. Edit - Once you have collected all of the elements which inspire this project, edit them.  When you started hunting for inspiration, you may have been going in one direction but realized somewhere along the way there were better paths to take.  So delete or separate all of the items that no longer belong in this project.

  4. Implement - You may not use every idea that you found will on your inspirational journey.  Actually, please don't use every aspect in your mood board all at once.  Save some of the goodness that remains in your mood board for a rainy day, you never know when a few extra assets will need to be created.

Rituals - 10 minutes of daily drawing (free drawing)

Art has been used IN rituals for thousands of years.   You probably have recognized art and design in your personal rituals.  Rituals like going to a religious service, the mural you see on your daily commute, the design on your favorite coffee mug you use every morning.  Even rituals like walking the dog, and the trusty Nike swoosh on the shoes you grab overtime to perform this ritual.    

How often does art BECOME a ritual though?  Incorporating a dose of creating can be incredibly rewarding.  There may not be any monetary gains from a daily doodle, but it can be a great stress reliever or just a good daily laugh.  A doodle a day, keeps the doctor at bay... I think that is how it goes.

Putting The Mono In Monochrome

Mono - alone, single.

Monochrome - an art technique using different shades of a single color.

Being a single in a sea of complementary, analogous, and triadic can be lonely.  There are benefits to being a single in this same sea though,  it allows you to not be anchored to any other shades.  

When starting branding and logo development sometimes being tied down to other shades limits your options from the get go.  Staying monochrome for the beginning of branding development or even the entirety of brand development is simple but effective.  When you start in monochrome you can analyze the nature of the essential design elements before you are swayed towards a certain design purely based on color attributes.

Sit, Stay, Rollover... Ad Rollovers

Sit, Stay, Rollover... or something like that.

The rollover action is all so popular in online advertising.  A rollover is the action of a graphic changing when your mouse scrolls over the graphic.  

If you actually took the time to count how many rollover actions you encounter in a day using the internet, you may be surprised.  I was actually pretty shocked at how desensitized I've become to rollovers since I unconsciously encounter them so often online.  Does that mean they're not affective?

Rollover's are still an affective way to grab attention, but creating a rollover that is unique is much more affective than a simple color change or copy change.  As always though, the rollover that you create should still match the look and feel of the business that you are advertising for.  If it makes more sense not to have a rollover graphic in an online ad, that ad would probably be avant-garde at this point.

What is Responsive Design?

Let's talk about responsive design, and NOT responsive web design.  

To responded is to make a reply; answer.  Responsive design is creating design which requires the audience to answer.  When creating responsive design, the audience's response should be varied.  Positive, negative, questionable; all responses become just numbers of engaged people to the design you've created.  The true goal is to create something that draws an audience and requires them to have an emotional response in which the audience must respond; better yet, take action.

Stacked - Graphic Design Stacking Elements

Stacking elements is a powerful tool in illustration and in typography.  To use stacking as a tool, you must put the emphasis on the right element and then work around it.  Identify the key word, message, letter or icon first.  Building around a central point helps bring attention to the intended element.  If too many elements are emphasized the overall message and intent can be lost in a sea of Jenga! like text or elements.

Breathe A Little - Letting Your Design Breathe

When do you breathe best? Is it when you are in a crowed subway station or when you are out on a mountain top?  The answer usually is out on a mountain top.  Graphic design elements work in similar ways.  

Letting a graphic element breathe, means to allow enough white space around the entire element to make the element stand out on it's own.  Information is interpreted best when there isn't too many alternative elements distracting from the main messaging.  Take a breath, it's okay to not fill the blank space and let the focal point breathe.

CREATE & STAY WILD - California In The Springtime

Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with being wild.  Harnessing wildness into a cohesive thought is so tough, so embrace it and create!  Wildness gives us an outlet to express the energy that isn’t used or exercised in day-to-day life.  So create & stay wild.

www.callebonitastudios.com

www.nelsonexcavation.com

PRESENCE

Presence, a sometimes painstaking task, can be the key to unlocking your creativity.  More than ever, our attention is pulled in difference directions by the multiple forms of communication and ways we receive information.  All of this clutter can make being present in your current location, work, task, exercise regimen seem almost impossible.  Isolating yourself from these distractions can open new opportunities for clear thought and creative exploration.  Go ahead, leave your cell phone at home and be present with only your thoughts for awhile.

www.callebonitastudios.com

SPACE

The opportunity of the unknown.  What can or could space do for your design?  The relationship between two objects can be defined by space, how much space between the two or how little.  Giving too much space to a focal point can leave the intended focal point looking isolated.  If there is no space between the focal point and the secondary object, it can be confusing as to which object should be the focus.  Evaluate the context of the objects to define the relationship and use space to clearly express their relationship.

www.callebonitastudios.com

Support Public Art

Have you ever gone to a large city and noticed the amount of sculptures, gardens, and murals there are?  Why is all of this great public art in large cities?  It might be that large cities have a budget for public arts, and they have a large platform that many tourists and visitors pass by and view.  Public Art is an important feature in all communities though, it can bring people together or just start conversation.  Smaller cities and towns need the effects of public art just as much a large cities, so why is there less public art in smaller communities?  Rally behind your local public arts projects and embrace the beauty and conversation that will follow.

Window - Seeing Design In A New Light

Window: an opening in the wall or roof of a building or vehicle that is fitted with glass or other transparent material in a frame to admit light or air and allow people to see out or in.
 

Looking out of a window and looking into a window generate different feelings.  Looking out of a window provides a feeling of dominance of the interior space you are in.  Looking into a window is to look in on something personal of someone else's or your own.  You see an outer perspective through a window which leads to something personal.  A window for others to intentially look through can generate an immediate varied perspective depending on what the window in framing.  Offering a window for potential customers to view a brand or a business is essential in creating a representative design.  How and what you frame with that window dictates the presence of the brand.

Word Flow Yoga

Word Flow Yoga, and inspired space for movers and shakers to share words, movement, and community.  Curated by the amazingly talented Cat Walker, Word Flow Yoga is la lifestyle blog that will no doubt inspire us to live a more practiced life in more ways than just yoga.  Calle Bonita Studios is so proud to have collaborated with Word Flow Yoga on their logo, and to provide a unique esthetic to convey Word Flow Yoga's fresh and encouraging voice.

FORM

A shape, a body, a mold, a mode; form.  Form, as a noun, is based on the outer line of a form.  When a form is translated into a three-dimensional shape, shadow and highlights appear creating visual interest.  When a form is translated in two-dimensional, shadow and highlights must be created to add visual interest.  When form is thought of in such a minimalist way, the objects arounds us can take on new meaning.  Letting form take the foreground can be just as interesting as form being the vessel for shadow and light.

IMPRESSIONS

Impressions: A strong effect produced on the intellect, feeling, conscience, etc.

Working in clay is a humbling reminder of how easy it is to make an impression.  It is also a reminder of the amount of skill it takes to create the desired impression.  Physical impressions are on almost every surface that we interact with: the grout lines in the floor we are standing on, the texture of the walls, the tread on the tires that take us from place to place.  Some of these impressions are more functional than decorative, but they all started by altering an object/surface/idea that was flat and non-descript.

BONNIE ESTATES

Logo and label for small production winery.  Calle Bonita Studios created the Bonnie Estates logo and wine label with a modern and playful feel to attract the millennial wine enthusiast.

LookUp

Research.  Research.  Research.  To create with intent, you must have done some research on the subject matter or medium in which you are creating.  Sure creating with no purpose can be freeing and in the moment, but will that work have the lasting impression that all great work does?  Research can only help develop a thought or an idea, so why not use research to develop design too?

DUALITY

Duality:  the quality or state of having two parts.

Duality.  Is there a better time to talk about duality than mid-week?  Just like in human nature, duality is a constantly reoccurring element of design.  Even in early religious art, the theme of duality is a focal point.

Duality in art and design makes a statement.  Sparking conversation can be an effective strategy in branding.  Although, make sure you are sparking the right conversation with your statement.

MESITA

Mesita, meaning little table in Spanish.  This young, small scale, vineyard creates beauty by cultivating less than desirable soil to work for their vines. 

Logo and wine label created by Calle Bonita Studios.

SYMMETRY

Symmetry:  the quality of being made up of exactly similar parts facing each other or around an axis.

When something looks visually pleasing there is often a level of symmetry involved.  Perfect symmetry though, can confuse the eye.  Adding a focal point to direct the eye is essential if there is an element of focus that should be created.  Symmetry can also be lost if there is no object to focus on.  Don’t let perfect symmetry take over the image.  Let symmetry contribute to the overall goal, but not be the leading scorer.