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elbowruminations

graphic design thinking for everyone

What to Get a Graphic Designer for ChristmasDecember 3 2008

It’s that time of year again. The time of year where you wonder what to get the Graphic Designer in your life that has everything. It’s also the time of year when Graphic Designers wonder what to populate their wish lists with to prevent being the victim of poor shopping choices. We’re here to help. Here’s our list of things to buy a Graphic Designer for 2008:

Item #1: A Swashbuckle from Veer - $65.00

Give the gift of typeface with this stylish belt buckle. Perhaps if the graphic designer you are shopping for does not wear belts (or pants), you might consider a hoodie instead. Heck! Anything from the store at Veer seems like a good choice.

Item #2: Keming Mug from Cafe Press - $14.99

If design isn’t your cup of tea, the premise of this mug may be lost on you. To let you in on the joke, kerning is the space between letters and if you move an “r” too close to a “n” you end up with an “m”. You

Keyboard Shortcut SkinsDecember 2 2008

Knowing your way around keyboard shortcuts can make every digital design task approximately a billion times faster. When in situations where I’m training another computer user, I often notice that even the most basic shortcuts are ignored, adding chunks of seconds to every minute: switching applications, copying-and-pasting data opening new documents. The seconds add up over a career’s length, and your keyboard inefficiency becomes like a lead weight.

Sometimes, though, I can’t remember a keyboard shortcut no matter how hard I try. That’s where PhotoJojo’s keyboard shortcut skins come in: they help designers learn photo-editing shortcuts visually. Simply put, they’re amazing and I want one.

Elbowruminations: Two Years LaterNovember 30 2008

How does a blog start? Well, if you’re Elbowruminations, it starts over the phone, in the summer of 2006.

“I have an idea,” Neil was saying. I was in Vancouver when Neil called from Calgary. We were getting ready for my year-long stint with Elbowroom, and Neil was pitching me one of our first collaborative projects. “Whether it’s a newsletter or a website, I don’t know, but we need to figure out a way to talk design with our clients on a regular basis.”

“When you get to Calgary,” he continued, “Let’s figure this out.”

Neil’s idea to transmit design-related content to our clients, suppliers and friends eventually transformed into a widely-read graphic design blog covering everything from new technology to corporate re-brands. Two years later, Elbowruminations has now published a total of 140 posts, which have garnered 105 comments from our readers. Today is our two-year anniversary of the first post on Elbowruminations, and we thought it would be fitting to mention a few highlights of our first couple years.

1. THE LIBRARY DEFENDERS

I think one of the most exciting times to be a design blog like us is when the people responsible for the design piece you just critiqued end up stopping

What is design?November 18 2008

Bad Design: Marble Slab CreameryNovember 17 2008

At first glance, Marble Slab Creamery is just another ice cream store with an average looking logo. If you do find the opportunity to be a customer, you’ll find such a frustrating lack of attention to good design principles, it may make you feel like your customized ice cream cone has melted all over your hand and down your sleeve.

I’ve been to Marble Slab a handful of times, and each time, the lines were long and the menu boards incoherent. Perhaps the Houston based franchise has a more educated following in the United States, but as an average ice cream cone eater in Calgary, I remain baffled each time I go. To appreciate the issues here it’s important to understand the basic premise of the store which is to select basic flavours of ice cream and choose “mixins” such as popular chocolate bars, gummy bears, cookie dough, or chocolate chips, etc. Once you’ve selected your customized concoction, it’s mixed together for you on some kind of small marble slab by a competent staff member.

From a design perspective, there are several flaws that serve to slow down product delivery time, create long lines, confuse customers, frustrate graphic designers and provide the opportunity for Marble Slab to lose potential revenue when people fail to understand the premi