Design

Creative restlessness. The concept that launched Luminus when it was two hustlin’ freelancers is the same concept that drives the newest brand interpretation. Co-founders Tim Bouchard and Mike LaDuca have always been driven by feelings of creative restlessness. Feelings that mean good enough never is, and greatness is an ever-evolving target.

Way back when, Tim and Mike were a freelance team creating websites for local businesses. But as they grew, so did Luminus. And as Luminus carved out its place in the Buffalo marketing landscape and became a destination for rising professionals looking for opportunities to explore, expand and exceed expectations, we transformed from a web design agency into something much bigger.

Read More

“Minimal costs. No skills required. Instant results.”

That’s the value proposition from Tailor Brands, one of many automated logo makers available online. The idea is that busy, cost-averse small business owners can answer a few simple questions and get a brand new logo in about ten minutes.

According to Tailor Brands, someone makes a new logo every two seconds. But are any of those logos actually good?

We asked our award-winning logo designer, John English, to compare his work to the tool. Here’s his review of the Tailor Brands logo maker.

Read More

This article is intended not for those who work on the web, but for those who are hiring someone to build a responsive website for them. This article will help explain to business owners *how* there responsive website will work and answer some of the common questions we get on a regular basis on the nature of responsive websites.

Congratulations! Not only were you smart enough to invest in a new website, you were smart enough to hire someone who can build you a responsive web design!

There are a myriad of reasons to make sure your website is responsive, but since you are already convinced, I won’t bother re listing all of the benefits here.

When it is time for you to review the build of your new site, it can be a little overwhelming to know what’s normal and what is something that needs to be addressed. But how are you supposed to know?

Read More

Guest Post by TJ Murrin

I won’t argue that this a good comparison, but a logo is a lot like an iceberg; there is always more below the surface. Again, it’s not super profound or original, but follow my logic for a few moments.

Read More

As a designer, there are few things more appealing than a well crafted logo isolated on a sea of white space. Free from all other visual distraction, all focus is on the design. But that’s not a logo’s natural habitat. Logos live in the real world; on letterheads and business cards, on websites, on billboards and t-shirts and coffee mugs – basically everywhere except vast, uninterrupted fields of white.

So why then, when sending concepts to a client, is it customary to send them in this stark fashion? It’s true that it’s important for the client to see your designs in a distraction-free setting but it is a much more accurate representation of how a logo will eventually look if it is given some environmental context.

Read More

We’ve all been there before. You’ve been approached to work on a project as a freelancer or small business owner. The client has unloaded a ton of information during a sit down that you have to digest and turn into a proposal that breaks down the scope of work and cost. Now you’re knee deep in the sales process faced with the challenge of assigning a price to a project requiring a range of creative services.

Read More

The Project: Create a vertical scrolling animation that tells the origin story of the Druthers brewpub in Saratoga Springs, NY.

The Idea: Use SVG animation to create an interactive experience that still performs well across a range of devices.

The Problem: We’d never done anything like it before.

Read More

1. You and a handful of your best friends get dressed to the nines and show up at the Statler.

Read More

As designers of both print and the web, most of our professional responsibilities seem to revolve around aesthetic decisions – which typeface will look most legible at this resolution, or which color scheme will effectively draw the eye of our audience.

But an oft-overlooked aspect of the job involves effectively communicating and collaborating with clients, who are truly the lifeblood of any marketing industry. Depending on the day, a designer may have to play the role of psychologist, motivator, or even soothsayer to ensure that the client’s goals are successfully met in a creative project.

Unfortunately, no two clients have exactly the same personality or work style, which rules out any one-size-fits-all approach to client communication.

There are, however, several archetypes we can use to describe clients that may help us to better understand and communicate with our creative overlords.

Being an avid fan of the hit comedy series The Office, I sought to ascribe these personality traits to some of my favorite Dunder Mifflin employees as a means of establishing a common cultural experience and hopefully putting a light-hearted spin on the subject. With any luck, you’ve met or worked with some of these types of clients before, and could benefit from some new strategies in collaborating with them in the future.

Read More

I’ll be honest; this is a nostalgia piece. And what evokes those bleary-eyed, time-sweetened, back-in-the-day memories of bygone eras better than soda pop? Or more specifically, if you’re a design nerd like myself, soda bottle caps.

Long before the plain plastic screw-off caps of today, bottle caps were more than just an afterthought. These slightly larger than one-inch diameter metal caps were as much a part of the brand and the experience as the label on the bottle and perhaps even the soda itself.

It’s this attention to detail that makes them so attractive to me as a brand designer. They created part of a fuller overall experience and the challenge of fitting an appropriate amount of visual information in an appealing way on such a small surface is very intriguing.

I’ve collected just a small handful of examples of these little beauties from a golden age of bottle cap design – the early to mid-twentieth century. I could go into detail about what makes a good design but this is more emotional than that. These caps are more about the feelings they evoke rather than any concrete principles.

Read More