Review: Icondemon Service. Valuable Icons

Today I want to review the Icondemon website. Icondemon offers a large collection of Web Icons to choose from.
Membership gives you access to 5300+ Web Icons. The Icons are available in .png format and different sizes.

Tag di Technorati: review

The service is nice and easy to use. Finding what you are looking for is easy thanks to the double searching options, by categories or by icon style, such as glass icon, vista icon or pixel icon.
By clicking the small information icon you get all info about the single icon as shown below:





















The homepage is clear and well designed.
Two kind of membership are available:

• - 1 year membership with 500 limited download for € 19
• - 1 year membership for € 99 without downloading limitation.

Advantages

- There is a huge amount of high-quality icons available for a reasonable cost.
- the quality is really high. All icons are perfect and well designed.
- all icons are for your personal and corporate use.

Things that may be improved

- You can’t change your password so you have to use those terrible “dufgfsgdfs” random letters line.
- The icons are available in one size only. So, if you have loved one of them and you need it i.e. 68x68 but it is 32x32 well…it is 32x32 and you can’t have the desired size. So perhaps I may suggest to make two or three size available at least.
- If they only can distribute few icons for free so that everyone could test the service it would be great!

Packaging Analysis: Juices Inspiration

Hooray!!!! Finally a DSL connection. It has been hard and we still have something to adjust but it works.

Here another short analysis about packaging. Inspired by the beautiful season and need of freshness I’ve listed some beautiful, or less ones, juice packaging.
Please read and comment!

Cambria Juice

I don’t like this packaging very much. It introduces a mechanical aspect that is unusual but, imho, not inspiring. Creating a packaging for a juice the message that you want to communicate is its freshness, the natural and pure fruit from it is made of. I think that Cambria misses this idea. 

photo from: Packagingworld
packaging from Hangar Studio

Optimum

I like the swirling graphic and the color lights and shadows from the Optimum juice packaging. The bottle shape looks ergonomic. By the way, nothing in the main visual put in evidence the freshness or the fruit percentage. In this way customers don’t know if it is a pure juice or simply a fruit flavor drink and need to read the product specification to know that. This require time and, on a supermarket shelf, when the customer is in a hurry to go away, this may penalize the bought.

http://packagingworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimum-juice.html
Designer / Agency : Jose Auso / Richard - Auso SCP

Minute Maid

Minute Maid is a leader of the orange juice, obviously because it comes from Coca Cola brand. Nothing really innovative. Nice the idea that, cutting the orange shapes, the packaging creates an interlocking visual of whole fruit on shelf.  This evokes the fruit department of a market or a grocery and their freshness.
The half open orange and the little drop beneath help to visualize the “100% pure squeezed orange juice” declaration, giving strength to the message.
 
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/11/cocacola-launches-new-packaging-for-minute-maid.html

Cawston

Cawston juice is an apple-centered product. The various juices are a mix of apple and something else. The modern packaging shape is in contrast with the old style lettering and the general design that remind a journal but this is the interesting thing: Cawston Press. The meaning is double “press” as “printed journal” and “press” as “pressed apple”, a juice coming from pressed fruit and not from water+concentrate juice. Real juice.
 
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/12/cawston-press-apple-juices.html

First Juice

First Juice packaging is fresh and colored. The “hand sketched” style is aimed to the target of little boys going around with their bikes. What’s the best thing to drink after a crazy cycling? A fresh juice!

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2008/04/first-juice.html

Romantics

Romantics has changed its bottle label replacing the “angel apple” with a tree, they also changed the font. BY the way I think that they made a mistake with this restyling. They have not strongly changed and the result is that it looks like another product.

OLD PACKAGING


NEW PACKAGING


http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/04/before-after-romantics.html

Exotic Planet

Much better the restyling of the Exotic Planet smoothies compared with Romantics ones. They turned and ordinary smoothie packaging in an elegant experience. New lettering, shiny silver color, beautiful and brilliant fruit shot as a planet to mean the company name, and a sophisticated matt black as background.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2010/05/before-after-exotic-planet.html
I really suggest to read the graphic agency WonderlandWPA description of their job.

Loaded

Nice and simple packaging. I appreciate the colored top of the pack that stay for the fruit but a little bit too plain.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2010/06/loaded.html

Froosh

Again a simple packaging but I found attractive the different headlines that characterize each different smoothie. “No bad stuff” “In fruit we trust” etc. Good idea! The straight-talking spread its message directly without distractions and emphasize the 100% fruit content of the product.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2010/07/froosh.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDieline+%28TheDieline.com+-+Blog+-+World%27s+%231+Package+Design+Website%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

ICA

Just as simple as “Loaded” but I prefer this packaging compared with the other. It may be the slim and tall pack or the way in which the designer has divided the 4-side charging each one with a message: in one side you can see the fruit, in the other the pouring action of the juice, in the third the full glass and, last one, the nutritional info.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/03/silver-out-of-stockholm-designed-this-new-packaging-for-icas-new-juicesthe-design-is-a-little-story-that-is-told-arou.html

ITO EN Gotta Juice

Again this packaging is colorful and modern but it looks like it is a vegetable smooth more than fruit’s juice.
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2008/10/ito-en-gotta-ju.html

Book Review - Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

Slide:ology – The art and science of creating great presentations is an interesting book written by Nancy Duarte and published by O’Reilly Media.
As the title shows the final intent of the book is helping to create better visual presentation that will capture and inspire your audience.
How to do that?

When you have to do a presentation you usually need to tell a story to a public that is your target. When we talk we usually, consciously or not, adopt both verbal and gesture communication. A visual communication is how we can complete our story to better engage our public.
Unfortunately this is not easy. The book is full of technical advices about visual communication but, if not to be a designer, at least it needs to do a lot of practice and time to study some basic concepts.
When our chief comes to us asking for a presentation it usually consider that it is needed “for yesterday”. Possibly you are not in the design or in the marketing department but you have to do your best. That’s why Microsoft Power Point has become so famous as presentation making software. You just have to take on concepts from here and there and fill in the white space. Than, just to insert a bit of movement, you can add several transition effects. That’s all.
Yes it is. If you don’t mind your audience attention, if you don’t mind to attract with your (or your chief) exposition or ideas then “That’s all”. On the other hand, in this case, you have completely missed the communication intent. You have just dumped what you have to say in a one-way conversation.
Duarte’s Slide:ology suggests that there are a few more things about graphic design you might want to know and that you are going to make your audience happy if you stop giving slide presentations that consist mostly of text you’re going to say anyway.
This suggestions is valid both if you are not a slide technician and even more if you work in the marketing and want to take-out a result from your presentation.
Together with the tips the book presents several case studies. Because of the Duarte Design mostly have pretty famous customers you may be intimidated by case studies such as Al Gore or Cisco System presentations. By the way the keyword idea Keep It Simple is valid to anyone.
In a well studied visual presentation nothing is casual in the same way as an advertising product. Everything is accurately constructed. You need to use the power of colors, you have to know how to create the space, how to choice photos that work together well, how to write less and show more because what in needs to be said it is all up to you. You are the focus of your presentation and slides are the visual support to your message.

Conclusion

I really loved to read this book that I found easily catching. It’s clear that to an easier use of this book you need to have to already know some basic graphic design techniques. Things that are obvious to a designer, such as grids, photo coherence and color palette, are a mess for others.
In the end I think that this book can help in some way who, for chance, need to prepare a presentation but is surely more adapt to designer that want to specialize themselves in the presentation practice.

Pasta Packaging Inspiration: Comparing the New Solutions with Italian Tradition

Here we are with a new roundup about packaging. As the previous one about coffee also this comes with my nationality. Italian people eat a lot of pasta everyday, this tasty food can be cooked in a few way but dressed in million ones. Italian are really sensitive about pasta preparing and obviously about pasta ingredients, mark and packaging. Italian generally are mistrustful against foreign pasta production. How a pasta pack looks like really create different approaches to it.
We are going to analyze some foreign example of pasta packaging, if they communicate the right message and how they can be ranked compared with the Italian most famous pasta marks: Barilla.

DK

From LovelyPackage, designed by Niklas Hessman, from Sweden. This is only an assignment for a student. Requirements are that it has to look like a low cost pasta but I think it contains some interesting points: the green color create a connection to the organic world, in addition, for Italian standard, it doesn’t looks like cheap anymore because the packaging is a solid box instead of a plastic wrap. I like this design but I really can’t consider it as “cheap”.

Malma

From LovelyPackage, designed by Vignelli Associates | Country: United States
I really like this packaging, both in the plain or red version. The red tone chosen is calm and earthy, not too much saturate. It remind me the cornfields at the sunset in Italian hot summer. The font is linear, an egg icon show how many eggs has been employed. Beautiful and modern. Is unnecessary to remind that Vignelli is a great and famous Italian designer. (see also one of my previous articles Book Review: The Vignelli Canon)

Fosh

From LovelyPackage, designed by Simmer | Country: United Kingdom
I strongly disagree with this packaging. it simply doesn’t look suitable for pasta. The  lines are so geometrical and stylized tat it could be a good packaging for a shampoo but not for foods and surely not for a food so traditional and earth-linked such as pasta.
Clearspring

From Popsop.com, designed by Myday Living Brands | UK
Simply beautiful. this agency has great skills in finding beautiful packaging and one more time, with the Clearspring Organic Past, has hit the message. The article says that Clearspring specializes in importing Japanese foods and that the designers chose Japanese-inspired style for the packaging. I disagree with this comment because I think the packaging is really Italian. If you compare it with the most Italian pasta company, Barilla, you immediately can notice several common aspects. (see below).

Barilla

Barilla packaging has been recently restyled by the FutureBrand agency.
Maintaining the two and complementary parts of the tradition they made a wonderful package. They merged the clean and institutional blue style, that allows to pop out the pasta cut, with the tasty aspect of the food, homemade dishes. As the pay off says “La gioia di stare insieme” (the joy of being together) is here visualized and complete: Barilla Company + you and your dishes make together a winning couple to create wonderful and tasty situations with your family.
Simply perfect.

Round-up: 15 Best Places Where to Find Free Vectors

Here we are with another useful round-up. This time the main topic is: VECTORS.
When I’m looking for some particular vectors or idea I obviously put the keyword into the search engine bar and look for the result. Anyway there are some websites that are full of free and perfectly done vectors designs. Those sites works as repository of links and stuffs. I want to share with you some of the best sites where you can fine quality vectors.

The best places where to find well organized vector stuffs for free:


http://www.iheartvector.com/


http://www.vecteezy.com/


http://qvectors.net/


http://www.lovevectorfree.com/ (brand new!)


Another list . This is a bit like a mess because they are not vector dedicated sites but are full of worthy stuffs anyway:


http://www.gomediazine.com/category/freebies/vectors/


http://dezignus.com/



http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/vector/#order=9


http://vector4free.com/vectors/page/10


http://www.freevectorstock.com/home-vectors


http://vector.net/freebies/


http://www.bittbox.com/category/freebies


http://www.vectorportal.com/


http://all-silhouettes.com/


And now the free section of stock sites. If you don’t find what you are looking for here you may always pay and download other stuffs!


http://www.vectorstock.com/free-vectors


http://www.designious.com/freebies

Beautiful Coffee Packaging Roundup

As a good Italian I'm coffee addicted. I simply love coffee made with a traditional moka, short and strong as is Italian style but I also appreciate coffee from other Countries. Without a coffee I just can't wake me up in the morning. O_O
Following this passion I've collected some nice coffee packaging that I want to share as inspiration.

Lavazza pyramid-shaped tin

The Canadian graphic designer and illustrator Lexane Rousseau has designed an interesting solution to keep separated the different tasty varieties of the famous Italian coffee Lavazza. The metal case looks nice and modern, it helps to save space tiling the single tins.
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Lavazzo/168237

Illy Caffé
Another classical Italian coffee with a long tradition in its innovative design cans.
I quote from the Illy website:

The Illy Art Collection 2010 cans have been designed by renowned German artist Tobias Rehberger, winner of the  2009 Venice Biennale“Leone d’Oro.” The collection is composed of two complementary limited-edition cans: “Everything” will be available world wide from March (June in the US), and “Nothing” from July to December.

http://www.illy.com/wps/wcm/connect/us/illy/art/illy-art-collection/the-latest-can/

Caribou

I like the design of the Caribou new logo, the font choosing and the light blue color. Anyway I think they need to restyle the coffee packaging too because the gap is huge.
http://packagingworld.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-caribou-coffee-packaging-identity.html

Tusso

The packaging palette has traditional colors, black and dark orange, but I really love the idea of putting on the pack coffee stains.
From http://www.mousegraphics.gr/

Dimello, Doppio and Social

Very beautiful works from the Greek company S & Team. The three different marks have each of them their personality, beautiful warm colors and simple but elegant logo. One of my favorite.
http://www.sandteam.gr/

Mocafé

Elegant but classic the packaging ideated by Mary Chin Hutchison.
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Mocafe-Organics-Identity-_amp-Packaging/192187

Stomping grounds

Coffee packaging of Stomping Grounds by TBD Advertising. Agreeable caramelized colors  but I don't like very much the visuals.
http://www.tbdadvertising.com/#/por/Packaging/Stomping_Grounds/0

Solberg & Hansen

Designed by Norwegian design firm, Anti. As declared by the designer the brand is trying to differentiate and stand out from the traditional competitors that exist in this market. In my opinion it hit the mark but not completely. Colors and visuals are really traditional and, frankly I've seen better attempt. I'm not saying that the result is not beautiful because it is but in this article you can fined more innovative solutions.
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2010/03/solberg-hansen.html
http://playmedesign.carousel.no/packaging/solberg-hansen/

Bull Run Roasting Company

Jeff Holmberg from Holmberg Design has created the packaging design for BRRCO Coffee Bar in Rustica's Bakery, Minneapolis Minnesota. I love the grunge paper style that makes the packages looks like homemade.
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/12/bull-run-roasting-company.html

Good Co.

Brilliant the idea of pointing out the side effect of a coffee. It obviously need not to exceed, it may cause addiction! ^_^'
Designed by Landor Associates Sydney team
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/06/good-co-coffee.html

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

Fritz Mesenbrink, a freelance designer in Portland came up with this packaging for Stumptown. The coffee comes from direct trade, and this is significant. Very nice the idea of the small "business" kind card displaying information about growers, farms, flavors, locations and more. A different solutions to display all that information required from the law. It's a pity that, I think, in Italy a packaging like this can't work. Too many people handle the packages, bringing them all around the supermarket before leaving them at the cash desk. The little card risks to going lost forever.
Via The Dieline: http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/02/stumptown-coffee-roasters.html

Miss Cordelia's Coffee

Simple 2-color palette, I love the paper bag that feel me such a homemade, strong and tasty.
Via The Dieline by Nashville based Perky Bros:
http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2009/09/miss-cordelias-coffee.html

Island of Gold Coffee Packaging

Generally, I like the tin packaging for a coffee brand because it looks like you can maintain untouched the taste and the aroma. By the way the colors choose is a little bit too much traditional and the use of a coffee plant as visual too old fashion for me.
http://www.newlinecreativegroup.com/work/packaging/island-coffee-packagin.html

Maria Sole Espresso Coffee

The packaging is really modern and tries to be different from other more traditional coffee packaging. Bright colors, no coffee beans, it looks more like a cosmetic packaging. I don't like very much the green version that I think matches better with a tea packaging but I like the Espresso version, silver with geometric Suns that remind the brand name (Sun=Sole).
http://popsop.com/2325