Now in the midst of chaos going on in my life right now, I’m ever more in need of inspiration…not just for work, but just the spark to want to get up each morning to deal with the new day’s challenges. I know, that sounds bleak right?  Well, I do what I can to keep going I guess….I have to!

Anyway, I revisited an old post I made a couple years back and stumbled across this creative little festival trailer made by this group Strukt. Extra little trivia I liked was that it was all shot using a Canon 7D.

There’s a lot of buzz in recent months about “crowd-sourcing” design. Some companies are making big bucks on providing a service that allows what they call “communities” to submit logos in the hopes of getting a cash reward. This isn’t new of course, it’s basically the same thing as doing a design contest, or what we’d call speculative work. I may have discussed this issue here once or twice.

Here’s a great article written up by a design group that had their logo plagiarized dozens of times by people who submitted derivative artwork in the hopes of winning a design contest.

To new, upcoming designers…I understand the thrill of possibly getting some recognition by submitting your work on these things. But if you’re serious about getting into this profession, you have to think about your own role in protecting the very career you’re heading towards. Your raw talent, your training, your software and hardware, and the future well-being of your clients, are all worth more than what little you get awarded from these things.

What’s a guy to do at the hospital when he’s not trying to calm a scared child, soothe a protective mom, apologize to insulted doctors, dodge attending nurses, explain to anxious grandparents, and direct visiting guests?

Why he’s admiring the hospital’s logo that’s all. I haven’t found out who designed this logo yet, but it’s been one of my local favorites for a few years now. Beautifully done in my opinion…I like how the artist treated the clear Hawaiian features of this family with such grace.

Here’s a fun project I completed for a couple friends of mine who wanted to use poker chips to act as their unique business cards. Turned out rather good actually, the chips themselves have a good heft to them and feel very genuine.

Here’s the look I was originally intending, but alas (I like using that word “alas” I don’t know why), the manufacturer couldn’t do something this fancy so we went with just the center portion for the finished design.

Someone put up an out-of-print copy of old 70′s logotypes on Flikr. There’s some pretty beautiful stuff there. I know I’m personally highly influenced by art from this era because this was my dad’s day and I grew up watching him design stuff like this back then. (via Aqua Velvet)

Yet another collection of inspirational ideas I stumbled across today. This one being focused on typography on business cards. There’s a few I kinda like here…especially the letterpress ones I don’t see too many people using them here.

I’ve been playing around a few times with UV coat print lately where you have gloss effects printed over non-gloss paper…but seeing as how many people are doing that now on this list, I’m thinking maybe I should try other things.  Maybe that’s becoming a cheesy trend?  (via Best Design Options)

Stumbled across another pretty good design-focused website today called Abduzeedo. Here you can find links for inspirational material, neat Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials and even wallpaper for your computer desktop.

Quick glance at some of their tutorial collections I was pretty impressed and inspired. I’ve been a bit bored lately by some of the tutorials I’ve been seeing on some of my magazine subscriptions…it’s like you see the end result and think, “why would I ever want to do that?”

Yesterday I thought, “What the heck” and decided to look for ugly things as a alternative to finding things that inspire me. I came across a pretty funny collection of “Bad Logo Designs”

I broke out in a little bit of a sweat hoping that one of my own designs didn’t show up on this list. Thankfully not. “Whew”  (via LogoDesignerBlog)

A friend of mine sent me a funny link to this site posting an email exchange between a graphic designer and a client. It gave me a good laugh. I can certainly relate. While I have yet to give as cynical response like this to one of my own clients, I’ve been in situations like this where people have approached me to design them something for free in lieu of being “in on the next big thing”

“It’s like Twitter but we charge people to use it” ROFL

If you have some time to read some of his other posts as well it’s pretty funny. I like the irreverence and cynical humor of this site  (via 27b/6)

Ever feel like you just can’t get enough product branding on your body? Hmm…I’ve never had that problem, but I DO have an addiction to classic Adidas shoes in recent years. (I think it’s my personal homage to old school rap)

Anyhoo, if you’re really into brands, perhaps you can buy yourself this piece of branding bling, “The most branded object in the world” Looks like it would put a series crink in your neck wearing it though.