The plain truth about logo design contests
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...
read moreCS5
One of the perks about teaching a college course in new media is that you get to use the latest software. Well, there’s no choice really, you HAVE to learn the latest thing otherwise the students you have lose out on the experience. About a couple months back the latest Adobe Creative Suite software came out for CS5. As is typical of every upgrade season, it sets you back a few hundred bucks if you’re upgrading, or nearly a couple grand if you’re purchasing it all for the first time. And as usual, designers like me have to...
read moreDay Twelve
Twelve days into this crisis experience – Kingston’s still in the hospital but at least he seems to be out of imminent danger. He’s got a fever that constantly hovers around 102F – 104F which is alarming to us. But the nurses and doctors who keep checking on him don’t seem overtly alarmed. The problem now lies in trying to figure out what the cause of it is. They’ve done all kinds of samples, CAT scans, ultrasounds, tested different antibiotics, etc without any clear cut solution so far. My wife and I are...
read moreBusiness during crisis
One thing I discovered about having my own business in the midst of a personal crisis — the advantage of being my own boss allowed me to respond to my son’s situation really quick. From the time I got the call he was hurt till I was standing there next to the ambulance by his side wasn’t more than 4 minutes. Precious minutes I’m glad I gave my child so that he had the chance to be saved. However, the one bad side about having my own business in the midst of a personal emergency — I’m screwed if I...
read moreHospital Logo
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...
read moreUpdate: Kingston
Kingston’s now off his breathing tube and they’ve let the sedatives wear out. He’s doing well so far — he recognizes us, he calls out “Caaars” to his favorite movie, and is generally doing ok. I’m relieved and happy of how he’s doing so far, but many more concerns are still there….perhaps it may be years before I get rid of these feelings? His right arm is still the only limb where we haven’t seen as much movement as we’d like….we’ve seen it react and move here and...
read moreI’ve had better days…
Well, my boy Kingston is still in intensive care. It’s hard to really put things to words….so many things have happened over the last few days that it’s an informational and emotional overload. If you watch the twitter feed over to the right hand side here, you’d probably have seen a flurry of posts I’ve made about my boy’s progress along the way. What happened is still a little bit of a mystery and I’ve been advised to stay tight lipped about it for now. But suffice to say Kingston got a head injury...
read moreNeed your prayers
My little boy Kingston fell down at the park today and sustained a head injury. Internal bleeding….had to rush him to ER and he had major surgery. Touch and go right now…. I’m a wreck. To my friends and clients, of course I ask you for your prayers. I haven’t forgotten about those of you with active projects, but I hope you would allow me a few days to deal with this situation.
read moreNeed a Typeface?
So here’s another fun typeface infographic that I stumbled across this morning. Remember the Periodic Table one a few months back? These are done with a bit of fun and facetiousness of course, but I like infographics like these because not only might they demonstrate fonts you haven’t consider using before, they also suggest fonts you kinda want to avoid because everyone’s poking fun at it. (Scribble via Gizmodo)
read moreI’m good enough, I’m smart enough…
I’m feeling a little bit of a loss of confidence today. Long time readers will probably recognize this happens to me once in a while. Who knows what triggers this feeling….I might see another designer do some great work that I wish I did? I might have done work that I wasn’t too happy with? I might have lost a bid on a contract I really wanted? Who knows…it just happens from time to time. I hear it occurs a lot for folks who work alone. It’s one of the hazards of doing my own business I suppose. What to do? I...
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LoweStudio Inc was founded by me, Raphael Lowe, a Honolulu based illustrator and web designer. I presently design and manage a few dozen commercial websites, but my main focus these days is acting as the head developer for Kapiolani Community College and teaching