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Design — Logo for Gubbi Labs

antzfx — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:55:40 +0000

‘Gubbi’ in Kannada language means ‘House Sparrow.’ Incidentally it is also the name of a place in Karnataka, India. One of my friends contacted me for designing a logo for ‘Gubbi Labs’ – a private research enterprise that works on a host of domains ranging from sustainable ecosystems to livable cities.

Design Brief
The design brief was simple: The logo should look like a house sparrow.

Ideation
I gave three options for the logo.
The logo given above is an artistic monogram that directly shows an association with knowledge. The logotype is cursive (running writing/joint writing) and looks as if written by hand. This logo is a direct communication of the themes ‘rare knowledge’ and ‘human touch.’

A silhouette of sparrow is used as the logo. The name ‘Gubbi’ appears on the body. The dot of the alphabet ‘i’ is placed such that it also represents the eye of the bird. This logo clearly says that Gubbi = Common house sparrow.

The sparrow is made of three overlapping pieces of brown cellophane sheets. An egg shape can be seen on its body formed by the overlap. This ‘egg’ represents an idea that is going to hatch. The font for ‘Gubbi Labs’ is free flowing without any sharp corners. It appears that the bird is perched on the alphabets ‘bb’ of ‘Gubbi.’ This logo directly communicates the central themes of ‘genesis’ of an idea and ‘futuristic’ solutions.

Refined Concept
We can clearly identify a pelican from its silhouette. But a sparrow does not have a unique shape that clearly tells that it is a sparrow. A silhouette of a sparrow just communicates that it is a bird.

Photo courtesy: Sudhira

So the client asked me to put a one to one mapping of the colors of a sparrow to the logo.

Final Logo

The logo represents a male sparrow perched on the ‘bb’s of ‘Gubbi.’ Bauhausm Medium is the font used in the design.
I really liked the outcome. Any comments? The space below is all yours.

Software: Photoshop, Illustrator
Design Date: 01-Feb-2010

Design — 'CPDM Illustrated' Newsletter

antzfx — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:19:08 +0000

‘CPDM Illustrated’ is a news letter that was started to showcase the creative work of Master in Design (M.Des.) students of my class. The first issue came out in February 2009. I got the opportunity to design the second issue that came out in November 2009. This post is about the design process of ‘CPDM Illustrated: Issue +2.’

Download the ‘CPDM Illustrated’ newsletter from here (PDF, 2.3MB).
Download the High Quality Version of the same from here (PDF, 11.3MB).

The three generations
It is decided to devote pages for three batches of M.Des. Students with contact information.

2007-2009 Batch who are no longer in the institute and have started their career in various organizations. The farewell group photo of this batch is included.
2008-2010 Batch (Final year students) has done summer internship in different reputed companies. Their internship work is featured in the news letter.
2009-2011 Batch (First Year Students): Since they are the newcomers, I asked them to e-mail me any work they have done in the past. So I got a lot of good works like photographs, drawings, paintings, collages…

The cover
I started the layout pixel by pixel and word by word. In the cover, I wanted to showcase the idea of ‘pixel’ as a basic building block. This led me to choose a photograph of a yellow flowered tree in our campus (Photo: Urvesh Bharambe). The image was rotated 90 degrees clockwise and the ‘stained glass’ filter is applied. Two versions are made by using white and black as the cell wall colour. I finally chose the black cell wall color.

The font of ‘CPDM Illustrated’ was retained from the first issue of the news letter (Designer: Arunkumar Francis). CPDM logo was dropped from the design and a round post-it sticker is used to denote ‘Issue +2.’ A transparent ‘Seal King’ like band was added to make the newsletter look unopened.

Page Layout

A clear heading and subheading are present on almost all the pages. Images are surrounded by a halftone patterned frame in grey and light yellow. The contents of the pages have 5 degrees of tilt. This tilt and the presence of ample white space in a page favour marginalia. As footer, a small band of single layered cells of the stained glass pattern is placed. Full page photographs are used to separate the three sections.

Software: InDesign, Photoshop
Design Date: 11-Nov-2009

Design — Beverage Retail Displays

antzfx — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:44:03 +0000

Traditional Trade: Visi Cooler Tops

Organized Trade: End Caps

Emerging Channels: Interactive Kiosks

Token of appreciation received for the designs

Greg Norman T-shirt

Dhoni & Ishant USB Memory Sticks (1GB)

Fastrack Sunglasses

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: 31-Oct-2009

Design — LED Solar Lantern

antzfx — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:12:48 +0000

‘SunFlow’ is an LED (Light Emitting Diode) Solar Lantern designed and prototyped by Geo Paul and I. The lamp on the left (Orange color) is a 3D rendered model and the one on the right (Yellow color) is the final working prototype.

We did 3D solid modelling, impact analysis, electronics design and integration testing.

Anas K A and Geo Paul with ‘SunFlow’ prototype
(Photo Courtesy: Urvesh Bharambe)

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: Project finished on 8-Dec-2009

Design — Toothpick holder: 'dpe' Contest 2

antzfx — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:15:10 +0000

I won third prize for this design that can be placed on the dining tables.

Design thoughts
In Kerala, snake boats are traditionally used for boat races and ceremonies related with temples. Miniature models of snake boats and Kathakali faces are the most gifted items or souvenirs from Kerala.

In the place of oars, holes are provided for lacing the toothpicks. Space between two toothpicks are sufficient for picking one easily. Provisions are provided for placing menu cards, if this design is used in hotels.

Judge’s comment
Amit Dongre, Desmania Design, New Delhi
“WOW is clear as the Indian form is used with good usability. I can imagine that the South Indian restaurants can use this happily and the customers will relate to it instantly. If the menu cards were like flags, it would have been even better. Picking the toothpick seems easier. The form will look great on dinner table.”

Acknowledgments
The background image used is ‘Attorney’s table in a courtroom’ by Jason Morrison, US.

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: 20-Nov-2009

Design — Doormat: 'dpe' Contest 1

antzfx — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:05:43 +0000

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: 13-Nov-2009

Design – Campaign for ‘dpe’

antzfx — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:34:34 +0000

One lazy afternoon in November. I was chatting with my friends Pavan and Pankaj. We were discussing about cute product designs featured in a website and were admiring the designers. Suddenly, we had a spark: “Can we organize a design competition for such products in our college department (CPDM, IISc Bangalore) among the students?”

Thus ‘dpe’ was born. ‘dpe’ means ‘Design | Participate | Excel.’ I made plans for a teaser kind of series ads to generate interest among the students.

Following are the three posters that were circulated as e-mails, one poster a day.

Notice the transition of background color and the change in the point of view of the box. ‘Provocative’ wordings like ‘We are second to none’ and ‘You are not a designer till you take part in this competition’ are coined and used. The box is open in the third poster only. The box and the alphabets are 3D modelled in SolidWorks software. We received quite a good number of responses for the first contest.

Software: SolidWorks, Photoshop
Design Date: 10-Nov-2009

DesiCreative.com Forum: My nine posts in 2009

antzfx — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:39:16 +0000

Whenever I see an interesting advertisement or related information in web, I usually share it with some of my friends who have similar interests through e-mail or tweet. One day in June – 2009, I happened to visit the forum of DesiCreative.com.

I said to myself: “Here are some people who are genuinely interested about ads.” Then I started posting some articles in this forum. This blog post is entirely dedicated to nine posts authored by me in DesiCreative.com Forum in the year 2009. These nine posts discuss art, advertisements, animation film…
Enjoy!

1. Photoshop is helping “you!”

2. ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’

3. Color! Or is it ColoUr?

4. Inspiring — I hope one day I too will be doing this!

5. Darth Vader in our life

6. Devil, will you return (again)?

7. Careful when you park your car!

8. “Tell me, what was your first design?”

9. HP: Student work in response to D&AD Student Awards brief

Design — 'Acoustics For You' Desktop Wallpaper Calendar 2010

fullfx — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:06:53 +0000

I had a little Christmas present earlier when Acoustics For You took my design to be showcased in their site. The design features the theme of their site and service.

Here’s the design for you to download.

Click on the image to go to the download page that has different resolution files

Design

A cinemascope layout was adopted for the design. This decision was made to leave plenty of real-estate available in the desktop even after the full calendar is added. Also this choice of layout makes the central theme of the design to stand out and catch the eye of the beholder.

A metallic background is used to give a premium look. Monochromatic colors are used so that the design will not distract the user when it is in desktop background. Music notes are added to complete the outlook of the company.

Software: Adobe Photoshop
Design date: 25-Dec-2009

Design — Calendar 2010

antzfx — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 19:09:19 +0000

This year’s calendar has a carton box type corrugated paper board look. The graphic used in this design are from the Custom shape tool library of Photoshop.

Design Thoughts
All of us use computers for personal and professional work. My desktop is always messy and I never tamper with the position of taskbar. All the icons or files tend to be on the left side of the screen. So, the calendar wallpaper should not have any numerals on that ‘forbidden’ area. Also, there should be ample space at the bottom to accommodate the taskbar. At the moment, I have not tested the wallpapers in a Linux machine, but I hope that a taskbar at the top may not be hindering the calendar. A graphic can cover the rest of the space with a nice tagline.

Main Graphic: The graphic used in this design are from the Custom shape tool library of Photoshop. It is on a separate layer and I have tried to attain an effect of the top layer being carved off from the corrugated sheet.
Highlighted month: A fluorescent green and red highlighter marking is achieved on the name and Saturdays & Sundays by using an ‘Overlay’ layer effect.
Caption: Most of the captions are from the 2002 song ‘Here I am’ by Brian Adams (OST: ‘Spirit: The Stallion of Cimarron’). The font used is ‘Two turtle doves.’
The coming month: The font used is ‘Two turtle doves.’

Criticism
Some people liked the calendar, some others don’t. One comment I received was about using an image of corrugated card board rather than printing on an actual corrugated sheet. The design was also criticized for not having a central idea. All such comments helped me in planning for a better design next year. More opinions from ad professionals about this calendar design can be read here.

Acknowledgments
All the sheets feature the image ‘Wavy paperboard’ by Pavel Klaus from Chomutov, Ustecky kraj, Czech Republic.

Download the whole Calendar (ZIP, 5.20MB) »

January 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 448KB)»

February 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 454KB)»

March 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 454KB) »

April 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 452B) »

May 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 453KB) »

June 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 442KB) »

July 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 456KB) »

August 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 457KB) »

September 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 449KB) »

October 2010 Download (JPG, 1920X1200, 441KB) »