In today’s world barcodes have become universal, present in every product packaging used today. Bacodes are expanding being used to encode music, images, URLs, and emails. Barcodes encode data by using different widths and spacing of parallel lines. Japanese group Design Barcode has been creating custom barcodes since 2005. Asking themselves “Why has the barcode never changed?”, the group began innovating a process of integrating design elements into the barcode. Some of the designs the group came up with are below.

Like the human body, the creative mind should be exercised and trained daily or else it would get out of shape. Doing creative exercises will ensure that your brain remains sharp so you can keep doing your project effectively. A couple mini design projects that keep your creative juices flowing are Quote Typography, Sketching, Logo Design, and photo manipulation.

Mini typography design exercise

1. Choose a quote from the most recent movie/TV show you watched or the last book you’ve read.

2. Allot a specific amount of time, say thirty minutes, and see how many ways you can design a quote typography study within the timeframe.

3. Submit it to the respective fandom for profit.

Mini sketching exercise

1. Look for kindergarten monster doodles online.

2. Create your own version of the monster.

3. Use Photoshop to bring it to life.

Mini logo design exercise

1. Check crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter for startup companies.

2. Use their company and project summary as a client brief and sketch as many logo concepts as you can.

3. State reasons how each logo could or couldn’t work.

Mini photo manipulation exercise

1. Subscribe to the Photoshop Battles subreddit. Here, users submit interesting photographs that you can manipulate to your heart’s content

2. Use your Photoshop skills to create the most hilarious pic you could think of.

3. Submit for that precious karma.

Here is a logo I did for my dad, who lives in Mexico.  He owns a gas station and wanted to re do his previous logo, which was very plain and not designed at all. The gas station is in a small border town of Mexico and the population is only like 5,000 to be giving. So in overall I didn’t want to design a over the top logo and make it seem like this gas station didn’t fit in with its surrounding. To me, that could possibly hurt is cliental. So I came up with this style of logo and colors to make everyone who lives there comfortable and when they notice the logo, its simple and easy to their eyes. It’s a slight and respectful upgrade to their business community. Basically the logo fits in with the town itself.

This is a logo I did for a client that is starting a clothing company and he had the idea of calling it “the backroom”. The metaphor for the brand is that all the good stuff is always in the backroom no matter what kind of product it is. After doing some research on “the backroom” I found a lot of political people use the term for meetings and also the mob always had a backroom, whether it was for meetings, drugs/alcohol (prohibition), or for their goods that fell off the back of the truck. Overall the terms for the backroom had many varieties, but still maintained the same concept. I kept it simple with only using black and white. And I kept it a bold logo to stand out on its own. Overall I think I captured the look and feel of what the customer wanted and more. 

Here I have a logo design I did for a client that runs a food prep service for people who are on the go and need to maintain eating healthy at the same time. I wanted something bright and eye catching, easy to say, and something to run off the tongue smooth as you were explaining or telling someone about this business. I went with a rustic but fresh color choice for the logo and of course I wanted to imply the Hispanic culture with the logo while at the same time trying to appeal to all people, not just Hispanics.  Overall I think I accomplished what I intended to do and most importantly my client is happy with the end result.

the same friend that needed some social media help was also needing a business card as well to help promote on the word of mouth side of things. so i came up with this design here that i translated to the videos too. (see previous post) I wanted something intense and clean at the same time. and also wanted to add the mexican influence, but very lightly. This just goes to show how people can need one thing and then it trickles down to something more and hopefully more in the future.