Have you ever wondered how Pantone, the design world’s color standard, is created? Check out this video!

360° Color: A Peek Inside Pantone from Base on Vimeo.

Google Calendar has a usability problem that makes content hard to read and therefore distracts the user from getting neccessary information. Since I have been getting a sharp eye for usability issues, I feel responsible to share some of this issues with designers worldwide so they don’t make the same mistakes when designing an application or any kind of user interface.

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I love kawaii! THE BOOK, originally uploaded by charuca.

We all became aware of the japanese cuteness obsession when we first saw Hello Kitty. Stores are now flooded with products with this cute little character that represents everything you need to know about cute in Japan.

Maybe it’s hard to understand cute, pink, happy and colourfull for Europeans and Americans, but cuteness is kind of mainstream in Japan. Products, packages, people, they way they act… it’s all cute, cuter and the cutest. ^_^

Cute (japanese ‘kawaii’) once became global and Hello Kitty inspired designers and illustrators all over the world to try to create an alternative that would become at least half that recognizable as Hello Kitty is today.

There is one specific designer/illustrator that I’d like to mention because of her hard work, volume, type and wideness of work she has done to promote her own cute characters. She attracted my attention because of the refined style, vector drawing technique, colour combinations and variety of design outputs she has made over the past few years. Her characters are named Charuca and have everything (if not more) that Hello Kitty had when she went global.

The author of Charuca is a woman in is not japanese, she comes from Barcelona, Spain. Recently she licensed her characters and made a brand, transformed her blog into a shopping website and managed to sell her characters in various forms in stores.

Charuca is a proof that everyone can make it, even the smallest designer with a talent from anywhere in the world.

And remember: not everyone wants cute, sometimes ‘emotional’ or ‘likeable’ is just enough

Steklarstvo Bistrica logo design, originally uploaded by Ajda Gregorčič.

This logo was made for slovenian company that distributes glass for personal and industrial purposes. The client wanted a simple and clean logo that would distinguish its identity from other glazier companies in the same city or nearby.

I decided to use serif font to present the historic importance of glazier activity in general and substantiate it with the logo initials ‘S’ and ‘B’, which are distinguished only by colour and are carefully placed left from the typographic part of the logo.

The colours were kind of the client’s wish, but they were also chosen for the recognition and differentiation factor that was very important for this company to really stand out in the crowd.

The company has already started using the logo, which is a big (first) step in the company’s new identity.

Bringler igre website redesign, originally uploaded by Ajda Gregorčič.

A few months ago we redesigned the Bringler igre website, a slovenian website with free online flash games that is owned by the game development company Motiviti (www.motiviti.com).

I redesigned the menu, the frames, buttons and links, colour combinations, changed the fonts and logo a bit and voila! (Took me two months to get to ‘voila’, but ok

The thing I’m the most proud of is the menu (default, active, mouse-over), but the hardest thing was to minimize the design elements so that game categories wouldn’t get overlooked because of the constantly changing game thumbnails.

We made quite a change to the design layout but stayed consistent to the previous one so the frequent users wouldn’t have to learn the new layout all over again. We also made it easier to the users to navigate through categories and add a new menu tab ‘Igre za punce’ (Games for girls) where girls can find games they like the most.

Every now and then we change the background picture on Bringler so you can have something nice to watch while waiting for games to load

Playdome’s Social city game for Facebook is currently one of the most popular Facebook games on the web not only because of the addictive gameplay but also because of great design elements, illustrations and user interface design that makes this game look fantastic.

During my last few weeks of playing Social city I realized that having my Facebook friends for my neighbours and being able to see their ‘city’ and how they’ve decorated it was one of the main reasons for really loving this game. Since the screenshot maker still doesn’t work with this game, the users are unable to save pictures of their own city and show them to friends on Facebook. So I decided to make some screenshots myself and give you some tips to make your city look even more beautiful.

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