Food for thought‘[...] do not think that good design can make a poor product good, whether the product be a machine, a building, a promotional brochure or a business man. But [...] good design can materially help make a good product reach its full potential. In short, [...] good design is good business.’
Thomas J. Watson Jr., IBM CEO

IKEA – guts and glory

March 28, 2008, 2:33 PM

Beautiful work for IKEA by Karmarama. Be sure to check the tv ads (and the rest of their excellent portfolio). Freakin’ hilarious. It would be a pleasure to see this kind of advertising in Romania. Bold, fun, effective, no BIG prices and useless information about the product. And no big logo.

ikea-big.jpg

(via PPA Marketing)

favicon

188

Tin Foil Tower

March 26, 2008, 3:26 AM

Superb photo by David J. Nightingale.

tin-foil-tower.jpg

(photo from Chromasia)

favicon

186

Josef Muller-Brockmann Remix

March 25, 2008, 1:50 AM

Nice tribute to Jozef Muller-Brockmann (feeble wiki, it’s weird that there are so few good articles about one of the greatest and most influential designers). Made by Gary Butcher (Creative Director for Motion Graphics at Apple, it seems).

(via brockmann)

favicon

185

Good to have one in the office…

, 12:47 AM

good-cheap-fast.jpg

(via ready 2 spark)

favicon

184

"Tight fellow, neh?"

March 23, 2008, 2:22 AM

tight-fellow-neh.jpg

favicon

183

Happiness is closer than we think

, 1:37 AM

happiness-is-close.jpg

favicon

182

Red Strong

, 7:40 PM

Striking poster from Leonard Hoss.

revista-kino-voyeur.jpg

(via Grain Edit)

favicon

180

3rd Best Design/Creative Blog at RoBlogFest

March 15, 2008, 6:30 PM

Last night my blog came out as the 3rd Best Design/Creative Blog (link in romanian) at RoBlogFest (the competition for the best and most popular romanian blogs). Even if I wasn’t interested in participating, I can’t say that I’m not glad. Appreciations are always welcome as long as you don’t let them fool you.

I want to thank Diana (www.creativecheaters.com – another great blog about advertising, design and especially ideas, that came close to taking my place :P ) for subscribing my blog in the competition. All the fame and glory (read traffic :P) should go to her :) And thanks Oana, she almost started a crusade in my name, saying I should’ve won :)) It’s better to be the third or the second, that means you’ll try harder than the first ;) Actually, third is the best, as Jerry Seinfeld says. Thanks go to the jury as well.

All in all, it took this prize to make me think again about why I’m writing this blog and how I want it to be like. I’m still not very sure about the “why” part, but the blog really needs the redesign I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now. Either do something right or don’t do it at all.

The biggest change will be the name, since “ibarbar”, even though an abbreviation of my name, hard to find elsewhere, lacks the ease of pronunciation and memorability a good name should have. So I’ve already bought the .com domain for the new name, I already have the logo, now I have to redesign the blog. Since I’m no webdesigner I’ll have to either be incredible lucky and find a good wordpress theme, sluggishly design one of my own or ask somebody’s help :) Anyway, I’m hoping it’ll be up and running soon enough. In the mean time, should you have any ideas, comments or tips, I’d be glad to hear them, as always.

Thanks for reading.

favicon

179