I’ve really been getting into graphic design recently, as I may have already mentioned. I’ve been absorbing as much information as I can about it – books, magazines, and websites; the works. Japan, being very outward image centric, is an awesome place to be if you are into graphic design. Creative designs can be seen on nearly any corner of Tokyo and there are tons of really well put together books and magazines.
There is just something so attractive and interesting to me about artistic, funky, and abstract logo and graphic design. In gaming the most well known example of the marriage of graphic design, culture, and technology is the WipeOut series of racing games from Sony Europe. They worked closely with a graphic design firm called The Designers Republic (whose website is sadly woefully out of date).
I don’t know if Sony is still working with them on the upcoming WipeOut HD or not but that website has captured both the feel of TDR’s original designs as well as my imagination. If you have any interest in this topic, please go to that website. Look at the amount of detail put into fleshing out the world of that game. The fake corporate sponsors of each one of the futuristic racing teams, their logos, fake product placement on the tracks, etc. Go to the environments page and check out all the little logos and color schemes. Just awesome.
Due to this blooming interest I’ve taken up my hand at working with Adobe Illustrator and am working to improve my skills. Borrowing from other ideas to start (never a bad idea in any field, IMO, learn from the pros!), I’ve been practicing with the software and have created some basic designs. I have had a spare domain name sitting around for a while, so my plan is to take that domain and make it my own personal graphic design playground. I might as well have an identity for my designs as well, so I’ll use it for that too.
You can find two designs on the site right now and can expect to see more in the future.
My site: guile(zero) . graphic design
Edit: This is another design firm I quite like. Capacitor Design Network. Here is a site they designed that is quite attractive Delicious Monster.