Any type of designer or artist needs inspiration from time to time to get any work done. And there's a lot of places online to get some of that. There are obviously various social networks that can provide you with that if you're following the right people or looking at the right pages. Wouldn't be a lot easier to just have purpose built social networks for designers where you wouldn't necessarily have to do all that? That's where these two sites come in.

Dribbble

Dribbble is a great little basketball-themed resource for designers. It's an invite only site where people post snippets of the things they're working on. Much like Twitter's 140 characters, Dribbble has a 400x300 pixel limit, allowing you to only give people a snapshot of your designs.


The site also allows you to follow various designers so that your feed shows you the kind of work you specialize in. For example, I focus on branding and even while I enjoy looking at the occasional user interface design, it doesn't do much in way of inspiration for me. The ability to follow other branding specialists is a great way for me to keep on top of trends and spark any ideas in my own head.

Finally, Dribbble is also great for freelance designers. The Pro package allows you to have a 'Hire Me' button on your profile. Every member has access to the job board where employers might be looking for a wide range of designers. And the site also features 'Teams', companies who may need design services as well.

Follow me on Dribbble

Behance

Behance is a little more content heavy than Dribbble is. It allows designers to post their entire projects and you're not likely to see any posts featuring only a single image, which does even more in terms of inspiration as you can see the amount of work that a person has put in. The great thing about Behance being more content heavy means that it also allows people to also post resources such as fonts and tutorials which has come in handy quite often for me.

The thing that I love about Behance the most is that when the people you follow 'Appreciate' projects, those projects show up in your feed. It's a great way to stumble across new designers as you come across work you might never have found otherwise.

The site also has a job board but can be limited.

Being owned by Adobe, you can sync up your Behance page with your Photoshop or Illustrator Creative Cloud programs and post work directly on there.

Follow me on Behance

While writing about Cardiff's logo unveiling I couldn't help but think that it looked a little dull. There were a few things that I thought I could improve on so I decided to design something myself and figured it would be interesting to take some video footage of it to provide some insight into how I work.



Starting out with the design I wanted something a little more "aggressive" with sharper curves and bolder borders so that it would stand out a little more. I also played around with the ribbon, using shadows to make it pop off the badge. In the current redesign the ribbon looked a bit out of place and almost seemed to intrude on the base shape of the badge. In the end the base itself was an easy enough job.

The tough part was the bluebird. Using reference images didn't help a lot since the one used to Cardiff's crest for decades looks quite different so I stuck to the original shape. With the new redesign I saw a small use of a darker blue under the bird. I thought I could build on that by using shadows and highlights to make the bird look more dynamic and add some depth to the design.

Finally, I finished off with the same dragon that's been used in the current crest. According to the club, it represents the dragon that's on Cardiff City Hall and also doubles as an oriental dragon which ties back to the club's Asian connection through owner Vincent Tan. I had considered using the Welsh dragon but left it as is since it would probably take up less space and balance out the bottom of the crest well.

I felt that the final product, which is a little bolder, would work nicely with the new rebrand.

Cardiff have gone through a lot of changes in the last few years. It seems clubs have been rebranding without consulting fans on the process a lot. In most scenarios that would be fine but in sports, the fans' opinion is something clubs really need to consider when they go through these changes.

It's happened in the past with Everton for example, whose rebranding was met with staunch resistance from their fans. They changed it only a year later after going through representatives of their fanbase and the crest, although not drastically changed, has become something that the fans can be proud of.

Cardiff did something similar a few years ago, changing their colours to red and focusing more on the Welsh dragon as the club's imagery as opposed to the bluebird that had represented the club for much of their history. It was a move by Vincent Tan to appeal to Asian markets but it was understandably not well received locally, and fans threatened to boycott the club.

After a couple of years, the club have finally listened and they've gone back to the original image of the club. After going through the fans, they've finally reached a conclusion that everyone seems to be happy with.

Even though their performances have been poor this season, this might help turn around Cardiff's poor attendance numbers. There's no doubt that they'd have a better atmosphere around the club with this change.

Personally I like the new logo. Overall with the blue and the bluebird being brought back. It's not quite as nice as the old badge was but it's a step in the right direction and hopefully further encourages this type of "modern" design in football.

Ultimately, this whole scenario really brings to light the importance of clubs going through the right channels. As a designer, I know there's a lot of times when you feel you can change a few little things but without truly understanding the traditions of the club, it's not an easy to make them without getting some level of feedback from the fans. Hopefully this is a good lesson for clubs in the future.

Designing crests is easier than you think. It's just about picking the right shapes, the right colours and the right imagery. The idea generating process is what takes the most time but when you know what you're doing the execution itself is quite easy.

I'm going to cover that execution process here with a few tips that could help beginners in design out a lot.

Step 1: Figuring out the colours

The logo I picked for this one was Championship side, Wolves. Their colours are primarily orange and black with a bit of white to use as a trim. You're going to preferably need three colours for this but two will do for some projects. I'm going to stick to three.

Step 2: Figuring out the shape

The reflect and pathfinder tools in Illustrator will be your best friends for this project. Everything will need to be symmetrical and the reflect tool will ensure that that's exactly how it stays. The pathfinder tool can do a lot of things but for this it'll mainly be used just to combined your reflected objects into one.

Create your shape using the pen tool. Then copy and paste on top (cmd + F). Go to Object > Transform > Reflect and reflect the image vertically.

All you need to do now is resize and make sure it all fits in well.

Step 5: Imagery

We're almost done. All that's left to add is the imagery. This could be the most time consuming part fo the design depending on what your image is but Wolves' image is quite simple so using the pen tool I'll draw the wolf out.

After we draw out one side, just use the reflect tool to make sure everything stays symmetric. And we'll do the same with the eyes.



And now we have our fully designed crest.

There's a lot of people who hear the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" and are afraid of it. In some cases that's perfectly understandable. You should, however, be a jack of all trades, master of (at least) one. Every designer has a piece of software or two that they could use in their sleep but being even slightly able at some others could help your work be a lot better.

Personally, I'd say that I'm an expert at Photoshop and Illustrator but I've been playing around with After Effects and Cinema 4D in the last few years. I wouldn't say that I'm anything beyond an intermediate level (if that) with those pieces of software but I don't need to be. They're simply there to supplement the other two.



As I mentioned in a previous post, mimicking a piece of design or art that you like can also be a good way to figure out how to use the program. You don't want to plagiarise of course, but you might end up using features within it that you had never used before and this might come in handy if you need a creative solution in the future.

In the last post about my Bordeaux redesign process, I talked about how a club needs an iconic logo. But what about those clubs which already have an iconic logo? I'm talking about the Manchester Uniteds and the Real Madrids who have been massive, global clubs for decades and have fanbases numbering in the millions.

Already iconic logos need something different. You can't have a complete overhaul simply due to the impression that it has already left on people. And we know that as football fans we're resistant to change on that scale. Companies like Nike or Coca-Cola recognized the impact of their logos and only made minute changes to them over the years.

There have only been small stylistic changes in Coca-Cola's design in the last 128 years.

From the image below you can see how little United's logo has changed over the years. They've stuck with the same shape more or less throughout their history.


The Process

There was only one major change that I wanted to bring to the new design and that was the use of a circle to tie the logo in better. The circle was the only aspect of the logo that wasn't just a slight change.



Once that was done I added the other mandatory elements (the text and the footballs).



After that I wanted to try and extend the space to work with the imagery at the center of the logo so I made the ship a little more prominent. The devil stayed exactly the same.



But because of the new shape in the middle there was a lot of empty space around the devil. I decided to add fading lines behind the central badge to give the illusion of waves and fill up the space at the same time.


Final Logo

Brescia's logo may not look that spectacular to most but it's a combination of the imagery and the colours that they've used that really brings the class of the design out.




Simple and clean. Very much something I might design myself and maybe that's why I'm a big fan of it. There isn't much unnecessary flash with this logo and it emphasizes what it needs to in an effective way.



Southampton's crest has struck a strange balance between being both intricate and simple. When you look at it as a whole it has an instant appeal but when you pick out the individual elements you see the true genius of this design.




Hearts' crest is simple in its structure but brings it out in a visually appealing way.



Like the Brescia crest, I like the colour palette and the unconventional shape of the logl. The imagery is prominent and contrasts really well with the stork.

Ideas come out of two situations:

You can be under the pressure of a deadline which can bring about some great ideas. For example, in 1831, mathematician Evariste Galois was challenged to a duel after getting in a fight with another man over a woman. Convinced of his impending death the next morning, Galois spent the entire night solving the algebraic problems that had troubled him for years. As he'd expected, he was killed in the duel but the ideas that came to him that night led to a revolution in higher algebra. Of course, this is an extreme example of the kind of deadline pressure a person could face but the story does support the idea that such pressure brings out the genius in anyone.

The mind also creates ideas through associations. Something you might not have thought about in a while might be sitting in the back of your mind. All it needs is a spark to turn into a big idea. You might be working on something else when your mind makes an association between your environment, something you'd seen in the past and your work.

Having a notebook or sketchbook handy at all times can help the process. It can be a place to put down interesting things that you read or see for future reference and it can be great for putting down spontaneous ideas that you might have. With your brain making associations to come up with something bigger, those jotted down notes might become more valuable than you'd think at that moment in time.

Plus when you're lacking motivation, looking through your notes, sketches or what ever else you might put down in your sketchbook could give you a spark of inspiration that you need.

Here's both my notebook and my sketchbook for reference:



I personally prefer having two separate books: one for the things that I read and one for the ideas that I have so that I can refer to each one as necessary. But ultimately, having one at all will greatly impact your creative output.

Tomorrow marks two years since I started working on Love Football Hate Football. When I look through my work from 2013 to now, I can see the steady improvement in my skills that I had hoped this project would bring. I've grown a lot as a designer and along the way I learned things - either directly by doing this or from other sources - that can be applied to design or any other creative fields.

What exactly did I learn?

1. Build your pack

I'd be the first to admit I'm not the most technologically savvy person around. I'm a quick learner when it comes to software but that's where it stops. Not great because if I didn't hold as much contempt for things like social media, I could've had a larger reach than I have in the last two years but operating in a vacuum has its benefits too.

Work like this can be quite polarizing so it's difficult to get any real constructive criticism when the feedback is generally nothing more than an outburst of an extreme emotion. That's why it's important to develop a close set of level-headed people whose opinion you trust and who you know will provide you with completely unbiased critiques to help you along the way.

2. Reps, Reps, Reps

I'm an avid reader but two books in particular have had a big impact in how I approach practice.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography goes through his bodybuilding, business, acting and political careers and to some it would seem inhuman how one man could achieve what it would take a few men a lifetime to. Others might not even bother looking past his recent transgressions. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and it taught me one very important lesson: everything is about repetition.

When you're at the gym, the amount of sets and reps you do are designed to break your muscles down and build them back up to be stronger than before. This has just as much of a mental application as it does a physical one.

For example, when Schwarzenegger was to make big political speeches whether at the UN or his State of the State addresses, he practiced them hundreds of times. He would draw a line at the top left of the page for each time he got through the speech and he would have perfected it by the time the lines reached the other end of the page. It was that kind of work ethic that made him successful in everything that he decided to take on.

In the second book, Mastery by Robert Greene, the author describes the journeys of various masters throughout history and goes into more scientific detail about repetition. Without getting too deep into neurobiology, through intense repetition the brain essentially becomes hardwired to perform certain tasks at an instinctual level. Cristiano Ronaldo scoring goals in the dark is great proof of this.

Thanks to these two books, I've found myself more willing to try out new software (Cinema 4D and After Effects) so that I can create even better content for the site.

So every time you get sick of practicing just think "reps, reps, reps", you'll be better for it.

3. Copy other designers

Similar to writers and musicians who copy their idols to learn from them, designers can too. This isn't an invitation to plagiarise anyone but copying someone else's style serves a good purpose. You grow and learn their techniques while incorporating your own style. And if you haven't found your own style yet, you definitely will by doing this on a regular basis.

This technique also goes back to the point above, where through repetition and a bit of experimentation you can greatly improve your skills and evolve as a creative person.

4. Live to fight another day

Perfectionists will often run themselves into the ground trying to get each pixel in the right place but sometimes you just end up burning yourself out. After hours of working on the same project you're likely to run out of ideas or become too overcommitted to be open to changing things up. Sometimes you might just want to get it over with and decide the project is over when it could really be improved even more.

So it's a good practice to let something sit for a few days, a few weeks or maybe even longer. With a clear mind, you might end up scrapping the entire project and starting from scratch but you will definitely be happier with the result.



5. Just get started

People constantly say that they need motivation or inspiration to work. I used to refuse to do any sort of creative work without it but in the recent past I decided to just start on what ever it was that I was working on and let the motivation come during the process. It worked.

I took a lot of satisfaction out of getting over the first few hurdles of starting a new project (what to do, how to do it) and that's what ended up sparking my motivation. We live in a world full of instant gratification but buckling down and getting through challenges will add up to create long term benefits that will bring more joy and motivation to your work.

But you can't get started until you get started.

With the amount of clutter the average consumer faces, brands need an icon or image that can stand on its own. When it comes to football it’s usually less important as fans identify with their club on a more tribal level. But as mid-table or smaller clubs begin to succeed and get more exposure through continental competition, they find that they can suddenly reach a global audience. With this new potential global fanbase in waiting, the importance for iconic branding finally comes into play.

The focus of this project was Girondins de Bordeaux, a club in the south-west of France. Apart from their impressive 2008-09 campaign which led to a league title and domestic cup, Bordeaux have struggled to make much of an impact in the league in recent years. They have since been fighting for a chance to get back into a Champions League, having made a great run to the quarter finals back in 2009 but a few appearances in the Europa League gives them a stepping stone to rejoin Europe's elite, where as mentioned, a strong brand can benefit from global exposure.




In the past, Bordeaux had a good range of logos that would stand out against some of their competition even today. Somewhere in the 1990s however, a trend of minimalist text based logos rose in French football. Clubs like Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon abandoned their imagery for simple, stylized acronyms of their club names. In the case of those two clubs, they both reverted to more traditional football logos, featuring the icons that they had used in previous years; icons that represent their cities that could still be recognizable to the casual fan.