Commercial art must be vigilant over color trends for the season as well as for decades. When designing logos and corporate identity packages we need to reflect not only the attitude and personality of the company, but also the color theory that applies – all while being conscience of the years color forecast and trends. Promotional items or marketing materials with a shorter shelf life should pay closer attention to the current trends. As designers, once we have overall awareness of an array of color information we also need to review the buyer profile and specifically target that audience for color cues that trigger a positive response.
This year’s spring and summer color trends seem to be filled with warm hopeful hues across the color palette – Red with blue undertones, Green as natural grass, Yellow warm and buttery, Blue with a cast of green or purple.

For more information about color trends, follow these links:
http://www.fashiontrendsetter.com/downloads/Lenzing-Trends-Autumn-Winter-2010-11.pdf
http://www.pantone.com/downloads/articles/pdfs/Pantone-FCR-sp2010f.pdf

I was sitting in my room, rummaging through my purse looking for my pen, when I realized how much ‘junk’ I had in there. As I sorted through some things I started to wonder why I had purchased the items that had collected at the bottom of my bag.

Before I started working for OrangeRoc I don’t think I would have given it a second thought but now I’ve realized that for me, the items that I purchase end up at the bottom of my bag for the same basic reason… design or packaging. I have about 7 pens in my one purse, all of which are the same brand. The first reason for me purchasing this brand of ink pen? The look, the way it writes ranks third and the price, dead last. I also found that I have 2 different lip balms. One of which was reasonable in price and served the purpose of winter days and chapped lips. The other was purchased because it came in a little silver tin with a cute label, and cost of $7.50 was NOT one of the reasons for the purchase, and although it works great for chapped lips, I have to be honest and say that I hardly ever use it. If I had to be totally honest, I’d have to admit to making the purchase just so I could have the cute little shopping bag with the purple dragonfly on it. I guess it goes to show that sometimes it’s the packaging that gets us and not necessarily functionality or necessity.

From a consumer to all you businesses out there… Branding as well as packaging are both key players in a company and it’s marketing.

An 81-year-old Honolulu woman died yesterday after she was hit by a sport utility vehicle as she crossed Pali Highway in a marked crosswalk. I often saw this little old lady crossing the street as I drove into work. It is so sad.

But, really isn’t a surprise. Every Pali driver has experienced the confusion of traffic stopping because of bumper-to-bumper traffic. It just took ONE driver NOT seeing her in the crosswalk.

This type of tragedy is avoidable through an already existing creative design solution:

In pavement lighting. In this case the solution is already created and should NOW be implemented.

The challenge for all designers should be to find solutions to all sorts of problems BEFORE they are needed. That is what it means to be a creative problem solver. But unfortunatly it seems like it takes an accident and a shock to put action into motion.

A call to all creatives: Let’s find problems; find creative solutions. And make things happen.

It’s that time of year again, the time when phone books wait anxiously on our doorsteps like lost puppies searching for a new home. So what do you do with them? Because of the internet, they have become obsolete for the majority of us. According to banthephonebook.org, each year 5 million trees are cut down for phone book production alone. We can all do our part to help protect our environment. If you do not need one, please take a few minutes to contact your local phone book company and opt out of phone book delivery. Let’s start 2010 by making a positive impact on our environment.

Ahh, aerial photography. What an inspirational, wondrous little gift for our creative minds. Aerial photography provides us with a view of our environment from a perspective we aren’t used to seeing; thus providing us with a fantastic new way of looking at things. Aerial photography was first practiced in the 1800′s by photographers in hot-air balloons, and is now quite a popular thing! Here are some breathtaking aerial photos for your inspiration.

Clicking on the images will take you to where we found them, and will allow you to see a larger version and learn more about the photographers.

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