Let me tell you how excited I was to shoot this family photo session. I have always wanted to take photos at the Kaweah Oaks Preserve in Visalia, Ca. That place truly is magical and does not look like it is in the Central Valley at all. It reminds me of the movie Avatar. At first I was sad to find that the green leafy vines were all dead for winter, but it turned out great for the photos anyway. This just means I will have to find a reason to come back in the summer because I sure love taking picture of green foliage.

We ended up going on the shortest trail which was the Grapevine Trail. It sure was an adventure for Aly who is two-and-a-half years old. She was able to explore high and low since this place towers with trees all around. There were plenty of squirrels, creepy spiders, and gorgeous sunlight. I couldn’t stop telling Ro how gorgeous the sun was every five minutes. It was an pleasure to see a mother and daughter interact with each other and to see so many emotions in this 1.5 hour photo session.

If you haven’t heard of Stop Online Piracy Act, I’m sure you’ve heard of it now when you clicked that Google logo today. January 18, 2012 marks the date of internet blackout in order to make more people aware of SOPA. Websites like Google, Wikipedia, WordPress, Mozilla, and Reddit have all joined together to let everyone experience how the internet would be if the bill passed. Craigslist has also taken a different route to prevent the bill from passing.

What is SOPA?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such…

Source: stop online piracy act on Freebase, licensed under CC-BY

The U.S. Senate will vote on January 24th even though vast majorities of Americans have opposed these bills. Help stop Internet censorship legislation. Protect your rights to free speech and privacy. Visit Google’s End Piracy, Not Liberty page to take action.

With much anticipation since the end of the FIFA World Cup in 2006, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa has been going on for two weeks with the first round of eliminations coming to an end this week. With everyone, including myself, being focused on rooting for their team to move forward, I had a little inspiration to do this article when I saw the ESPN 33 FIFA Murals for each individual team taking part in the games. I decided to look up the official design posters from the past World Cup. Here are all the poster designs for the World Cup since 1930, starting with the most recent, South Africa to the oldest, Uruguay.

Which one is your favorite?

2006 Germany

2002 Korea Republic & Japan

1998 France

1994 USA

1990 Italy

1986 Mexico

1982 Spain

1978 Argentina

1974 West Germany

1970 Mexico

1966 England

1962 Chile

1958 Sweden

1954 Switzerland

1950 Brazil

1938 France

1934 Italy

1930 Uruguay

And did you know that the first World Cup mascot was the 1966 World Cup in England?

Finding the right font for that one design can be tough. A great font does not necessarily have to be those that must be purchased. An example is the font Calluna which is above. Great typography can come from anywhere. Here is a list of 25 free fonts ranging from Sans Serif, Serif, Web 2.0 to other type of fonts for you to use in your designs. The fonts below were chosen, not only because they are great and free, but they are also license-free which means that you can use them both for your personal use, as well as for commercial purposes. However, licenses and disclaimers are always changing so please do check each font you download.

Now, which one is your favorite font on the list?

Airstrip Four

Alte Haas Grotesk

Amputa Bangiz

AUdimat

Carbon

Comfortaa

Com4t Fine Regular

Days

Delicious

Dream Orphans

Fetigo Pro

Fontin Sans

Goudy Bookletter 1911

Just Old Fashion

Justus

Mayberry Pro Semibold

Miso

Mod

Museo

Petit Latin

Serif6 Beta

Tallys

Tuffy

Ubuntu Title

Here are some free rock textures I have shot up in Burrough Valley, CA that’s been sitting in my camera for a month now. I have been planning on giving away free textures every week, but have been so busy to post them. These are all free for personal design use as well as for commercial design. You do not need to give me credit for it, although I would be curious to see what you have done with it. So please feel free to email me a sample of your design. There are 11 high resolution rock textures available for download via 31.1 MB zip format.

Go ahead and take a guess at the number we see in a day.

The average American sees 16,000 advertisements, logos, and labels in a day.^[1] Isn’t that amazing? That data was collected in 1999 and is used in the book, Logo Design Love. I am sure with the influence of social media and the new type of marketing called inbound marketing, that we see a lot more advertisements, logos, and labels today.

After being influenced from reading David Airey’s Logo Design Love, I decided to do my own experiment with how many logos I see before going to bed by just doing my daily routine.

Here is my list of logos in five minutes:

I saw a total of 11 logos. These are just the ones I noticed, and I know there are a lot more around me.

Give it a try. What logos are on your list in five minutes? How many do you see on your computer screen alone. . .on your tv screen?

_{1. Sharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. with Cameron Stauth. Brain Longevity: The Breakthrough Medical Program That Improves Your Mind and Memory. (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1999)}

There are so many websites out there that sell pre-designed logos for real cheap and all a company has to do is slap their name on it. While this may be cheap and fast, it does not really represent the company. Every company needs brand identity and it is important to have a logo that sets a company apart from the crowd.

Let’s define what a logo is. A logo is used for instant public recognition of an organization. It provides trust and loyalty for its audience, as well as tell the story of a company and its goals. No pre-designed logo will ever tell the story of a company and using a pre-designed logo is harmful for business because someone else probably has the same $50 logo, but with a different company name. In order to create an effective original logo, a graphic designer must go through a design process.

YOU THE DESIGNER MUST:

Research
Research is probably the number one most important design process in logo design. Knowing what you are designing for is what will set  a logo apart from any other logo and brand identity designs. It is important to ask the client as much questions as possible about their company and do further research in the field that they are in to get a better understanding of what it is you should design.

Brainstorm & Sketch
Brain storming and sketching go hand in hand. Once you have an idea after researching, write it down. Then sketch each idea out. It is a good idea to keep a grid notebook with brainstorming and sketching as you can see the steps you have made and how it has evolved.

Conceptualize
After sketching, it is a good idea to narrow down your ideas down to three sketches. Ask yourself which concept best represents the company and its goals.

Design & Develop
The next step is to design and develop the logo. The logo development must go through several questions such as, does it work as a black and white logo as well as the colored version? and is it readable when scaled down to one inch?

Refine & Design
After meeting and showing the client the logo design, they will almost always want to change a little of something and this will lead back to the previous steps until the logo is perfect.

This is a very broad step-by-step a logo designer goes through. An effective logo design will have gone through several processes and phases before actually coming up with the final logo design that suits the client’s needs. This is why logo design should cost more than $50.