Blog

http://www.printmag.com/branding/physics-of-brand-science-behind-memorable-brands/

http://gawker.com/gawker-com-to-end-operations-next-week-1785455712

https://medium.com/product-hunt/28-tools-to-help-you-launch-your-startup-on-a-small-budget-7d5383997bbd

https://webflow.com/blog/the-art-of-progressive-disclosure-in-web-design

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/john-maeda-leaves-kpcb-joins-automattic-as-design-head/

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2016/08/18/apples-stores-no-longer-called-apple-store/

http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-comments

https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/

http://www.creativebloq.com/advice/the-5-biggest-mistakes-that-junior-designers-make

http://www.ladygaga.com/

http://mashable.com/2016/08/18/domain-name-transfer/

http://blog.typekit.com/2016/08/18/preview-a-new-look-for-fonts-on-typekit/

https://enigma.swiss

http://principleformac.com/posts/principle-two.html

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/08/17/how-the-need-for-connection-pushes-tech-further/

https://m.signalvnoise.com/whats-new-in-basecamp-3-2-for-ios-44724495c882

http://codepen.io/steveg3003/pen/XKGNmY

http://www.swearwords.com.au/

http://blog.typekit.com/2016/08/17/flexible-typography-with-css-locks/

http://www.thenewsletterplugin.com

http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/14/founders-big-tech-wont-buy-your-startup-but-big-brands-might/

http://designyoutrust.com/2016/08/beautifully-arranged-visual-recipes-by-mikkel-jul-hvilshoj/

http://www.heydonworks.com/article/on-writing-less-damn-code

http://petapixel.com/2016/08/17/major-browsers-will-soon-block-flash-website-ready/

Last year we created a logo for Rock Canyon Amphitheater in Twin Falls, Idaho. This year we got to create a poster for one of their upcoming events, for an Iron Maiden tribute band. Now, you may be thinking, "Why would I go see an Iron Maiden tribute band?" I…

WordPress now powers about 25% of sites on the interwebs. Its ease of use, flexibility and power have made it a go-to choice for many business owners. Do you have a WordPress website? Do you know a business owner with a WordPress website? Is your care plan up to date?…

Our latest project is done and live on the interwebs! Extremely grateful to the entire Nagel Foundation Board of Directors, for collaborating on the process of developing a new brand identity mark and website. The Nagel Foundation story started with a German immigrant who bought a soda-water company for $700…

Projects sometimes come with no set of guidelines or creative brief. I can be free to explore and develop concepts without feeling like I'm straying from a set of rules. That's cool. This was the case with a recent project from the Meridian Library District, and their Meridian Writes program.…

Clients often wonder when it's time to change, or update their logo. Do you evolve your logo (change it slightly)? Or do you revolutionize your logo, and come up with something completely different? Below are two examples of evolving and revolutionizing a logo. First we have CBS Sports, which evolved…

I was texting with a friend the other day who said he was glad my business was going well. Jokingly, I replied that my boss was a jerk (I’m self-employed) and that I was too hard on myself. He replied, “You should fire that guy.” You know what? He was…

Continuing with (IMO) great and iconic album covers, I present to you Destroyer from “the hottest band in the land” KISS. Destroyer came on the heels of their worldwide hit KISS ALIVE!, which was the biggest selling live album in history. Knowing that the follow up album to this had…

So you’ve got your company name for your business and are ready to meet with a designer to get all those logo ideas down on paper so you can launch your business to the world. Have you considered how important color is when establishing your brand/logo? You see, if you're…

As a designer, we usually have several sources for fonts, vector images and stock photos. If you're looking for a great source for fonts, images, vectors and Photoshop Actions, I highly recommend Creative Market. As per their website: "Creative Market is a platform for handcrafted, mousemade design content from independent…

One of the things that has always been on my design bucket list is to design an album cover. Not just any album cover, an iconic album cover. Besides design, one of my other passions is music. I played drums in a few bands in my teenage years up to…

I'm extremely proud that Graphic Zen was chosen to create the new brand identity for the Meridian Chamber of Commerce. The project was very rewarding to work on, as I live and work in the Meridian community, and love my city. After initial concepts were created about 4 months ago,…

As you can imagine, we deal with a lot of different web hosting companies while creating sites for clients. For a time, we even tried our hand at being a web host ourselves. We leased a server, installed the billing software and for a little over a year and a…

With the World Cup still in full swing Chevrolet and Manchester United star in this great video showing the history of the Manchester United jersey. The Manchester fans sing "Glory Glory Man United" as they march to the stadium, where star Wayne Rooney debuts the latest jersey with the Chevrolet…

Pop the champagne! Or wine (or your favorite beverage), because Getty Images is saving you from ripping off images on the interwebs. You can now embed Getty Images into your website, blog or social platform without feeling guilty for pirating images. From Getty Images, "Finally, everyone can enhance their online…

Would you work for free? If you do creative work (designer, artist, coder) you may have seen something like the following example that I see far too often in online forums, direct emails, or via face-to-face networking. It goes something like this: I have a small business and I would…

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (congratulations on the Super Bowl win!) recently asked followers to submit logo ideas for his DangeRussWilson brand. I created a few logo concepts and received thumbs up from a couple of Seahawk fans. It's kind of hard to design something without a design brief/direction, so…

With all the dialogue (arguing?) going on these days on topics political/social/sports etc., it's always a good idea to bring things back into perspective. “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human…

So as part of my goal to express myself creatively this year (I get to express creatively for everyone else most of the time), I've submitted my first design at Threadless.com. You can see the design here, and I'd be most appreciative if you'd click this link and vote a…

We recently had the chance to create a fun ad design for a fellow creative, Cliff Marks Jr. Photography. Cliff is the exclusive photographer for the Treasure Valley Children's Theater and this fun shot of 'Alice in Wonderland' that we used for the ad is perfect to show the fun…

Are you ready to Stand Up America? On December 7, 2012 one of our clients, Derrick Boles began a journey of more than 1800 miles. Derrick and his Stand Up America campaign is an inspiring journey. Using an Elliptigo cycle, Derrick will ride from San Diego to New Orleans, with…

How do you share your blog posts with your audience? We are currently testing a service called dlvr.it (Deliver It) to see how well the service handles blog posts and places them into our social media accounts automatically. We were using Twitterfeed, though lately their service has been pulling old…

I think it's amazing sometimes that people in the same line of work find themselves on a similar path. Kim Doyal, aka "The WordPress Chick" recently posted her manifesto after experiencing some "creative frustration" (my interpretation). She inspired me to create my own manifesto, which I've added here. It doesn't…

Very happy to announce our working partnership with Derrick Boles and the L.E.A.D.E.R.S.H.I.P. 1st for America organization. Leadership 1st's mission is to engage, empower, educate and mobilize community based organizations through training, technical assistance and fund raising opportunities. We recently completed the first phase of their fundraising division, located at…

Update: March 2014 - An updated version of this site was just finished. Proud to feature one of our latest clients: Heal-N-U Therapeutic Day Spa in Meridian, Idaho. We created this website to feature the spa services, including online booking and gift card purchasing. This spa specializes in not only…

Cleaning out some files for the new year, and ran across a handwritten sheet of inspirational thoughts gathered from various friends, sites and seminars. Thought I would share them with you as you plan for 2012. May it be your best year yet! Have a mind open to everything and…

Merry Christmas and all the seasonal greetings that come with this time of year. As we look forward to 2012, Graphic Zen will be debuting a revamped website, (work continues on it now), and some new service offerings. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the "snow" that is gently…

Just finished up a website for Independent Scentsy Consultant, Lisa Nelson. This site will be used by Lisa as a marketing and lead generation tool for prospective consultants and customers. This was a great site to work on because it educated us about the fantastic products and the story of…

Graphic Zen recently completed the website redesign for Cougar Mountain Landscaping. The new design features a "Video" page, where Cougar Mountain will feature videos of client landscape installs and DIY tips. Dave Wells, partner at Cougar Mountain said, "We really love the new design. It's much cleaner and puts the…

Was asked by a friend the other day over coffee how we get ideas for clients, or what is the process that leads us to create a design for the client. This quote below from Paul Rand is a great summary and description of what I sometimes call 'creating order…

Recently our Graphic Zen site got hacked. Why people do it, I'll never know. What I do know is that the Graphic Zen site was gone, the WP database was hosed and two years worth of work, blog posts, images, etc. was down the drain, right? Wrong. Thanks to WP…

Have you always wanted to make your own animated film? Dream of becoming the next Disney or Pixar? Just found a great resource for learning 3D animation. Check it out - Click Here!

Graphic Zen would like to welcome Richard “Chad” Villapando to our development team. Chad is a talented and experienced website coder and will be one of the lead developers for our web division. He’s developed a wide range of websites using HMTL, CSS and WordPress including sites for start up…

Looking to save some money on product creation tools? This guide will show you where to get photo editing software, PDF converters and editors, form fillers, image editors, background makers, logo generators, word processors, spreadsheets and more! We used to sell this guide, now we're going to be giving it…

Looking for photo editing software? Don't want to shell out the big bucks for Photoshop? Try Sumo Paint. If you're expecting online image editors to be anemic, you'll be surprised by the extensive features of many of the nominees like Sumo Paint. Sporting a toolbar, image navigator, swatches, and layers,…

We’ve always used the analogy that building a website is like building a home. Imagine that you’ve just purchased ten acres of beautiful land, and you hire the best builder in the area to construct your home. You drive the builder out to your land and point to a spot…

The font is a critical factor in creating a website. For one, it will either make it easy or difficult for your readers to read the content of your website. Another thing is that, it also says a lot in the overall design of your website. It is therefore important…

A good graphic designer is able to create great designs long after the latest design fads have passed. It is true that becoming good at web designing takes years of experience. However, it is also rooted in learning the fundamentals well. Time has proven that the basics work and they…

Can vehicles be considered art? Watched an episode of "Top Gear" the other night and the hosts entertained the topic, going so far as to set up their own exhibition of what they considered art at a local museum. Of course, it was Top Gear so it was all a…

Created a new look for Meridian Food Bank recently and will be utilizing it on their new website as well. The client stressed that it was important to keep the "bowl theme", because that was a strong memory for he and his wife from their missionary work. "Too many empty…

Updated the site - call it spring fever I guess, or still striving for that "zen-like" state of the website. Looking to shake things up a bit - stay tuned for a new sister site, and something of interest for non-profit groups... Cheers.

This should be a no-brainer, own your domain name! We've recently been involved with projects with clients who let other designers or webhost providers register their domain name "as a courtesy to them". Great - what happens when you want to switch providers or the designer who used to do…

My apologies (I'm sorry!) to all Tweeters out there, especially my followers, for my repetitive Nigerian bank scam tweet. I'm sure it was funny the first few hundred times you saw it. :-0 See, I was trying out a tweeting software to schedule tweets and added that one. Instead of…

Okay, I must admit that I rarely pay attention to the drugs being marketed on television. The supposed cure for an ailment usually comes with a litany of side effects, many that seem worse than the original "problem". I would love to design a logo and help craft a name…

Just finished the "Safe At University" site - located at: www.safeatuniversity.com. This is a site dedicated to student safety while attending college or university. The guide is filled with tips for parents and students on dealing with various campus and off campus safety situations. Please visit!

Cross one off the "bucket list". Finished the Seattle Rock 'n Roll Marathon on June 27th. To make it even better, proposed to my girlfriend afterwards! Now back to work!

Or should I say "The Fewd Network"? Appears they are working the staff too hard, or they don't hold the production staff to the same exacting 'You've got to get this right' mentality that I see being preached on The Next Food Network Star. Don't get me wrong - I…

Attention entrepreneurs/business owners: what business are you in? Attended a great business seminar today and was asked that question by one of the speakers. If you answered, "I'm in _____ business", chances are that you are not as successful as you should be. The speaker challenged us to think that…

Training continues for the Seattle RNR Marathon. Did 14 miles last Saturday and came to the realization that this is eating up a lot of life. Eat, run, sleep. Occasionally get some work in. How you runners do it? Going to try tweaking the diet a bit to gain some…

Not you? Then I suggest you watch a Japanese movie called "Pray". It will give you the screamin' heebie jeebies. Some of the last few big "horror hits" in the U.S. were actually remakes of Japanese horror films - "The Ring" for example. I actually find the Japanese version scarier.…

What is it about April that makes me want to go out and play golf? If it weren't for the rain, wind and hail, I'd probably be out on the course. Noonan!

Have recently received numerous requests from new/small business regarding my services. I like the pioneering spirit of the entrepreneur! Despite government interference, we (small business) will rise from the ashes of layoffs, downsizing, bankruptcy, etc., to forge a new product, industry or service! Power to the business people. Amen.

Training continues for the Seattle Rock & Roll Marathon in June. I decided today after a great conversation with a friend that I'm only doing part of the run for me. I'm mostly doing it for the folks that aren't able to - cancer patients/other terminally ill patients. People who…

I believe that in a typical 24-hour period, the movie "Die Hard" can be found on one of your tv channels. Wonder if Bruce Willis watches to remember what his hair looked like?