Graphic Clinic

Category: Design

  • Book covers

    Book covers

    Sheep-and-other-stories-WEBDoing a book cover design must be easy. Dead easy-peasy lemon squeazy. After all, if it was hard only professional designers would do it. As such isn’t it great that designing your own book cover is a task open to all.

    Or is it?

    We were recently asked to produce an eye catching book cover for Kenneth P Stephens collection of short stories set in the undiscovered parts of Scotland. So what else could we do than start researching book cover design in the post-print world.

    We were amazed, astounded and apoplexy that so many authors are choosing to cut corners on their cover designs. All that hard work, slogging away at their laptops producing wonderfully crafted word smithery and then they wrap it up in something that they bash out in MS Paint in the final evening before the deadline.

    We couldn’t let Kenny suffer that fate so we snuggled down with a decent malt, fired up the iPad, devoured his prose and set to work the following day. The result is above.

    We’re looking forward to the arrival of his second collection of short stories and will serve up the creative solution here when it’s published.

  • New iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpapers

    New iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpapers

    So we’ve all go shiny new iPhone software that makes our phones super groovy again. The only snag is that stupid “parallax” scrolling nonsense they’ve brought in. I hate it, it’s such a gimmick and brings nothing to the party in my opinion.

    It also means that those nice iOS6 wallpapers we did are now looking rubbish on our phones now. So the solution; spend ages working out exactly ‘how big’ are the wall papers now, what is going on with the scrolling, and can we create some similarly nice wallpapers for our phones again?

    So what we’ve created is a series of wallpapers to match our various moods. Some bright, some calmer, but all of them a damn sight better on the eye’s than our old ones, plus they’ve been designed to take into consideration the new look-and-feel of iOS7 and it’s new folders and the way they zoom.

    To use any of them, simply open this page on your iPhone and tap and hold the image of your choice. You’ll then be asked if you want to save it to your camera roll, and from there you can set it up as a wallpaper.

    If you have a specific Pantone reference you’d like, just drop us an email or send us a message via Twitter.

    iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpaper in Pantone 803 to 805 blend iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpaper in Pantone 803 to 328 blend iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpaper in Pantone 299 to 432 blend iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpaper in Pantone 299 to 328 blend iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpaper in Pantone 151 to 234 blend iPhone 5 iOS7 wallpaper in Pantone 485 to 432 blend

  • Heart of Midlothian iPhone & (Retina) iPad Wallpaper

    Our Creative Director Brian is a massive football fan and an even bigger fan of one of Edinburgh’s sides – so much so that he couldn’t resist this. Below is an iPhone 5 wallpaper for free download for my fellow Hearts fans. Simply view this page on your phone, press and hold on the image and save it to your camera roll. You’ll then be able to set it up as your wallpaper. Note: please switch off the parallax scrolling nonsense for this to look ok.

    iphone-5-bg-HMFC-2

    iPad Retina wallpaper Heart of Midlothian

  • Picking even sides is a hassle no longer

    Picking even sides is a hassle no longer

    It’s no secret that I love my football, but every week we have the same dilemma on a Monday night. Working out who is coming is a doddle thanks to RocketSports, but picking the teams is always a headache. If you have even sides, it’s usually a bit easier, but when it’s odd numbers the problems are increased. Who to side with whom?

    Luckily technology can help us with that problem and we’re super excited to be working with Keiran from IntoHand in Bath to develop a prototype Team Picking app for iOS and Android. Current offerings are hideously ugly and unbelievably bad to use – as if the people making them have never hear of UX or UI design.

    Below are sample screenshots of what we hope to launch in the January.

    The Load screen:

    01 Intro and load

    Your team screen, say who’s there and rate each player on your team:

    02 selection screen

    Pick those sides – a nice BIG button!

    03 selection screen complete

    Adding a player is a simple tap or two:

    04 adding a new player

    Edit your squad easily:

    05 editing squad

    Voila! Your teams, picked based on your ratings. Get your ratings right and you’ll never have an uneven game again. It’ll work for any sport or occasion.

    06 Picked teams

  • Intro talk at the Design Museum in London

    Our Creative Director Brian continues his hard work with the design lecture series LongLunch and has arranged a talk at the Design Museum on the 12th from one of the UK’s most prominent design agencies of the last two decades.

    Intro’s Creative director Julian House will be talking about his design philosophies to a packed Design Museum, and then three days later will be flying to Edinburgh to do it all again for the Scottish Design community.

    There are still a few tickets left for both talks, available via www.longlunch.com.

    There will be free posters to give away, designed by Julian himself, and screen printed by Dan Mather.

  • Graphic Clinic and Original Designers Workbook iPhone 5 wallpapers

    Graphic Clinic and Original Designers Workbook iPhone 5 wallpapers

    For the last year or so I have stuck rigidly to a really nice iPhone 4 skin produced by the guys at Effektive in Glasgow. I liked the dark grey one.

    Today I upgraded to an iPhone 5 and they’ve not yet created a new grid, so here’s my homage to their initial idea. Pantone’s have been turned into hex colours using this site. They use the Graphic Clinic Pantone’s of 427 and 485 plus – because I really prefer the dark grey one Effektive did – Pantone 433.

    I thought I’d share them. You’re free to download them and use them. If you do I’d appreciate a tweet to let me know @GraphicClinic. Thanks.

    I’m happy to do a specific Pantone version, should you wish. Requests on Twitter to @GraphicClinic.

    Graphic Clinic iPhone 5 Pantone 427 wallpaperGraphic Clinic iPhone 5 Pantone 485 wallpaperGraphic Clinic iPhone 5 Pantone 433 wallpaperOriginal Designers Workbook iPhone wallpaper Pantone 433Original Designers Workbook Pantone 2925 iPhone wallpaper

  • Plymouth Half Marathon designs

    Plymouth Half Marathon designs

    A new look for Englands “riveria” half marathon

    We were approached at the end of 2011 to work with on some interim designs for the Plymouth Half Marathon in anticipation of a full rebrand for the annual event, this year taking place on the Queens Jubilee weekend. We took our creative lead from old postcards promoting the area as a holiday destination, picking out key landmarks on the marathon’s route such as the Tinside Lido, Smeatons Tower and the Hoe.

  • Time for another LongLunch: Lava Design at the Design Museum in London

    It’s that time again when our Creative Director (that’s me) is off to run yet another LongLunch lecture. LongLunch brings together the design community regularly in London and Scotland to listen to inspiring designers talk about their work, their design philosophy and their loves and hates.

    The 45th talk will be from Dutch agency Lava — who spoke for LongLunch in Glasgow last year — on the 4th of February at the stunning Design Museum on the banks of the River Thames in London. This is the third jointly run talk with the Design Museum who have a government obligation to run a certain number of talks each year and LongLunch is proud to have been invited to provide two talks a year at the Design Museum from the Graphic and Digital design industry. More details for the talk can be found at http://www.longlunch.com/