But they can also apply outside of design and can be used as the fundamental building blocks for our daily lives, and strengthening our own creativity.

Finding Balance
Finding a balance between your work and personal life can be a difficult task. Even so, bringing new activities into your daily routine is important, and not just for the sheer pleasure of it. It also helps us to refocus and take in the world from new perspectives. Because much of design today is limited to sitting in front of a computer screen for several hours a day, our work environment has become very constricted and can be draining. Enjoying your time away from work is an extremely important part of cultivating your creativity. Remember you are not your work, your work is you. Your artistry is an extension of how you experience the world around you.

1.) Take Breaks
If you’ve spent hours working and everything is becoming a blur, or you’re just stuck, it might be a good time to step back from the work. The mental effort it takes to see all of your design projects through can be taxing and it’s beneficial to take a break in these instances. So go on a jog, read, or move yourself to a totally new environment where you can escape thoughts of those lingering deadlines. It will help relieve stress and increase your productivity in the long run. You may even stumble upon new solutions along the way. Those eureka moments aren’t typically found while fully engrossed in your work.

2.) Finding balance between your own creative endeavors and your client’s needs
Don’t forget to indulge in your other favorite art forms whether it’s photography, drawing, painting or personal design work. If you feel pressed for time, you don’t always have to start from scratch. You likely have a wealth of unused resources and design concepts that were never presented or just didn’t make the final cut, for whatever reason. Go back through your forgotten sketches and lists, and you might be surprised at what you find. Even some random doodles made during early phases of a previous design might become the source of a great breakthrough.

3.) Explore your other passions
Finding other hobbies and activities to immerse yourself in with relative frequency is probably one of the best ways to fuel creativity. Something different, like juggling, making music, or learning martial arts. You probably have a fair amount of passion for your work, whether for your clients or for yourself, but it can still become routine over time. Finding unrelated activities will help to break up the monotony and expand your knowledge and creativity.

4.) Find a time to relax
Occasionally you just need to take the time to do nothing. Or at least almost nothing. Find your favorite spot in nature where you can kick back and bask in the environment. Clear your mind of the clutter. It can be a refreshing escape, and a great way to wind down after a long day. When work rolls around again you’ll be more engaged and your creative ideas will flow with greater clarity.

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It may take some time to bring these habits into your life. Even if you feel like you only have 10 minutes of free time a day, make use of that time and increase it little by little. Take incremental steps and make daily adjustments as you progress. You’ll soon find a rhythm that works for you and you’ll be happier and more creative as a result.

The post The Principles of Design Zen – Part 1: Balance appeared first on Sam Wasserman | Branding & Design | Nashville, Tennessee.

Generative Art refers to artwork that has been created algorithmically, often with the aid of a computer and widely available software. It can be easy to create very beautiful and detailed works with just a few simple rules and some basic programming knowledge. Ranging from the highly chaotic to the extremely ordered and blending everything in between, generative art reflects many of the rules and patterns we observe in nature and strikes a beautiful balance between science and art.

Even though generative art and design actually has a fairly long history through the use of analog systems, its influence continues to grow. Especially with the advent of many open-source applications freely available to download all over the web.

John Whitney – Stills of early computer animation

John Whitney, who is known to be one of the fathers of computer animation used both mechanical and digital techniques to create beautiful psychedelic lights and patterns. Perhaps his most well-known work was his collaboration with Saul Bass for the title sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film masterpiece, Vertigo. These styles not only had an incredible influence on film and animation, but could also be seen as a precursor to electronic music visualization. To view John Whitney’s art in action, you can view a playlist of his work here.

Diana Lange – Nature of Code

Generative art is extremely flexible, and there is often as much creativity going into the process and rules of the algorithm as there is crafting the desired style of output.

Data visualization can take on almost any form. The above image from Diana Lange’s Nature of Code series is reminiscent of a geode or cross-section of other crystal forms. It was created with a program made in Processing, a digital sketchbook intended to teach coding though the use of visual arts. The program searches Flickr for photos, then analyzes the color data. It then arranges the information into cells of different sizes, based on the frequency and brightness of each color in the image.

John Greene – Tessellated pattern made with Fleen

If you are less inclined to use code and prefer a more visual tool set, there are still options out there. Fleen lets users draw custom geometries and develop operators that generate into various compositions. You can then save the art as both vector or high resolution raster formats for further customization, incorporating into designs, or just to get that awesome custom tapestry printed.

Leonardo Solaas – Propagaciones 10

There seems to be an almost instinctive attraction to generative art. We are pattern-seeking creatures after all, and the processes used in its practice are strongly tied to the rules and physics of our universe. When creating with generative tools you may very well have some idea how you intend the art to look, but part of the fun is watching the emergence of beautiful and unpredictable results that blossom on their own, removing much of the ego from the creative process.

If you are interested in generative art, check out some of the links below. There are plenty of tools out there, and this list will continue to grow.

Links to some cool generative art software and applications:

Processing
A free open-source software sketchbook and one of the most widely used tools for creating generative art. Built to promote software literacy and to and aid the learning of code through with visual art.

NodeBox
A free open-source and cross-platform application for creating generative art and data visualization.

Fleen
Fleen is an experimental pattern generator that creates tesselative art from user defined geometry.

Jenn3d
Jenn3d is an application for visualizing Coxeter polytopes.

ISO Flock
A swarm simulator with tons of customizable behaviors and perimeters.

Electric Sheep
What do computers dream of? Electric Sheep is an abstract visualization program run by thousands of people all over the world.

Ultra Fractal
Multi-layer fractal generation and rendering.

Mandelbulber
An experimental application used for generating and exploring three-dimensional fractals.

Context Free
Context Free uses simple written instructions called grammars which can generate images with surprising speed and complexity.

The post The Beauty of Generative Art appeared first on Sam Wasserman | Branding & Design | Nashville, Tennessee.

A good collection of icons is one of the most important things a designer can have in his or her toolkit. Icons can cross language barriers and convey abstract concepts in a way that everyone can understand. Here are some of the top places to find free high-quality icons around the web.

The Noun Project
Free for personal and commercial use with artist credit

The Noun Project is a visual dictionary that hosts thousands of icons made by designers from all over the world. Search for just about anything here and you’ll probably find it. All of the icons come free under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Another option is to pay a small fee per icon or you can choose to subscribe and never worry about having to attribute again. You can also download their new desktop app which makes selecting icons for your projects easier than ever. Just drag, drop and you’re done.

Graphic Burger
Free for personal and commercial use

Graphic Burger serves up top-quality design resources free to the community. Here you’ll find loads of tasty icon sets as well as other freebies created by contributors from all over the world. Everything here comes free to use for personal or commercial work and is modifiable with no need to attribute.

Flat Icon
Free for personal and commercial use with artist credit

Flaticon has a huge collection of glyphs and icons that are all available for free. Just don’t forget to credit the artist. If you wish to avoid attribution, two subscription options are available. Flaticon also provides a very handy generator which lets you create icon fonts for web use. Cut down on images and take full control of your icons by styling them in css.

Iconmonstr
Free for personal and commercial use

Tons of free glyphs made in Germany. Simple, straightforward and well crafted. Iconmonstr also sports an onsite editor that can be used to change the color, size, or enclosure of the icon before you download. All icons are free to use and modify for both personal and commercial projects. No attribution needed.

Iconfinder
Check individual licenses

Iconfinder hosts over half a million icons in all different styles. There are plenty of free options here, but just make sure you check the individual licenses for each icon first. Become a subscriber and help contributing designers and illustrators earn royalties with each download.

The post The Best Places To Get Free Icons appeared first on Sam Wasserman | Branding & Design | Nashville, Tennessee.

Rebranding. That word can sound intimidating. After all, it took loads of time and effort to establish an identity and apply a look and feel to your business. However, it doesn’t have to be scary and it might just be the boost you need. Here are some clues you may be ready to take the leap and rebrand your business.

 

1. You are offering new services and interacting with new crowds

As you expand into new territories you might find additional services are becoming a main function of your business. Maybe you’re a food truck owner who wants to open a full fledged restaurant and your branding screams meals on the move. With such an expansion, you might want to draw in more followers who are unfamiliar with your humble origins. Refining the look of your business to interact with fresh faces could be a necessary step to take along with your new accommodations.

2. The landscape has evolved

Sometimes it’s the environment around your business that changes, and you have evolve with it. You’ll often have to make big transitions just to stay relevant, and these adjustments can completely transform how you operate. You might have to compete with emerging industries, use new technologies, and create new methods to serve your customers. If any of these things have caused drastic shifts in how you run your business, it might be time to reconsider your current image and look at things from another perspective.

3. Your business has changed over time

Perhaps your small coffee shop is growing into a popular bistro, and it’s been a while since you last even thought about making any major changes to your branding. The subtle day-to-day changes in your business can build up over time, and your company may end up being very different than when you started it. If you get the feeling that things are changing in ways you never imagined, it could help to re-focus and find new ways to communicate your growing business models more effectively.

4. You feel lost in the shuffle of other similar businesses

Are you speaking to your audience uniquely and loudly? Find some competitors that stand out and see what strategies they use to attract new admirers and keep a strong following. Think about what makes your business special and what you offer that will give you the edge when compared to the others. If all of your competition looks the same, you may be in a unique position to set a new standard in your market. If you see the opportunity to set yourself apart from the crowd, jump on it!

Do one or more of these things apply to you? You might want consider rebranding to take your business to new heights. It can be a difficult decision to make and you might not want to lose any of the equity you have in your current designs. But you don’t always need to flip the script. In fact, a subtler approach is sometimes the way to go.

If your branding needs work, or if you would just like consultation please send me an email at hello@www.samwasserman.com. I’d love to help!

The post 4 Signs You’re Ready To Rebrand appeared first on Sam Wasserman | Branding & Design | Nashville, Tennessee.

The League of Moveable Type
Free, Open-Source, Commercial Use

Design with freedom! All fonts from The League of Moveable Type are distributed under the Open Font License (OFL). That means you can use any of them for both personal and commercial work. You can even expand, rework, and remix all of the typefaces just as long as you license the resulting work under the same terms.

Font Fabric
Free, Commercial Use

Font Fabric is an independent foundry based in Sofia, Bulgaria. They have a great selection of high quality fonts intended for a wide range of use, with new ones posted just about every week. Download the free versions, or buy a whole font family. Either way, you can’t go wrong.

Google Fonts
Free, Open-Source, Commercial Use

Google provides a wealth of free open-source fonts ready for both web and print use. There’s no need to sign up and it’s ridiculously easy to use. This is probably one of the most useful, and even necessary resources you can have in your toolkit.

Font Squirrel
Free, Commercial Use

Don’t want to spend the time scraping the web for the best free fonts for commercial use? Font Squirrel has it covered. All fonts here are hand-picked and high quality. They even have a handy webfont generator for those times when you have that great font that needs to be displayed with live text like it deserves.

Open Font Library
Free, Open-Source, Commercial Use

Open Font Library provides over 500 fonts with licenses that allow a full range of uses and many other freedoms. There are tons of ways to contribute to the library, from helping to improve existing fonts to submitting your own. It’s also a great resource for designers to learn the ins and outs of type design.

Lost Type Co-Op
Free for Personal Use, Donate for Commercial Use

Lost Type Co-op is a collaborative type foundry started in 2011. The community hosts dozens of great fonts created by artists and designers from all over. All fonts here are available on a pay what you want basis. When you donate or purchase a font for commercial use, 100% of the funds go directly to the original creator, providing a great service to the design community.

The post The Best Resources For Free & Open Source Fonts appeared first on Sam Wasserman | Branding & Design | Nashville, Tennessee.