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Using hearts is a simple and popular way to make a logo. ‘Love’ is so positive and pretty that it makes all clients giggle with glee when they see a beautiful heart in their logo. Well, one problem, as stated by johnson banks (a must read article), is that a designer who uses a generic shape like a heart, has the potential of creating a similar design and if you’re a true logo designer, may complicate your trademark search.

“What? You mean I actually have to check to see if someone out there has a design trademark? Bummer. Well, I guess I’ll take my skillzzzz to those fancy logo contest sites where I’ll sell my soul to every cheap company out there.”

You go do that. You’ll become rich and famous. We promise.

For all those designers really dying to get some heart logo inspiration, do a simple search on Logo Pond and you’ll find plenty of heart designs that will make you throw up your hands in disgust and curse the stock art gods. If you hate searching or typing, a few sites have done all the work for you and have selected some random designs for you to fall in love with and copy for your next contest.

16 heart warming logos

50 Beautiful and Creative Logos with Heart

If you’re one of the logo design wannabes, like anything, go learn how to do it the right way, especially if you decide to use generic shapes like the heart. David Airey and Jacob Cass are two great logo designers who you’ll worship after spending 3 minutes on their site. They provide great examples and information about becoming a great logo designer. They also feature some of their own creative thinking behind their logos.

Logo Design Love, another blog by David, is one of the best sites devoted to logos. Also check out his great book (not an affiliate link) about creating visual identities. It has a cool heart on it.

20 Cool T-Shirt Websites For Inspirations and Goods

The Designed — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:34:17 +0000

This is just another ‘cool t-shirt’ post. For what it’s worth, here are 20 cool t-shirt websites where you’ll find inspirations, goods, and even a chance to make some money with your mad design skills. You probably have heard of some of these, hopefully we’ve introduced you to a few new ones to brainlessly look at really neat and funny t-shirts.

ATshirtBlog

OMG Tees!

uneetee

Scribtee

TypoTees

Shirt Fight

iloveyourshirt

Rumplo

Teecycle

T-shirt Guru

Tee Junction

Color Overload

Pop Culture Tees

Taddict

Threadless

Design by Humans

teextile

shirt.woot

10tees

TypographyShop

No related posts.

Link Collection January 2010

The Designed — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:56:16 +0000

Here are some of the best design and inspiration links around the web for the month of January 2010.

15 Blogs for WordPress Designers and Developers to Follow – DesignM.ag

How to Design an Apple iPad in Photoshop – Circlebox

10 Great Tips For Using Twitter as a Designer – Six Revisions

15 Invoicing Tips for Designers and Freelancers – Vandelay Design

Bike Lances in the Sky Concept – Toxel

8 Re-Stained Paper Textures – Lost and Taken

Photoshop before there were computers – Conscientious

30 Creative and Inspiring Blog Designs – WDL

28 Fascinating Metro Station Pictures – Photography Blogger

Amazing 3D Typography by Jeff Osborne – Abuzeedo

30 excellent examples of vCard websites – FrancescoMugnai

50 Awesome Resources for Design Inspiration – socialh

50+ Top Design Blogs Highest Ranked Posts in 2009 – thedesigncubicle

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling – The Oatmeal

Websites That Will Increase your Design Blogs Traffic Substantially – thedesigncubicle

40+ Excelling GIMP Tutorials for Designers – Naldz Graphics

Top 10 Fonts of 2009 – MyFonts

Fantastic Presentation Styles of Web Designers’ Portfolios – Inspect Element

50 Really Fantastic Desktop Wallpapers for Web Designers – dzineblog

29 Free Photoshop Nature Brushes – blubots.com

70+ Promising Resources and Tutorials – Smashing Apps

49 Innovative Calendars – HONGKIAT.COM

When Clients Take Too Much Design Control – Build Internet

WDL’s Most Popular Articles of 2009 – Web Design Ledger

10 Easy ways to fix common WordPress headaches – Styl.eti.me

Learn About Design, Not Making Things Pretty – Astheria

Creating a Realistic Torn Photo Effect – Specky Boy

Amazing Alphabet Illustrations by Paul Thurlby – Abduzeedo

15 Awesome Free Javascript Charts/Javascripts – SPLASHnology

Landing That Dream Job: A Web Design Graduate’s Checklist – A Web Design Blog

Behind the scenes: writing a design book – David Airey

A Showcase Free High Quality Grunge Textures - bluebots.com

Design Blogs You Should Be Following On Twitter – Designussion

10 Web Browsers You Probably Haven’t Heard Of- Six Revisions

30 Inspiring 3d Flash Websites – WebDesignDev

12 Killer Tips for Designing in the Browser – Design Shack

Charming Character Design by Berk Cankat – pixelelement.com

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell – The Oatmeal

10 great, but not so well known typography blogs – RE-WINDER

30 Hilarious Print Advertisements – Spyre Studios

Gorgeous Typography Examples in Advertising Design – Noupe

Why You Should Invest In A Minimalist Office – Sprye Studios

Hell of Tutorial in Photoshop – Abduzeedo

Out-of-Work Architects Turn To Other Skills – NYTimes

25 of the Best Photography Portfolio Sites – Vandelay Design

48 Unusually Brilliant Business Card Designs – Neil Patel

How to Make a Confident First Impression with Clients – Design Shack

What If Computer Graphics Ran Under Crayola’s Law? – Gizmodo

60 Extremely Creative Movie Posters – 1stwebdesigner

Top 100 Fonts of All Time – 100 Besten Schriften

ffffl*ckr – Browse Favorite Photos

The Designed — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:32:22 +0000

There is a new web tool called ffffl*ckr whose purpose is to help you sort through all the photographs on Flickr to find the ones that you really enjoy. The idea behind it is that the photography of the people you like, probably like stuff that you’ll like also. If you authenticate your Flickr account, the application lists 20 of your recent 100 favorites from which you can select any of those to show the recent favorites of that photographer. It’s all displayed on one page for easy browsing with options to enlarge the displayed picture and visit it’s source. This truly creates a unique browsing experience for every user, every time they visit the site.

Go use it, it’s awesome.

6 Torn Photoshop Tutorials

The Designed — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:44:03 +0000

Can you believe that people actually buy jeans with tears in it? In fact, the more tears it has, the more expensive it seems to get. Mmm…maybe if you created more torn effects you’ll get paid more. Here are 10 torn Photoshop tutorials.

Specky Boy

PS Hero

Blog.SpoonGraphics

Photoshop Essentials

My Janee

Photoshop Lab

You may also like these brushes to help you create the effect you’re loooking for.

Colorburned

If you liked this post, then take a look at this one…

7 Decent Design Resources

The Designed — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:52:47 +0000

Happy New Year! Let’s start it off with some tuts, brushes, vectors, and phone wallpapers. Here is a network of sites that offer just those. Some are updated a lot. Some are not, but have a decent archive. Some are for fun. Some are for work. Guarantee you’ll like at least one of them.

iDesign iPhone

iDesign Vectors

iDesign Tuts

iDesign Brushes

iDesign Pre

PS Brushes.net

Trendy Robot

If you liked this post, then check this one out…

5 Deep Thoughts For Web Geeks Next Year

The Designed — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:17:13 +0000

Raise your hand if you’re tired of people asking you what your New Year’s resolutions are? Well, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and suggest 5 more ~~original~~ ideas that will change your life forever, or at least give you something to think about until next year. Feel free to also leave your own deep thoughts for 2010 in the comment section below, because everyone cares.

1. Follow less and interact more…

Seriously, does one really need to follow thousands of people on Twitter? Yes it’s more difficult to spam follow now and one can argue that there are some benefits to following so many people like…um…you now look cool because half of them followed you back as a courtesy and now you can strut your Twitter package around like you’re the next Henry Jones. But seriously, let’s be realistic and stop trying to be like someone else. If you want a lot of followers, let your work and content speak for itself. Follow those who you want to follow. If it turns out to be thousands, then I will personally worship your Twitterish powers.

Interaction is also important. Humans are needy and there are a few of those who will follow you and long for communication and acknowledgment. Now understandably the more popular you get, the more time it takes to interact with your followers. Not everybody will have Jedi-like skills like David Airey when it comes to communicating with followers, so don’t try to please everybody if it gets out of hand. You may gain success on Twitter or your blog, but lose out on other important things in your life. Whether you are a web god with 25,000 followers or just some designer who made a few icons, throwing out a few @’s or comments shouldn’t take that much time and being able to find that comfortable balance for you shouldn’t be that hard.

2. Expand your knowledge and get better…

Get off your butt and go learn something new. The web world is constantly changing and the only way to make it is to be two steps ahead of what’s next. Whether you’re a specialist or an all-around circus act, there is always something or someone out there that you can learn from. We all fall into the trap of just kind of learning about something because most clients could care less about the knowledge monster that you already are. Maybe the only one who will pat you on the back for your hard work is yourself, but welcome to the world of the unappreciative customer. Who knows, maybe all that geek work could pay off with number 3.

3. Write effectively…

How many small web agencies out there actually blog on a regular basis? Probably not too many. It’s funny to visit a design or development website that advertises a blog link yet their last post was 3 months ago and it was about their dog Fido taking a dump in their backyard and how it inspired them to create an icon that they used for your last project. Who cares. You don’t have to be a Smashing Magazine or a Six Revisions inspiration machine to feel worthy enough to blog. Try to write once a week about something relevant in your company or something useful for somebody to use. Maybe you’ll find your niche and become the next web evangelist changing lives everywhere and you’ll never have to deal with a crappy client again. Maybe just publishing content keeps your site looking fresh and involved to those visiting it. With time you will not only develop a better following, but you also may gain an extra client or two because of it.

“But it’s soooo hard to do.” See number 2.

4. Give…

Release a new WordPress theme. Put together a free workshop in your local area for web dummies. Help out the smaller non-profits in your city. Sponsor a contest or giveaway with something cool and useful, not something like a free man massage – uncool.

You’d be amazed how much you get back for giving so little.

But don’t get too carried away. You do it too much and you’ll negate the price of your work and the respect of your peers. Keep it high quality and low quantity when it comes to giving away your work. In the words of Latrell Sprewell, “I got my family to feed” and so do you and everyone else.

5. Get a new chair…

If you already care about your body and your chair costs more than your computer, then you automatically get entered into our free drawing for a 24hr Fitness membership next year that will be used twice and then you’ll just keep the mini-me card on your keychain so it looks like you really are into working out. Everyone else, go spend some money on a good chair because you’ve spent enough time in that Kmart chair that you only got because your wife said it matched the bedspread. Then again, maybe you should work on moving your ‘office’ out of the bedroom first.

Happy New Year.