Yellow Car Design: The Blog » design

Little Owls T-shirt

ycd — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:14:50 +0000

If you’re following us on Facebook you’ll remember that a few weeks ago we mentioned that we had ordered a t-shirt from Wordans, a canadian website where you can order custom-designed apparel ranging from t-shirts to aprons, passing by g-strings and tote bags… Well the t-shirt we ordered came and we’re quite happy with the result so we thought we’d post it on the blog!

We had been interested in getting our designs printed on stuff for a long time, and when Marc designed the above little owls for a project I knew right away that they’d look good on a shirt. I chose a plain but good quality beige American Apparel top that I thought would complement the illustration (and the rest of my wardrobe!). The ordering process is quite simple: You choose the apparel you want to print on including the size and the colour, then you simply upload a jpeg of the image you want to use and place it where you want it to be on the product, either at the front or at the back. It gives your a preview (that was ours), you can re-edit it if you’re not 100% satisfied or go ahead with it if you like it, then it takes you to the payment and shipping page. Nice and easy! Also worth mentioning is that if you type “Wordans Coupon” into Google you might get lucky like me and get a discount code for 15% off on your purchase which makes the experience even better.

So go ahead and get your craziest ideas printed on stuff that you can wear. Or if you don’t know how to design it, you can always ask us to design it for you; we’re pros

Vick @ Yellow Car Design

Zeste/Évasion : One of our latest projects – L’un de nos projets récents

ycd — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:45:20 +0000

These are pictures from one of our latest projects for Groupe Serdy, the Quebec production company who owns the TV channels Évasion (showing travel & escape-related shows) and Zeste (Quebec’s very own food network). Our work consisted in designing a kit for each channel to unveil their autumn 2011 programming and showcase their new TV shows. Those were to be distributed to journalists last week at Évasion & Zeste’s launching party (taking place at nothing less than Gordon Ramsay’s new Montreal restaurant – thankfully before the sprinkler incident that forced the restaurant to be evacuated on the same evening!).

Back to the project, we had less than 2 weeks to come up with a concept and design the folders, 8-pages booklets, DVDs and DVD menus. The designs had to be done in a style that would link the 2 channels together as part of the Groupe Serdy company, while being unique to each one’s own branding and colours. After many long hours of work and print-related stress, we were very excited to open the FedEx envelope containing our very own copies of the kits and very proud to see the result!

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Voici les photos de l’un de nos derniers projets pour le Groupe Serdy, l’entreprise québécoise et maison de production regroupant les chaînes de télévision spécialisées Évasion et Zeste. Notre travail consistait à créer un cahier de presse pour présenter les nouvelles émissions et la programmation automnale de chaque chaîne. Les cahiers de presse allaient par la suite être distribués aux journalistes la semaine dernière lors d’un lancement officiel (ayant lieu au nouveau restaurant montréalais du populaire chef britannique Gordon Ramsay - fort heureusement avant l’incident des gicleurs qui a forcé le restaurant à être évacué le soir même!).

Pour en revenir au projet, nous avions moins de deux semaines pour trouver un concept et pour réaliser les pochettes, les livrets de huit pages, les étiquettes et les menus de DVD. Les cahiers devaient être semblables pour souligner le fait que les deux chaînes appartiennent au même groupe, tout en étant cependant propre aux couleurs et au style de chacune. Après de longues heures de travail et de stress relié à l’impression, nous avions très hâte d’ouvrir l’enveloppe FedEx pour voir les copies finales des cahiers donc nous sommes, finalement, très très fiers!

Year of the Rabbit – or of the Hare?! – Stamp by Canada Post

ycd — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:54:28 +0000

Year of the Rabbit

Last week I received a letter in the post with a stamp that caught my attention. You can’t really tell by the scan I took of it, but it’s really nice and bright and there’s a gold outline around the drawings. In other words, it is MUCH more attractive than your usual head-of-the-Queen stamp!

According to Canada Post , this international stamp was inspired by traditional Chinese embroidery. The two rabbits chasing each other in an endless circle are based on a traditional Chinese robe medallion. The gold foil mimics the metallic gold thread in the embroidered design and signifies that this is the Year of the Metal Rabbit, which occurs every 60 years.

While scanning it, I noticed that the translation didn’t really make sense; “rabbit” in French should be “lapin”, but on the stamp it was translated as “lièvre”, which means “hare” in English. Even without being a zoologist, it is well-known (I hope!) that hares and rabbits are quite different…They live in different habitats: rabbits usually live in burrows or tunnels in the ground and prefer to stay hidden during daylight hours. Hares on the other hand, always stay on the surface among plants and usually try to escape enemies by running. Baby-rabbits are called kittens, while baby-hares are called leverets. Rabbits are born completely helpless, naked and blind; hares are born fully furred, able to see and capable of independent movement. Their diets are different. And the list of difference goes on… so I thought had to investigate the matter further because I found it quite unbelievable that a company such as Post Canada would mess up the translation on a Special Edition stamp such as this one.

So, here is what I found on a forum dedicated to the French-speaking Chinese community:

According to one of the versions of the mythology behind the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs, it all started when the Emperor YU Huang organized a celebration for his birthday and decided that all animals should attend. He asked that 12 animals be chosen, according to the order of their arrival to the “party”, to become guardians of the road to heaven.

According to that story, Emperor YU Huang also asked that all animals chosen needed to be wild and “natural”, which suits more the description of a hare than the one of a rabbit. Therefore, we should call the zodiac sign “hare” and this year should be the Year of the Hare…

However: “Tù 兔” is a general term in the Chinese language that includes rabbits, hares and all other species belonging to that group. So we can assume that, somewhere in the Chinese-to-English translation, the whole wildness thing was forgotten and we chose to translate “Tù 兔” as rabbit. Maybe because “rabbit” is sexier than “hare”? Who knows…

When searching on Google on French Chinese Zodiac websites, I found both “Année du lapin” and “Année du lièvre” being commonly used. On English websites, “Year of the Hare” didn’t bring much results other than a novel of that name from Finnish author Arto Paasilinna… I think we can therefore say that it looks like it’s a preference thing either you want to call it Hare or Rabbit. I wonder if HM&E Design, the Toronto design firm commissioned to create that stamp, chose the combination Rabbit – Lièvre because both words have 6 letters and allows the design to be balanced?

Anyways, Happy Year of the Rabbit/Hare/Bunny/Lapin/Lièvre/Etc to everyone!

Packaging Design for Mighty Lions & Wolves

ycd — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:33:34 +0000

My Mighty Lion - Cat treats

Marc, Desmond-the-puppy and I were doing our weekly shopping at PetSmart last weekend when Marc spotted that very nice bag of cat treats. Before even reading the ingredients to make sure that our cats Steve and Bobo would like them, we knew we had to buy a pack in order to feature it on our blog as an example of great packaging design. Indeed, how nice is the illustration on it and in fact, how nice is its whole design! We love the logo which totally represents how spoiled pets are by their owners, and we think that the little clear window allowing to see the actual bites is a very good idea. Also, the colours, bold and matte, appeals to us, more let’s say than the glossy purple/pink/yellow used on other cat treats packaging. Many people probably couldn’t care less about the look of their pet’s treats packages, but in our case, let’s call it professional bias; we simply can’t help making design a priority!

That being said, we of course make sure that the ingredients are suitable for our lions before feeding them the treats – it’s not completely all about design… In this case, it’s all natural, grain free and full of chicken and salmon proteins. Steve and Bobo are bound to find them the most delightful snack! Also, good news for Desmond and other dogs out there: there’s a canine version – My Mighty Wolf – with an equally exquisite packaging:

My Mighty Wolf - Dog treats

For more info and to find a retailer, check out the company’s website.

by Vicky @ Yellow Car Design

2010 Business Cards

ycd — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:42:58 +0000

Throughout the year we pick up business cards wherever we go and keep them for whenever we need inspiration (or as examples of what NOT to do, in certain cases). My idea was to sort the cards that we founds during the past year into various categories (best, worst, funniest, most colourful, best illustration, etc.). However, that proved to be a difficult task with my little assistant Steve the Big Ginger Cat who thought that business cards were fun to lay in…. After a few attempts, I gave up and just decided to grab the ones that caught my attention for whatever reasons (yes, I could have put Big Steve into another room and close the door but the poor guy really wanted to be involved!). Anyways, I came across a great website yesterday that list the Top 100 Best Business Cards of 2010 – click here to view – so I suggest you visit that link as well in addition to the “6 best business cards of my personal collection”.

BRIT Awards Rebranding by Music

ycd — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:46:56 +0000

Music, a Manchester design studio that I quite like because they gave me the correct answer to win a contest organized by Grafik Magazine (I won the studio’s self-promo book that I’m yet to review on this blog – been too busy – sorry!) just revealed the new branding that they created for the BRIT Awards. They designed both the visual identity and the trophy for the UK’s most anticipated award show. I like it, and particularly love the fact that they’ve used a Boston Terrier like our little Desmond in one of the image!

I think that using the freshly redesigned trophy as the B’s counters was a clever move and even though it could have ended up looking tacky that was somehow avoided by choosing cool (and random?) images as the background and by allowing the white space to completely go through the letter, reminiscent of a stencil letter.

Music explains, in an email sent to their newsletter subscribers, that to highlight what they believe to be the essence of The BRIT Awards – the celebration of creativity, they propose that every year an “acclaimed and notable Briton be invited to take ownership of the trophy in its new pared down form, re-imagining it to convey their own artistic vision.” Nice… See Vivienne Westwood’s version down below. I wouldn’t mind one of those on my mantelpiece… if only I could sing!

The trophy

Vivienne Westwood's customization of the 2011 trophy

Freshly Printed Business Cards!

ycd — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:36:37 +0000

YCD's Business Card

After designing several business cards for various clients, we finally got some printed for Yellow Car Design! It took a long time but we’re quite happy with the result and can’t wait to start distributing them. We settled on a simple and minimalistic look featuring our logo and contact details. That design goes along well with our soon-to-be-launched new website, YDC 3.0, which is in construction now (should be launched later this fall). For a long, long time we were using Helvetica on all our materials; we’ve sort of grown out of it a bit now and replaced it with another classic font, Garamond. Since most things are better when “homemade”, we printed our cards ourselves on a pre-cut greyish stock that had been laying at the bottom of a paper drawer for ages. For hand-crafted cards, they do look quite professional don’t you think? All we need now is people to give them to!

Hey, are you a book or a DVD?

ycd — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:26:07 +0000

Eat Pray Love

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fight Club

The Beach

Trainspotting

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Recently I was in a bookstore where they had a display of the latest edition of the novel Eat Pray Love. The cover featured Julia Roberts sitting on a bench next to a nun, eating something with a sheepish look on her face and it really annoyed me. I wasn’t annoyed because of her – I don’t mind her, and same thing goes for Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ewan McGregor & company– but because of the whole “oh-now-that-we-made-a-movie-with-that-book-let’s-pretend-that-they’re-the-same-thing” thing. We all know this is rubbish, and that in most case movies based on books end up being very different (sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way).

So why did the publishing company felt like they had to put Julia Roberts on the cover of the book? Don’t we see her enough on the movie posters? See, if I want to own something with her face on it, I’ll buy the DVD. Because she is an actress, not a novel character. I might have been interested in reading the book –though the story sounds a bit too soppy– with its original typography-based cover because it had a concept behind it (“eat” written in pasta, “pray” in beads, etc) and wasn’t like “hey reader, we think you don’t have enough imagination to picture the main character in your head, so here’s a picture of the actress who plays the role in the film so that you have something to relay on”… How annoying!

Marc and I both recently read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo* (with the nice colorful jacket) and we also rented the movie to compare scenarios. Even though I enjoyed both I am very happy to have read the book without knowing what the main character looked like in the film and actually, in my head, she was pretty similar to the actress who portrayed her in the film. So now I can say “wow, well done my imagination, you worked well without being dictated how to picture the character by a book cover”. Do you know what I mean?

Anyways, it made me think about the whole “issue” and I’ve checked our bookcase and realized that a lot of the novels we own have been made into films. And that, strangely enough, only one of them, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has the cover featuring Johnny Depp that was made after the film… And we almost certainly bought this version of the book because the original one wasn’t available at the bookstore! In the examples above, I think that the original non-movie tie-in version are all better… What do you think? Any example where the movie-inspired cover beats the original one?
Vick @ Yellow Car Design

*We strongly recommend it and can’t wait to read the sequel. The author was a graphic designer and there are lots of graphic design references… That was an added bonus for us

The Y Series – wine bottle label

ycd — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:28:40 +0000

Yalumba - The Y Series (+ Steve The Cat's nose)

Just as we often buy books for their covers, we usually choose our wines according to their bottles. We chose this 2009 Y Series Viognier because we liked the texture, embossing and overall look of its label. The illustration shows vine shoots found in a vineyard and the font is a nice and classy semi-serif similar to Century Schoolbook . Only once the bottle was empty and on its way to the recycle bin did we noticed this nice little feature: a handy tag that can be torn off and put in your wallet to remember the wine’s name next time you’re at the SAQ/LCBO/wherever you buy your wine! It’s a great example of function + design… We’ll be keeping an eye out to see if it’s used by other wineries to compare how they’ve designed the little tag to keep it in line with the rest of the label as it’s the first time that we, personally, have seen it. If you’ve seen it done before, please leave a comment below to let us know what wine it was and we’ll try get a bottle to check its design – even if it means having to drink it after!

Viognier 2009

GO à vélo!

ycd — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:08:44 +0000

GO à Vélo - Logo, Jersey & Cuissard

Il y a quelques mois, GO à vélo!, une équipe inscrite au Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie, nous a contacté pour savoir si nous accepterions de créer un logo pour leur équipe de vélo. Nous avons créé le logo, et puisque le grand départ de cette randonnée de 1000 km à travers le Québec est prévu pour demain, le 18 juin 2010, nous avons pensé faire un blogue pour promouvoir la cause!

Le Grand Défi à pour but d’amasser des fonds pour la recherche médicale sur les maladies orphelines tout en faisant la promotion de saines habitudes de vie chez les jeunes et dans tous les foyers québécois. Pour plus d’informations, veuillez visiter le site du Défi au http://www.legdpl.com/fr/ et pour voir la page de “notre” équipe (à laquelle on dit un gros bravo pour les 10 540$ déjà amassés!) cliquez ici. On souhaite une excellente randonnée aux membres de l’équipe et à tous les participants au Défi! Bonne chance

PS: Le logo de Yellow Car Design est joliment disposé sur le jersey de l’équipe, l’aviez-vous remarqué? C’est une première pour nous, et nous en sommes très fiers!

GO à Vélo! - L'équipe

GO à vélo – Logo by YCD

A few months ago, GO à vélo!, a team enrolled for the “Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie” (Big Challenge Pierre Lavoie), a 1000 km bike ride across the province of Quebec asked us if we’d be interested in creating a logo for their bike team. We created the logo, and since the departure is this week, on Friday, June 18 2010, we thought we’d create a blog post to promote the cause and the team.

Le Grand Défi’s goal is to raise money for medical research on orphan illnesses (illnesses that impact very few patients and therefore does not attract attention in the way of research for treatments) while at the same time promoting an healthy lifestyle to Quebec’s youth and general public. For more information, please visit http://www.legdpl.com/fr/ (French only) and to see “our” team’s page (that we want to congratulate for the $ 10 540 already raised!) click here. We wish an excellent ride to the team and to all the Challenge’s participants! Best of luck

PS: Yellow Car Design‘s logo is proudly printed on the team’s jersey, had you noticed it? It’s a first for us, and we’re really happy about it!