nStation

I use Microsoft Paint occasionally. Its features are limited and functionality is basic. But for regular people, Paint seems to be the tool of choice for a random doodle or running an office captioning contest. Readily availability can’t be the only reason. Hear goes my two cents on the matter. More »

Paint.NET (paint-dot-net, or PDN) is probably the best freeware out there for quick and easy pixel manipulation for Windows. Although it doesn’t boast Photoshop or GIMP like features, simplicity and super-fast startup time makes it a modest substitute for a fully blown graphics application. The PDN plug-in repository makes it even more interesting with a whole array of great plug-ins. This post is about 7 interesting plug-ins I stumbled upon while exploring the plug-in repository (Forum) that may be potentially useful web designers and UX designers alike. More »

Conceptual logo design for Fresh Networks, a social media software company.

An invitation card design based on the traditional Sri Lankan Sesatha; made entirely on Illustrator and later rasterized for production. This was done for my friend Hasitha on his wedding and homecoming; two invitation cards based on the same design since the norm amongst Sri Lankans to have two cards for the different events with similar designs. Hasitha followed a very traditional theme for his wedding; he had the Sesatha card design in his mind from the very beginning. It also integrated well with the other elements.

The wedding invitation card and the homecoming invitation card together.

The wedding invitation card flip opened. Inner sides of the card written in Sinhala script.

It took me about three months to complete the design. This is entirely done in Illustrator and has no raster elements to bleed. The base for the card was done in wood and painted to glue to the two sides of the card. The card flip opened to show the invitation text inside the fold.

Inspiration

I looked at many Sesatha designs before attempting to do one on my own. Most real designs were not eye-catching and the elements that made the Sesatha looked oddly put together. Then the design on the 2000 rupee note caught my attention and this was heavily inspired by that.

A poster done for a cultural event organized by the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka, Colombo. The requirements were to create a poster that reflects the artist, R&B and the atmosphere. A standard sized (17×22’) poster was done for the two venues; Colombo and Male. The poster shown here is the one that was done for Male.

Please note that this work is copyrighted.

Conceptual logo designed for Energy Futures Network.

Note: this post is no longer relevant as the theme has changed since.

nStation has a new theme from today onwards (July 16, 2008). This theme is a fresh design I came up with a couple of days back. It took me about a week to complete the design and another week to develop it to a WordPress Theme.

This theme is more modern looking than the previous two. There is adequate white space surrounding objects and consistency has been preserved across pages. I have also made every attempt to make it look good on all browsers. Different sections of the theme (header, main menu, content area, etc.) have different appeals to it so that they do not conflict with each other in appearance. More »

Conceptual logo design for Gräning, Püschel & Kollegen law firm.

Google showcased their Android prototype and its UI to the public at the IO conference. I noticed an interesting design pattern on Android UI icons: they are left hand oriented. Usually in a right hand dominated society icons are designed in the same orientation. An exception to this is the Apple Mac OS where most icons are neutral oriented. Left hand oriented icons are rare; especially when they are done by professional. So this is something new to the design community from Google. More »

A poster done for a cultural event organized by the U.S. Embassy Sri Lanka, Colombo. Two posters (17×22′ and 36×24′) were designed for different needs. The portrait version was designed mainly for noticeboards and other places and the landscape version was designed for places where more room is available. The poster shown here is the portrait version.

Please note that this work is copyrighted.