out of the blue design blues
November 11th, 2011

A Big Cat by Any Other Name

Out of the Blue Design created an innovative “Big Cat” corporate identity campaign for our client: HyperRoll. It was launched on May 24, 2004. The Snow Leopard officially became the face of the new Apple OS X on June 8th, 2009.   The visual similarities between the two campaigns, including color, placement, navigation, and over all look and feel, indicate this is more of a compliment than a meme.

Apple Snow Leopard

Big cats are compelling; they convey strength and agility. Their colors also work really well with blue.

HyperRoll Snow Leopard

May 25th, 2010

ART of Precision: An Integrated Media Magazine

Art of Precision - Spring Issue
ART of Precision is a quarterly integrated media magazine that captures the beauty and elegance of precision manufacturing.  Our inaugural  Spring Issue features micro springs and wire coils. We chose these minute work-horses because they are both delicate and strong. They create tension and maintain balance.

Print Publication

No integrated media project would be complete without a home. OBD designed a simple and easy to navigate website. We then created an on-demand print magazine. This green solution is a cost-effective way to market products to a broad audience.  We looked at a numerous web-based magazine offerings but  MagCloud had us at hello. We are very happy with the service –especially with the print/paper quality of the actual magazine.

Laptop-iPad

As you can see, social media is only part of the integrated media story. The other part is the device the information is served on. ART of Precision works everywhere. All the time. Here we show it on a laptop and an iPad. Continue …

May 13th, 2010

We Love Choice

Adobe - Freedom of Choice

February 28th, 2010

Essence of Good Design

Braun Multipress MP31

Braun Citrus Press User Manual ~1960

The great functionalist designer Dieter Rams gave us ten provocative definitions for good design.

  • Good design is innovative.
  • Good design makes a product useful.
  • Good design is aesthetic.
  • Good design makes a product understandable.
  • Good design is unobtrusive.
  • Good design is honest.
  • Good design is long-lasting.
  • Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
  • Good design is environmentally friendly.
  • Good design is as little design as possible.

Continue …

January 15th, 2010

Excellent Tool for Designers and Web Developers

Graphic artists, interface designers, web developers, and user experience designers should check out Pixus.  This is a great tool that makes it easier to measure anything on your screen. If you are not into counting pixels, then you will love the preview mode and the ability to lock in the aspect ratio. It is an easy to use Adobe Air application for anyone who needs to crop or re-size anything from photos to ui elements.

Design Tool for Web Designer and Developers

January 4th, 2010

Happy New Year!

Every year, we express gratitude to our friends and colleagues and point out exciting events from the previous year. 2009 was an extraordinary year. Our clients kept us on our toes—inspiring us and helping us see old things in new ways.  We continue to focus on medical device clients and were fortunate to work with amazing teams developing some really outstanding products for asthma, cardiovascular, diabetes, HIV, and ophthalmic diseases.

Because of our strong social agenda, our favorite product in 2009 is an HIV test that makes testing as simple and portable as a pregnancy test. It was developed by a brilliant German team at ZYOMYX. We believe this will have a tremendous impact on the developing world; saving lives and reducing human suffering. The underlying technology will have many applications and we expect this team to win the medical device Olympics. Continue …

January 4th, 2010

Electronic Publishing

2010 marks the year of ever-so-green e-publishing. Health care marketing will now include everything from e-books to magazines and brochures. This will result in cost-effective and highly-targeted marketing materials delivered directly to customers through websites, blogs, phones and e-readers. We predict that these new options will shine a bright and positive light on both design and the art of precision photography. To illustrate, we designed a Medical Device on-demand photography book that goes directly to the heart of the matter. Check it out and imagine the possibilities!

Medical-Device-Photography-Book-0 Continue …

January 4th, 2010

Design to Go

The days of cluttering the studio with computers with multiple browser settings are over. Thanks to the Adobe Browser Lab we can now simulate user experience for common browsers and OS systems.  Seeing what users see makes it much easier to design. It will also helps trouble-shoot new sites before bug reports show up. This is a huge step forward for our designers.

November 27th, 2009

Testing for HIV/AIDS Just Got Easier

Zyomyx Point-of-Care CD4 Test was selected by the CD4 Initiative to help diagnose HIV/AIDS in patients in developing countries. This innovative test is as fast and easy as a pregnancy test.

zyomyx-white-blood-cells

Continue …

November 11th, 2009

Website Fonts: Massive Upgrade for the Internet

We finally have an alternative to Arial and Times Roman!  Typekit could easily change the way we design websites because it provides designers with the ability to use “real fonts” to keep your corporate identity consistent across all media.

Typekit

Continue …