However… for the good of design everywhere, from time to time, it must be done!

The culprit this time around is piracy.
Piracy! You shit!

For all the good in the world piracy has done us; free music, movies, porn etc. it’s also hurting us.
I’ll explain this as simply as I can so the culprits can understand too. Piracy means that our beloved Adobe products and other software of the trade are in the hands of every would be designer and their retarded cousin that no one talks about.

‘This can’t be too bad surely?‘ you ask with the strain of speech inherent to your kind.

YES IT CAN!

I present to you now the criminal!
Porketel Inc.

As I’ve said, I hate to make an example. But this crime could not go unpunished!

They are not alone in their act of villainy, the web is littered with this eye-puke! The real problem here is that some poor sap is going to actually cough up money for these fellows and forever lose faith in the value of good design. They are churning all our hard work and talent to dust in one shot!

Here’s the stuff they’re using to promote thier business…

For those not in the Afrikaans know.. Olinosterfant is a fusion of the Afrikaans words for elephant and rhinoceros. Right? Got it?

The Crime:
I’ll forgive the bevel on the elephanoceros and the fact that it’s an elephaneros, but for this there is no excuse:

Congratulations Potketel Inc. You’re this weeks lucky winner!

Your prize?! An elephant penis in your company portfolio! Woot!

You will need:

• Stone

• Chisel

• Big hairy man arms

Lets begin.

Create a new document in Photoshop. size 450px X 650px

Create a new layer and call it base. It on this layer that we will create the stone tablet.

Now using the rounded rectangle tool [U] and these settings

Draw your tablet’s basic outline.

Now we’re going to make the shape a selection.

With the selection done, set your foreground colour to black and your background colour to white.
You can do this quickly by pressing ‘D’

Now go filter -> render -> clouds

And now we’re going to turn the clouds into a pretty decent rough rock texture.
filter -> styalize -> emboss
using these settings.

Right click on the base layer and click ‘blending options’

We’re first going to give our tablet a little depth with a basic bevel and emboss.
Use these settings.

And to give it a little more realism we’ll add this gradient to mimic simple lighting.
Use these settings.

You should now have a pretty decent looking empty stone tablet.

All it needs now is some chiseling!
You can use any font you’d like really, I found this one at dafont.com
Dalek

Place your chosen text as you like and rasterize the text layer.
You can do this by right clicking on the text layer and then clicking rasterize layer.

Your layers should look something like this by now.

Now we’re going to apply another bevel and emboss layer style to our text.
It’s important the make the shading angle on the text the opposite of that on the tablet.
This will make the text look chiseled out instead of embossed on.
Use these settings

Tada! We’re done.

Start spreading your decress across the land with confidence!

Of all the design blogs in all the world you’ve somehow landed up here… What did you do wrong?! did you use Paula Scher’s name in vain?!

In order to officially announce my arrival, I shall chisel my ideals in digital stone!
*Incidentally I’ll soon post a tutorial on chiseling your ideals in stone.

I’ll do my best to uphold these ideals, an army ninja pirate zombies couldn’t stop me.
*A hefty cheque however can

COMING SOON…

• A tutorial on chiseling your name in stone SCHWING!

• Unexpected inspiration…

• and, why most designers suck.

That’s all sucka’s!

Thanks to piracy, our beloved careers are low capital;
computer? CHECK. Pirated Design Software? CHECK. Talent? NONE.
A horde of terrible designers have descended upon the unsuspecting public armed with comic sans and a cruel sense of style.

Some however are kind enough to not singe our retinas entirely and use existing design as their own.

Here, my friends, is the Barney’s Paint logo… something about it seems familiar… hmmmm

Barney’s Paint is a rather large paint franchise in South Africa.
Feel free to hassle them and complain relentlessly!
Barney’s paint

I feel obligated to mention as a side-note that their website is dripping with comic sans.. BLEH!
Until next time,
Stay sharp! Bad design is everywhere!