Did this a few months ago. I really like the design and concept, it’s a great theme that I’ve been mastering recently; minimal clean grunge… was a joy to design this one

Designed this for a new proposal this week. Going for minimalism, icons and clean typography with some subtle texturing. I didn’t design the logo, had to kinda stick with that unless they go for any re-branding; i think that would top it off nicely!

The Golden Ratio – has always captured my imagination and has been a big part of my own development with design, both on the web and graphically. Whilst creating and crafting my skills I’ve always been more of an image manipulator and will use that as a basis to focus on the creative and graphical elements afterwards. The Golden Ratio and Grid Systems on the whole have helped pull in consistency in my work.

The symbol itself is actually ‘Pi’ but the formula isn’t exactly the same! The Golden Ratio is 1.6180339887498948482… where Pi is 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288… It’s been pondered over throughout history and not just by designers and mathematicians; biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have been fascinated by it’s allure, which has led to.. well let’s say some Divine Inspiration for many of the forward thinkers of our time.

Leonardo da Vinci’s illustrations of polyhedra (geometric solid in three dimensions) in ‘De Divina Proportione’ thought that some bodily proportions, especially the head an face, exhibit The Golden Ratio, which he more than likely passed over to his artwork. Such as the old Mona Lisa. See examples below:

When applying this rule to the web and design I personally use my own grid PSD template based on the formula. My 960px grid is split with 20px gutters and then into The Golden Ratio of 593px by 367px. Along with that I use a 60px by 20px split and then a 40px by 20px split with some added extras for quick layouts like third rules and odd and even columns for typography, elements and features. Here’s a quick look:

A great example of pushing the boundaries was Salvidor Dali. The Sacrament of the Last Supper by Salvador Dali (1904-1989) is painted inside a golden rectangle. Golden proportions were used, when positioning the figures. Part of an enormous dodecahedron floats above the table. The polyhedron consists of 12 regular pentagons and has fundamental golden section connections (from www.atrise.com). He took the ratio to a new level and that was years ago! Love his work though… amazing!

Well I can’t write this all in one post… it goes on and on into a whole new level, but I thought it would be good to start and get it digitised! more to come…

So here’s something a little different.

I’ve installed Logic Studio 9 this weekend and yowser it’s a big UPGRADE from 8 Express I’ll say! Needless to say I’ve been playin around with the VMK and getting sucked into a new world. I’ve uploaded it below so have a listen.. kinda ambient electronica esq

Jump to the MP3 Here! It will download onto your machine… Thankfully in the process of setting up proper hosting on my own site (finally)

Beta preview can be seen here: www.rikhopkinson.com

Will update soon – just seeing if this works!

Circle from Rik Hopkinson on Vimeo

I don’t blow my own trumpet that often; but i really think this latest corporate design I’ve been workin on over past few days is pretty goddam flawless. From a design, SEO, CSS, semantic, tasty imagery, subtle, aesthetic, griddy and rather pleasing point of view – I love it! (Not too mention the sub-conscious image pointing CTA) mmmmm

I’m sure this is the year for these guys – and not just for the website Nice little minimal experiment…