2006 Best 50 hacks for your Life

2006 LifeHack Review: Best 50 hacks for your Life - lifehack.org

I’ve selected the best 50 life hacks of the year, based on their popularity and contents in different categories. Invest your time - read them. Bookmark this page and mark reading them as one of your new year resolutions.

Design Tips: Logo Inspiration

creativepro.com - Design Tips: Logo Inspiration

Design legend Malcom Grear reveals how to create memorable logos. The many examples are sure to spark your own creativity.

Top 50 Music Videos Of 2006

DoCopenhagen: Top 50 Music Videos Of 2006

Here we go again... Our top 50 videos of 2005 was a huge success. This year we decided to do things a little bit differently. All the videos are from You Tube and can therefore be watched in the browser. If you want to download the videos to your computer and watch it on your ipod or TV we recommend that you use this download tool from Lifehacker.com

Digital Photography Tips

creativepro.com - Photo Recipes to Help You Get "The Shot"

Even if you're not an expert photographer, you can whip up incredible images. A few simple ingredients make it happen.

Another Color Palette Generator

Another handy web color tool:
Color Blender

Pick a color value format, input two valid CSS color values in the format you chose, and pick the number of midpoints you'd like to see. The palette will show the colors you input as well as the requested number of midpoint colors, and the values of those colors.

Pure Design Inspiration

Speak Up: High Priority Contest

These are the entries received for the November 2006 contest to design New York magazine’s “High Priority” feature for their year-end double issue.

Granularity for students - lifehack.org

Granularity for students - lifehack.org

Granularity is a tremendously useful strategy for students. The typical spiral-bound student-planner doesn’t seem to encourage it; that tool is often little more than a place to store due dates: “research paper due.” But no one can just write a research paper. That paper can only be the result of numerous small-scale tasks. It’s not surprising that students who think of “write research paper” as one monolithic task are likely to put it off far longer than they ought to. Instead of “write research paper,” one could think of these tasks: go to library to look up sources; organize them by call number; read first three sources and take notes; get article from JSTOR; read remaining three sources and take notes; organize notes on computer; check bibliography format; ask professor about endnote form; make rough outline; and so on. Each of these “granular” tasks is far more do-able than “write research paper.” Thinking of work in terms of granularity can be one way to overcome the overwhelming dread of getting started. And keeping track of such tasks on paper and crossing them off one by one gives the satisfaction making progress and getting closer to done.

77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better | OEDb

If someone granted you one wish, what do you imagine you would want out of life that you haven't gotten yet? For many people, it would be self-improvement and knowledge. New knowledge is the backbone of society's progress. Great thinkers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and others' quests for knowledge have led society to many of the marvels we enjoy today. Your quest for knowledge doesn't have to be as Earth-changing as Einstein's, but it can be an important part of your life, leading to a new job, better pay, a new hobby, or simply knowledge for knowledge's sake — whatever is important to you as an end goal.

Color Palette Generator from Adobe Labs

kuler

You need Flash Player 9 for this fabulous site.

Design Life Now Exhibition

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum | National Design Triennial: Design Life Now

The third Triennial brings together the experimental designs and emerging ideas—including animation, new media, and fashion, robotics, architecture, product, medical, and graphic design—at the center of American culture from 2003 to 2006.

Life 2.0: The little book of Flow

Life 2.0: The little book of Flow - revised

The premise of this essay is that those exquisite but all too rare moments when we experience 'flow', when we are truly creative, happy and intuitively know exactly what is needed, are simply those instances when we glimpse our original and true nature. It sets out to show how, instead of trying to fathom the conditions for flow, we can realise this 'true nature' and make 'flow' our normal way of being, wherever we are and in whatever we do.

Design Tips: The Power of Grids

creativepro.com - Design Tips: The Power of Grids

Grids can bring valuable consistency to your print and Web layouts. Find out when to rely on grids and when to ignore them, then put theory into practice with tips for using grids in Adobe InDesign.

Coroflot's 2006 Design Salary Survey

coroflot.com - Coroflot's 2006 Design Salary Survey

Global Aesthetic-Practice Estimate
2979 respondents from 64 countries reporting $158,480,126 in wages earned in the fields of Design Management, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Interactive Design / Web Design, Interior Design and for the first time, Architecture and Fashion Design

50 Essential Bookmarks

Communication Arts: Resources

We asked six designers, each with a unique voice and perspective, to share a list of sites they consider to be vital to their work. Due to space limitations, we only included the sites not already listed in "50 Essential Bookmarks.”

Get Smarter

Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter

Thinking about intelligence as changeable and malleable, rather than stable and fixed, results in greater academic achievement, especially for people whose groups bear the burden of negative stereotypes about their intelligence.

Photoshop 411

creativepro.com - Dr. Phil for Photoshop

All relationships are complex, but there's nothing more confusing than the complicated relationship between megapixels, file size, image size, and print size. Julieanne Kost and Daniel Brown explain the difference and advise you on the best sizes for scanning, printing (for both a desktop printer and a press), slideshows, and Web sites.

how to be interesting...

russell davies: how to be interesting

...the core skill of any future creative business person will be 'being interesting'. People will employ and want to work with (and want to be with) interesting people.

Pictures of designers working with their hands not computers!

Basics in Design - Basel School of Design

The Basel School of Design invites students, professionals, and teachers to apply for study in the famous foundation programme, the “Vorkurs”, for either
one or two semesters, and to concentrate on the main
topics in process-oriented and form-oriented basic
design work.

Fun Font Game

FontBook: Digital Typeface Compendium from FontShop

Choose Pummel and ”Fight the FontBook“

FontBook is a type encyclopedia with an abundance of carefully researched notes on type designers, year of publication, similar fonts, and additional language versions.

Inspiration for designers & students

Incomplete Manifesto - Bruce Mau Design

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

Design How-To: Modular Design

creativepro.com - Design How-To: Use Lego-Like Modules

Want a simple format that's useful when designing everything from postcards to Web pages? Use snap-together modules that provide endless variety.

Thinking like a Genius

Thinking like a Genius

"Even if you're not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future."

The following eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."

Career Advice for Designers

HOWdesign.com - Job Bank - Career Advice

A designer's personal qualities outweigh technical skills every time. Recent grads, take note: The intangibles have a very real value to employers, colleagues and clients.

Information Architects & Typography

Information Architects Japan � Blog Archive � Web Design is 95% Typography (1)

95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in other words: Typography.

From consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry...

WorldChanging

Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century is a groundbreaking compendium of the most innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future.

Freelancing

A beginner's guide to freelancing (Phil Gyford: Writing)

It’s been over a year since I first thought of writing down everything I’ve learned about freelancing. I’ve now been freelance for more than three years but the title still has a double meaning — this is both for beginners and by a beginner, because I know I still have a lot to learn.

Typography Article

creativepro.com - dot-font: Using Expert Characters and Expert Sets

Extra typographic characters, the elements that make fine typography possible in digital typesetting, used to be unavailable in a standard font. If they existed for an individual typeface, they were packed into a second, supplementary font known as an 'expert set.' The expert set was a separate font, and you had to pay for it separately, but it was typically a fraction of the cost of the primary font.

Adbusters

Adbusters

We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century.

To this end, Adbusters Media Foundation publishes Adbusters magazine, operates this website and offers its creative services through PowerShift, our advocacy advertising agency.

More on Innovation in Business Week

Want a Master of Design with That?

Denis Weil explains how going back to school helped him with his role in innovation at McDonalds

Smart Design Students on the Road

TRAN.sit National Studio Tour

In a field that can be based as much on networking and personality as it is on creativity and skill; who you know can be the handshake between finding a good job and finding a great job. We have decided that we want to meet as many designers and creatives as we can; our direction is destined by a road map.

How Magazine Blog

How Magazine

One of the best design magazines on the rack now has a blog of its own. And it's good.

Free Online Illustration Class

illustrationclass.com

Why Doodle? How do you become a better artist? How do you improve your raw drawing skills? Simple, just start doodling. Like physical exercise you'll get creatively stronger and improve over time.

Stamp Out Bad Design

<< BAD DESIGN KILLS >>

Cool site that aim at stamping out bad design and educating the visually illiterate.

Designers who Blog

Designers who Blog: collaborative weblog

DesignCharts: Top Web Design

DesignCharts // Weekly Top 40 Website Design Charts // Because Web Designers Are The New Rockstars // Best Website Designs Updated Weekly

Inspiring Sites

The Coke side of life

1000 journals - Pure Inspiration

1000 journals

The 1000 Journals Project is an ongoing, collaborative experiment attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels.

The goal is to provide a method for interation and shared creativity. If you ask a kindergarten class how many of them are artists, they'll all raise their hands. Ask the same question of 6th graders, and maybe one third will respond. Ask high school grads, and few will admit to it. (explained in Orbiting the Giant Hairball)

What happens to us growing up? We begin to fear criticism, and tend to keep our creativity to ourselves. Many people keep journals, of writing or sketching, but not many share them with people. (when was the last time a friend invited you to read their diary?) You will not be judged here. And you will have company. This is for you. For everyone.

Design History: Herbert Lubalin

tribute to Herbert Lubalin | one of the most influential graphic designers in the 20th c

Another Great Design Blog

Ace Jet 170: Found type, print and stuff

I'm an English graphic designer working in Belfast. Married with two very young, active, funny and very brilliant boys. At work I develop and implement brands and corporate IDs mostly, work very hard and eat well.

Color Palette Generator

Color Palette Generator

Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. This is useful for coming up with a website color palette that matches a key image a client wants to work with.

Dreamweaver Tips

creativepro.com - Dreamweaver Design Challenge: Tables vs. Layers

This article was inspired by two questions I've received many times since Dreamweaver added the layers feature. The questions are, 'How come I can center my design when I use tables in Dreamweaver, but I can't center layers?' and 'How come when I combine tables and layers, the alignment of elements sometimes looks terrible?'

Smithsonian Photography Initiative

Smithsonian Photography Initiative

Today we have more than 13 million images in some seven hundred collections throughout our museums and research centers. The collections are organized by museum and discipline — for instance, the National Museum of Natural History holds natural science images in its collections, the National Air and Space Museum houses images of flight in its archives, and the National Museum of African Art holds photographs of Africa in its collections. We believe that the Smithsonian's ability to look at photography broadly and in context makes the institution unique.

Design Reference

Nine skills that separate good and great designers

The crux of the session were comparisons of good and great designers, structured along the lines of previous articles I’ve written: Good designers (blank), Great designers (blank). Following is a recap of the 9 skills presented.

More on Design Innovation in Business Week

Business Innovation: Innovation & Design
Strategy, creativity & research

Innovation All the Time - That's the daily order of business in the creative professions. Here's how to apply their practices to your own company...

Portfolio Examples

coroflot.com - Design Portfolios

The Best Design Schools

The Best Design Schools

Business Week loves Design...

More Historical Reference (1992-95)

stickers circa 1992-1995

between the years of roughly 92 through 95 i peeled many a sticker in the lower east side. this was before i shut my eyes to the barrage of information on the streets out of consumer exhaustion; before i became a working graphic designer and was still impressed by, and hungry for, nifty logos and graphics. anyhow, now-a-days the premium on every inch of personal space here in the city has curbed my junk collection, but the old piles managed to stick around. now, over ten years on, i thought these stickers were a pretty cool little time capsule and i’ve decided to post some of them for your browsing pleasure. a few were designed by friends. one i designed myself during that period. click any to see larger image. enjoy!

Design History Resource

19th Century Circus & Magic Posters - a photoset on Flickr.

Take study-worthy lecture notes

Geek to Live: Take study-worthy lecture notes - Lifehacker

Copying class notes after the fact is a time-consuming way to study for an exam, but it was the only thing that truly worked for me back in college. But next week I'll be in a classroom again for the first time in 8 years, pen poised over notebook, and this time I'm going to perfect a strategy that gets my notes right the first time: the Cornell Note-taking method.

How to Be a Student

How to Be a Student

The typical college campus is a friendly place; but it is also a competitive environment. The education you receive there, and the attitudes you develop, will guide you for the rest of your life.

Spirals

Spiral photo gallery - beautiful.

Article on Design Icon

The Wordsmith on Paula Scher

Unless you're part of the clubby graphic-design fraternity, you may never have heard of Paula Scher, but it's nearly impossible not to know her work. Every time you pass a Citibank ATM or hand over one of its credit cards with the iconic red-arched 'Citi' logo, you're in her orbit. When you open a box from Tiffany, with its slender, elegant typeface, you're decoding a message she has sent you (namely, 'This had to be pricey!'). If you get subversive pleasure reading Jon Stewart's snarky faux textbook, America (The Book), or are charmed by the signs on the New York subway for the Metropolitan Opera, or look back wistfully on the loopy spaceship cover of the first Boston album, you're under the spell of this astonishingly versatile, formidably talented designer.

Fun

Pantone Matching to real world objects.

Advice to Design Students

Core77 Boards - If I Knew Then What I Know (Advice to students)

Advice is cheap, and hindsight is 20-20, but whether you had a great school experience or a crappy one, there's no way that you can come out of a design education without a few bits of advice for those just starting out.

Design Ideas

creativepro.com - Five Great Design Ideas to Use Now

So you're just sitting there, staring at a blank piece of paper or computer screen, as if the Idea Fairy will come along and bop you on the head. Consider this article the magic wand you've been waiting for.

An Interesting Oddity

The Condiment Packet Museum

Yep. You read it right.

Excellent Documentary on Andy Warhol

American Masters . Andy Warhol | PBS

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in a two-room shack-like apartment at 73 Orr Street in the working class neighborhood of Soho in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Andrej Warhola and Julia Zavacky Warhola. The youngest of three sons, Andrew attended Holmes Elementary School and Schenley High School, and entered Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh in 1945, where he studied with Balcomb Greene, Robert Lepper, Samuel Rosenberg, and others. He experimented with his name, signing holiday cards "André," and dropping the final "a" from his family name. He graduated in June 1949 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Pictorial Design.

Reviews:

Stargazer - The Nation

Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film - Report - New York Times

Design Professor Blog

The Crap Detector is a great resource - bookmark it!

Core77 - 1000 words of advice for design students

Core77 - 1000 words of advice for design students

There are a million things to learn in design school, but what about the things you need to know 'about' design school? In an effort to be clear and concise—something your teachers are always bugging you to do—here are exactly 1000 words of advice for design students (cliches included)...

Making Meaning

creativepro.com - Giving Design Meaning

Design goes far beyond making something "pretty" on the outside. The best design takes into account customer needs and delivers meaningful experiences. This excerpt identifies seven design principles to follow and five process stages to go through to reach the end goal: design that matters.

Designer Movies

hillmancurtis :: 917 679 2725

Hillman Curtis has a great bunch of short movie/interviews that he has made with some of the top designers of our time.

IDD110 Design Resource

The Design Encyclopedia

A growing, collaborative resource that describes, tracks and explains culture, commerce, politics, media, sports, brands – everything possible, really – through design.

Illustration Tips

How to make illustrations even if you can’t draw

I really hate clipart. So much that I at some point decided to start making my own illustrations for my documents, presentations and my blog.

Now I get all these nice compliments about my childish drawings. They seem to work well in my presentations because they add a personal touch. Doing presentations is a personal thing. The fact that you, yes you is there to present. People tend to appreciate the fact that you have spent the extra time adding your own special finish to the slides.

Hack Your Facebook

The ULTIMATE Facebook guide

World War II Posters

Speak Up › War Effort

Speak Up › War Effort

OK, you guys...

I have joined FaceBook - a new appendage to my digibody.

How to talk to a professor

I think I've posted this before - but it's still a goody!

How to talk to a professor

Talking to a professor–out of genuine curiosity, a genuine interest in learning, a genuine desire to improve–is one of the smartest things a college student can do. While some professors are genuinely unapproachable, many are happy to talk to students. Here are five points to consider when you’re talking to a professor...

Good advice for a new school year

Advice for students:New year’s resolutions

People in academic life, teachers and students alike, get a curious bonus — while everyone else trudges from January to December, we have a chance to begin anew with each semester, term, or quarter.

Interesting Report on Internships

creativepro.com - Employers Report Internships Lead to Full-Time Hires

Recent Poll by CareerExposure.com Finds 94 Percent of Employers Offer Full-Time Positions to Interns

Senior Web Sites

Here they are - in all their glory - IDD Class of 2006 portfolio web sites.
In no particular order:

Heather Cote

Jacqueline Barcamonte

Daniel Moricco

Sarah-Jane Bolling

Daniel Vecchitto

Nicole Theobald

Christopher Katagis

Conor O'Brien

Rebecca Kapchan

Kyle Levesque

Elizabeth Kenty

Sean Riley

Robert Rasmussen

Christine Simons

Tyler Stavola

Jennifer Daigle

Roy Riedl

Mark Driscoll

Jason Forkos

Kristin Alicandri

Another Excellent Design How-To

creativepro.com - Design How-To: Turn One Photo Into a Thousand Images

Well, maybe not a thousand. But you can often carve up a large photo into several smaller images. You'll stretch your photo dollar, and your images are almost guaranteed to be unified in color and texture.

Overcoming Procrastination

It's the end run of the semester - here's a little kick in the pants:

Overcoming Procrastination - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Nice How-To Article

creativepro.com - Design How-To: Using Ghosted Backgrounds

IDD400 Weekly Viewing

Motion Graphics+ from up-and-coming artists:

Radical Friend 2006

IMPACTIST

Takagi Masakatsu

After you redesign your blog, you can work on MySpace

Mike Davidson: Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace

Blog Design

Top 10 Best Designed Blogs by Elliott Back

IDD400 Sites for this week

Motion graphics sites for this week's analysis:

Trollbäck + Company

SUK & KOCH

mmmm, Inspiration

Alvin Lustig, Modern American Design Pioneer 1915-1955

The Alvin Lustig Archive (www.alvinlustig.com) grew out of our admiration for this important modern design pioneer, one that we believe deserved much more attention than what is currently available. As graphic designers, Lustig's passion for design in all aspects of life resonates with us and influences our own practice.

Zine Resource

Barnard College Library Zine Collection

ZINES ARE

Short for magazine or fanzine, zines are self-publications, motivated by a desire for self-expression, not for profit. The following quote from Not Sorry, a zine out of the zine capital of the United States: Portland, Oregon explains what zines are, and why they're necessary.

"I'm not even trying to be dramatic, but to the world at large, I am a freak. My voice is downplayed, ignored and/or made into a joke in the mass of verbal and physical disapproval that bombards me every day when I leave the safety of my house or make the stupid decision to read a newspaper, magazine or turn the television on. When I am out of my element, I am told that my very existence is wrong or problematic because I am a fat, queer, mentally ill, politically radical woman with very little money and little to no regard for beauty standards and so on and so forth. But you know what? I am so NOT fucking SORRY. As long as myself and others are disrespected, invalidated, unsafe and ignored by the masses, my experiences, ideas and opinions need to be heard and I will keep on talking this shit and it is not going to be pretty. Besides, how else are these stories going to be documented? With the exception of the gay rights movement, these stories will most likely not be found in any future history books, and if they are, they will most likely be totally inaccurate. Now I know that this zine will not go much beyond the zine reading community, but this is where I have chosen to start and it's something which is always better than nothing."

Jenny San Diego. Not Sorry, #3. April, 2005. Portland, Oregon.

Print Designers FYI

creativepro.com - Paper Tips: Fit the Design to the Sheet

Riddle me this: Would you rather trim a half-inch off your design or risk going out of business? While paper costs have remained relatively flat, it pays to be prudent when matching layout specs to paper size.

Inspiration

The Visual Dictionary - a visual exploration of words in the real world.

The Visual Dictionary is a collection of words in the real world. Photographs of signage, graffiti, advertising, tattoos, you name it, we're trying to catalogue it.

CNN has been watching over our shoulders!

CNN.com - Design software weakens classic drawing skills - Apr 5, 2006

Students are more comfortable manipulating computer graphics than doodling, drafting and drawing with pen on paper, and this has created a sharp decline in drawing skills in recent years, teachers say.

Another must-read blog...

Eyebeam reBlog

The Eyebeam reBlog is a community site focused on art, technology, and culture. The guest reBlogger is filtering feeds provided by artists, curators, bloggers, and news sites. With the touch of a button the reBlogger selects material to share with the Eyebeam community.

The Best Design Blog?

Don't forget about reading this one on a regular basis:

Design Observer - writings about design & culture

Typography Tutorial

creativepro.com - Creative Suite How-To: Working with Typography

Typography is perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the Adobe Creative Suite -- especially when you tap into the workflow features of Version Cue.

Designers must write...

Ideas Blog - Designers must write

Early in my career, I was involved in a strange and completely unnecessary rivalry with one of my coworkers. She and I were like oil and water. After years of chilly interaction we actually managed to engage in something that had the semblance of a civil conversation. During this chat, she somewhat reluctantly noted that she held no drawing skills. To state it candidly, I was aghast. How could a professional not have a handle on what I perceived as the absolute basics?

The “P” Word

Thought this would be a good refresher on entering the last 5 weeks of the semeste.

Study Skills Library - Procrastination

Procrastination is a complex psychological behavior that affects everyone to some degree or another. With some it can be a minor problem; with others it is a source of considerable stress and anxiety. Procrastination is only remotely related to time management, (procrastinators often know exactly what they should be doing, even if they cannot do it), which is why very detailed schedules usually are no help.

New Design Magazine

redaction

Redaction is a new graphic design publication. Its mission is to present works of design educators and periphery practioners striving to create new paradigms in design practice and design writing. Its goal is to highlight designers operating in alternative modes: authors, editors, critics, producers, directors, artists, and researchers.

Flash Tutorial Resource

gotoAndLearn.com

Great Flash tutorials! Use it.

Architecture Student Blog Site

Archinect : School Blog Project

About Archinect
Mission: The goal of Archinect is to make architecture more connected and open-minded, and bring together designers from around the world to introduce new ideas from all disciplines.

Background: Archinect was initially developed in 1997 by Paul Petrunia. The site has since become a top online destination for progressive-design oriented students, architects, educators, and fans.

Photoshop FYI

Here's an issue that you may have had in creating an image:

creativepro.com - Graphics How-To: Simulate a Shadow in Photoshop

Objects in a spotlight or a setting sun throw long shadows. When you want that three-dimensional look but the available images don't fit the bill, you can make one yourself in Photoshop.

25 Best Free Quality Fonts

Vitaly Friedman | Blog: 25 Best Free Quality Fonts

After Effects Tutorials

From Creative Cow Media Pros Community

Fun With Track Mattes

Paint to Mask

Rotoscoping with Vector Paint

Funny

Tom Wayman, Poems (an excerpt here - follow the link to read the rest)

Did I Miss Anything?
Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent...

Making Meaning

creativepro.com - Giving Design Meaning

The writers of this excerpt believe that design identifies and builds value based on a deep understanding of customer needs. This applies to decisions of appearance (such as color, typeface, material, and form), but also to levels of performance (such as process, workflow, interaction, and experience). And it applies at the business level, too, including corporate strategy, structure, process, and goals.

Free Design magazine

GDUSA

Graphic Design USA is a monthly news and information magazine for and about the professional design community including graphic design firms, corporate and publishing inhouse departments, advertising agencies, institutions and non-profits, and other creative businesses and organizations.

IDD400 Analysis Links

New sites for you to choose from for your Motion Graphic analysis this week:

Spark

Eyeball NYC

The Designer's Republic

IDD480 Before you construct your site...

Read and work through this:

creativepro.com - Web Basics: What You Need to Succeed

Visual Web-design programs such as Dreamweaver and GoLive are wonderful tools. But unless you have a team of engineers who ask you only to prototype sites while cooling you with a palm frond and feeding you grapes, at some point you must grasp a few code basics to craft the best-possible Web site. Read this article and you'll understand XHTML: the most modern, flexible form of HTML, and the foundation of CSS.

And then this:

creativepro.com - Web Design How-To: Giggle Your Way to Code Mastery

You've read plenty of dry-but-worthy articles on designing Web sites. This is not one of them. You'll smile, you'll play games, and along the way, you'll learn how to use CSS to style sites that meet Web standards and work across many browsers and display devices.

25 Best License-Free Quality Fonts

Vitaly Friedman | Blog: 25 Best License-Free Quality Fonts

Recently I’ve been browsing through the Net searching for the best license-free fonts which would fit as a serious heading for a serious online-presentation. Fortunately, I wasn’t the first web-developer, who was trying to find such fonts.

Cool Typography Study

Perception of Fonts: Perceived Personality Traits and Uses

This study sought to determine if certain personalities and uses are associated with various fonts. Using an online survey, participants rated the personality of 20 fonts using 15 adjective pairs. In addition, participants viewed the same 20 fonts and selected which uses were most appropriate. Results suggested that personality traits are indeed attributed to fonts based on their design family (Serif, Sans-Serif, Modern, Monospace, Script/Funny) and are associated with appropriate uses. Implications of these results to the design of online materials and websites are discussed.

Basics on Blogging...

and modifying the templates in Blogger:

creativepro.com - Putting Your Best Blog Forward

IDD480 More on Self Promotion

Actually, lots more! I did a quick search on Creative Pro and came up with a slew of past articles on self promotion:

Search creativepro.com: Self Promotion

Just a glimpse from 188 results:

Three Faces of Self-Promotion Terri Stone May 27, 2005

A designer, a photographer, and an illustrator/printer/retailer share how they've become successful. This is not your usual promotion article....

Creative Fuel: Weaving a Self-Promotion Web Molly W. Joss May 26, 2005

Are you thinking about making a Web site to promote your business? Or are you dissatisfied with the site you already have? Molly Joss passes on some hard-earned wisdom on day 4 of Creatievpro.com's Self-Promotion Week....

The Art of Business: Low-Budget Self-Promotion Eric J. Adams May 23, 2005

It's Self-Promotion Week at Creativepro.com. No, we're not advertising our site -- we're helping you promote your business! To kick off the week, Eric J. Adams proves that it doesn't take a wad of cash to promote yourself -- just targeted and timely persistence, and more than a little gumption. ...

You're Hired! Cynthia L. Baron May 25, 2005

On day 3 of our Self-Promotion Week, you'll get the dirt on customizing portfolios. Once you've tailored your materials, the competition won't have a chance....

IDD480 Self Promotion

creativepro.com - Turn Potentials Into Paying Clients

Designers and photographers create self-promotional pieces to win new clients and lure past clients back. The best way to accomplish these goals depends on the individual creative professional; in fact, if your promotion looks like someone else's, you've lost your chance to distinguish yourself.

(Think of it as “Turn Potentials into Employers.“ Perfect timing on this little article.)

IDD480 Job Search Sites

SimplyHired.com | Job Search Made Simple

But along with simplicity, we'll make it possible for you to see every opportunity out there. If your cousin is looking for a part-time job working the evening shift at a pickle factory 300 miles west of Texas, we'll help you locate that one-in-a-million job waiting for her in Albuquerque. Our tools will turn everyone into an expert at finding the needle in their own personal haystack.

Indeed | one search. all jobs.

Indeed is a search engine for jobs - with a radically different approach to job search. In one simple search, Indeed gives job seekers free access to millions of employment opportunities from thousands of websites. Indeed.com includes all the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages - and we continue to add new sites every day.

Writing Advice

Advice for students: Writing by hand - lifehack.org

A recent piece in Inside Higher Ed by Shari Wilson, “The Surprising Process of Writing,” jibes with my observations over the last few years: many students do better with in-class handwritten essays than with word-processed essays written outside of class. My evidence is only anecdotal, but it’s consistent enough to suggest that writing by hand may have several significant advantages for many student-writers.

Inside Higher Ed :: The Surprising Process of Writing

Amelia, a university sophomore, scores a 60 on her first academic paper. On her second she scores a 60 again. On her third paper, she pulls up to an 80 — mostly due to extensive rewrites. Yet on her midterm and final, she received an astounding 90 and 85. Not only was her paragraph structure and use of quotations significantly better, but her ability to sequence ideas and support claims had taken a leap. Even her mechanics (grammar, sentence structure and punctuation) had improved.

Creative Inspiration

creativepro.com - Fly the Creative Skies

Fasten your seatbelts low and tight across your laps, ladies and gentleman, because we've got a quietly powerful creativity boost for you. This article, which combines full-page photos with insights from a fellow creative pro, will give you wings.

IDD480: Planning Flash Projects

creativepro.com - Web How-To: Planning Flash Projects

In this excerpt from the "Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Bible," you'll learn what questions to ask and what solutions to propose when creating a Flash project. Along the way you'll pick up tips on what makes a good user interface and how to use Flash's Project Panel.

Design Anarchy

Adbusters: Design Anarchy Preview

AdBusters

Soemthing you should all know about.

Respect your Elders

Elder Wisdom Circle. Advice From Those Who Care.

FREE Advice: Our Elders can help with most any problem providing a personalized reply to each request. Our service is totally confidential and easy to use. To seek advice, click [ here ]. Be sure to check out the new Advice TV feature of our site, the link is located on the homepage.

To become an Elder one must be at least 60 years of age, complete an application and screening process. Elders participate individually from their home computers or as part of a collective group at locations such as an assisted living community.

IDD480 Another Portfolio Article

Every Design Tells A Story

All student portfolios present a gallery of work. This one presents the work as a book, with explanatory text in a well-paced, editorial design that creates a personal brand for the graduate.

IDD480 A good portfolio discussion...

: : Speak Up > What does a portfolio look like these days? : :

One of my classes is the last graphic design class for seniors at East Carolina University so the subject of portfolios inevitably comes up. I told them that they would probably want several variations of portfolios�a website, an electronic portfolio on disk that they can mail or leave, and what one would have traditionally thought of as a portfolio. But what is that last thing?

My Sentiments Exactly

There's a great discussion with lots of viewpoints in the comments of this short post:

: : Speak Up > Computer = Fart, or Digital Immersion Is Not Design : :

I witness a bevy of design students leap to the computer whenever a project is delivered into their hands. From the Apple’s input devices, they wind up at Google for research or sit pining over which software will suit the problem’s needs—or their premature vision. A large complaint from those in the industry, who hire young designers, is that designers can’t think, and when I see them head to the computer I have to agree. They’re looking at bits and bytes for answers when they should be doing research or collaborating.

From a site that you should all be reading regularly!

Quidd Tech

Ben has a solution for performance issues while working on large files check out the new QUIDDtech blog:

Quidd Tech

Now, as you may or may not know, your home folder (the folders mounted on the G5 when you login where you save all your files) are not on the machine you are working on. They exist on a server that the G5 accesses across the network. Because of this, programs that are working with files in your home folder and require disk IO must wait for the data to move from the server, across the network, and up into the G5's memory. This can be slow (or expensive in IT talk) for applications, and you witness the expensive transaction by poor performance in the application. Video may be choppy. Audio may slice. You may have to wait for some time when applying mathematical transforms on entire chunks of data, like applying a filters or effects to an image.

Uh, yeah, Designers Writing...

creativepro.com - The Art of Business: Add Writing to Your Repertoire

You're an artist, not a writer, but that doesn't mean you won't occasionally be asked to create effective text to complement your print or Web design. Rather than passing up an additional revenue source (or needing to hire someone to write your own marketing materials), take this crash course in copy writing.

IDD480 How To Find A Design Job While Being Young, Naive, And Full Of Hope

Post No.118 - How To Find A Design Job While Being Young, Naive, And Full Of Hope:

As I sit in front of the desk of the office of my first design job—yup, first—I’ve been thinking about the six-month journey that led me to this point. Furthermore, this time spent in the job-hunting trenches was such a learning experience, I feel as though it is worth sharing everything I’ve encountered. This may or may not help the next design graduate in line, seeking an awesome design job.

IDD480 Reference

creativepro.com - Don't Be a Stranger; Survey Suggests Job Seekers Should Follow Up Within Two Weeks of Submitting Resume

Great Graphic Design Podcast

Design Matters

Debbie Millman interviews the best and the brightest from the world of graphic design.

All Classes!

We have 5 digital cameras in the lab now. You may check them out from me for use in creating your projects. Yay!!!

New Side Bar!

I have posted the links to the students blogs for this semester. There are still a few missing! Please send your link ASAP, if is not working on this list. Please read your classmates posts and leave comments of the helpful and supportive variety.

FYI

IQ and Self-discipline - lifehack.org

Free Stock Photo Resources

11 Resources on Free Stock Photos for Web and Design�-�Listible!

Free Sound Source

freesound :: home page

Another Color Palette Tool

ColorBlender.com | Your free online color matching toolbox

IDD480 Resource

creativepro.com - Web How-To: Plan Your Site Right In Dreamweaver

“Without the proper site management, your brilliant work may instead be replaced with an annoying "File Not Found" error. Here's how to plan, build, and manage Web sites for best results.”

Ten Tips for Top Type

Haven't gotten around to take IDD270 Type Design and production? Look at this:

creativepro.com - dot-font: Ten Tips for Top Type

Design How-To

Take a Layout from Dull to Dazzling

“A design can be well crafted yet miss the mark entirely. By following the transformation of Web banners for a bluegrass concert series, you'll learn how to inject energy and authentic visual cues into any type of layout for any event.”

Start the Semester Off Right!

A good place to study - lifehack.org

"Here’s a suggestion for the start of the semester: Find a good place to study and make it your own. The more time you spend in that place, the more it will become associated with the work of learning."