11.16.2007

More Typographic Inspiration

Jeff Canham

Typographic Snowflake Creator

TYPEflake*

Creative Business Cards

Hey Good Lookin'

We've collected the most beautiful, distinctive and offbeat business cards from creatives around the country. See how these designers make a great first impression.

11.14.2007

All About Type

TeachingType

TeachingType is an initiative by tutors, students and people interested in typography, typographic education and related subjects. The aim of this platform is to develop and refine graphic design education. We believe that a constant discussion and evolution is happening in our profession and so it is in happening in its educational methodologies. Those procedures, aims, and purposes change not just from college to college or from student to student, but also from day to day. Rather than passively seeing where this fast moving current is taking us and our students, we passionately navigate in this stream; enjoying the journey; enthusiastically learning.

11.09.2007

More Writing Resources (you know you need them!)

150 Resources to Help You Write Better, Faster, and More Persuasively

As a student, writer, author, journalist, poet, or screenwriter, you know that you probably spend more time on research, editing, and proofreading than you do on the actual writing. Therefore, you might not have time to find resources to help you write better, faster, or more persuasively. This is where our list comes to your rescue, as the following links focus on places where you can conduct research, software that is free and easy to use, and services that will remove that 'extra work' monkey from your back.

Interview Questions & How to Answer Them

For my soon to be graduating seniors and students interviewing for internships:

64 Interview answers you need to know

Yound Designers Competition Results

“propose a strategy to raise the turnout of voters between 18 and 24” - brilliant solution - read it to the end!

Except You

If we've learned anything from MySpace and Facebook, it's that my generation values being a part of the group and having a say. We're mavericks of social networking, communication and internal organization. We become passionate about anything the peer consensus agrees to rally around, including skateboarding dogs. So why not focus that social muscle on something that really matters? Something like going to war. Or global warming. It's obvious that we care about those things. Getting us to act is the hard part.

Design Students and Typography

Interesting tale from portfolio reviews:

Type Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

It’s not the designer’s voice that concerns me here so much as the designer’s understanding of history — a body of knowledge that once acquired, can be edited, modified, even jettisoned at will, but only after giving it a good, hard think. Designers in general (and students in particular) have an overwhelming tendency to consider anything that’s been achieved in the past as a kind of “been there, done that” straitjacket, while the opposite is not only true, it’s surprisingly actionable.

Fun Hand Drawn Type Inspired by Spam

Spam One-liners - a photoset on Flickr

11.05.2007

Improve Your Writing

Improve Your Writing with these Editing Tips - lifehack.org

Teachers, business people, and just about everyone else it seems complain often and loudly that people today (usually “kids today”) don’t know how to write. I’m convinced, though, that a big part of the problem (perhaps the biggest part of the problem) is that people don’t know how to edit. We labor under the notion that good writing flows easily from the pen or typing fingers, and that editing too much will “kill” our work.

The best writers know differently, of course — their memoirs and biographies and writing manuals are filled with stories of books that needed to be cut in half to be readable, sentences that took weeks or months to get just right, and lifetimes spent tinkering with a single work that never strikes them as “just right”. To paraphrase a common saying among writers, there is no good writing, only good re-writing.

11.02.2007

99 Useful Resources for Graphic Designers

99 Useful Resources for Graphic Designers at You the Designer - Graphic Design Blog

I have used every one of these resources as a graphic designer and website developer and have hand picked all of these resources based on their usefulness and overall quality. I hope you find these resources as useful as I do! Enjoy!

10.29.2007

Create Advanced Online Galleries

creativepro.com - View Source: Create Advanced Online Galleries

Do you need an online portfolio or just want to post photos from your kid's birthday party? The free Lightbox2 adds sophisticated JavaScript functionality you can customize. The best part? You don't have to do a lick of programming.

10.27.2007

10.18.2007

Software & Services that Are Free - NOT Scams

creativepro.com - Software and Services that Are Free -- and Not Scams

From file transfers to audio editors, conference calls to color explorations, here are free services and programs you won't regret trying. And no, we're not getting kickbacks from these companies -- we just think this stuff is cool.

10.15.2007

Typographic Inspiration

ALPHABET: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography

Focusing on an ordinary subject that we see each day, often by the hundreds of thousands, Alphabet presents 26 letters as more than just shapes for conveying information. The 51 artists and designers in this show conceive and interpret the alphabet in surprising and inventive ways, ranging from graceful and polished to witty and unconventional. The 63 alphabets featured in Alphabet were created by artists in North America, Europe, and Asia, and represent work from well-known typographers and designers as well as rising artists and design students.

10.08.2007

Tips for concentrating and focused study

10 Ways to Make Your Study Sessions More Productive | Enhanced with Minerals for Taste

Establish a routine that utilizes any or all of these things to make your study sessions more productive.


And from the University of Kent:
Concentration

Concentration means directing one's attention on whatever one intends. We all have a natural ability to concentrate. Have you noticed how difficult it is to get young children's attention when they are playing? Do you remember the time when you were completely engrossed in an interesting novel, a super film, an exciting match or an exhilarating piece of music? You were concentrating then. At this very moment you are reading these words, you are concentrating.

The ultimate “mouse trap”

Remember the game? Well here is a real life conglomeration with too many brilliant devices to even try to describe.
Watch this!

10.04.2007

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

Forever Skull

Forever Skull: Voice: AIGA Journal of Design: Writing: AIGA
The skull. Immortal icon of mortality. Overused, overexposed, overdone—and yet evergreen, everlasting, ever in play.

10.03.2007

Muriel Cooper: The unsung heroine of on-screen style

Muriel Cooper: The unsung heroine of on-screen style - International Herald Tribune
If you're a digital design buff or graphics geek, you may know who she is. Otherwise you're probably thinking, Muriel Who? Cooper was one of the first graphic designers to apply her skills to the computer screen. Having co-founded the Visible Language Workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, she ran it until her death in 1994, and taught many of today's most gifted software designers.