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Category: General
Font management with Suitcase Fusion 3 now extends to website designs
With little exception, fonts can be the number one asset any designer owns, and the most difficult to manage.The in-house graphic designer with a limited number of corporate fonts to use on a daily basis may need nothing more than Apple’s Font Book app (if even that) to manage a small font collection. But the freelance designer with dozens of clients, the ad agency production studio and the print shop with hundreds of clients must have robust font management or dealing with fonts can become a full-time job. For those users, Extensis offers Suitcase Fusion 3.
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Infographic design: Netflix vs. Redbox
Infographic design is one of the coolest projects a designer can work on. It allows you a hefty amount of creative freedom, with the advantage of not having to put a lot of emphasis on fitting the design concept into an overall campaign. You can just go to town on the cool factor.
This infographic by Redbox highlights great communication work by the designers for Redbox
There are entire websites dedicated to showing off infographic samples, and one I came across recently highlighted this Netflix vs. Redbox comparison made by the folks at Redbox. The use of color was an obvious choice, but the simplicity and easy readability was definitely something that attracted me to it.
If you’re looking to add a few colorful and creative pieces to your portfolio, an infographic that is well thought out, both in the data on display and the design used to communicate it, can make for a powerful showpiece.
Avoiding bland, cliché photography
There are plenty of stock photography sites out there, and while many of them are expensive, more and more of them offer some great, affordable images to use in your designs. But before you decide on your image, be sure to read through this post at DesignShack titled 10 pitfalls to avoid when using stock photos.
The handshake - perhaps the most overused design cliché of all time
The article covers topics such as avoiding cliché and overused photos, creating bad clipping paths, and avoiding obviously posed photos.
Perhaps the most important piece of advice offered is to shoot the images yourself. A decent DSLR camera can be had for $500 nowadays, and can produce stunning images in the right hands. Beef-up on your photography skills by reading through the great photography tips and reviews at Digital Photography School, or subscribe to a photography podcast such as Daily Photo Tips with Chris.
Regardless if you choose to buy stock photos or shoot them yourself, be sure to make good choices when selecting images for your designs.
Rant: Stuff that ticked me off last week
I’ve never been at a loss for things that leave me scratching my head or gouging my eyes out when it comes to what I read on the Internet. There’s just so much stupidity out there just waiting to be discovered.
I spent the entire week trying to figure out why my stupid Apple Time Capsule has all of a sudden decided that it will allow me to access any web site on the Internet except my own. Since I wasn’t writing for this site, I had plenty of time to catch up on the supersize cornucopia of stupid found scattered across the intertubes.
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133 examples of potential lame clients
WebAppers, a site I normally love to visit, recently offered a giveaway courtesy of yet another pathetic “cheap logo design” site, LogoBee. Potential winners need only comment to win. Not only were the examples of LogoBee’s work absolutely, horrifyingly mundane and pathetic (as expected), but 133 people (as of this writing) offered a comment on why they should avoid paying a decent designer an acceptable wage to obtain a truly inspiring and customized logo.
Potentially lame client communications
I saw this as the perfect opportunity to show off what 133 potentially lame clients might look like if they were gathered into one place.
Good grief, I really had hoped most people had moved past wanting cookie-cutter logos, but I guess not. I would sooner design a logo for someone I know for free than refer them to one of these lame sites.
Alien Skin announces Bokeh 2 plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS5
Alien Skin has released Bokeh2, thier easy to use tools for creative blurring, including spiral motion blur. New support for Adobe Photoshop CS5 64-bit and Lightroom is in the mix, as is an improved preview feature which is now much faster and more interactive, making experimentation easier.Bokeh 2 gives photographers and designers a wide range of tools to focus attention where they want it. The focus region is easily placed over the subject and then the fun begins. Every aspect of the lens blur can be customized, from highlight intensity and shape to motion blur and vignette.
Focus attention where you want it with Bokeh 2
Bokeh 2 now works in Lightroom, including batch processing. The 64-bit version of Photoshop CS5 works great with Bokeh on both platforms. Bokeh provides multiple techniques for non-destructive editing in Photoshop, including Smart Filter support and rendering effects on a duplicate of the original layer.
Bokeh 2 sells for $199. Owners of Bokeh 1 may upgrade for $99. Online or physical delivery is available through the Alien Skin website. Free upgrades will be automatically sent to purchasers of Bokeh 1 who purchased in April 2010 or later.
Bokeh 2 is a plug-in and requires one of the following host applications:
- Adobe Photoshop CS3 or later
- Adobe Lightroom 2 or later
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or later
I’m a huge fan of Bokeh, and I plan on putting it through its paces and post a review as soon as I get my hands on it.
Photographing the perfect landscape
Rolling hills and vales, enchanting areas of woodland, rugged shorelines and a dappled spring meadow can all become the most obvious of subjects for the landscape shooter, often yielding strongly emotive and awe-inspiring results.
Shooting landscapes is all about the setup (a little HDR treatment works sometimes, too!)
The recipe for success however is less obvious. Unless of course you read this great article at Digital Photography School on photographing the perfect landscape.
News portals for Mac users
Keeping up with Mac-related news can be a daunting task. Apple has never been so popular, so news portal sites that offer Apple/Mac-related news can be a great way to keep up with the latest goings-on.Below are a few of the sites I tend to go to when I’m looking for news on any particular Apple/Mac related news. The Mac Observer is a daily visit for me, and MacNews is a favorite forum hangout.
Apple / Mac-related news portals keep you up-to-date
Mac.Alltop
Alltop is a site which allows you to view the latest topics on virtually any subject you wish with a customized MyAlltop page. Mac news is pulled from numerous sites, including some more obscure places that even I didn’t know about.
The Mac Observer
The Mac Observer, a site that’s been around for many, many years is one of the best Mac news portals out there. They have an extensive list of sites they pull news from. Generally speaking, if there’s news about Apple, The Mac Observer has you covered.
MacNews
MacNews, part of the AppleCentral group of sites, brings together top headlines from a variety of RSS feeds. The site also offers a great group of discussion forums.
Addict-O-Mattic
Addict-O-Matic provides the latest headlines on topics such as entertainment, politics, shopping, sports, and of course, Apple. You get all the feeds from the best sources in each category. And like your search results dashboard, you can personalize the layout of the headline boxes, delete ones you don’t like and bookmark your personalized page. I love the clean layout of this site.
MacDailyNews
MacDailyNews is great because you’re presented with a long list of headlines and one-line summaries of the articles, making it quite easy to find what you’re looking for.
MacNN
MacNN offers a news portal page, collection all the latest headlines for you. I’m not a huge fan of the site, but it has been around for many years and offers plenty to read.
AppleLinks
If you’re looking for volume, AppleLinks is the place to visit. Over 2,000 pages of Mac news awaits you. They also have an interesting way of presenting the news that you really have to see because it’s difficult to describe.
TechMeme
Techmeme pulls together tech news of all sorts, but features quite a bit of Apple news at any given time. I like the site because it gives a great overview of all the hottest geek news, regardless of what OS you prefer.
If you have a favorite Mac and Apple-related news site, feel free to share it in the comments.
BrandNew: A look at logo and brand makeovers
If you’ve never heard of Brand New (part of UnderConsideration.com), you’re missing out on some fantastic conversation about companies who re-brand or at least re-design their logos.
Logo and brand makeovers featured at Brand New
Recently, I read two great reviews at Brand New, the first covering the new Girl Scouts of America logo, and the second dissecting the latest brand makeover of the YMCA logo.
Brand New is a great site for designers, offering intelligent design discussion along with the analysis of corporate re-branding. Definitely worthy of bookmarking!