And as usual on mondays we give you some clever examples of creative use of words and letters that yield some unique results. Click on an image to go to the authors flickr page.
Monday Typography #3
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Author Archives: IdeaMonster
Useful Mac OS X tricks
The funny thing is that it’s usually all in the OS documentation. But who reads this stuff? Why do they even make “instructions” if nobody reads them ? ;) Well we don’t read them and sometimes we find out about some stuff either by accident or in some web article (this is what you’re doing right now, ha!). First of all let’s take the dock. The dock (in my case it’s a custom Onyx dock but it works just as your regular “shelf” in Leopard…) you have a bunch of icons and a couple of stacks probably like your Documents, your Downloads, some people (like me) also have their applications in a stack for easy access. The trick is :
Press Command, hold it and click on anything on the dock
That takes you to a finder window with the file selected. You can easily find where exactly is that app, that file dragged to the dock, or any element in stacks because if you open a stack and Command + click on an item in it it will open a finder window with that item highlited. Pretty cool huh ?
Photoshop tutorial – light trails / curved beams
Today I’ll show you how to create those ubiquitous light trails or as I think of them “curved beams of light” that can either go around a character or be just in the front looking like “light painting”. We will create the image above and it will take about 10 minutes to do so because it’s all about the PEN tool in photoshop. If you don’t really know how to use the pen tool then find a tutorial that shows you the basics of the tool before you proceed.
Fold ’em when you need ’em
What is the mysterious “fold” ?
There’s this very big issue among many designers of making all the necessary information above the fold (that being a standard of about 600 / 700 pixels high). So they try and they try to fit everything that’s “important” in there. In a typical layout that gives us 960 x 660 pixels of space that the most users will instantly see. Which is about this much of this website :
I get things done (on a Mac)
Free Mac OS X to-do apps
Sure there are plenty of ways to organize your work. There’s sticky notes, there’s trying to memorize everything. There’s writing on the sides in notebooks. And there are dashboard sticky notes that can be quite useful. But all of those ways are confusing and not so organized. Sure we do creative work so we’re all a bit artistic and we don’t follow the organized routines. But at some point you’ll notice, especially when you’re doing web designs or any kind of paid designs that keeping tracks of what you have to do is important. So here’s a quick list of applications that are free, work on a Mac and are a good way to organize your things.
iGTD
My favorite out of the bunch is iGDT, unfortunately it has been discontinued since the author works on a similar but paid app for another company now. But it still is available for download if you search the web for it. The best thing about is is how advanced it is. First of all it syncs with iCal and with ToDo lists in your mail app. So you have the info in a couple of places. Second of all you can use a context view of your to-do, or view them by projects. The icon in your dock has a badge with how many things you have left to do (green) and another, red badge for things you have to do for today. Try it out, it’s really worth it, even if there’s not gonna be a new version. You can download it here
Monday’s Typography #2
Another part of our weekly typography inspiration. As usual all the pieces are linked to their authors flickr page so go there and see more. Enjoy as those really are inspiring.
Viral video timeline
I’ve been thinking about the steps of the viral video before it reaches the final one of being viral and here’s what I came up with. This list is based on the observation I had with a few of my own videos that went viral and after making a few viral websites too.
1. Content
As usual it all starts with the content. It has to have a viral hook, which is something like a hook in a song – a catchy part that will get people “hooked”. So if you’re planning to go viral with a video it has to have at least one moment that others will want to share. It can be a funny moment, a scary one or just plain out of the ordinary. Take note that if you’re making a video about for example skateboarding, it’s rarely enough to be just good at it. If you’re good you will only reach a small niche. So there has to be something else for other people to want to watch your video. In such a case – a not-so-nice conversation with a cop, running away from cops, falling down, whatever. But remember it has to be addictive. It needs to be interesting enough not only for the viewer to send it out but also for the viewer to want to watch it again. Oh and as said before it’s best if it was around a minute in length.
How much is 2 + 2? 4? More than 4? Less?
I was watching TEDx Warsaw today and the main topic of the event is 2+2>4. Meaning that if we stick together we might achieve a lot. But is it really true?
There’s no I in team. Or is there?
One of the speakers – Sandra Bichl mentioned an interesting point. There are three types of people who enjoy working in teams. One is the people who found a group that they can really well work with (which is very rare). The second one is people who cope nicely with not meating deadlines and team tensions. And the third one is the ones who are just lazy and they want others to do their work for them. But how often does team work actually influence a positive change? I can honestly say that based on my experience it’s about 25% of good team work that will eventually wear out in time anyway, and 75% of good work done in one person “teams”.
Means to an end can influence the end
The truth and fact is that if you’re doing something long enough you get better and better at it. Seriously, unless you’re like totally not doing your thing – you can get pretty good at things if you put in the effort. But there are also some other truths about what happens in time. First of all you start seeing things differently. Second of all you get repetitive and it’ll be hard to “think” creatively. Don’t worry though these are some normal symptoms. Of course a nice computer-less vacation would help a lot in such a case, but that’s not always possible. What to do then ?
Nice packaging design
We believe a package doesn’t need to be a boring thing. It can very well sell a product. Or attract the attention of a potential customer. And to prove it we have found some splendid works from various designers from all over the world. Click on an image to see the authors page.
Monday’s typography examples
Some nice uses of glyphs. Click on the image to see the author’s flickr page.
And more after the break.
Attention span vs Viral Videos
Attention!
As we all know the web is not a place to indulge fully. People scan websites instead of reading them. And even if they read a large part their attention wanders off after a while and they either leave the site or switch to some other article. This is how the modern world works and it’s now common also in newspapers, magazines and other non-digital media. Except for books maybe but they’re beginning to be less and less popular unfortunately. Which makes our imaginations want more digitized fast paced action or we get bored. So basically the wheel goes round and round.
So you’re a web design agency are you?
There are some trends that are common of course, but they are changing constantly and evolving. Sometimes it just takes one Steve Jobs to say “Flash is a technology of the past” to turn some heads around. Unfortunately for the industry, sometimes it’s easy to shape the minds of potential customers. And that might lead to them leaving the site without ever clicking “contact us”. So what are they looking at ?
New additions to the team.
We will expand pretty soon with new authors and new ideas. There will be more tutorials, more insight and a lot more studies of various subjects such as facebook and it’s influence, viral marketing, web 2.0 and 3.0 and of course design.
New textures added
Grunge, bricks and some abstract ones. Keep in mind that those are free for ANY type of use, both personal and commercial. I’d appreciate a paypal donation, but it’s not mandatory. Enjoy!
So you want to make a web experience?
Because making just websites is for underachievers.
Ok, let’s imagine for a second that we’re making a web experience of informing our potential customers about our brand, thus raising their brand awareness. Basically, we just want people to know and like the brand, what can influence them to pick our brand up the next time in their store or online. And at this point two things should matter to us as the let’s say … Sausage Flavored Cereal makers. Sure we have a cult following of our fans, and the product is great. Why wouldn’t it be? Everyone eats sausage and cereal for breakfast, and we innovated our way out of cornflakes by combining the two. So we know we have something good. And we know people move around the internet sort of like in a maze where they can also stumble upon our competition, the dreaded hamburger and pizza cereals!
