Season's Greetings

Skitch

I've been Skitching. It's cool! And useful!

It's great just for doodling or for doing serious stuff like anotating screen captures to send to fellow gang members (I mean, colleagues) who are working remotely.

Blog, beautiful blog

I need to pretty-up Blogdini!

Smashing Magazine has selected over 30 excellent weblog designs with unusual design approaches.

Most of these designs make the Blogger templates look pretty ho-hum. (Note to self -- must sort out look of Blogdini. . . one day, Roger Phipps.)

Conference notes with pictures

So cool. Link

I can't has old apps!?

Eek! Leopard is starting to sound a bit scarey. Stuff isn't running on it: Acrobat Pro & for some people, InDesign CS3. There should be patches to fix this in New Year. But it looks like CS2 & Freehand won't ever run on Leopard. Better get those Illustrator skills up to scratch!

Here's some stuff. . .
"Products that will require updates for full Leopard compatibility include Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and the company’s professional video applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects CS3 Professional, Encore CS3 and Soundbooth CS3." Link

And here are some user's comment from that site (Macworld):
"The details of Acrobat incompatibility are horrifying! So far there have been no posts from anyone who can produce an Acrobat file under Leopard. This makes Leopard COMPLETELY unusable for a large percentage of Mac users! Why was there no discussion of this before the release! How could Apple and Adobe not see this coming?"

"OSX has the ability create a PDF from any document natively in the OS. You will still be able to create PDFs (distill) but some of the more advanced functions of control in manipulating those PDFs will be unstable when using ACROBAT PRO."

"According to Adobe's web site all their CS3 graphics programs including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. are currently compatible with OSX Leopard.
By not having Acrobat 8.1.1 Professional immediately compatible, the other programs are essentially unusable to any practicing graphic designer since today's printing workflows depend on making valid PDF files."

And other comments from TUAW

"if you read the acrobat pdf carefully, you learn that acrobat runs well, except some small bugs. these minibugs will not break the main functions of acrobat. i can confirm that. so run it!"

• Check out the statement (pdf) from the Adobe site.
• If you are going to let Leopard loose, here are installation hints from MacWorld.
• Creative Guy tells us what's working and not working on his MacPro.

The Big Idea

The Big Idea is a great resource for all arts & design related stuff in New Zealand. They list events, job opportunities, workspaces, exhibitions . . .

More than 14,000 people have registered as members of The Big Idea since they launched five years ago.

OMG,YES!!

Yay, Kathy Sierra is speaking at Webstock 08!


Kathy's workshop at Webstock 06

She was such good value at the last Webstock.

Is it or isn't it?

Seraphim, in the Users' Forum at Creative Bits gives some fairly basic guidelines on what is & what isn't a logo.

Basically; keep it simple & keep it vector.

Worth a read for those of you who aren't sure -- you know who you are!

Colour my world

There are some really useful and interesting comments regarding colour (rgb & cmyk) for those of us involved in design for print. They are at Creative Bits and are in response to this question regarding rgb & cmyk conversion.


There is also a review of Skitch, which looks like its going to be a pretty useful & cool app, especially for anyone working with images. I've received an invitation and downloaded it, but have only had a very cursory go with it so far. More anon.

Book 'm, Danno!

The Top Ten Type Crimes are listed at Font.com.

Another useful reference is "The Mac is Not a Typewriter" by Robin Williams.

Logo Trends 2007

Dos Helix, Radiance, Eco Smart, Urban Vinyl, Flora...

A range of new eco friendly household products?

No. These are some of the logo design style trends for 2007 as identified by The Logo Lounge.

These and other existing and emerging trends are discussed by Bill Gardner, principal of Gardner Design and creator of LogoLounge.com.

The other big trend for 2007 logos as identified by Smashing Magazine is Leaves. (The plant kind -- not the b*ggering off kind ).

There's even a tutorial on how to make one! How good is that!

The Wayward Wind

This could be A Very Useful Tip from CreativeBits if you are shooting pics with no tripod.

It suggests that blurring in hand-held photos is caused by tiny shakes of your hand basically applying a motion blur to your images, and tells you how to fix it. I guess it's worse after a night on the town or in a Wellington southerly!


Image from Wellington Airport site

The Rapid E-Learning Blog

The Rapid E-Learning Blog "shares practical tips and tricks to help you become a rapid elearning pro."

It is hosted by Tom Kuhlmann who "has over 15 years of hands-on experience in the training industry."

Copyblogger says "The blog attracted 6,312 subscribers in the 24-hour period following the launch promotion, and now has over 8,500 and counting less than a week later."

I'm checking it out as we speak.

I Link, Therefore I Am

Some excellent sites (with feeds) for designers:
Graphic Define Magazine — "Focussing on the business of running a design studio". Issue 4 is up now.

And Smashing Magazine. It is featuring an interesting article about "Data Visualisation" and links to some cool free fonts.

A List Apart has a timely article on "Staying Motivated" by Kevin Cornell.


Gratuitous photo of Mt Ngaurahoe with halo.

In the Doldrums

Much as I love being in Blondini Gang — some days I have to remind myself of this quote that I saw somewhere: "The worst day of being a designer beats the best day of being a plumber."

Call me old fashioned

The post "10 tips from an old-school designer" at Creative Bits rang a few bells with me.

I must be showing my age, but I trained and began working as a designer when we drew all our lines with a 'rapidograph', made manual colour separations, used bromides, drawing boards, Letraset, rubber cement, scalpels -- and had to do arcane calculations before having someone set our type for us.

It was slow, exacting, satisfying.

I wouldn't go back. The (mac) computer is the tool of choice now.

They took our proud Italian heritage, and named us after a ballet costume.

Well we aren't there yet in NZ, but after the final episode of the Sopranos in the US, the Design Observer has this to say: “Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos”

A good read and it doesn't give away any secrets about the ending!

Webstock Mini

Coming up on in Wellington (NZ), Webstock Mini

Featuring:

* Michael Koziarski workshopping on Ruby on Rails

* Leigh Blackall taking us on a tour of Second Life
"Come into Second Life and tour educational facilities and chat with educationalists using Second Life in their work. Then come back into your first life and discuss any thoughts ideas from the tour."

* Robert O'Callahan showing us new features in Firefox 3

Are you a typeface slut?

Michael Bierut at Design Observer writes about Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface and reasons for choosing a particular font for a particular job.

It's an interesting article, worth a look if you are into typography — and who isn't?

A Good Idea!

Here's a really good idea. I read about it in the Springwise Trends newsletter, but it's happening in good old Godzone.



Hirethings. You can hire goods, articles or services from here, or list stuff you want to make available. Excellent.

2 useful design resources

Creative Guy today has links to two useful articles for (especially) print designers.

1. At Real World Illustrator— about the importance of resolution in Illustrator. When using vector based programmes like Illustrator and FreeHand, resolution isn't always an issue, but if you are using some of the effects available in these programmes, for example, drop shadow, the programme rasterizes the image in order to create that effect. If you haven't set an adequate resolution (apparently the default in Illustrator is 72dpi) then the result can be bitmappy and fuzzy. The article outlines ways to set resolution in Illustrator, depending on effects and output required. I for one have bookmarked it.

2. At CreativePro.com there is a brief article about the importance of paper grain, implications, especially for folding, and how to use this knowledge to improve your design.

No relation

Cool name, but. . .
Check out their programme here:
www.deluxe.co.nz

I took it

Web design survey at A List Apart.

Bizarre airline food

On a Good Friday flight from Wellington to Auckland, we were served "Easter Bunny Donuts"!

But never fear, animal lovers — most were unharmed in the eating process (give or take the odd ear or tail).

Drooger!

Was looking forward to attending the "Designers Speak" session at the New Dowse next Wednesday. It is organised by the Designers' Institute of New Zealand and will be feature Dutch designer Dutch designer Gert Jan Leusink talking about the "Inspiration behind Droog Design and its international success."

It's a great opportunity, particularly as most of the DINZ events are held in Auckland. DINZ events in Wellington are few and far between. But unfortunately, I have a prior engagement so will miss it. I'm going to see the Droog exhibition at the Dowse tomorrow, though. So that's some compensation.

PS. I think the new Dowse colours & graphic image are v cool.

It worked for me

Sign outside Caffiend in Petone today. It's nearly as good as Eva Dixon's "All you can eat for as much as it costs."



& cool outfit inside.

Back in the real world

Back from an arduous time in the Deep South.

Saved by the Vodem. It is great to be online anywhere you like and makes it easy to keep in touch with clients while on the road.

Contrary to popular belief, the weather was great down there, except for a torrential downpour on the last day. It's a beautiful part of the country though, and it was great to go out to Oreti Beach again, and to Riverton (even in the wet).

Going Down (South)

I'll be on the road from tomorrow. Down to the Deep South on Family Business. I'll be taking my macbook, and (hopefully) a vodem modem so I can be online while away.



(All this assumes 3G coverage has reached Invercargill (just joking — I've checked the Vodafone map).)

Logo trends

Check out the logo design trends for 2006 over at the Logo Lounge.

You can also see if/how times and ideas change by comparing the trends with those from 2003–2005 there.

Power dressing

Escape from Cubicle Nation talks about what you wear when you work from home.

They are promoting "Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day" and running a competition where you send in a pic of you working in your bathrobe.

I don't think so!

One of the things I hated about working from home was that you didn't have to get dressed! Suburban neurosis, here I come.

I'm so pleased to be back in my own little office in Petone, sharing a space with the two Jims.

Anyway Happy New Year. great to be back.