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).