Are you a designer, architect, photogapher, set designer, artist, student or ‘creative’? Jannelli & Volpi is currently running a Wall Paper Design Contest that you should definitely check out. Create a design for a wall decoration: a key element of in the interior of a hotel room or suite in a bed and breakfast.

Register here

The Wall Street Journal is throwing their hat into the user-generated content ring with the relaunch of their “creative leaders” ad campaign, a series of meta-interviews in the weekend “Pursuits” section that get advertising creatives to talk about advertising, to promote the sale of ad space in the WSJ, and specifically the weekend edition. Originally launched in 1975, the campaign has featured advertising industry heavies such as Jerry Della Femina and Phil Dusenberry. They have relaunched featuring advertising wunderkind Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky ( cpbgroup.com), the agency known for such ad campaigns as Coke Zero and Subservient Chicken, as well as their own line of gear, including trucker hats that say “ironic” on them. (more…)

Have you met Otto? Otto is a robot inside your Mac (OS X Tiger and above), and you may have ignored him up until now. OK, Otto’s not really a robot, but he’s the mascot for Automator—a program that (as you may have guessed) automates tasks for you. In its simple drag-and-drop interface, you can create “workflows” that run strings of common tasks in your favorite Mac software like Mail, Preview, and iTunes.

There are sample workflows built in that you can try, or just take a sec to create a new one (File > New) and drag and drop a series of commands. For example, you could get a series of images in your Finder, flip and scale them in Preview, and send them to iPhoto for import to your library. Press Run, and a few seconds later, the workflow is done.

The downside is that by default it only can create workflows for your Mac software, when the reality is that the tasks you’d want to automate most are elsewhere, like Photoshop. Enter the Photoshop Automator Action Pack, from Ben Long at Complete Digital Photography.

Last week saw the release of… (more…)

Our friends at the Freelancers Union, the independent workforce advocate non-profit founded by Sara Horowitz, is making group insurance plans available to self-employed workers in 31 states starting June 1. Check their site for details.

Many, if not most, freelance designers work from home to save on overhead costs. Even designers who work for agencies or larger companies may get the option to work remotely. If you tell someone you work from home, you typically get the response, “You get to hang out in your pajamas all day!” Or occasionally, “Wow, I could never be disciplined enough for that.”

Discipline can be tough when you’re working from home, but there are some ways you can make it a pleasant and productive experience. And it all starts with your pajamas… (more…)

An exhibition of work by Artemio Rodríguez. Featuring prints, illustrated books, skateboard decks, short animated films

Last Friday, I attended the grand re-opening of La Mano Press, an artist-run printmaking collective in the arts district of downtown Los Angeles. The night featured the travelling print exhibition, ‘Graphic Reality: Mexican Printmaking Today,’ curated by La Mano frontman Artemio Rodriguez, as well as a selection of prints, illustrations, skateboard decks and short films by Rodriguez himself collected under the name ‘Print Bites.’ Best of all was the unveiling of the customized 1968 Impala dubbed ‘Muerto Rider,’ emblazoned with black and white woodcut-style graphics and the bearing the rallying cry ‘We are the defenders of the Cheeseburger’ along the side door.

Muerto Rider Translation: Dead Rider. A customized 1968 Impala

‘Graphic Reality’ debuted at the International Print Center New York’s (IPCNY) gallery space in Chelsea last November. Rodriguez claims that the criteria for artist participation were both medium—all of the artists are primarily printmakers, not conceptual artists dabbling in the method—and age. Bringing together a relatively young group of artists (born between 1962 and 1981) gives the collected work a fresh, unified generational context, while also setting into relief the anachronism of young artists deliberately choosing to produce work in such highly traditional methods. For example, LA native Rogelio Gutierrez, the youngest exhibitor, creates litho portraits with stone instead of metal whenever possible. Jiving with the intentions of a studio dedicated to spreading awareness of traditional printmaking, the exhibition focused on themes of continuity and historical awareness through method, despite the highly varied personal inquiries of each piece of work. (more…)

In my recent post about the most exciting new features in Adobe Creative Suite 3, I mentioned Spry for Ajax, found in Dreamweaver. If you’re attuned to Web buzzwords, you might have found this intriguing… or you might have just glazed over it because, truthfully, it sounds scary. But, in fact, the Spry framework for Ajax exists to make complex things less scary for Web designers.

Quickly defined, Ajax is a method for creating dynamic Web features, and stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It’s become one of the hottest things in Web design because a page doesn’t need to reload for the dynamic interactivity to work—this means things happen more quickly, always a plus on the Web. Spry is Adobe’s special “framework” that allows you to create Ajax features in Dreamweaver without having to learn all the code behind it.

OK, great. So what does it do? Built into Dreamweaver CS3 are assorted Spry “widgets” that you can click to add to your page. These include form validation features and XML data features (snore), but my favorites are the interface widgets.

Thirteen Spry widgets are found in the Insert bar.

The interface widgets allow you to create complex navigation menus, tabbed interfaces, accordion-style interfaces, and collapsible panels. These let you (more…)

You’ve redone your homepage, chosen artwork you’d like to show, and decided how you’d like to display it. Now comes the grunt work – getting it all done.

Coding it yourself
In a perfect world, you would code everything on your site yourself. It’s frustrating at times, but ultimately very satisfying when you can tell a prospective employer that you did everything they see on your site.

Look at other sites for inspiration. If you like how a site looks, study the code to see how they did something, but don’t steal it! (You wouldn’t want someone stealing your work to use on their site, right? Same thing.) A little research can show you different ideas you might never have thought of and may start you off on a new and exciting approach to your portfolio.

Don’t be afraid to use Google – type in (more…)

Stock Image? Indeed.

In a recent article on Designobserver.com, Jesse Nivens makes a great point about stock photography: since it’s predicated on a standard business model of supply and demand, it provides images that reflect the dominant worldview in order to sell. For Nivens, this meant a dirth of images portraying overweight individuals (let’s say ‘fat’, unfortunately it produces more results in a search engine), even though the reality is that contemporary American society could stand to lose a few. Others joined in and bemoaned the lack of visibility when it came to finding a range of visually marginalized groups such as wheelchair-users, the unattractive, and the non-tan (British). Apparently, these images aren’t as needed in the world of stock photography because they aren’t aspirational enough to sell products. Trust me, though—plenty of British people buy things all the time. I’ve lived there.

Limited subject matter isn’t the only thing that frustrates designers about stock photography. The design community has had to become adept at using stock footage in lieu of original commissions because of deadline and budget constraints. Considering the pace of advertising and image projection today, both online and in print, the proliferation of stock photography isn’t really a mystery—it allows anyone to acquire decent photos on almost every topic for about $100, all in the time it takes to use a search engine and right-click your mouse. (more…)

“2 is the new 1.” What I mean is that because we get so much email and voice mail, I’ve noticed that even my good friends and clients often don’t respond unless I ping them a second time. That’s how they know I really want to talk to them.

Just one more reason not to be discouraged by a bit of silence from clients. It simply means that you have to shift your expectations to the right a bit. When it comes to prospects who don’t know you well, don’t even expect a response to your first outreach. Plan your strategy to include a second outreach a day or two later. And if by chance someone does respond to your first effort, imagine your delight!

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