The Animation palette feels right at home in Photoshop.

With Adobe’s release of the CS3 lineup came the abrupt loss of ImageReady, possibly leaving you feeling a bit jilted. Prior to CS3, ImageReady came bundled with Photoshop, and contained loads of Web-focused graphics tools for creating animated GIFs, rollovers, image maps, and more.

Photoshop CS3 has taken on some of the duties of ImageReady, but Adobe hopes you’ll pick up Fireworks to handle major Web graphics creation. Fireworks is truly the best program out there for the job, but if you just shelled out a lot of cash for Photoshop you may be better off finding some workarounds for now.

Let’s take a look at where to find some of the main ImageReady tasks in Photoshop, and which ones you should stop looking for because they’re just not there. (more…)

Clear short spurts of time everyday for marketing

There’s no “good” time to do marketing. So if you’re really busy and you’re waiting for a slow period, you can stop waiting right now. By the time things get slow, it will be too late: that’s the essence of feast or famine.

The cruel truth is that fitting in marketing when you’re busy is essential because it’s not something you do only when you’re slow. You will eventually have to figure out how to fit it into a very busy life, so why not start when it’s busy?

This is an issue I’ve been addressing with many Marketing Mentor clients recently, so here are a few of the solutions we’ve come up with: (more…)

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, the head of the Graduate Program in Graphic Design at Yale since 1990, is also a practicing designer, public artist and Feminist.

In 1971, de Bretteville founded the Woman’s Design program at Cal Arts, and later co-founded the historic public space ‘The Woman’s Building’ with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven 1973, and the Communication Design program at the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design in LA in 1981. Her many public works reflect a deep commitment to social activism through the engagement of community voices and respect for collected local memories. In 2004, she was awarded an AIGA medal for outstanding contribution to the field of design. (more…)

Ford Blue Oval Scholars is a national Web-based initiative that aims to provide Ford Motor Company Fund scholarship winners with a place to network and share information with each other, learn about internships and jobs, plan and implement community service activities, and access information about careers. They are now launching a national contest open to both amateur and professional designers between the ages of 18-28.

The winning logo will be used as the official logo on the website and in all materials related to Ford Blue Oval Scholars.

First prize: Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Software.

Deadline: October 1, 2007

DETAILS

Most professional designers aren’t all that familiar with Corel’s line of imaging software since Adobe products tend to be industry standard. But when it comes to replicating natural painting techniques digitally, Corel has always had a leg up with its Painter application. 2007’s release of Painter X is extremely powerful, simulating the look and feel of real painting with tons of digital brushes and textures. Granted, this isn’t something that you need to do often in design projects, but it can add new dimension to your work or broaden your repertoire. (more…)

MUJI is proud to announce the second in their series of MUJI Award International Design Competitions. The theme for 2007 is RE, which stands for the reinvention of everyday life…that’s MUJI’s greatest resource.

Designers are asked to submit projects that focus on reality, in which people are both part of the environment and whose lives create the environment.

Deadline: 7/31/2007

DETAILS:

If there is a utopic, sun dappled wonderland for nerds—the kind of place abundant with old circuit boards and sympathy for anachronistic societies—it would probably feature lots of free copies of Make magazine.

Make: technology on your time, published quarterly by O’Reilly Media (of Tim O’Reilly, champion of the open source movement and all forms of tech related publishing), offers instructions, tips, and inspiration for DIY hard and software projects. The most recent edition (Vol. 10, ‘Home Electronics’) features such compelling projects as: a Solar-Powered Bike GPS made of fully recycled parts, Mini High-Powered Laser made from an old DVD burner, a Tabletop Biosphere (sorry- ‘Shrimp Support Module’), and, phenomenally, a Brain Wave Machine (pp. 134,140, 110 and 88, respectively). (more…)

“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to write the check…”
“I was out of town and nowhere near my checkbook…”

Whether the excuses are legit or not, delayed client payments affect your bottom line. So why not offer credit card payment to your clients so you can get your money faster? It’s easier than you think. (more…)

Do you cringe whenever you see a billboard covered in Comic Sans? Or a logo designed with Arial? Do you notice every kerning misstep or poor leading choice? Sounds like you might be a type snob.

Don’t worry, there are many like you out there, and it’s not necessarily a bad quality for a designer to have. Take, for instance, the folks at Ban Comic Sans, who have made it their mission to get people to stop using this casual font in inappropriate places. (more…)

Interactive development process Guide

In my experience as an interactive art director at a strategic marketing firm, I’ve found that the best client relationships are open and collaborative, enabling a productive exchange of ideas and fostering a common pursuit of a singular goal. I have also found that creating visualization charts of my interactive development process has been a good exercise. For all the organizational benefits of having a well-defined process, it can also be viewed as a flexible framework. While I use it as the foundation of all my projects, I realize that it can always be adjusted to fit the situation.

To help my clients understand the steps I take in developing a website or Flash presentation, I have designed a communication tool to help them visualize each phase of a project. I created the “Interactive Development Process” diagram to help distill the complex projects into their essential and optional components. Below is a detailed description of each phase of the process… (more…)