Let me begin with this caveat: I am not a photographer, and I have a feeling that some pros will be appalled by my suggestions!

Graphic designers are often asked to do a little photography work. Small website clients especially like to make such requests because “real” photo work simply isn’t feasible given their budgets.

For several years, I ran an online shop. I did all of the photography myself, for better or worse. It saved me time and money, and after much trial and error, I learned a few things. Here are a some tips that you can use for almost any small product shot job:

1) White posterboard is your friend. It’s cheap and flexible and provides a perfect backdrop. Curve it up when you need a seamless surface below and behind a large object, or lay it flat on a table when shooting a product from above.

A curved piece of posterboard propped against a wall creates a seamless, wrinkle-free backdrop that’s easy to both put up and take down.

2) Avoid colors and patterns. Unless your product calls for a specific background color (for example, a silver piece that would look great on black velvet), use solid white. (more…)

I received HOW’s Business Annual a few days ago. It’s loaded with great material, including the results of a poll that asks, “…do you hope to start a business someday?” The poll made me think about starting my own business again (my wife always cringes when I mention this), but I think I have a good argument for both starting a design business and staying put at your current job. It really comes down to where you are in life and how you balance risks vs. rewards.

I am a completely different person now than I was when I started my own business almost twenty years ago. Back then, I was single and simply couldn’t stomach a nine to five job, especially a corporate one. I spent several years working in ad agencies and design shops, but I never lingered longer than 3 years. I was passionate about working for myself and labored full-time only to gain experience and contacts. When I finally decided to leave my agency job and set out on my own, I was taking a great risk. I had no clients, only a few contacts, and was borrowing money to get started. However, I simply had to do it because I was not happy working a nine to five job.

I would not recommend this approach to others, but it worked well for me. My first client was a large New England bank, and I paid off my loan in three months. I then acquired a few book publishing accounts and actually turned a profit in my first year. The rewards far outweighed the risks at that time in my life. (more…)

Some time ago, I wrote about Communication Arts—an ultra-professional graphic design magazine that’s a great source of inspiration. Computer Arts, the topic of today’s post, is often confused with Communication Arts, probably because the two magazines have very similar names. Computer Arts is however something very different, though no less inspiring.

UK-based Computer Arts produces several monthly magazines: Computer Arts, Computer Arts Projects, 3D World, and MacFormat. The last two are highly specialized, but the first two are incredibly useful to digital artists and designers of all sorts.

Computer Arts Projects covers a different theme in-depth every month.

Computer Arts is geared towards digital artists and illustrators. It always includes great tutorials, product reviews, artist profiles, and a CD-ROM full of software and other goodies. Computer Arts Projects is quite similar, but as the name suggests, it’s slightly more instructional in nature. Also, each issue of Computer Arts Projects is built around a specific theme.

I just picked up the “Create Perfect Characters” issue of Computer Arts Projects. It explores many areas of character artistry, everything from development to animating in Flash and After Effects, designing in 3D software, even sewing a plush character. To be honest, (more…)

DESIGN 21: Social Design Network has announced a new competition in partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI) and Media Communications Association International’s New York Chapter (MCA-I NY). The design competition, which is open to all who register for free on the DESIGN 21 website, challenges designers to create an official logo for “Stories from the Field: The United Nations Documentary Film Festival,” presented by MCA-I NY, UNDPI and The New School.

All designs must be submitted online at www.design21sdn.com by November 26, 2007 at 11:59pm UTC. All logos must include an original icon that represents the film festival’s mission as well as the name of the festival. The winning logo is worth $5,000.

More information about the competition can be found here.

Layer Tennis is a series of live design events hosted by Coudal Partners and presented by Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Two artists (or two small teams of artists) swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist or team gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley.” Each volley is posted to the Layer Tennis site. A third participant provides play-by-play commentary on the action, as it happens. Observers can follow it all on the web. There are ten volleys, and when the match is complete, everyone with an opinion sounds off in the forums and a winner is declared.

Matches take place on Fridays at 2PM CST. You can learn more or watch a match here.

In Part 1 of this post, I extolled the virtues of Google Analytics and walked you through the set-up process. Today, I’ll show you how to view some simple statistics.

Viewing Your Data

Since you’ve already copied Google’s code to your pages, you’re ready to start tracking your sites. Go to the Google Analytics home page, and make sure that it’s receiving data from all your sites. That way you’ll know that Google Analytics is getting the information it needs.

Once the data is flowing, view the reports for any site, and you’ll see the relevant data. Google doesn’t just dump a bunch of numbers into a web page. Instead, it presents the information in graphs and even maps, so it’s very easy to understand.

The default dashboard is a great place to start. It graphs your traffic over time and tells you how long visitors are staying on your site. The default dashboard also shows you where your visitors are coming from, and what pages are most popular.

Google has a great help center, so if you have a question (for example, what is a bounce rate?), go ahead and click on the Help link in the upper right-hand corner. (more…)

Just recently, I was thinking about Netscape and how huge it was years ago. It was once one of the most popular browsers, and web designers everywhere made sure their sites were compatible with it. Today, Netscape is barely a blip on the radar. Can the release of Navigator 9 change that? Let’s find out.

Will this familiar icon ever return to a prominent place on your desktop?

On the surface, this seems like an exciting update, with some features that will make the browsing experience more pleasant. The first new attribute worth noting is the URL correction, which recognizes common typos such as “.cmo” and “.ogr”. When Navigator 9 identifies one of these common errors, it asks you if you meant to type something else. I’ve often wished that Safari and Firefox had this functionality. Another new and noteworthy feature is (more…)

The Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament is a live design competition, and it’s coming to your neighborhood. Contestants will have 15 minutes to create a design in front of a live audience. As they design, their in-progress works will be projected in real time throughout the venue.

The contestant search is going on now. Buy tickets and learn more about Cut&Paste here.

Google is a well-known and well-respected search engine. So much so in fact, that its name is synonymous with web search. But that’s not all that Google does. The company also offers a host of free services that every webmaster and web designer should know about.

One of the best of these offerings is Google Analytics, a free service that both records visitor data and helps you make sense of the information. Collectively, these processes are called web analytics.

But what do that really mean? Basically, it’s about analyzing where your users go and what they do on your website. It’s essentially the marketing side of web design. Many books on the subject will dive right into issues such as how to set up campaign specific landing pages or conduct a-b testing, but even a small site stands to gain from something as simple as the tracking of visitors.

With Google Analytics, (more…)

Those of you who enjoy photography and who browse photo-sharing sites like Flickr have probably come across the word “Holga.” I noticed that a lot of interesting photos are tagged with the term, so I poked around to see what it meant.

I discovered that a Holga is a type of film camera originally produced in China during the 1980s. With poorly-made plastic bodies, plastic lenses, and dinky price tags (less than $100 for a camera and accessories), Holgas are essentially toys, so you may wonder why so many photographers are using them.

Snag your own Holga at shop.lomography.com.

The reason is regression, or maybe rebellion. Photos taken with a Holga are extremely “lo-fi,” so they’re unlike the slick, sharp, and polished photos most people take today. (more…)