Confessions of a Designer

5 Things You Can Learn From My Mistakes

So, I've got some confessions to make. I've screwed up.

Once.

Ok … maybe a few times.

I'll be the first to say that in every career a little rain must fall. Though I've seen my share of stormy days, I haven't yet found myself slipping on scuba gear to wade in the waters. Thankfully, it's not the mistake that defines the designer … rather, it's how resilient they are and how they can help others avoid following their misguided footsteps.

Every designer has a horror story to tell, though I'm glad I've never been on the business-end of an unintentional reply all sent to a client -- one of the more colorful variety. However, I'm not immune to taking the odd misstep. Read More>>

Green-minded font uses less ink

Eco-conscious consumers can now download a free font that uses up
to 20 percent less ink than traditional fonts, thus reducing consumption
of ink cartridges and toner. Read More>>

Hands playing a Wurlitzer organApple rolls out star-studded music tutorials

Apple has added Artist Lessons to its popular GarageBand application,
with tutorials by performers such as Sting, Norah Jones and Sarah
McLachlan. Read More>>

Story Behind the Photo

Story behind the Photo is an ongoing series that highlights a unique story behind a photo or image created by a Shutterstock submitter. This month’s featured story comes from Laurin Rinder. Laurin has been a commercial and freelance photographer for over 40 years, having run a photo studio in Laguna Beach, where he photographed album covers, models for the Eileen Ford agency, and product and catalog work for magazines and worldwide antique dealers. He recently co-authored the Beginner’s Guide to Micro Stock Photography. You can view his gallery here. Read More>>

Book lending made convient

You know a model is a good one when it gets copied far and wide, and one of the best examples today is Netflix. We've recently written about the Netflix model being applied to toys and textbooks, and now a few new contenders are applying it to popular books. Read More>>

I Should Attend These Things More Often

A Review of the Adobe CS4 Launch Tour; by Rachel Drice

The Adobe CS4 Launch Tour was held on Friday January 16, 2009 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Attendees were offered an overview of what’s new in Adobe Creative Suite 4 and I had the pleasure of attending.

At the crack of dawn (8am) registration was open and a slew of graphic designers, web designer and creative directors lined up to get in. If you were smart, like me, you preregistered and showed up at a more decent hour (9am). Read More>>

Last Chance for Professionals! ADC 88th Annual Awards Call for Entries!‏

Don't miss the professional deadline extension of January 23, 2009 and the January 30, 2009 deadline for Students. It's your chance to win a Gold Cube in the 88th Annual Awards. Enter your Advertising, Design, Interactive, Photography, Illustration and even unpublished work in Playground. There are also breakout categories, ADC Hybrid and ADC Design Sphere, and a sponsored award from Corbis! So go ahead, enter now!

Please note: Your package needs to be postmarked on or before the deadline. All payment and packages must be received by February 2, 2009 for your work to be judged in the Annual Awards.

Sneaker Vending Machine

We know that many of our readers like a good vending machine story. In the past, we've featured machines that vend everything from umbrellas to hair straighteners, but we feel we've let you down on the vending front lately.

Which is why we were happy to spot a new automated selling device in London: Onitsuka Tiger, the Japanese sports brand, launched a sneaker vending machine on Carnaby Street today. Read More>>

Seven Quick Ways to Cultivate Inspiration

When Art Is Your Passion But Also Your Business

As graphic designers, we often enter this creative field as a result of our hobbies and off-the-wall way of thinking, as opposed to the more Left Brain career fields like accounting or medicine. However, combining artistic sensibilities with the very real-world need for a paycheck can be jolting and unsettling. After all, there can be (and often is) a big difference between what “sells” and what looks good on the living room wall. The phrase “Artist for Hire” never really caught on, and with good reason. When you need to squeeze out those creative juices for a deadline, inspiration can be in short supply. Here are seven tips to keep your inspiration fresh. Read More>>

Magazine Publishing for the Masses

Whereas most online publications today (other than websites and blogs) are still presented either as PDFs or other downloadable files, Issuu's viewer features full-screen mode and vector graphics to create the online equivalent of a print magazine right from within a web browser. In addition to uploading their own PDF documents for publication, users of the site can browse the works of others and create their own personal libraries; through its community features, they can discuss and share what they see. It's like a YouTube for magazines, and the result is what Issuu calls a "living library" of the best publications on the web—readers can gain access to zines that have a very limited reach, and micro-publishers gain access to a global readership. Read More>>

Apple iTunes tracks go DRM-free

Image via CrunchBaseBeginning this week, three of the four major music labels - Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group - will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Read More>>