Pariah Burke Consulting & Training with Creative & Publishing Workflow Expert Pariah S. Burke | Informing & Empowering Creative Professionals™

These are the arti­cles, blogs, and resources I found inter­est­ing and wor­thy of shar­ing for 06 June 2009 through 10 June 2009:

• 5 Rotten Things No One Else Has Told You About the Clients You’ll Work For — In over 10 years of free­lanc­ing I’ve had the for­tune, and some­times mis­for­tune, of work­ing with some unusual clients.While each client is a unique indi­vid­ual, I’ve found that many char­ac­ter­is­tics and behav­iors are sim­i­lar from client to client.Most of my clients are typ­i­cally small busi­ness own­ers in the US.If you are work­ing with a different […]
• How to Make the Web Work for Your Business in 5 Steps — I know every­one is look­ing for places where they can get more cus­tomers, so I’m going to tell a story. Let’s call this the tale of two friends.
• Five Common Client Phrases Decoded — It may be easy for two design pro­fes­sion­als to dis­cuss hier­ar­chy and lay­out, but it can be very frus­trat­ing for a client. During my expe­ri­ence, I’ve noticed a few pat­terns when it comes to client feed­back and the phrases they choose when try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate. Below are five com­mon remarks I’ve picked up on and have trans­lated into designer-speak.
• How To Make Potential Customers Pick You Over ‘The Other Guys’ — Workflow: Freelance — Worldwide, indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies are tight­en­ing their belts. They are approach­ing new pur­chases cau­tiously — in many cases delay­ing, or even avoid­ing, new expenses.Consumers and busi­ness buy­ers alike are look­ing to get max­i­mum value for their dol­lar. The burn­ing ques­tion at the back of every buyer’s mind is:Why should I buy some­thing from you instead
• James Cameron To Direct Heavy Metal — We’ve known for awhile now that some of Hollywood’s most pow­er­ful genre direc­tors are col­lec­tively work­ing on a new Heavy Metal movie, though when or how it might hap­pen has remained well hid­den. Well add another name to the Heavy Metal direc­tor list, which already included David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, Zack Snyder, and Kevin Eastmen. Now James Cameron is get­ting involved.
• Team Workflow: Working with a Designer — As a devel­oper, work­ing with a designer can be chal­leng­ing. It doesn’t mean we can’t inter­act socially, it’s just that we don’t think at all the same way about a prod­uct and how to fur­ther it. The designer I cur­rently work with has an artist’s back­ground. His weapon of choice is a paint­brush, and Photoshop […]
• Rapid Prototyping Tools and Principles — Dan Harrelson from Adaptive Path has writ­ten a very inter­est­ing blog post titled Rapid Prototyping Tools and what makes good prototypes. My long time favorite Adobe Fireworks is men­tionned along with Axure RP Pro (which is a newer tool in my arsenal) but also sev­eral oth­ers includ­ing online tools like Balsamiq Mockups. What is most inter­est­ing to me in the post is the first part before he lists the tools and where he explains the prin­ci­ples of good pro­to­typ­ing and why it should be done in the first place. For me, this comes fol­low­ing a very well received pre­sen­taion at the IA Summint 2009 from Fred — Scouring the Web 24/7 for the best cre­ative pro news and how-to so you don’t have to. — Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, InCopy, QuarkXPress, and Acrobat tuto­ri­als, tips, tricks, arti­cles, news, and reviews
• MacBook Gestures to Control Photoshop CS4 — Photoshop CS4 can detect when you use more than one fin­ger on the track­pad of the newest Apple MacBook lap­tops. Pinching your fin­gers together will cause you to zoom out on the active image. Starting with your fin­gers together and then spread­ing them apart will zoom in on the image. Dragging with two fin­gers held […] — Scouring the Web 24/7 for the best cre­ative pro news and how-to so you don’t have to. — Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, InCopy, QuarkXPress, and Acrobat tuto­ri­als, tips, tricks, arti­cles, news, and reviews
• Color Theory 101, Part 1 | Planet Photoshop —
• Twitter to Launch Verified Accounts — It looks like a law­suit was the final push TwitterTwitter reviews needed to announce a ver­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram to thwart celebrity imper­son­ators on Twitter.
• InCopy NEVER Gets Respect, Even in Adobe’s Own Ads! #Photoshop #Fail —
• Preparing and Talking About Your Graphic Design Portfolio — As a graphic designer a port­fo­lio is essen­tial. While it’s great to have an online one, it’s also a good idea to have a phys­i­cal one too to take along to meet­ings and interviews.

  Putting together and show­ing this kind of port­fo­lio of your graphic design work is quite a skill, and the best way to do it gets debated con­stantly by design­ers around the world. There is no right way of doing it – there will always be dif­fer­ences in what employ­ers or clients expect, or would like to see. Some sim­ple logic and advice will help you though, and I’m going to share what I have learned both from expe­ri­ence and from read­ing other articles.

• Teach Yourself Graphic Design: A Self-Study Course Outline — May 20th in Inspiration by Sean Hodge

  Fortunately, it isn’t required to go to design school in order to be a graphic designer. A good foun­da­tion in graphic design his­tory, the­ory, and prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion will help you hit the ground run­ning. There are plenty of resources avail­able in which you can learn graphic design on your own. Don’t set your expec­ta­tions to high at first, as it will take enthu­si­as­tic study for years to become great. You can do it though!

  If you would like to learn graphic design from the ground up, through self directed study, then this arti­cle lists some great resources that will get you started with your design edu­ca­tion. Also, even if you do go to design school, at least three-fifths of your edu­ca­tion will be through self directed study any­way. Let’s get to it!