Creative Community Bulletin 9 October 2013

Great con­tent found by Pariah and shared to the design and cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties on social media.

  • How agile think­ing leads to bet­ter branding

    Simon Ward, chief exec­u­tive of brand con­sul­tan­cy Holmes & Marchant explains why an agile approach is as impor­tant for brand­ing as it is for development

  • The Ultimate Guide to Flat Design

    So are you ready to try it out as well? Not sure how to get start­ed? WebdesignerDepot is here to help with a guide of flat design resources. We’ve put togeth­er a giant list of every­thing flat design, from free UI kits to col­or palettes to typog­ra­phy options.
    If you want to test the flat design waters or swim out a lit­tle deep­er, we have every­thing you need to get start­ed, from ready-made tools to tuto­ri­als for the do-it-yourselfer.”

  • The Worst Photoshop Disasters. Part 2 (40 pics)
    “The aver­age Photoshop user can be excused for mak­ing mis­takes when try­ing to Photoshop an image, but com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions with expe­ri­enced users can­not. See anoth­er install­ment of the most embar­rass­ing Photoshop blunders.”
  • How Schools Kill Creativity, Ken Robinson TED Video
    “Sir Ken Robinson makes an enter­tain­ing and pro­found­ly mov­ing case for cre­at­ing an edu­ca­tion sys­tem that nur­tures (rather than under­mines) creativity.”
  • How to Make Your Monitor Display Colours Accurately
    “Read this sim­ple guide to set­ting up colour man­age­ment on your monitor.”
  • The Paperless Book

    I have been hes­i­tant to call “Every Book Is A Startup” a book because of the expec­ta­tions peo­ple hold for a book: a fin­ished work, writ­ten from a posi­tion of sin­gu­lar author­i­ty, avail­able in some way in a phys­i­cal form. What I nev­er expect­ed was how strong­ly the qual­i­ties of a book would be brought for­ward from the phys­i­cal to the dig­i­tal. Digital books have been designed to car­ry for­ward the same atom­ic qual­i­ty of immutabil­i­ty of phys­i­cal books. As I reached out to my col­leagues work­ing in the world of eBooks, the con­sen­sus was that no one had con­sid­ered a real­i­ty in which an author, giv­en the abil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute direct­ly and vir­tu­al­ly cost free, would con­sid­er updat­ing their work and the con­se­quences that might have.”

  • Eye-Catching Mobile App Interfaces with Sleek Gradient Effect

    A present-day’s dom­i­nant trend is a smooth and gen­tle neon-like gra­di­ent that is usu­al­ly paired with a light, almost lumi­nous, text and sim­ple, easy-to-understand glyphs that are reg­u­lar­ly bol­stered by low opac­i­ty lay­ers. Such an exquis­ite com­bi­na­tion nat­u­ral­ly adds a note of refine­ment and sub­tle­ty to any UI.

  • Why Microsoft Is in it for the Long Haul With Surface
    “Even if Surface gets vast­ly bet­ter, out­shin­ing Apple and Google’s Android is unlike­ly. The best that Microsoft can hope for in the near future is to be a strong No. 3 in tablets. “It’s still going to be tough,” says Milanesi, “though the marke…
  • Inspiration: Digital Art by Oliver Wetter

    Born in March 1978, in Trier, Germany, Oliver Wetter of Fantabulous Visions has paint­ed any­thing and every­thing pos­si­ble. He spe­cial­izes in cov­er art­works for edi­to­ri­als, book cov­er art, mag­a­zines, con­cept & genre art, prefer­ably fig­ure and por­trait relat­ed. As usu­al, you may look for­ward over 40 qual­i­ty and inspir­ing art­works. Enjoy!”

  • Design: Seeing Without Thinking — Visual Perception and Pattern Detection for Designers
    “One of the most potent ques­tions design­ers should be ask­ing them­selves in the cre­ative process is:

    What jumps out?”

  • 30 Creative Advertising Examples
    “Advertising is very good mean of inter­act­ing with the pub­lic. First impres­sion for any ad impor­tant. Make it dif­fer­ent, make it cre­ative are two main fun­das of adver­tis­ing. For any kind of ads whether tele­vi­sion ads or print mar­ket ads, if the…
  • The Myth of the Brainstorming Session

    From my expe­ri­ence work­ing at an agency, as a design­er, and at ooomf, com­ing up with ideas from a sin­gle brain­storm­ing ses­sion like this one is usu­al­ly not the most effec­tive way. Many peo­ple I’ve come across, includ­ing the most cre­ative ones, need indi­vid­ual time to let ideas mar­i­nate before the best con­cept reveals itself (even if it’s some­thing that seems as sim­ple as nam­ing a website).”

  • How to Whiten Teeth and Eyes in Photoshop (And Why You Always Should) by Pariah Burke
    Unfortunately, teeth in pho­tographs often ren­der as less than pure white due to a com­bi­na­tion of light­ing, the shad­ows cast by lips, the refrac­to­ry prop­er­ties of den­tal enam­el, and the fact that the raw teeth beneath the enam­el are ivory rather…
  • The real fig­ures behind alarmist UK children’s read­ing reports

    The Bowker survey’s base­line find­ings were that the children’s book mar­ket is very sta­ble; changes are incre­men­tal, not expo­nen­tial; and that kids are omniv­o­rous media con­sumers. As of January-February 2013, the sur­vey showed a 12 per­cent increase in ebook pur­chase of children’s books, and an 8 per­cent slide in hard­cov­er pur­chas­es, but even though this is the high­est share for ebooks since ear­ly 2011 at 23 per­cent over­all, it looks like grad­ual change more than any need for cri­sis talk. For one thing, the impor­tance placed on print books has remained fair­ly con­stant since 2011, and oth­er media, with the sin­gle excep­tion of mobile apps, have all declined. And the pro­por­tion of par­ents who pre­fer their kids to read in print has remained pret­ty con­stant too, at almost 70 percent.”

  • John Nack: AppSeed Turns Sketches into HTML, PSDs, Integrates with Photoshop

    Lean start­up method­ol­o­gy strong­ly empha­sizes paper pro­to­types: What’s the sim­plest, fastest, lowest-cost thing you could do to increase learn­ing & decrease risk? To that end, AppSeed aims to let you sketch on paper, then turn the results into func­tion­ing, HTML-based app prototypes:”

  • 10 Wildly-Unconventional Web Designs

    There’s a big dif­fer­ence between fol­low­ing best prac­tices and fol­low­ing con­ven­tions. Best prac­tices align your design work with busi­ness and brand­ing goals while still allow­ing for dis­tinc­tive­ness and cre­ativ­i­ty. Following con­ven­tions, how­ev­er, often yields ordi­nary results that fail to pro­vide unique appeal — the designer’s main responsibility.”