Creative Community Bulletin 06 June 2009 Through 10 June 2009

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!