Creative Community Bulletin 27 February 2010 Through 04 March 2010

These are the arti­cles, blogs, and resources I found inter­est­ing and wor­thy of shar­ing for 27 February 2010 through 04 March 2010:

  • Use short­cuts with Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh | Macworld – Successfully work­ing with a gra­di­ent mesh is much more involved than just using the Gradient Mesh tool. It involves the Direct Selection tool, the Eyedropper tool, the Lasso tool, and oth­ers. Depending on where you click and when, each of these tools can exhib­it mul­ti­ple, some­times con­flict­ing behav­iors. The fol­low­ing short guide gives you a quick ref­er­ence to com­mon tools and their key­board shortcuts.
  • Paint with Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh | Macworld – Gradient Mesh is a grid-based paint­ing tech­nique in Illustrator that enables advanced col­or­ing of vec­tor objects with smooth and mal­leable col­or tran­si­tions. If you’re rea­son­ably famil­iar with Illustrator’s Pen tool and oth­er path-drawing, selec­tion, and col­or tools, you can use the Gradient Mesh fea­ture to add real­is­tic col­or­ing, light­ing, and 3D char­ac­ter­is­tics to a flat vec­tor object. Ultimately, gra­di­ent mesh can give you the effect of photo-realistic paint­ing with all the ben­e­fits and free­dom of resolution-independent vec­tor artwork.
  • Internet Explorer 9 To Be HTML5 Compatible – Microsoft Joining The Anti-Flash Movement? – Rumors are fly­ing that the forth­com­ing ver­sion of Internet Explorer, the ninth incar­na­tion, will include strong sup­port of HTML5.

    This would be a dra­mat­ic change from Internet Explorer 8, which is not known for its HTML5 com­pli­ance for a rea­son. Thar rea­son? It has near­ly none. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing, Microsoft browsers have for time immemo­r­i­al lagged behind the mar­ket on adop­tion of the cur­rent stan­dards of the internet.

  • Make your­self an Amazing Typographic Portrait – The tuto­r­i­al is made after receiv­ing a reader’s request. As we know, typo­graph­ic por­trait art takes a huge amount of work. Here is a much sim­pler ver­sion I made, which hopes to give begin­ners an idea on how to start. This tuto­r­i­al will show how to cre­ate cus­tom brush­es and fill pat­terns. Also you will learn more about selec­tion and pos­ter­ize tool.
  • How to Kill the Design Community | Webdesigner Depot – I hope this arti­cle has pro­vid­ed plen­ty of use­ful tips that will help all of us to pre­vent the com­mu­ni­ty from mov­ing for­ward and being saved.
  • The Digital Asset Management Market – For those Replacing Version Cue – Digital asset man­age­ment (DAM) sys­tems allow orga­ni­za­tions to cen­tral­ly orga­nize and quick­ly locate their dig­i­tal assets such as images, doc­u­ments, videos, pre­sen­ta­tions, and oth­er cre­ative files. Added ben­e­fits of DAM include: sim­ple work­flow enhance­ments, easy dis­tri­b­u­tion and secure pro­tec­tion of large amounts of dig­i­tal assets.
  • Adobe Stops Development on Version Cue, No CS5 Version – CreativePro​.com: Will cur­rent Version Cue users have to buy anoth­er asset man­age­ment sys­tem to replace Version Cue?

    Adobe: Current Version Cue users will either have to buy a com­mer­cial asset man­age­ment sys­tem or choose to use an open source or ‘com­mu­ni­ty’ edi­tion prod­uct depend­ing on spe­cif­ic require­ments. The tim­ing of this pur­chase and migra­tion to this sys­tem is up to the cus­tomer, though Adobe would rec­om­mend com­plet­ing this tran­si­tion before it dis­con­tin­ues sup­port for Version Cue Server CS4.

  • Free For All: Web Design Resources – These free­bies are for all stages of Web site cre­ation, from sketch­es through wire­frames to check­ing for cross-browser compatibility.
  • New $20 Font of Ampersands Benefits Victims of Haiti Earthquake – The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) is proud to announce the release of “Coming Together”, a font cre­at­ed exclu­sive­ly for Font Aid IV to ben­e­fit the vic­tims of the recent earth­quake in Haiti. The font con­sists entire­ly of amper­sands, to rep­re­sent the idea of peo­ple com­ing togeth­er to help one anoth­er. Type design­ers, graph­ic design­ers, and oth­er artists from around the world con­tributed art­work to the font.
  • Some words whose mean­ings have changed with­out con­tro­ver­sy – As soon as you have the per­cep­tion that a new mean­ing is edg­ing the old one out, pre­scrip­tivists see it as a bat­tle­ground for the lan­guage, and lift their skin­ny fists like anten­nas to heav­en, cry­ing out for some­one to aid them in their quest to return the word to its orig­i­nal, unsul­lied state.