Creative Community Bulletin 18 September 2013

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

  • DPS Delivers Standardized Metrics to Magazine Publishers

    Adobe is excit­ed to announce that four stan­dard audi­ence metrics—as defined by the mag­a­zine industry—are now avail­able direct­ly from with­in Digital Publishing Suite.

    Adobe has been active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the DESI project—the Digital Editions Standardization Initiative—led by the MPA (the Association of Magazine Media) and sup­port­ed by a task force made up of lead­ing pub­lish­ers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy providers. This group has come togeth­er with the com­mon goal of cre­at­ing accu­rate and con­sis­tent industry-wide bench­mark­ing of dig­i­tal edi­tions for pub­lish­ers and the adver­tis­ing com­mu­ni­ty. These met­rics will allow pub­lish­ers to estab­lish even greater val­ue inher­ent to their dig­i­tal con­tent and major brands to fac­tor dig­i­tal edi­tions into their adver­tis­ing strate­gies with accel­er­at­ed confidence.”

  • 7 Useful Git Tips for Beginners (For Coders)

    Today, I can’t imag­ine life with­out Git. Git not only gave me a much-needed abil­i­ty to version-control my work, it also made me a bet­ter programmer.

    Here’s a series of sim­ple tips that will help you make Git an impor­tant part of your web devel­op­ment workflow.”

  • Script your first Adobe Generator plu­g­in for Photoshop
    “Today we have released an update to Photoshop CC that includes Adobe Generator. Read the announce­ment here.

    Adobe Generator is a Node.js based serv­er plugged into Photoshop via Kevlar API (ExtendScript). Generator is also open-sourced on GitH…

  • Elemental Photo Manipulations: Fire

    “Elemental Photo Manipulations” is a four-part series high­light­ing amaz­ing art­work com­bin­ing pho­tog­ra­phy with Photoshop in sur­re­al, mind-bending, and some­times star­tling ways. Ignite your imag­i­na­tion with this first install­ment, “Fire,” then return to CreativePro​.com every two weeks for “Earth,” “Air,” and “Water.””

  • Mesmerizing Photographs Of Stars Bursting In The Night Sky

    Recently, Harris added a new col­lec­tion to his reper­toire and it’s just as breath­tak­ing. In this series, the stars seem to erupt against a galac­tic night sky in a stun­ning pyrotech­nic display. ”

  • Studio Visit: Studio Moross (Kate Moross)
    “From vibrant illus­tra­tions to sexed-up music videos, how this London orig­i­nal tack­les the cre­ative indus­try at large”
  • Interview: Odile Decq, Maison & Objet’s Designer of the Year

    The Maison & Objet’s Designer of the Year on her rock­’n’roll atti­tude and tran­si­tion­ing from archi­tec­ture to [indus­tri­al] design”

  • Dropbox Simplifies Its Brand
    “Drew, our co-founder and CEO, cre­at­ed the first Dropbox logo­type in 2007 (yep, an engi­neer who can wield Adobe Photoshop!) And since then, our logos and brand have evolved as Dropbox has spread to more platforms.

  • The Personal and Technical Skills Web (and Other) Designers Need
    “A web design­er is a per­son that designs the web­site from scratch to an end, by con­sid­er­ing all the major require­ments and need of the client. All the major require­ments of the site like information/requirement gath­er­ing, design­ing, cod­ing, tes…
  • When To Wear Your Wonder Woman Knickers (Advice for Professional Women)
    “Every minute of every day dur­ing my Wonder Woman time is allo­cat­ed to some­thing whether it be me actu­al­ly work­ing on the orchard or orga­niz­ing some­one to pick up sup­plies and this is an impor­tant part of ensur­ing suc­cess. Bang, bang, bang, eve…
  • How to Install the Evernote Web Clipper into Safari on iOS (iPad and iPhone) #Evernote

    We will need to cre­ate a book­mark and then go back and edit the book­mark to include the JavaScript code for the Evernote book­marklet. The steps that we will be fol­low­ing are sim­i­lar to the oth­er tuto­ri­als on this web­site – only we will be insert­ing the code for Evernote.”

  • Helvetica Reimagined as a Hotel
    “Designer Albert Son has reimag­ined the Helvetica font as a hotel, cre­at­ing this beau­ti­ful brand­ing in the process”
  • The designer’s guide to mod­ern poster design

    In a pre­dom­i­nant­ly dig­i­tal world, the inter­na­tion­al poster scene is chang­ing – but found­ing edi­tor of Eye mag­a­zine Rick Poynor thinks the tra­di­tion­al poster can still pack a con­sid­er­able punch.

  • Movie Typography: The Way Way Back, Pacific Rim, Only God Forgives, Blue Jasmine

    The typo­graph­ic treat­ment reminds me of the cre­ative and taste­ful typog­ra­phy for Gone Baby Gone, as point­ed out by John D. Berry on his blog Easily Amused. Here the (ultra) con­densed styles of Univers grad­u­al­ly increase in weight with each new word, giv­ing them more flow and tex­ture. The mir­rored columns at the top – flush right for the actors and flush left for the movie title – are well-balanced. Their per­fect­ly cen­tral posi­tion cre­ates an inter­est­ing ver­ti­cal axis that fans out in Liam James’ pos­ture. This effect is enhanced by the sub­tly mir­rored loca­tion of the adult stars, even in the clothes they are wear­ing. I love posters that are far clev­er­er than they seem at first sight and reveal more and more secrets with every examination.”

  • How To Sort A List Randomly In Excel

    Have a list of names in a spread­sheet and want to sort them into a ran­dom order? There’s no native func­tion to do that in Excel, but you can achieve it with a lit­tle ran­dom num­ber gen­er­a­tion. Here’s how I do it.

    Sorting names ran­dom­ly can be use­ful (for instance if you’re assign­ing tasks or pick­ing a com­pe­ti­tion win­ner). This prob­a­bly isn’t the most sophis­ti­cat­ed way to do it, but it works. Assuming your list of names is already in Excel, fol­low these steps.”

  • How Little “Nudges” In The Supermarket Could Encourage People To Eat Better
    “Instead of man­dat­ing that peo­ple eat more healthy foods, what if our super­mar­kets were designed to sub­tly push them to mak­ing the right deci­sion themselves.”
  • The Reasons Behind the Importance We Place on Seeing Eyes During Human Interactions
    “Have you ever won­dered what it is about the eyes that make them so impor­tant in communication?”
  • Digital Publishing Awards Honors Apps and Ads Made With Abobe’s Digital Publishing Suite

    ” There’s lit­tle ques­tion the iPad will play an inte­gral role in the future of pub­lish­ing (and, in fact, it already does). Tablet own­er­ship near­ly dou­bled this year ver­sus last year, with 34 per­cent of adults own­ing one, accord­ing to Pew Research. Fueled by the device’s soar­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty, cre­atives have pushed the bound­aries of design and inno­va­tion. Adweek and Adobe rec­og­nize this pub­lish­ing rev­o­lu­tion, and this year launched the Digital Publishing Awards, hon­or­ing notable apps and ads made using Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite (which Adweek also uses to pro­duce its own iPad edi­tion) and relat­ed soft­ware. The pan­el of judges was com­prised of Josh Klenert, direc­tor of user expe­ri­ence and design at The Huffington Post; Nick Mrozowski, exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor at Adweek; Carol Wells, design direc­tor at Adweek; and Joe Zeff, pres­i­dent of Joe Zeff Design. Here’s a look at the inau­gur­al win­ners. Try not to be jealou”

  • Scrabble Introduces An Upgraded Edition Of Its Typography Set
    “Featuring 15 new fonts, this hand­some sec­ond edi­tion of Scrabble Typography will be sure to set the hearts of typog­ra­phy lovers aflut­ter with its styl­ish pack­ag­ing and great features. ”
  • An Oral History Of Apple Design: 2000
    “If there is one thing that CEO Tim Cook does­n’t want peo­ple to know, it’s what dwells behind his com­pa­ny’s “sig­na­ture.” As a result, most efforts to explain design at Apple end up reduc­ing a com­plex 37-year his­to­ry to bro­mides about simplicity…
  • Top 10 Tricks for a Healthier, High-Energy Workday
    Working at an office can be sur­pris­ing­ly unhealthy. Between sit­ting all day, eat­ing poor­ly, and endur­ing never-ending stress, your office can take a few years off your life. Here’s how to stay healthy and ener­getic at the office (and make the d…
  • Everyday Quotes Replaced With The Word ‘Design’ To Highlight Its Importance

    Highlighted in posters, these quotes are real idioms replaced with the word “design”, to give it a dif­fer­ent mean­ing that’s rel­e­vant to design. ”

  • Your Personal Brand: Give Yourself An Audit
    “If I said to you “what is the first thing you think about when I men­tion Donald Trump”, what would you say? Now do the same for Hugh Hefner? How about Miley Cyrus? Oprah?”
  • 50 Essential WordPress Plugins You Should Know
    “In this arti­cle, I have com­piled a list of WordPress plu­g­ins that WordPress users might find a use for. Instead of search­ing in the Internet jun­gle, take your pick from the list of plu­g­ins below. The plu­g­ins are free unless stat­ed otherwise.”
  • Will The Formula For Amazon’s Success Carry Over To The Washington Post?
    “JEFF BEZOS SAYS HE HAS NO QUICK FIXES FOR NEWSPAPERS, BUT HAS THREE BIG IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED PROPEL AMAZON TO SUCCESS.”
  • iPhone 5C will sell more 5S mod­els than the iPhone 5 ever would have
    “Perhaps the design of the 5C is intend­ed to push buy­ers into throw­ing down an extra $100 to get the only viably professional-looking iPhone. Under this sce­nario, the 5C exists, to an extent, to ush­er all but the most casu­al users into the arms…
  • Op-ed: How patent trolls doomed them­selves by tar­get­ing Main Street

    But that troll may have gone one step too far. This was­n’t Webtech’s first patent asser­tion letter—the com­pa­ny had received sev­en over the last two years—but this one was too much. The patent accu­sa­tions con­sumed a large amount of man­age­ment time. Also, Webtech had lost two con­tracts each worth a mil­lion dol­lars because its cus­tomers want­ed to be pro­tect­ed against patent suits. Because patent lit­i­ga­tion is so expen­sive, Webtech could not afford to indem­ni­fy them.”

  • Why Some People Have No Boundaries Online

    One is our bound­ary pref­er­ences: are we inte­gra­tors or seg­men­tors? If you’re an inte­gra­tor, you like to build bridges between your pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al lives. Integrators strive to blend their jobs with their lives out­side work—they’re eager to talk about their kids at work, don’t mind bring­ing their work home, and hap­py to share the same infor­ma­tion with col­leagues as fam­i­ly and friends.”

  • Amazon Launches Kindle Reader With Goodreads Integration
    “THE NEW KINDLE PAPERWHITE WILL ALSO INCLUDE PARENTAL CONTROLS AND FEATURES TO HELP AID STUDYING.”
  • Why I’m Finished Defending Sexism In Tech

    Despite all of this, I con­tin­ued to defened the sta­tus quo. I want­ed to just drink scotch with my guy friends and build soft­ware. I’m done now. I did­n’t want to think about gen­der issues but the alter­na­tive is tit and dick jokes at our indus­try’s most respect­ed events. ”

  • Korea Will Soon Be Home to the World’s First Invisible Skyscraper

    The vision­ar­ies behind the project, GDS Architects, will make the tow­er appear “invis­i­ble” using an LED façade sys­tem with opti­cal cam­eras to dis­play what’s direct­ly behind the build­ing. When turned on, the “reflec­tive skin” of the build­ing will give the illu­sion that Tower Infinity is blend­ing in with the skyline.”

  • Twitter Is Going Public, Files S‑1 With SEC on Thursday

    Count to 10 and let’s hope the damn thing leaks right away. We don’t know much, but expect Twitter to go pub­lic at a val­u­a­tion of between $15 bil­lion and $20 bil­lion, rough­ly. Its last pri­vate mon­ey came in at around a $10 bil­lion val­u­a­tion, and those investors will want a return on their funds.

    Facebook’s IPO, for com­par­i­son, val­ued the social giant at around $100 bil­lion on the day of its flota­tion. The irony here is that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg yes­ter­day at Disrupt told the world that it should not be afraid of going pub­lic. And today, in keep­ing with his advice, Twitter made this spe­cif­ic bit of news.”

  • What Makes a Good Gesture Control #UX #UI

    Don Norman, a renowned cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist and author of The Design of Everyday Things, would like­ly say that if most humans are not using the ges­tures on smarth­phones to their potential—and smart­phones were made to be used by humans—we should con­sid­er it a flaw in the phones’ design (because there’s very lit­tle we can do about the flaws in humans).”

  • Using Adobe tools out­side the “core” #edu #high­ered

    However, I want­ed some­thing that could be a lit­tle eas­i­er and more approach­able for a teacher new to using tech­nol­o­gy – espe­cial­ly our tech­nol­o­gy, so Steve and I decid­ed that part of our project would be to cre­ate the time­lapse using Photoshop CC video tools, which are more lim­it­ing than Première, but also much less intim­i­dat­ing for a new­com­er. We also want­ed our end result to go beyond a sin­gle appli­ca­tion or goal. We asked our­selves, what else can we do, how can we round this out, expand on that one sin­gle time­lapse and cre­ate a col­lec­tion of assets around this theme?”

  • Hashtags Make Your Facebook Posts Less Likely To Go Viral
    “THE FACEBOOK ANALYTICS FIRM EDGERANK CHECKER HAS PUBLISHED THE RESULTS OF A NEW STUDY THAT FINDS POSTS INCLUDING HASHTAGS ARE ACTUALLY LESS LIKELY TO GO VIRAL OR ENGAGE FANS THAN THEIR HASHTAG-LESS COUNTERPARTS.”
  • The evo­lu­tion of data stor­age #info­graph­ic
    “The evo­lu­tion of data stor­age #info­grafia #info­graph­ic”
  • 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web
    “These sev­en ser­vices search the avail­abil­i­ty of your user­name on mul­ti­ple sites at the same time, and many also offer the option to cre­ate your pro­file on each of the sites they search for a fee. If you’re aim­ing to uni­fy your per­son­al or bran…
  • How to Choose an eCommerce Payment Gateway

    To be in busi­ness, you must sell things. To sell things, mon­ey must change hands. For mon­ey to change hands, you need a way of accept­ing payments.
    That’s what a pay­ment gate­way is for. A pay­ment gate­way allows you to:”