Creative Community Bulletin 24 October 2013

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

  • Qualities of a Great Graphic Designer

    What makes a great design­er? Is there some secret for­mu­la? Where is that sweet 5‑step process to becom­ing a killer design­er? Well, sor­ry to be the bear­er of bad news, but there is no such for­mu­la. However, when I study and watch suc­cess­ful design­ers, I see com­mon qual­i­ties. Working at a cre­ative agency has proven to me that there are eight qual­i­ties of a great graph­ic designer.

    A great design­er is…”

  • 7 Habits of Highly Effective Media Queries

    As we all know, media queries are respon­sive design’s secret sauce. Here are some con­sid­er­a­tions for craft­ing high-quality media queries:”

  • How to Find Out If Your Flight Has In-Seat Power Outlets
    “Here’s how to find out which planes have some extra juice to give.”
  • The Benefits of Working in an Office Before Going Out on Your Own

    No mat­ter how good your idea is or how tal­ent­ed you are, don’t under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of work­ing for some­one else first.”

  • Slick Technique to Create an Invisible Watermark on Images in Photoshop 
    “I hope you don’t have to, but if you have to take the case to court, well, you have a hid­den water­mark to prove that the image is yours”
  • Do Tweets With Hashtags, Quotes, and Images Get More Retweets?
    “Zarella exam­ined a dataset of more than 1.2 mil­lion ran­dom tweets to find cor­re­la­tions between the use of non-alphanumerical char­ac­ters and the num­ber of retweets. His analy­sis found two char­ac­ters with par­tic­u­lar­ly strong cor­re­la­tions: hashta…
  • 80 Top-Quality Typography Tutorials
    “Whatever your dis­ci­pline, typog­ra­phy is an essen­tial part of design, and you can nev­er stop learn­ing about it or improv­ing your typog­ra­phy skills. To help you out, we’ve gath­ered togeth­er the most amaz­ing typog­ra­phy tuto­ri­als from around the w…
  • How to Customize Extension Icons in Google Chrome — Change Evernote Webclipper Back to Green!
    “When you install a Chrome exten­sion, it often puts an icon in your nav­i­ga­tion bar for quick access. The prob­lem is, some­times that icon can be pret­ty ugly. Here’s how to change those icons to some­thing bet­ter looking.”
  • Reading Made Awesome: The Features of Ebook Apps You Should Be Using
    “Reading books on tablets or phones is awe­some. There, I said it and I’m not tak­ing it back. While the biggest advan­tage of read­ing on a mobile device is con­ve­nience and a huge portable library, there are a ton of fea­tures that make the experie…
  • Amazing Collection Of 3D Text Effect Photoshop Tutorials
    “For cre­at­ing such stun­ning and awe­some 3D text effects almost every design­er is using Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is very pop­u­lar and com­mon­ly used soft­ware and with Adobe Photoshop design­ers can eas­i­ly gen­er­ate amaz­ing and cre­ative 3D te…
  • Say hel­lo to Hi — Real-time jour­nal­ism and storytelling
    “Craig Mod is one of those peo­ple that every­one in Tokyo seems to have heard about. From his suc­cess­ful har­ness­ing of Kickstarter to fund a new edi­tion of Art Space Tokyo to his ear­ly involve­ment with Chin Music Press and var­i­ous star­tups, and …
  • James Gilbert on Designing Solo with Others
    “James Gilbert decid­ed to make his ad hoc col­lab­o­ra­tive approach offi­cial, trans­form­ing James Gilbert Design into Studio Contents.”
  • 50 Brilliant WordPress Tutorials for All Skill Levels
    “Want to build a new web­site, or add some­thing new to your exist­ing one? Then check out these awe­some WordPress tutorials…”
  • The Secret Features of OS X Mavericks

    OS X Mavericks did­n’t exact­ly wow any­one with its adver­tised fea­ture set, but it does have some pret­ty cool hid­den fea­tures. Here are our favorites.”
  • Was iOS7 designed in Microsoft Word?!

    The com­mu­ni­ty at large has been per­plexed as to how Jony Ive — Apple’s senior vice pres­i­dent of design, who was pre­vi­ous­ly known for such sophis­ti­ca­tion and con­straint when design­ing hard­ware — man­aged to pro­duce such an ugly user interface.
    Finally, it seems like Vaclav Krejci has found the answer: he designed it in Microsoft Word!”

  • How to Create an OS X Mavericks USB Installation Drive
    “When it’s done, you should get a mes­sage stat­ing the process is fin­ished. Now, you can restart your com­put­er, hold the Option key to access the boot menu, and select your new USB dri­ve to install a clean copy of OS X Mavericks.”
  • eBook Editing Favorite Tool Sigil is on Life Support, May Not Update #eprd­ctn
    “Sigil is not dead but it’s devel­op­ment has slowed con­sid­er­ably to the point it’s not being devel­oped very much at this point. The best way I can describe it is Sigil is on life support.”
  • The Real Reason Why Sleep Deprivation Can Destroy You

    In a nut­shell, this new study pro­vides evi­dence that we need a cer­tain amount of sleep every night, because the brain takes this time to rid itself of tox­ic meta­bol­ic byprod­ucts, which would oth­er­wise accu­mu­late in the brain and impair brain func­tion, destroy neu­rons — and poten­tial­ly cause neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive disorders.”