I’ve always had difficulties with color…not to say I don’t use it, nor use it well. But it’s always been a detail in my own artwork that I’ve had to consciously push…otherwise, I end up with end-products that are always just in red, black, and white.

Now both in teaching students and talking to clients, I find myself trying to explain how important it is to put some thought into using more color in a project. Check out this info-graphic that demonstrates how colors affect shopping purchases (Kissmetrics)

Here’s a cool collection of 40 photoshop lighting effects that I had bookmarked for a few months intending to post at some point. While I’ve been quite eager to use one or two of these techniques at some point in time, I haven’t really found any commercial uses for them….yet.  But they’re really easy ways to elicit some “Ooohs” and “Aaahs” from random viewers. (via Vandelay Design)

Here’s a collection of some great design rules that should be considered when doing web-design. But a few of these are good rules for any artwork in general. A few of these we’re even going to cover in class… (via 3.7 Designs)

Today’s 1st day of instruction went well. I dusted off a year’s worth of teaching absence and got through it relatively unscathed. There were some false starts in the early part of my first class but got rolling fairly well after the 1st hour. I think by the end of my 2nd class I started to feel my voice start leaving me… I think I’ll need to bring a jug of coffee with me to class.

To the students of Art 112 (if any of you are reading this) thanks for coming to class today and I hope to see many of your faces again next week Tuesday.

On that note, I bookmarked a great link the other week from a designer named Frank Chimero. This was his advice to budding graphic design students. I liked many of his thoughts:

Look people in the eyes when you are talking or listening to them. The best teachers are the ones who treat their classrooms like a workplace, and the worst ones are the ones who treat their classroom like a classroom as we’ve come to expect it. Eat breakfast. Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more than most say. Realize that design is also a liberal art. Quiet is always an option, even if everyone is yelling. Libraries are a good place. The books are free there, and it smells great.

Check out the rest of his post here.

There’s a lot of buzz in recent months about “crowd-sourcing” design. Some companies are making big bucks on providing a service that allows what they call “communities” to submit logos in the hopes of getting a cash reward. This isn’t new of course, it’s basically the same thing as doing a design contest, or what we’d call speculative work. I may have discussed this issue here once or twice.

Here’s a great article written up by a design group that had their logo plagiarized dozens of times by people who submitted derivative artwork in the hopes of winning a design contest.

To new, upcoming designers…I understand the thrill of possibly getting some recognition by submitting your work on these things. But if you’re serious about getting into this profession, you have to think about your own role in protecting the very career you’re heading towards. Your raw talent, your training, your software and hardware, and the future well-being of your clients, are all worth more than what little you get awarded from these things.

One of the perks about teaching a college course in new media is that you get to use the latest software. Well, there’s no choice really, you HAVE to learn the latest thing otherwise the students you have lose out on the experience.

About a couple months back the latest Adobe Creative Suite software came out for CS5. As is typical of every upgrade season, it sets you back a few hundred bucks if you’re upgrading, or nearly a couple grand if you’re purchasing it all for the first time. And as usual, designers like me have to weigh the options of investing in the upgrade…are the changes worth the price of upgrade?  I know very well-established design colleagues who are still using CS2.

It’s still a crazy thing to keep up with….this year it might be all this software, next year it’ll be time to upgrade all the hardware. Kids…you want to do this type of business all legit?  This is where you’ll be sinking all your money.

ANYWAY, I guess since the new Fall semester starts next week, I better sit my arse down these next few days and familiarize myself with the new GUI and features. Nothing more embarrassing than sitting down in front of a class and not being able to find that one feature that’s been moved to another menu.

There’s a good set of tutorials over at Layers Magazine to check out all the programs and the new features they have. I guess the rest of my day will be staring at tutorials…

Had a new experience today sitting down with 3 other independent graphic designers today for a lunch meal. I tried organizing this way before Christmas last year when I had met these other designers across other networking groups. I figured it’d be fun just to swap horror stories or get inspiration from other like-minded folks. Ended up we always had some excuse or another that prevented us from getting together up until now.

I ran across this article the other day “Web Designers, Don’t Do It Alone”, and it kinda spurred me on to make this happen and get to know these other folks.

You know what? It turned out great. I told them, “I have no agenda other than to just sit down with you guys and talk story.”

We swapped vendor referrals, talked about customer horror stories, even passed tips on to each other how we handled work-flow. I was encouraged that these other designers saw business the same way I did….that we’d rather help each other all get more business rather than be at each other’s necks.

We made the commitment to each other we’d do this again sometime…maybe a few times a year?  Any of you out there are local Hawaii graphic designers who’d like to participate, contact me.

Here’s a fun project I completed for a couple friends of mine who wanted to use poker chips to act as their unique business cards. Turned out rather good actually, the chips themselves have a good heft to them and feel very genuine.

Here’s the look I was originally intending, but alas (I like using that word “alas” I don’t know why), the manufacturer couldn’t do something this fancy so we went with just the center portion for the finished design.

With so much possible these days in the area of online design, about the only thing holding a developer back is time, budget, and the ever-present browser compatibility. It’s still neat to look at demos of what’s possible though. Like this great collection of tutorials and examples of what you can do with CSS3. There are a lot of examples where folks have replicated Flash effects, down to techniques about how to replicate Photoshop graphics with it as well.

Some of the demos are more fun than practical…like the coke can demo above, but still very cool and inspirational nonetheless. (via Roman Cortes)

Got a link to this article about the “7 Personality Types of Designers Today”. (via WebDesignerDepot)

I see a bit of myself in almost every one of these…good stuff, bad stuff, things I’m glad I got over, and things I’d want to be. A little food for thought.