You’ve been there. Paralyzed in front of a giant display of neverending color swatches at Home Depot.

With so many color possibilities, it’s ironically impossible to choose. How do you decide which white do use? Or if Pepper Grass goes with Hot Pink? Fortunately, there’s help with Behr’s ColorSmart tool.

ColorSmart lets you preview colors before your paint. You choose from an “inspiration library” of suggested color schemes, or customize and design one based on your favorite colors. The tool will also help you find coordinating colors and then show you how they’ll look in different rooms.

This all means you can avoid making heinous, tasteless, and costly mistakes. Such as painting your living room Pepper Grass and Hot Pink:

Behr’s ColorSmart tool

Posted in: Color, Design, Home-Improvement, Lifehacks

Quicksilver, the miracle shortcut tool for the Mac, should have its own Marvel Comics movie. It just has too many features and mutant abilities to ignore.

Yasser Dehab of The Apple Blog adds to this neverending list by showing you how to use Quicksilver to access every menu item in any Mac application.

He explains the benefit:

Now you’re probably thinking, “Great. I just accomplished in about 20 keystrokes what I used to do with a point and click. This helps me, how?â€? Well, hold on. It gets better.

The beauty of Quicksilver is that it actually learns how you like to use it. For instance, we can start by defining a trigger that automatically brings up the QS bezel with the menu bar items (I use ctrl + cmd + space, you can use whatever you’d like). Using that trigger, you can teach Quicksilver commands by typing and selecting the command that you’d like.

For instance, you can evoke the menu using your new trigger and then type “vâ€? (for view) and “cuâ€? (for clean up). Now you can easily execute View > Clean Up through a quick series of keystrokes. You can do this for all of your frequent commands. Or, if you’re a keyboard nut who’s really into the whole QS thing, you can create triggers for each dropdown menu. The possibilities are really endless, and can save your precious seconds in front of the computer.

Yes, this means all you shortcut-obsessed designers can now create keystrokes for those deeply buried Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign menus. Of course, it’s also quite useful in non-design applications with elaborate, cumbersome, and often illogical menus—-Microsoft Office.

Check out the full walkthrough.

via The Apple Blog

Posted in: Lifehacks, Mac OS X, Quicksilver, Shortcuts

Tired of lame writing tips?

Check out Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, a collection of non-sucky tips for blog writing. It’s quickly become my favorite writing blog. Brian’s advice is approachable, concise, and never pedantic.

Here are his recent Hemingway-inspired tips:

1. Use short sentences
2. Use short first paragraphs
3. Use vigorous English
4. Be positive, not negative
5. Never have only 4 rules

Read the full post here.

Posted in: Blogging, Writing

37signals’ manifesto and eBook, Getting Real, is now available for free as an HTML site.

The book details 37signals’ rapid prototyping and web-app development process with the goal of showing you “the smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application.”

If you’re familiar with the company’s successful web applications, Backpack and Basecamp, the ebook essentially answers the question, “How’d they do that?”

Designers and studios working with new up-and-coming technology firms will also find the book useful for getting a better understanding of the philosophy and working methods being adopted by many “Web 2.0″ companies.

PDFs of the eBook are still $19, but the HTML version is absolutely free. Yay!

37signals via Lifehack.org

Posted in: 37signals, Design, Web Development, Web-2.0

After avoiding the 7 deadly sins of résumé design, you may be asking, “If I can’t use crazy colors, clip art, and other types of decoration, how do I make my résumé stand out from the crowd?” Like many things, the answer lies in the details.

Even if you can’t hire a fancy designer and are stuck with Microsoft Word, a few tweaks can turn your blasé résumé into an elegant and functional showpiece.

Update (Oct 25): As promised, here’s a template of the final résumé. Please credit this site, LifeClever, if you post it elsewhere. Thanks!

The typical résumé

Before starting your résumé makeover, first take a look at a typical one:

Like most résumés, it was created in Microsoft Word. It doesn’t look horrible, but it could use improvement. You can improve almost all résumés with four steps:

1. Pick a better typeface
2. Remove extra indentations
3. Make it easy to skim

4. Apply typographic detailing

   Click to continue

Posted in: Lifehacks

MediaTemple, the web hosting service favored by designers, has finally announced their new Grid-Server (gs) hosting plan. Unlike other shared-hosting plans, Mediatemple’s Grid-Server eliminates the “bad neighbor effect” by distributing the load over several servers instead of confining it to one machine. This redundancy means more stability and virtually no downtime.

After testing the new plan for several weeks during its beta period, I’m proud to say this plan delivers the best bang for the buck out of any hosting service I’ve tried in the past. $20 a month will get you loads of features, including the following:

• 100GB of storage
• 1TB of short-width bandwidth
• Multi-domain hosting for 100 individual sites on one account.
• Ruby on Rails
• 1000 email accounts
• 1-Click install for WordPress, Drupal, Gallery, and ZenCart

Before you sign-up, here’s what I like and don’t like:

Click to continue

Posted in: Design, Reviews, Web, Web-hosting

It’s true, setting up your own wiki can be torturous to configure and customize. But don’t let their apparent complexity get the better of you. Several sites can help you choose a wiki solution to match your (un)willingness to get your hands dirty with code. To sort through the mess, here are my favorite wiki comparison sites:

• How to Start a Wiki
  A must-read for anyone starting their own wiki. Besides being straightforward, it has an extensive list of links to other wiki resources.

• Wikimatrix
  A wiki selection tool on steroids. It has wizards, feature-filters, and detailed side-by-side-comparisons to help identify the right wiki engine for the job. The matrix overviews are quite comprehensive though somewhat overwhelming. Thankfully, you can hide items. Wikimatrix also has short descriptions for most wiki engines as well as screenshots, discussions, statistics, and related wikis. The main downside of Wikimatrix is its speed when comparing a lot of wiki engines. I also wish it had tutorials, editorial reviews, and ratings.

• [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisonofwiki_software/ “Wikipedia)
  Provides a basic comparison chart of the most common wiki engines, technologies, features, licensing, and intended users. Being a wiki itself, it can be extended by you and other users. However, I found the current presentation overwhelming and wished for the ability to sort and filter. The Wikipedia Entry is more suitable as a reference guide than a wiki shopping tool.

• [Top Ten Wiki Engines](http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?TopTenWikiEngines”Top Ten Wiki Engines)
  As the name suggests, this site gives an overview of the most popular wiki engines. While popular doesn’t always equal good or easy-to-use, this list gives an indication of which wiki engines will have a large support framework.

With these tools in hand, finding and setting up your wiki should be wikiwiki (quick) and easy.

Posted in: Web-2.0, Wiki, Writing

If you’re embarassed by mundane office supplies, check out [TUL Dry Erase Markers.](http://www.tul.com “TUL home) Part of OfficeMax’s new brand of affordable designer writing tools, these markers are surprisingly cute and clever. Each marker has a magnetic body that sticks to most whiteboards, a comfort grip, and a built-in eraser cap.

I get weirdly excited about such geekery, so I hopped over to OfficeMax and bought a 12-pack to test them. Here are my impressions:

What I like

My two favorite features are the magnetic body and built-in eraser caps. Both help ease the problem of losing markers and having to hunt for erasers. The triangular body is also a nice touch, preventing the markers from rolling off flat services.

In addition to functional enhancements, TUL’s also made some thoughtful aesthetic considerations. The visual design of both the packaging and markers is clean and restrained, avoiding garish logos and decoration. The color palette includes designer-friendly colors such as Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK). If they’re gonna stick to the whiteboard, they might as well look good, right?

At $18, the price for a 12-pack is also reasonable, just $5 more than a standard 12-pack of Expo markers.

What I don’t like

While the packaging was easy to open, the markers fall out too easily. Once it’s out of the box, it’s difficult to put it back in.

On a freshly cleaned whiteboard, l also noticed one marker didn’t stick so well to the whiteboard. It might have been a defect, but it’d be nice if future versions use slightly stronger magnets.

The bottom line

Despite very minor flaws, TUL Dry Erase Markers combine style and functional features to put traditional markers to shame. Instead of feeling shame, you’d be proud to show off these markers.

Posted in: Design process, Lifehacks, Office, Productivity, Tools

After slaving away creating beautiful design comps or prototypes in Photoshop, you’ll most likely have to show them to a client, colleague, or creative director to get feedback. Often, this process generates some confusion as emails and verbal exchanges go back and forth. To reduce uncertainty and mix-ups, use Photoshop’s Notes tool to place comments and suggested edits directly in the file.

This often ignored feature works much like Adobe Acrobat’s comment tool, allowing you and others to post virtual sticky notes on the document itself. By default, the Notes tool is located in the tool palette, second from the bottom and on the left side. It has several advantages:

1. Feedback and design comp always travel together in the same file, so comments don’t get lost or mixed up.

2. Since you see annotations directly on a design comp or prototype, you’ll know exactly where the change is referring too.

The Notes tool also comes in handy when a creative director is sitting next to you and looking over your work. Instead of making the changes while he or she directs you, use the Notes tool to quickly capture the feedback. This creates firm agreement on the changes, and it saves the creative director from having to stand over your shoulder as you work. Once you capture the feedback, you can make the changes, closing off each note as you complete an edit.

Posted in: Design, Designhacks, Photoshop

Merlin Mann has just posted the first in a series of interviews with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. The series of conversations will focus on GTD implementation, with today’s interview tackling everyone’s worst habit: procrastination.

Merlin and David discuss some of the reasons why we procrastinate, followed with insights into how we can overcome it.

It was quite nice to hear the two most prominent figures in productivity get together and talk about GTD in detail. I only wish the interview was a bit longer.

I also hope this series leads to a more formal partnership between Merlin and David. It’d be great to see them team up and write a detailed book on GTD implementation. Until then, there’s plenty of reading material. Books mentioned in the interview include:

• The Now Habit
• The War of Art
• Bird by Bird (The Shitty First Draft)

Listen to the interview on Odeo.com or download the MP3.

How do you cope with procrastination? What other books or tools would you recommend? Don’t hesitate to comment!

Posted in: 43folders, GTD, Interview

So you desperately want that book everyone’s been talking about, Getting Things Done. You could order it from Amazon, but you hate waiting. Luckily, there’s a Borders bookstore around corner. You like saving time, so you go online to Borders.com. to make sure the store has it in stock before you head out. But wait, you can’t find the inventory search anywhere on the site. What gives?

That’s right, instead of putting the store inventory search in the most logical and obvious place, the company’s stashed it away on their lesser known corporate site, BordersStores.com. I suspect it’s to do with their partnership with Amazon.com. You won’t find any explicit link to it anywhere on Borders.com.

To check if your local Borders bookstore has the book you want:

1. Go to the “My Stores” section on BordersStores.com, and add your local store using the form on the left.
2. Next, go to “Search Inventory” in the main navigation and use the form on that page to search for your book.
3. In the search results, click on your book and you’ll see the book’s availability on the right.
4. If the book’s in stock, you can save more time by using the “Reserve for in-store pickup” link. A staffperson will look for your book and put it on hold for you at the register.

Given the convenience of this search tool, it amazes me why Borders doesn’t promote it on their main site and why other stores like Barnes & Nobles or the Virgin Megastore don’t offer similar tools.

Walk into any used bookstore, and you’ll see shelves full of classicly designed Penguin books. These cheap, unassuming little paperbacks take you back, pointing to an era before fancy computers and today’s gluttony of typefaces. In celebration of these books, designer Joe Kral has compiled an inspirational Flickr set of some of Penguin’s best cover designs.

Many showcase the impactful image-central grid system of Romek Marber. Even today, they still look good.

While Penguin books still live up to their original promise of affordable literature, the entrance of computers has sadly muddled the their design. Most new covers just suck, suffering from overdesign, art direction by committee, and unfortunate typography. It’s quite sad:

Yes, some hope comes with Penguin’s latest Great Ideas series, but I doubt the refreshingly considered design of this series will spread to their entire library. It’s a shame.

You can find more inspiration and a chronicle of Penguin covers in Phil Baine’s book, Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935–2005.

Posted in: Books, Design, Flickr, Inspiration

Indeed.com has just unwrapped a salary search engine to help you navigate the nebulous world of estimating your salary worth. Its premise is based on the familiar saying, “something’s only worth what others are willing to pay.” So instead of relying on traditional salary surveys, Indeed combs over 50 million job listings looking for actual published salaries in their job descriptions. In other words, it finds out what others are willing to pay you right now. Boy, I wish I had this when I graduated from design school.

What I like

• The interface should look quite familiar, since it’s based on Google’s bare bones home page. It’s refreshing when you compare Indeed’s salary search page to the cluttered and confusing Salary.com.

• You can go beyond job descriptions and search for what specific skills are worth. For example, if you’re a web developer, hand-coding pays more than knowing how to use a WYSIWG web design program. [See example comparison.](http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=GoLive&l1=&q2=Dreamweaver&l2=&q3=FrontPage&l3=&q4=%22hand+code%22&l4= “Comparison of pay for hand-coding to WYSIWG)

• Comparing salaries for multiple job titles and locations is easy and presented nicely. See example comparison.

What I’d like to see

• While the minimal interface is very nice, it feels almost too much like Google. A slightly more distinct visual design would help make it more memorable.

• The comparison tool could be more robust. For example, it could show historical data of how the salary for a given position has changed over time.

• I’d love to see a way to factor in cost of living to help compare the same jobs in different cities.

• RSS updates for favorite searches.

The verdict

Indeed.com is easy-to-use and is ripe for a Google acquisition. If it stays out on its own, it needs a more unique design and an even more beefed up comparison tool.

Posted in: Careers, Lifehacks, Web-2.0

Between 9am and 5pm, your business card is the preferred way to give someone your contact information. But after hours, in social settings like cozy little used bookstores and cute hipster dance clubs, you’re probably going to give someone your 411 with pen and paper. It works and doesn’t carry the formality of business cards, but where’s the flair? Moo, a new web-based printing service, is changing that with MiniCards, a modern spin on the age-old tradition of calling cards.

In partnership with Flickr, Moo lets you make 28mm x 70mm cards with your own images on one side and up to six lines of text on the other. An easy-to-use interface allows you to choose images and crop them to fit. The Flickr logo and buddy icon are optional, with no charge to remove them. A pack of 100 cards is about 20 bucks, and comes in a nicely designed box.

What I like most about Moo’s MiniCards is that they’re intentionally not business cards, hence their unusual size. While business cards are meant to project an organization’s brand and personality, Moo’s calling cards are all about your individual expression as well as the easiest way to contact you. This means you’ve got a place to showcase and share your favorite design work, photos, and artwork. Of course, it’s also another way to impress a potential date in a bookstore or club.

Check out the [Moo Flickr group](http://www.flickr.com/groups/moo/ “Moo Flickr group) to see how people are using MiniCards.

via NOTCOT

Apple’s aging .Mac webmail client has been an embarassment for quite awhile now. So much so, that I’ve seriously considered dropping .Mac altogether. Now playing catchup to AJAX rich webmail clients like Gmail and Yahoo, Apple’s soon releasing a revamped webmail system.

The new webmail system will sport the look of Mac OS X’s Mail.app, and features fancy user interface enhancements such as drag-and-drop, smart refreshes, message previews, and keyboard shortcuts. It’s certainly a welcomed improvement and I will likely use it more. But is this too little, too late?

The hatred for .Mac is not new in the Mac community. For me, .Mac is slowly becoming less and less valuable‖certainly less interesting‖as free services from Google, Flickr, and Delicious duplicate or nullify many of .Mac’s offerings. Of course, some things to like include .Mac’s ability to sync certain system preferences between computers. Still, it doesn’t seem quite worth the hundred bucks a year.

Here are some areas Apple might look at to improve, perhaps innovate, .Mac’s services:

Social networking

Given the passion (obsession) of Mac users, it’s a mystery why Apple hasn’t entered the social networking space in an emotional, compelling way. Apple could infuse it’s suite of software and web services with social-networking features, connecting users in the dedicated Mac community to each other. Imagine being able to easily find other iChat AV users or the ability to share and trade Garage Band samples. It seems ripe for it.

Tiered membership

Apple’s current membership model for .Mac is a closed gated community. You pay for exclusivity and supposed premium services. With competition from explosion of free services, reasons for joining the .Mac country club will be fewer and fewer. Even AOL, perhaps the largest internet gated-community, are opening up their doors and offering free services.

To compete Apple might offer some .Mac services for free in addition to truly premium features that are worth paying for.

Apple + Google collaboration

A more open .Mac could happen with an Apple + Google collaboration. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt just joined Apple’s board of directors, so this seems almost too obvious. For example, a .Mac version of Google spreadsheets could have interoperability with Apple software, allowing users to collaborate and publish directly to Google spreadsheets from a robust version of iWork. The possibilities are very interesting indeed.

What do you think? How can Apple improve or overhaul .Mac? What alternatives do you use now?

Posted in: Apple, Google, Mac

So you’ve labored with sweat and tears writing your résumé, and now you’re all set to turn it into a magnificently designed creation. Unfortunately, with the freedom of modern computers and fancy software, comes huge opportunities for abuse. When it comes to résumés, both non-designers and professional designers commit some almost unforgivable sins. Here are the 7 deadly sins of résumé design and how to repent:

1. Fancy “résumé” paper
2. Times New Roman
3. Teeny tiny font size
4. Grey text
5. Excessive decoration
6. Weird paper size

7. Horizontal format

   Click to continue