Does your workspace suck?

It will when you see this gorgeously versatile and modular Joyn workspace: Designed by the Bouroullec brothers, it’s too cool to be called a desk or even a furniture system. It’s an office platform. Instead of mind-numbing cubicles, colleagues sit right next to each other around modular table units. This promotes collaboration, communication, and conversation. [...]

Talent still isn’t everything

Whoa! My first article on Boxes and Arrows just got published. It’s called: Talent isn’t everything: 7 habits of highly effective junior designers. The article adds a bit of polish and elaboration to an earlier post I wrote last year. Enjoy. ;-)

5 reasons to design with mood boards

If you’re a designer, the most dreaded thing a client can say is, “my wife really loves purple, and so why can’t we make it purple?”

This happens even at the conceptual phase of design, when you’re exploring rough concepts and before details such as color, imagery, and typefaces are nailed down. It’s easy to see why.

How to fix dumb speling misteaks in InDesign

<img src=’http://www.lifeclever.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/indesigndynamicspell_checking.jpg’ alt=’InDesign’s Dynamic Spell Checking’ class=”large”/>I’ve been making alot of dumb speling misteaks lately. It happens to the best of us. A deadline approaches. You rush. You finish. Finally, you send it out–not realizing it’s tainted with typos.

Adobe CS3: Worth the wait?

Adobe just dropped the long awaited CS3 bomb. With six different configurations, Macworld is already calling it the “largest release in Adobe’s history.” Of course, the best part is the one million new features that’ll make you feel like a loser newbie all over again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled for Intel-native speed improvements [...]

How to always remember GTD

While browsing Flickr for apolitical images of puppy dogs, sunsets, and flowers, I found this little gem: It’s Stefanos Karagos’s nicely-designed diagram of the classic GTD workflow, now conveniently in a desktop wallpaper. Available in seven sizes, it’s formatted to fit most screen resolutions. The next time you’re daydreaming about piling instead of filing–or putting [...]

Where is Illustrator’s auto-recovery feature?

InDesign’s auto-recovery feature has saved me several times from utter design despair. This is why, along with recent heartbreaking crashes, I’m frustrated with Adobe for not incorporating the same recovery feature in Illustrator. Will the new CS3 sport this feature? Probably not. According to LenHewitt on Adobe’s forums, there are some major technical limitations: Page [...]

13 lucky alternatives to Helvetica

Love Helvetica, but hate it too? Check out FontShop’s 13 Helvetica alternatives, a list of typefaces that are kinda-sorta like Helvetica, but not quite. You’ll find familiar classics like Univers as well as more obscure choices like FF Schulbuch and Maxima. For the typophile in all of us, each entry comes with a little historical [...]

Web 2.0 in just 5 minutes

Mention “Web 2.0″ and you’ll probably hear a groan. People are just sick and tired of hearing it. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger has even made a New Year’s resolution to stop using the buzzword. So for the jaded and newbie alike, here’s a poetic and inspiring video on the history of Web 2.0: Web 2.0 [...]

The New York Times’ impressive infographics

I’m continually impressed with The New York Times. Not only for its journalistic writing, but especially for its well-designed infographics. The Times’ recent coverage of Bush’s State of the Union address features two superb pieces of information design. One shows the relationship between applause and speech length for each address over the past seven years. [...]

What 50 pounds of clay can teach you about design

My 3rd year graphic design teacher, Alison Woods, once told me a parable from Art and Fear that’s still stuck in my brain years later: The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded [...]

Don’t have a Wii? Get it tomorrow

This Sunday, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Target will finally have limited quantities of the coveted Wii available. I’ll be waiting in line at the local Best Buy with a few people from our office in hopes of satisfying my latest obsession. I haven’t played a video game in almost a decade. But as an [...]

Where to find office supplies for 11×17 tabloid paper

For designers, size matters. And that size is the 11×17 paper format. Tabloid size paper is vital for printing large design comps, diagrams, and charts, but it’s a pain to file and organize. In a quest to organize the piles of tabloid size papers at work, I recently stumbled upon the aptly named 11×17.com. While [...]

MetaDesign’s website gets ripped off

Brian Clark of Copyblogger recently got his blog’s design copied, causing quite a stir. Now, it looks like it’s my turn to get ripped off. My recent design for MetaDesign’s website has just been stolen by another design agency called Spotts & Company. Not only did they lift the layout and type styles, they also [...]

Adobe’s new icons: Love or hate ‘em?

Adobe’s recent Photoshop CS3 beta is quenching the desperate thirst of Photoshop fanatics everywhere. But it’s new icon system is causing some controversy. The new icons use a system of abbreviations to represent each Adobe product, a bit like the symbols in the periodic table. Since their introduction in 2003, the Adobe Creative Suite icons [...]

Get 10 insanely great Mac apps for under 50 bucks

MacHeist is bundling 10 award-winning Mac Apps for a fantastic price of $49. To get into the season, 25% of the sale goes to a charity of your choice. The bundle includes: Delicious Library FotoMagico ShapeShifter Devonthink Personal Disco RapidWeaver iClip 4 One game by Pangea NewsFire (unlocked when $50k charity is raised) TextMate (unlocked [...]