Entries about design

Nov 29, 2006

Kuler: Create and share color themes

kuler is Adobe’s spanking new web-app for exploring, creating and sharing color themes for your next design project. Or just for fun. If you’re color-challenged like me, you’ll find inspiration in kuler’s growing library of user-submitted themes. Better yet, you can create your own themes for others to rate, download, and critique. A well-designed interface [...]

Nov 21, 2006

The fast and easy way to pick and convert colors

Need a quick way to pick and convert color values without opening Photoshop? Check out the free widget with funny British spelling, ColourMod. This handy widget lets you pick colors and automatic convert their values into CYMK, RGB, HSV, and Hex. All at a glance. It’s available for both Dashboard (Mac) and Yahoo! Widget Engine, [...]

Nov 15, 2006

Find the right typeface with FontBook

With a gazillion typefaces available, how do you find the right one? After eight long years, FontBook, the “largest type reference in the world,” is back with a spanking new edition. This “big yellow book” helps you choose typefaces by showing samples of 32,000 typefaces from 90 major and independant type foundries around the world. [...]

Nov 10, 2006

Get a crash course in color theory

I have a secret. I’m a designer, and I suck at color. Maybe it’s because color theory wasn’t part of my graphic design curriculum in college… Thankfully, it’s never too late to learn. If you’re color-challenged like me, here’s two sources that can help: Mark Boulton’s Five Simple Steps to Designing with Color This is [...]

Nov 6, 2006

Pick perfect colors for your home

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 [...]

Oct 26, 2006

Free eBook: 37signals’ Getting Real

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 [...]

Oct 20, 2006

MediaTemple: The last hosting plan you’ll ever need

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 [...]

Oct 16, 2006

Give and get direct feedback with Photoshop Notes

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 [...]

Oct 6, 2006

Flickr Find: The beautiful nostalgia of Penguin books

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 [...]

Sep 21, 2006

How to choose an easy-to-read typeface

Imagine yourself picking a typeface for your next resumé, book, newsletter, or other text-heavy project. With the dizzying array of typefaces in the world, how do you choose when you simply want one that’s clear and readable? Thankfully, Before & After magazine’s short tutorial, What’s the Right Typeface for Text?, can help you make this [...]

Sep 6, 2006

The perfect bed for Getting Things Done

Itching to join the cult of productivity but can’t find the space for filing cabinets in your tiny apartment? You might want to check out the apartment Tobias Wong lived in from 1998 to 2003. Being an ever clever designer and artist, Tobias combined the spacial constraints of New York living and a desire for [...]

Sep 1, 2006

6 illuminating concept maps you should know about

My friends at Dubberly Design Office (DDO) have just posted a small sample of concept maps they’ve designed within the last 7 years. Each map takes a difficult–almost mystical–subject and attempts to rigorously map out its many complexities and relationships. There are six maps, each answering one of the following questions: What is Java technology [...]

Aug 31, 2006

A styleguide for people who don’t like styleguides

Most major corporations have strict guidelines detailing how their logos should be used. Some can be cumbersome, espousing rules for everything from minimum size requirements to how it should look on the back of a gas guzzling 4×4. The GE styleguide, for example, is a tome at over 300 pages. Imagine my shock, when I [...]

Aug 29, 2006

Everything a web developer might need on one page

On my way to becoming a web designer, I am constantly searching for techniques, tutorials, and other resources. The Web Developer’s handbook is a hefty database of links on a range of subjects pertinent to web development and design—all on one page. The list is a bit intimidating at first, but you are sure to [...]

Aug 23, 2006

I heart Flickr: my new source for joy and design inspiration

My friend Winston recently showed me a Flickr set of Spanish pharmaceutical posters from the 60s. The design work was just beautiful, putting the contemporary staid look of today’s pharmaceutical companies to shame. I never realized Flickr’s potential as a source for both joy and design inspiration until I saw this eye-pleasuring collection. In the [...]

Aug 17, 2006

Schmooze with joy and wonder at the DWR Eames Film Festival

The misnomered furniture store, Design Within Reach, is hosting the Eames Film Festival at various retail locations nationwide. If you haven’t seen any of the films by the legendary design couple, Charles and Ray Eames, you must attend. Their most famous film, Powers of Ten, truly induces eyegasms. We missed the San Francisco showing, but [...]

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