Gender Design

We spoke about this a little, but I was curious as to what were the true differences between masculine and feminine design.

This blog went into a little more detail on this topic and included specifics on what would make a site more masculine or feminine.

Enjoy! - http://www.redpolka.org/blog/archives/001544.html

Design for Screen Changes

One of the things that frustrated me with my design was how an image would look one way on my computer at work, and the colors would be completely different at school.

I looked into it and found a study on differenced between several monitors in regards to color and design.

http://www.cse.yorku.ca/Courses95-96/4361/q28.html

Color Creations

I wanted to do more with color in my final project, but I just couldn't find the time.

I did find a helpful site that put a lot of what we learned about color on one page to be accessed. I'm sure I'll be visiting it in the future for other projects.

http://graphicdesign.about.com/od/color/tp/using_color.htm

Signs - sent in an email by Gillespie, Thomas K.

I know most of us just delete his emails, but i did check this one out. It is a 12 minute short film that is posted on youtube. it is pretty cool. It is a couple of people that work in adjcent buildings and started by making signs to each other. Old form of email...I guess. It is a good film and you should watch it. Kind of makes you think what else is out there if you really don't look around every once in a while. It reminds me of Ferris Bullers Day Off when he says, "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." quote from imdb.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy0HNWto0UY&feature=response_watch

MoMA Paper Works of Art

This is a good webpage and shows the different things that the artists did with just paper. THe one that i liked the most was the paper punch work. check out the art for yourself.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/paper/deploy/index.html

main link to the musuem is:
http://www.moma.org/

The Answer Is YouTube

For as long as I have known about and used YouTube, it has never failed me.  I used YouTube for many different things; searching for things that I heard about but had not seen, Embedding moves to blogs and personal websites, a casual search for entertaining, even learning by watching tutorials which are a tremendous help.  Just recently a few day ago I tried to upload a move on a website that I had made for my ICM 506 class.  The Move that I loaded directly to my website failed.  So instead of uploading the movie directly to my website I loaded it up on YouTube and Embedded it on to my website, which worked perfectly.  

For this class, I have used many different tutorials.  I like them because they are much more interactive, I can actually see what I have to do in order to accomplish something rather than reading about it.  When Professor Callahan introduced animations to the class I left the class with a "?" hanging over my head.  Of course, the answer to learning more about animations in Photoshop was one simple search away on YouTube.  

Here is the one that I used.

Your Answer May Be On YouTube!

My apologies to You Tube

If you were to ask me a couple of months ago what I thought of You Tube, I would have said I don't have time to watch that stuff.

I was judging YT but the clips TV picks up to fill its programming. I guess tutorials on Photoshop don't really bring in the ratings.

I've even found some items on YT to pass the time. Yes, I'm guilty of watching old Beatles clips!

save the pixel!

here is an excellent resource on web design, save the pixel, by ben hunt. i can't remember where i stumbled upon this book, but it's one that i will be adding to my library for sure.

hunt not only talks about the art of simple web design, he also discusses several key design disciplines and techniques to follow when creating a website.

:: Think-Then-Do Technique ::

"Think-then-do requires you to work in short bursts of activity, with multiple cycles of Thinking and Doing.

This helps you to avoid what I call “screen-blindness”. You may recognise the phenomenon if you've ever spent several hours working on a design. The longer you work, the more slowly you seem to get results. You find yourself sitting staring at the screen, pushing pixels around one way than back again. You lose touch with what it is you're trying to do. You're screen-blind. Later, you come back to the design after a break, and you just “see” what's right and wrong! You sit down, and five minutes later the design is almost done. This is think-then-do at work."

you can download the first chapter for free. you can also read more about him on his website, web design from scratch.

This could prevent a meltdown

I thought I should at least visit Patrick McNeil's web site, Design Meltdown. He's the author of "The Web Designer's Idea Book."

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. It's light blue and white and strikes me as being very calm. Judging from the table of contents, I wished I had visited it several weeks ago.

The topics deal with color usage, design styles, site structures, problems and solutions, etc.

http://www.designmeltdown.com/

A book of ideas

I'm sure this isn't the only book of web design on the market, but I thought it was helpful in making sense to the types of web sites out there.

"The Web Designer's Idea Book" organizes the sites by type, design style, theme, color, elements and structure. The author is Patrick McNeil (designmeltdown.com).

http://designmeltdown.com

Interesting Tutorial Website

I recently came across this website.

http://www.good-tutorials.com/

People submit their tutorials for using different programs. There's some junk, but there's also useful stuff.

Logos

This site offers tutorials on how to make several logos.

Whether you want to copy an exact logo, or transform that logo into your own, this is a helpful site that offers many options.

Enjoy! - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/30/60-beautiful-logo-design-tutorials-and-resources/

Design for Life

For anyone who is interested in doing Design as a career, I found out that next week will be the agIdeas 2009 International Design Week from May 4-7.

There is a forum, information about different studios, workshops, career information, and business gatherings to make contacts.

Although it is in Australia, it might be worth looking into for the future if you're serious about making design your full time career. Also, they may post helpful information on the site once the conference is over.

Check it out - http://www.agideas.net/conference