Welcome to September! My birth month, as well as the intro to winter. Time to update your desktop wallpapers and get with the now – download and install the September 2010 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper below!
The one and only September 2010 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper is available in 2560X1600, 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900 and 1280X800. Enjoy & please share!
The print-only freelance designer is a dying breed. There, I said it. If you’re a freelance designer who doesn’t have web-related skills, you best add that arrow to your quiver or you’re going to be left in the dust. Now, it’s worth noting that I’m not saying “print design is dead” or “identity design is dead”. As long as there are businesses, artists, musicians and the like, graphic designers will be needed. However, freelance designers who only operate in the print realm aren’t long for this world.
The digital realm is growing and spreading, and at the expense of the print world. As the opportunities for print work shift over to digital work, so do those print jobs. The numbers show the shift: Amazon sold 143 ebooks for every 100 hardcover books in the second quarter of 2010. In the music industry, album sales fell 12.7% in 2009 while digital singles rose 8.3% and digital albums rose 16.1% (source). These are only two industries, but two big ones – and they point towards the growing trend towards digital over print. It should be noted that overall, people still currently buy more physical albums and physical books, so it’s not like we should erase the section of our brains that holds our print design information right now. However, the numbers don’t lie: digital is growing, print is declining.
Hit the jump for the full article! Read the whole article >
Volume 23 this week. Michael Jordan. It’s gorgeous outside and I want to go for a bike ride, so that’s as good an intro as you’re going to get. This week: Twitter background designs & best practices, a great typography mug, 10 places that can turn your designs into actual things, a cool office that’s been made to look like an old cottage, and a fun website with ridiculous “I can’t come to work” excuses. Read on, readers!
Twitter seems to be here to stay – so, if you’re a Twitterer (Tweeter? Twitterionian?), best make your background look as dope as possible lest the Internet mock you for lameness. Here’s a great article on how to do that. PS follow us!
Thanks to swiss-miss for the find; I’m always up for a good nerd-style coffee mug.
There’s a ton of sites out there that offer one-off printing or construction of your graphics and ideas. It’s like a new revolution! Check these sites out if you’re the creative type.
I love cool offices; these guys went off in their own direction and turned the inside of their offices into an English-style cottage.
Some light Friday reading for you – ridiculous excuses from people as to why they can’t make it into work. Example: “Due to heavy rain and high fever I am suffering from, I’ll be in once rain stops.” Yup.
See you next week!
Last week, there was a link going around the design-o-sphere – a link to a post written by Frank Chimero about what advice he would give to a design student. If you haven’t read this post yet, I suggest going to do so right now. Frank answers this anonymous question with what would best be described as a series of amazing quotes and beliefs on graphic design that aren’t just for students; it is a must-read for anyone in the design industry, so check it out.
As I was reading through his post (and posting random quotes from it that I found interesting on Twitter), I was struck by a creative 9 iron; why not take some of Frank’s great design quotes and create a poster series from them to give away? I felt due for a quick personal project, and I could see these quotes making great posters to be hung everywhere from a design student’s dorm room to a classroom or a house.
So I did that. Allow me to present to you the Design Quote Collection, below. Each poster is available for download as a high-resolution PDF, 11″ X 17″, so you can print them off and hang them where you please. As well, you can download the .EPS file (contains all artwork on separate layers) if you wish to tweak the colors etc. to your liking.
Click to download the Success Poster PDF.
Click to download the Yelling Poster PDF.
Hit the jump for 4 more design posters! Read the whole article >
This week’s Found Friday is a healthy mix of good value stuff and well-designed stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff. All related in some way to design, we have the following which caught my eye this week: a great bamboo water bottle (gorgeous AND great for the environment), a site that converts YouTube videos to MP3s (think of the possibilities!), a limited-time great bundle of discounted design files from Envato, 10 free design ebooks, and a great point-and-shoot that has a built in projector. Read on!
Plastic bottles are terrible for the environment and you, if you reuse them. So kick the habit by picking up this Bamboo Bottle.
A website with a very simple premise: it takes in Youtube videos and spits out MP3s. So, for all of you who want the mp3 version of my engagement stickman country music video for Andy (moderately NSFW because of a swear… man I’m so romantic), now you have your chance. (via swiss-miss)
$400 worth of high-quality design files for $20? Count me in. WordPress themes, vectors, PSD templates, CSS-only designs, and so forth. Only available for a few more days, so get on it if you want it.
I don’t know when I’m going to find the time to read 10 ebooks on design, but I’ll find the time to at least skim a couple. Check this list out if web design is your thing.
Point and shoots don’t really excite me, but this guy – which comes in different colors, thankfully – lets you connect to your computer and project images up to 47″. Pretty solid for $350.
That’s it that’s all! See you next week.
