“In the later half of January 2006, a group of designers with nearly 50 cumulative years of experience designing products for companies like Adobe, Apple, eBay, Macromedia, Nike, Palm, and Yahoo got together to talk about design vision. It was a concept for which we all had a personal definition — forged by our unique experiences and insights. Yet we all recognized the important role design vision played in our lives as designers so we took the first step toward a public discussion about what it can do for you, your organization, and your products.” (Thanks infoDesign!)

“While perusing the aisles of the local grocery store, a similarity between a few of the products presented itself to me. Several diverse products, especially in the coffee area, had logotypes where the vowel of the letter was enclosed inside a capital ‘C’.” (Thanks kottke.org!)

“Can one noble genius single-handedly educate all of mankind? Although not previously possible, the answer is now most assuredly ‘yes’. The author of Hall of Best Knowledge, blessed with an almost unnatural intellect and refinement, bravely battles the problem of a nation‚Äôs ever-increasing ignorance one engaging concept at a time. The people call out for help, in one stupid voice, and they are answered with authority. The Hall of Best knowledge combines lush imagery with lucid prose–imagine the works of Chaucer projected on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel–creating a weekly learning experience that is without equal in this or any age.”

“Photoshop’s native HDR support isn’t so hot. Photomatix makes a standalone app and also a Photoshop plugin for better tone mapping … I’ve used HDR in Photoshop CS2 (which is required, as stated previously), and to be honest I’ve not got anything as stunning as the stuff linked to on BoingBoing.”

“Textorizer takes a raster image in a format such as png, jpeg or gif, detects edges using a Sobel convolution filter and replaces them with supplied lines of text. The output from textorizer is in SVG…”

“I am in the process of setting up a new website. I have been planning it for a week or so now. A few days ago I visited a certain domain name seller to check on the availability of a domain. It came up as available. Super… I thought. Quite a good name there. However…… Today I came to set up the name and hosting for the new website. And what do you think I discovered? The domain name was purchased 2 days ago. And who is the name registered to? The exact same domain name seller I searched the term on on the first place!”

“This is where I try to sum up the current state-of-the-art in graphic design for web pages, and identify the distinctive features that make a web page look fresh, appealing and easy to use.”

“Visualize and present your flat designs on photo-realistic surfaces in minutes, using Photoshop. Introducing the LiveSurface Image Library from Shift: a set of high-resolution royalty-free comping images with pre-masked layers and Vanishing Point planes. Finally: creating presentation-ready, photographically-rendered images with your flat artwork is simple and accurate.” (Thanks swissmiss!)

“From what it looks like, the German websites of car maker BMW have been kicked out of the Google index. BMW.de at this time has a PageRank of 0. A search for BMW Germany, which only days ago yielded BMW.de as a top result, now doesn’t show any sign of BMW.de at all. Instead, BMW.com — BMW’s international site — is on top for this search. The reason for the ban is likely to be that the BMW websites have been caught employing a technique used by black-hat search engine optimizers: doorway pages. German and international bloggers last week were quick to spread the news.”

“This is qwerky, notebook of the weirdest new webapp names.”

“I wonder if we’re at all reaching a point where the maturity of our Web design can start to approach the timeless. From a usability perspective, aren’t incremental improvements are almost always appreciated more than radical refactoring?”

“The Art of DeTouch explores the manipulation of images related to the human form. Drawing photographs from existing online portfolio sites of professional re-touch artists, this application allows a user to explore precisely how the images were altered. Using Processing, an open source programming language and environment, before and after images are compared algorithmically pixel by pixel to generate visualizations of the alterations.”

“The population is rapidly aging and becoming a larger share of the marketplace. 13 percent of the population is currently over 65 years old. In 30 years that group will double to 66 million people. People change as they age. Sensory, cognitive and motor abilities decline. The built environment is not typically created with the needs of the aging population in mind. How does the choice of typeface in signage systems, for example, impact the older viewer who is experiencing vision problems typical to that age group? Are certain typefaces more suitable to the aging eye?”

“As your client base grows so will the size and scope of the creative work you do for them. If print design is one of your services, adding print services to your menu will add more value to your business and your bottom line. Even with the shift toward online print ordering, some printing due to the quantity and/or expense will require an in-person press check… It is incumbent upon the designer to have a basic understanding of preflighting, the printing process, and standard procedures surrounding a press check to be successful at it. Do a little research, buy a Pocket Pal, and ask a lot of questions from your printer or others with experience… With that said, let’s take a look at the basics of preparing, performing and concluding a press check.” (Thanks swissmiss!)

“AAA-level compliance is the ideal of accessibility, the bonus-round of accessible design: AAA-level compliant pages meet the needs of every group of users. AAA is achievable, but requires preparation and forethought. To create a forward-looking, fully AAA-compliant site, we need to execute a sort of hat trick: XHTML 1.0 and 2.0-compliant markup, a generous breadth of backwards compatibility, and real universal accessibility.”