“If creativity is your livelihood, is it a good idea to pursue multiple interests and develop a range of skills, or should you focus on one or two key talents and become the best around in your specialism?

I’m asking the question because two of my favourite blogs take completely opposite positions on this issue.”

“A simple drawing can communicate complex ideas quickly and almost effortlessly. It can even be the basis of a successful business plan.”

“For the first time, I no longer have a copy of Microsoft Word installed on either of my computers. That’s some change. I wrote my first two books, and many hundreds of articles, in Word. But I’m writing my third book in an inexpensive yet wonderful piece of Mac-only software written by a single person instead of a “business unit” at Redmond. Scoured of Word, my computers feel clean, refreshed, relieved of a hideous and malign burden. How did it come to this?”

“I recently asked if you were ready for WordPress 2.5, but let’s go through the steps to prepare your blog for upgrading to the new version next week.”

“It’s an Online Comic Strip, Made by YOU! Got a funny joke or a story to tell? Get ready to share it in a whole new way. Our FREE online toys make it FAST, FUN and EASY to create awesome comics.”

“I am in the process of printing a postcard out of InDesign CS3. The background was created in Photoshop CS3, and the information has been added with InDesign. When printing a proof from Photoshop, I get the color I expect to get. Printing out of InDesign, I do not. I even created a box in InDesign with the same color values, and the color is still not correct. I have checked the color profiles, and the object color profile, and they are the same. Any Ideas?”

“xScope ($27) is a great utility for Mac-based web and UX (user experience) designers. It provides a number of floating tools for measuring, aligning, and inspecting on-screen graphics.” (Thanks swissmiss!)

“Maps are everywhere these days. The ubiquity of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile directional devices, interactive mapping tools and social networks is feeding a mapping boom. Amateur geographers are assigning coordinates to everything they can get their hands on—and many things they can’t.”

“In 1996, Supreme Court Justice David Souter told a congressional panel that ‘the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it’s going to roll over my dead body.’ While the controversy over whether or not cameras should be allowed in courtrooms rages on, sketch artists remain fairly non-controversial, covering even the most important trials. The general public sees their artwork on the news, online, and in print. These artists see the trials for us, and often their artwork is our only glimpse into the proceedings.

I found myself wondering who these artists are….

(Thanks Waxy!)

“CR Blog is at the Design Indaba in Cape Town and reports on a talk by graphic design legend Ivan Chermayeff. This animation of hundreds of logos that his studio has designed is a real gem. Chock full of famous brands such as Mobil, National Geographic and Chase Manhattan, it’s ten minutes long – if you don’t have the time just watch the quick rewind in the last five seconds (caution – flashing images)…”

Steve Duenes answered reader questions Feb. 25-29, 2008: “Mr. Duenes manages the graphics department, a group of 30 journalists who research and create the diagrams, maps and charts for the newspaper and the Web site. He started at The Times in 1999 as the graphics editor for science. In 2001, he became the deputy graphics director, and in 2004, he became the graphics director.” Check out this excerpted anecdote from one of the readers (emphasis mine):

in september i traveled with bill gates to africa to look at his work fighting aids there. while setting the trip up, it emerged that his initial interest in giving pots of money to fight disease had arisen after he and melinda read a two-part series of articles i did on third world disease in January 1997. until then, their plan had been to give money mainly to get countries wired and full of computers.

bill and melinda recently reread those pieces, and said that it was the second piece in the series, about bad water and diarrhea killing millions of kids a year, that really got them thinking of public health. Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn’t the article itself that had grabbed him so much — it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.

No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.