“InDesign lets you control the visibility of layers in your placed Photoshop graphics. That can be pretty handy when you find yourself designing a series of related ads that require minor changes to the same image.
In InDesign, select a placed Photoshop graphic and choose Object > Object Layer Options. This gives you a dialog box where you can toggle the eyeball next to any layer to turn it on or off.”
This is awesome: “Video Demonstration of a work in relief filled with ingenuity: on each page deploy forms cut from paper. The book by Marion Battle is a lively primer in three colors: red, black and white. “
“At first I wasn’t too sure how to take the post from Slant Six Creative’s blog post stop taking advice. In the post it suggests that reading too many blogs will drive you crazy, and within that context DesignNotes is mentioned along with a couple others. There’s one maxim where no press is bad press, but I also was wondering after reading it if that means that there’s one less person about to read about my observations. So I deferred to a friend to find out what she thought. Thankfully she thought it was actually quite a good post. The thing that surprised me about the original post was the premise that I’m giving advice.”
“WordPress 2.5’s interface overhaul is getting closer, and now that I’ve been able to play with the release candidate, these are my thoughts.
The official WordPress blog posted up a nice sneak peek into the WordPress 2.5 release, and intriguingly enough, most of it seems to be an interface update thanks to the fine folks from Happy Cog. Excitedly, I grabbed the release candidate and installed it on my laptop to play with. While the experience was primarily positive, there were some things that irked me. This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but the ones that I felt most passionate about are here.”
“Since the days of the caveman, we’ve been using information graphics or ‘infographics’, as visual shorthand to convey information to the viewer that might take paragraphs or pages to explain in words. We interact with infographics on a daily basis, from the stick figure telling us when to cross the street, to icons in a web navigational menu. The field of infographics is exploding, with Edward Tufte being the current leading expert. There are many great examples to be found, that run the gamut of information displayed…”
Two of our facilitators and one of our attendees from VizThink ‘08 were involved in a significant visualization effort for one of the most famous conferences in the world, TED. If you’re unfamiliar with TED, they choose a theme each year and then each presenter has 18 minutes (no more, no less) to present their story. The presentations are almost always impressive, and most certainly inspiring. One of the most famous TED presentations related to our field was one done by Hans Rosling in 2006.
Here’s a note from Tom Wujec who headed up this visualization effort at TED:
Dear VizThinkers:
As many of you will recall, at VizThink 2008, I extended an offer for a free ticket to TED to a graphic cartographer who had the talent and stamina to capture the ideas of over 50 TED presenters in 3 ½ days of meetings. It probably will not surprise you that the offer was extended to David Sibbit of the Grove Consultants International, one of the leaders in our industry. David and Kevin Richards, from Autodesk, made a herculean effort to create over 700 sketches which are now on-line in a 200 page pdf book as well as in several videos. If you’re interested in seeing this emerging variation of digital visual recording, please download the interactive pdf book as well as the videos that strive to capture the spirit of this year’s Big Ideas.
A list of winners from “the Oscars of information graphics” contest recently help in Pamplona. XPLANE took a bronze. Congrats, Ted, Taylor and Matt!
“Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Here are some of the best…”
“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.”
Check out this video we made for Kronos to help celebrate International Women's Day, 2011. Learn more in this xBlog post or jump over to YouTube and watch it there.
XPLANE | Dachis Group developed a A vibrant, engaging poster showing how Microsoft Azure enables developers to run applications and store data on Microsoft servers. The poster recently took top honors in the American Business Awards.
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