14th
May
2008
“I pulled together a slidecast, with audio, of ‘10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.’ Bryan Mason and I gave this talk at SXSW 2008 Interactive. I’ve already described the talk here (we gave a version of it at Web 2.0 Expo SF in April) but the SXSW folks recently made the audio available.”
posted in Business of design, Creativity | Permalink |
8th
May
2008
“Web designers and graphic designers are always looking for new sources of design inspiration. Of course, many of us turn to CSS galleries, and there are even more sources of offline inspiration. Personally, I find the work in many Flickr groups to be another excellent source of inspiration. Aside from the billions of photos on Flickr, there are also some groups that have been established to showcase the work of designers. Here is a look at 99 of them according to category (about half of them are general graphic design groups). Below the link to each group you’ll see the number of members and the number of items (pictures, graphics, screenshots, etc.) that have been submitted to the group, plus I have included part of the group description as listed by the moderator.”
posted in Creativity, Graphic design, Illustration, Web design | Permalink |
5th
May
2008
“Focus is something of a novelty these days. We’ve got cellphones for texting and calls, IM, Twitter, Email, RSS feeds, Facebook, Myspace… the list goes on and on. If you don’t have ADD before you start working online, it seems it’s almost inevitable thanks to these inputs. If you’re a web worker who uses the Internet for the majority of the day, you’re especially at risk for losing focus.
Focus is something that must be fought for. It’s not something that automatically switches on when you want to. You have to make sure your surroundings are perfect for working if you want to be focused. Here’s a few ways I’ve found this to work…”
posted in Business of design, Creativity | Permalink |
2nd
April
2008
“A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE on DESIGN, ENTREPRENEURSHIP and INSPIRATION: Learn about taking control of your own work by seeking out methods to inspire new thinking and adopt unconventional ideas about collaboration and business via six presentations and discussions led by 37signals, Segura Inc, Coudal Partners and friends.”
posted in Business of design, Creativity | Permalink |
12th
March
2008
“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.”
posted in Creativity, XPLANE | Permalink |
1st
February
2008
This is making the rounds but it is pretty great, especially #6 and #7. (Thanks kottke.org!)
posted in Art, Creativity | Permalink |
10th
December
2007
Fun-looking mail art project.
posted in Art, Creativity | Permalink |
6th
December
2007
“Who was this person that said you had to wait for inspiration to start making something?” Yeah!
posted in Creativity | Permalink |
13th
November
2007
“A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.”
posted in Creativity | Permalink |
8th
October
2007
“Michael Fallon presents the interesting idea that creativity–or at least the mandate for it–can create boredom, discontent, depression, and a lot of cruddy work. Agree? Disagree?” (Thanks fimoculous!)
posted in Art, Creativity | Permalink |
28th
September
2007
“Cartographies of Imagination, by me, Sarah B. Nelson, is about navigating the world of collaboration, through methods, tools, techniques and ideas. I’ll share methods, tools, and ideas to inspire you to draw on the collective wisdom around you. I’m an interaction designer and design strategist at Adaptive Path.”
posted in Communications, Creativity, Interaction design | Permalink |
30th
August
2007
“Whether your chosen medium is pictures or language, food or formulas, everyone has the capacity to be creative in their work. But we can often lose our motivation to create, making it difficult to stay focused and excited on a project. So how does one keep their creative well from drying up?”
posted in Creativity | Permalink |
10th
August
2007
“design|snips was born out of my realization that most sites I add to my ‘Design’ folder are bookmarked because of a few elements that are really well designed. Whether it’s the headline style, callout boxes or other modules, I usually am inspired by a few key parts of each site. design|snips will collect and categorize these elements and hopefully help you when it comes time to start on a new interface.”
posted in Creativity, Interface design, Web design | Permalink |
10th
August
2007
“Scroll through yards of inspirational images. Share and contribute, see what you can do. Add a personal link to your submission or just engage anonymous. Be part of the longest visual website in the world!” (Note: Could have NSFW images…)
posted in Creativity, Web graphics | Permalink |
21st
July
2007
“At a conference recently, I heard Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits talk about inspiration. He showed a bunch of different techniques he uses, including how he uses Photoshop’s mosaic filter on an image to blow up giant pixels representing the basic colors in the picture. He uses those as pallets for the design work he does. Very cool.
Inspiration can come from process, but it can also come from the most unexpected places. For example, when we were designing the data-over-time visualizations for Google Analytics, we were totally stuck with bar graphs. We’d iterated dozens of times, scoured the web for examples to steal, and had tried just about everything. The result felt muddy and chartjunked…”
posted in Creativity, Information design, Information graphics, Movies/TV | Permalink |