Patrick Haney's Web Design Inspiration

Here's a Web Design Inspiration set that UI Designer Patrick Haney is archiving on Flickr since 2005. The collection is now at 453 screenshots (and counting).

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T-Mobile G1 with Google Advert

Check out T-Mobile’s first promotional video for the Android-powered G1 phone. It will make you "smarterer", "connecteder", "funnerer" and uh, grammatically stupider.



Visit T-Mobile G1 Official Website »

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Why Upgrade to Adobe Photoshop CS4

Coming just 18 months after its predecessor, is Photoshop CS4 any good? Enter dekePod, Deke McClelland's irreverent and uncensored video series. Day and date with Adobe's announcement, Deke provides a third-party, impartial, and highly opinionated review of the new software. Titled "Photoshop CS4: Buy or Die," this episode promises to show you all facets of the program—complete with commentary—without interrupting your busy day. In just five minutes, you'll know whether you want to upgrade or not. Either you buy or it dies, it's as simple as that.

Related Post: Sneak Peak at Adobe Photoshop CS4

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Sneak Peak at Adobe Photoshop CS4

Adobe has announced details about Creative Suite 4 and the new suite, due to arrive before the end of the year, includes the latest version of Adobe's flagship image editor. According to a review, Photoshop Creative Suite 4 has been given a speed boost and boasts performance enhancements that take advantage of the latest advancements in graphics processing units.

What I like most about the new Photoshop CS4 is the Content-Aware Scaling feature which automatically recompose an image as you resize it, smartly preserving vital areas as the image adapts to the new dimensions. Another feature that I'm so excited to use is the revolutionary new Rotate tool that smoothly turn the canvas for distortion-free viewing at any angle. The features are a little hard to explain so spare me the time and just click on the link below and see them for yourself.

See the top new features »

UPDATE: Adobe Creative Suite 4 is now available

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Gmail Redesigned

I'm sick of seing the same white background every time I load my mail so I gave the boring interface a new look. Thanks to the guys at Global Designs, all I needed was the Stylish extension in Firefox and a CSS Stylesheet which loads locally over top of Gmail to change its skin. The image above is a screenshot of how my Gmail looks like now, after I installed the plugin.

Here's some more screenshots with the plugin.



Learn more about the installation [here].

Globex Designs »

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Search Engine Rap Battle

MSN vs Yahoo!

Watch Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo trade punchlines in this hilarious Search Engine Rap Battle. I'm a big fan of Google but I think Yahoo has the skills to win in a battle of lyrics. MSN vs Google and Google vs Yahoo videos after the jump.


MSN vs Google


Google vs Yahoo

The guys behind the Search Engine Rap Battle are also the same guys who made the Mac vs PC rap video, and now they're working on a new Rockumentary. Check out the new web series, Spaceship Excellent.

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Latest Microsoft Ads - “I’m a PC”

Two days ago, Microsoft launched the next phase of their $300 milion marketing campaign. The spots feature Bill Gates, Eva Longoria, Deepak Chopra, Pharell Williams, (Jerry Seinfeld is gone for now) and whole lot of other real people that use a PC. More videos after the jump.

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Lens Coffee Cup Helps Photographers Focus

I think it's an EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM. Whatever. This photomanipulated concept would be the coolest cup for any hot coffee.

via Chain Change

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Why America is Fucked

This is a video from Jess Gibson which shows Aaron Draplin, a graphic designer, telling him a story about a sign.

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Learn Photoshop in One Week

Interested in learning Photoshop but know nothing about the popular editing software? Weblog Elite By Design puts together a three part series that will help you to master Photoshop in just one week. I still think it takes time to master Photoshop but it's a very good resource for newbies anyhow. The first part which covers the basics of the program and how to operate the software might be a good place to start.

Link: How To Master Photoshop In Just One Week

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How To Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography

Frank Lazaro, a member of the Digital Photography School community, has put together a Photoshop tutorial on how to make your digital photos look like they were taken with a Lomo LC-A camera. If you're in the mood to play around with some of your photos but aren't interested in being really hands on with the process check out previously featured Wanokoto, an online image editor that helps you create vintage effects.

Link: How To Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography

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106 Signs That You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic Designer

Image Copyright: powerbooktrance [Flickr]

While the following signs (in no particular order) may be funny, I've got to admit that most of them are true. Keep reading and see for yourself. You know you're a graphic designer when...

1. You've almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard
2. You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
3. You'd rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend's shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.
4. You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can't type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard
5. You've had “Software Nightmares”, when you've been working way too much
6. You consider meals interruptions
7. You've learned your lesson and stopped using the word “final” in any file name when saving
8. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car
9. You've intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers
10. You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix
11. You'd rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer
12. When you heard that Adobe was aquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm
13. You've Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up
14. You've totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)
15. The amount of words you've written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you've read in novels
16. You've had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn't part of the deal
17. You've kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it
18. You've nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately) spinning beachball o’ death
19. You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town
20. You've intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away
21. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago
22. You have removed the arrows and cleaned up the fonts on a forwarded mail before forwarding on
23. You’ve had a client that thought they knew more about design than you
24. Your clients pay you for your professional expertise and skill, yet you’ve run into one of ‘those’ clients, that refuses to take the advice from the very person he/she is paying for advice (you)
25. You’ve had a client that insisted on using the font “Papyrus,” and you had to hold in your barf as you prepped it [the design] for printing
26. You’ve requested a vector logo from a client, and instead, they email you a 72 dpi image they grabbed from a website
27. You’ve used typography as a texture
28. You don’t have a favorite font because you love “Typography.” Not Fonts. Choosing a favorite font would be like choosing a favorite child, it’s just wrong
29. You collect as many free stuffs from the interwebs as you can on your hard
    drive, hoping that one day, that cool project will come along that you can
    actually use some cool shit on
30. You’d rather have a free font than a free gallon of gas
31. It’s hard to talk about frustrations at your job with a group of friends because they have no idea what “Vector” or “DPI” is, just to name a couple.
32. You’ve had a client ask you to “Make the logo bigger”
33. You’ve had a client that insists on “filling up the space”
34. You’ve learned to over-price web design projects because most clients are more picky about their websites than a high school girl picking out a prom dress
35. You feel like you’re “On Call” half of the time because clients procrastinate so much
36. You know keyboard shortcuts that require 4 fingers
37. You’ve lost hours of work because an application crashed, and you had to start over from scratch because you were in the “zone” and forgot to save. Basically, you were having so much fun being creative that saving was the last thing on your mind at the time
38. You’ve “Live-Traced” something
39. You spend more hours per week looking at CSS showcase sites than you do at the gym
40. The only thing that would make you happier than the demise of IE6 is world peace
41. You’ve done everything but give up a body part to talk a client out of a “Flash Intro.” Yeah. I said it. Flash Intro. Sad, so so sad. (goes along with #24)
42. You have enough fonts on your hard drive to last you for: 1 font per day for about a decade, give or take a year or two
43. You know, explicitly, what a “Flourish” is
44. You worry about negative space as much as the content area
45. You get phone calls from friends and family members on a regular, sometimes annoyingly-frequent basis, wanting your services for free or extremely cheap. (and the “portfolio” line makes you want to throw something across the room)
46. You’ve had a client that wants a website they can “update” on their own, but doesn’t know shit about websites
47. You’re never more than 99% happy with your final product because you believe that EVERYTHING can be improved upon. (especially with those tight-deadline projects)
48. You have bags under your eyes so big you’d have to check them in at the airport
49. You watch the Superbowl just for the commercials
50. You can spot bad typography from 100 yards away
51. You are pro-facebook because 95% of the Myspace accounts burn your retinas
52. You are completely immune to subliminal advertising
53. You look upon a well-designed project with either: sympathy OR extreme jealousy
54. Your hand is permanently stuck in the shape of a mouse
55. You tell stories of exacto-knife inflicted wounds with grizzled sort of pride
56. You practically take caffeine intravenously
57. You have an appreciation for everything unique
58. You’ve been spending three days non-stop on a project and it still looks like shit. You find yourself overcome by Deathlust.
59. You find your pulse increase at the sight of a lovely ligature, glasses steam up when an unusually elegant arm, leg, or tail comes in view, and a well-kerned paragraph is apt to make you break into a sweat with excitement
60. When you look at album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)
61. You buy a CD or DVD for the artwork, even if you have no idea what the actual music or film is like (even worse, you don’t actually watch or listen to it, just stare at it for hours and hug it in adoration)
62. You organize your CD collection according to the Pantone chart
63. You look at the clock and see it’s about midnight and think 'I’ll go to bed now'… and you actually go to bed about 2-3am
64. You need someone else to point out that you’re sitting in a room in front of the computer with all the lights off, and haven’t noticed
65. You know what "kerning" is and you really, really like it
66. You wear two [ke] [rn] pins on your bag, and only you know what the mean. To others its probably a band of sorts..
67. Forget the boy-wonder and the man of steel; your heroes have names like ‘Tibor Kalman’, ‘Stefan Sagmeister’, ‘Paul Rand’, and ‘Paula Scher’
68. You don’t wear black to look cool, you wear it to hide the gauche
69. You have a thing for chairs. You don’t know why
70. You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD
71. You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under
72. You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos
73. Seeing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure
74. You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets
75. You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn’t come
76. You’re up ’til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth
77. The hottest dream you ever had was “Trace contour… Find Edges… Pinch… Extrude… Smudge Stick… Motion Blur…. Sprayed Strokes…
78. You know Lorem Ipsum by heart
79. Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart
80. The preschool teacher complains your child won’t color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet
81. You deliberately butcher your perfectly cross browser compatible site in IE by placing a “Too Cool for IE” banner on it
82. You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin
83. You can name more than 200 fonts in under five minutes
84. Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash
85. You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper
86. You've actually paid for a font
87. You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because “it’s the only one where the lower-case g is just right…”
88. You can't go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design
89. Looking at a menu make you go “hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic” rather than “mmmm, lunch!”
90. And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture…
91. You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers
92. Cmd+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something
93. You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed
94. You refer to your privates as “the Magic Wand”
95. You know that rivers are more than just water
96. Your best friends are all employees at the local print shop
97. The only people who seem to know what you do for a living are other Graphic Designers (ex: Graphic Design? What’s that? You’ll never be able to make a living being an artist!)
98. Kerning and leading on your shopping list actually matters to you, and you don’t see a problem with that
99. Several South American economies suffer noticeably any time you try to give up coffee, or even cut your consumption of it by half
100. You know that “bleeding” doesn’t hurt
101. Your significant other/friends have threatened to never speak to you again if you point out one more font to them
102. You know the difference between fuchsia, magenta, and maroon
103. If you could go back in time you wouldn’t go back to see the rise and fall of civilizations, you’d go back in time to destroy comic sans and papyrus
104. Deciding on the right crop doesn’t involve a choice between corn or wheat
105. You’ve considered naming your children things like ‘Kern’, ‘Pica’, ‘Bézier’, and ‘Serif’
106. You can understand everything on this list

Ripped off from Bittbox and Facebook. :D

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Artweaver: Free Photoshop-like Image Editor

We always like coming across a free application especially when it sets out to accomplish a lot of what a paid application does. I've already shared Pixlr - an online image editor that works just like Photoshop last month. Now let me introduce you to another Photoshop alternative.

Well, more than just an alternative like GIMP, free application Artweaver is a fair clone of Photoshop itself. Of course Artweaver doesn't have the polish and advanced feature sets of Photoshop, but the tools function is intuitive and the menus are laid out just like in Photoshop. In fact, the programs are so similar that seasoned Photoshop users will find themselves wondering why a feature is suddenly missing from the menu. While it isn't a true replacement for Photoshop, Artweaver's feature set is robust; it includes layer management, image cloning, a history function, transparency, pen tablet support, and a host of the common filters in Photoshop.

Artweaver is available (for Windows only) as a full install or in a portable version and best of all, you can download it for free.

Link: Artweaver

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Andy Rooney on Public Art

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9/11 Museum Design Unveiled

Artist's Renderings: Squared Design Lab/National September 11 Memorial and Museum

Two days before the 7th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the city unveiled new additions to the memorial design. More images after the jump.


Two trident-shaped columns found in the wreckage will stand side-by-side in an evocation of the fallen towers.


The updates include a new version of the above-ground entrance pavilion, which will be surrounded by a grove of oak trees.


The main element of the design remains two cascading fountains in the footprint of the twin towers


Officials still hope to complete the shell of the pavilion in time for the 10th anniversary of the attack, in 2011, with the museum scheduled for completions several years later.

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Head Controlled Art

New York City based artisits Trevor and Ryan Oakes have invented a method to render, by hand, an accurate camera obscura style tracing of an object or scene onto a curved surface.

via MAKE Magazine

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Along Came A Spider

Image Copyright: Marked Images [Flickr]

La Machine, the art group based in Nantes, France that created The Sultan’s Elephant in 2006, installed a 50ft high, 37 metric ton of arachnoid machinery by the name of "La Princesse" on the side of the Concourse House near the Lime Street station in Liverpool. Last week, the mechanical monster woke up and explored various landmarks around Liverpool. More photos and videos after the jump.





La Machine was commissioned by Artichoke, the creative company behind The Telectroscope, to bring La Princesse to Liverpool as one of the highlights of the Capital of Culture 2008 celebration.

Check the BBC's day-by-day coverage - La Machine

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*relativity by Drzach & Suchy

The following videos are parts of project *relativity by Drzach & Suchy. It is based on the technique of Shadow Casting Panels, invented by Drzach in 2004.

*relativity: "moderne"



*relativity: "Marilyn"



*relativity: "point of view"



*relativity: "pop(e)-culture"



*relativity: "coexist"

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Right Brain vs Left Brain

If you see the lady spinning anti-clockwise, your thinking is dominated by the left hemisphere of your brain. But if you see the lady spinning clockwise, you rely heavily on the right side of your brain. I see the dancer turn clockwise most of the time. Do the test with your friends and let's see which way would the dancer spin most.

According to The Art Institute of Vancouver that features a Left Brain Right Brain Creativity Test, the brain is composed of two hemispheres, known as the left and right hemisphere. While each hemisphere has unique functions, which one side performs and the other does not, both hemispheres possess the ability to analyze sensory data, perform memory functions, learn new information, form thoughts, and make decisions.

The way you use these abilities determines a large part of your personality and behavior. By the time we, as humans, are two years old, one hemisphere begins to dominate your decision-making process. Communication between the two halves is possible due to the corpus callosum and this process continues to improve until the age of 15.

The left hemisphere specializes in analytical thought. It is responsible for dealing with "hard" facts such as abstractions, structure, discipline, rules, time sequences, mathematics, categorizing, logic, rationality, and deductive reasoning. It is also responsible for details, knowledge, definitions, planning, goals, words, productivity, efficiency, science, technology, stability, extraversion, physical activity, and the right side of the body. Left hemisphere ability is the predominant focus in school and society.

The right hemisphere specializes in "softer" aspects than the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is responsible for intuition, feelings, sensitivity, emotions, daydreaming, visualizing, creativity, color, spatial awareness, and first impressions. It is also responsible for rhythm, spontaneity, impulsiveness, the physical senses, risk-taking, flexibility and variety, learning by experience, relationships, mysticism, play and sports, introversion, humor, motor skills, and the left side of the body (the old belief that left-handed people are more creative does hold some scientific credence). The right hemisphere also has a holistic method of perception that is able to recognize patterns and similarities and combines those elements into new forms.

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How Design Can Save Democracy

In conjunction with NYTimes.com, AIGA's Ric Grefé and Jessica Friedman Hewitt have developed an interactive demonstration of how good ballot design can improve the voting experience.

via The New York Times

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Google Chrome Beta for Windows

Google Chrome has been the talk of the town since its release last Tuesday. I've downloaded and tried the new browser and I love the New Tab feature which provides image thumbnails and links for the websites you visit most often. Other features include Application shortcuts, Incognito mode, Crash control and more. In a nutshell, browsing is a whole lot easier with Google Chrome. But until the new browser fixes its security flaws, I'll stick with my favorite Firefox.

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Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Unboxing Parody

Microsoft's Internet Explorer team has produced promotional videos for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. There's a video parody of the popular gadget unboxing videos featuring a fictional character named Roland Wacker. Another video parody of a classical documentary on the subject of "slicing" which serves as a analogy for WebSlices. And finally, a video titled "Keeping up with the Election 2008″ from a series of showcase videos which demonstrates how Internet Explorer 8 can be used in various scenarios.

via istartedsomething

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Typography in Motion Pictures

Image Copyright: Typography Photo by Fadi N. Awwad [deviantART]

I love typography. There's something about this assembled set of letters that captures me a little more than the average person who just sees words. It's that deep meaning behind a typeface that most people carelessly overlook. It's amazing. But watching typography in motion, combined with great scenes from films, is even more fascinating.

Pulp Fiction



The "What does Marsellus Wallace Look Like" scene in Pulp Fiction portrayed using nothing but typography. By Jarratt Moody.

Kill Bill



By Jordi Casanueva

V for Vendetta



The scene in V for Vendetta in which V introduces himself to Eevy, in a long rambling string of alliteration. By Chris Silich

Fight Club



A typography experiment animated and designed by graphic artist Sebastian Jaramillo based on the movie Fight Club on the scene "Chemical Burn". Also, here's another one by YouTube user Jerryhatt on the 8 Rules of Fight Club.



Ocean's Eleven



YouTube user Callme4b's first attempt at animation, and After Effects. Project Description: Take 45 seconds of audio from anywhere and animate typography to it to show intonation.

Psycho



Psycho intonation typography experiment. © 2007 innospiral.

The Big Lebowski



The video above is Michael De Graaf's Motion Graphics Assignment in November 2007. Here's another one from the same film:



The Devil's Advocate



Al Pacino's speech on God all in typography.

Full Metal Jacket



Taking a famous scene from the classic film, Full Metal Jacket, typography is used to illustrate a heated dialogue between a Sergeant and a Soldier in a station bumper for AMC, American Movie Classics.

Who's On First?



Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine using typography only.

Wedding Crashers



The scene in the beginning of the movie where Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) says what he really thinks about the idea of dating. By Brian Cain

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