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Google Voice Business Cards: Did you get yours?

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:09:25 +0000

A little while back I got my Google Voice Phone Number. As of this post, you still have to sign up for an invite. I got my invite pretty quick. I think it was about a week wait. If you would like to learn more about Google Voice, click here. Well, after logging in to my Google Voice Account, I noticed this little Icon and link to get free Google Business Cards for the first 25,000 users of Google Voice (they are not giving them out as of now). Well I made the first 25,000 so proceeded to sign up for the cards. This is what they looked like when I received them. Pretty cool. Just thought I would share this image of an actual Google Voice Business Card in the wild. Simple, Clean and oh so Google-ish. Oh yeah, did I say Google Voice is a killer Google Application? It’s like Gmail for your phone! Yeah yeah, you might think I’m nuts showing my name and contact information, well I got’s nuttin’ to hide! Feel free to leave me a message!

Top 100 Plus Design Blogs: Inspire and Re-wire Your Desire

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:17:15 +0000

This list of Top 100 Plus Design Blogs is used mostly for my personal inspiration. Design Blogs come in many flavors. These flavors are more dynamic than most web docs due to the nature of their creators… designers at heart. I hope you find a blog that you have not seen yet. I will append this list as I see fit… If you have a Design Blog and it’s not on the list (and you think it should be on this Top list) submit your site in the comments. We would all love to have a look see. I’m at 125 design blogs and counting. Here we go (in no particular order)… I was going to just make a list, but decided to put a little more heart into it. Plus, this way you can get a visual taste of what your eyes will encounter when you visit a site.

fuelyourcreativity.com

wearejustcreative.com

signalnoise.com

sharebrain.info

redswish.co.uk

positivespaceblog.com

rwillustrator.blogspot.com

elliotjaystocks.com/blog

justcreativedesign.com

arbent.net

creativebits.org

dache.ch

underconsideration.com/brandnew

frederiksamuel.com/blog

blog.spoongraphics.co.uk

webdesignerdepot.com

dezinerfolio.com

knowtebook.com

crazyleafdesign.com/blog

webresourcesdepot.com

uxbooth.com/view/blog

thefloatingfrog.co.uk

denisdesigns.com/blog

webdesigndev.com

designshard.com

nikibrown.com/designoblog

nouveller.com

littleboxofideas.com/blog

dawghousedesignstudio.com

colourlovers.com/blog

rob-sheridan.com/sketchblog

More To Come!
Please Submit Sites in the Comments Section.

Photoshop Tutorial: Using Smart Objects

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:58:48 +0000

Most graphics programs use rasterized images. When applying transforms like resizing or such the original pixel information is lost. Most of you know you can’t play around with an image in Photoshop and preserve the pixel information of the original image. Well, this is where Smart Objects come into play. They don’t call em’ Smart for nothing.

Smart Objects can be placed or imported as a layers. Smart Objects allow the designer to transform the original image using – scaling, distorting, skewing etc. all the while maintaining the original pixel resolution of the original image. A dream for designers. One can scale the image to the size of an icon and then back to its original size without a loss of image quality. No rasterizing is taking place until the final output when you “flatten” said image.

Here’s a quick example…

Create a Smart Object… there are a couple ways

1. Using Photoshop click File > Open as Smart Object. This is for when you want to open an image directly as a Smart Object.

2. You can paste from Adobe Illustrator. You will be able to choose to past as a Smart Object in a the dialogue box.

3. The other way is within a Photoshop image document, click File > Place – then choose the image file you want to place as a Smart Object. This is for placing an image as a Smart Object layer into an existing project document.

After creating a Smart Object, you will notice in the Photoshop layers palette that the layer looks a little different than a normal layer. It is now easy to tell the difference between Smart Object layers and normal layers. There will be an inset or “badge” in the Smart Objects layer.

Once this Smart Object is created you can go ahead with all your transforms back and forth without losing the resolution of the original image that you placed in as a Smart Object.

Here I placed a Smart Object layer next to a normal layer. They are both the same image, but the one on the right was placed into the document as a Smart Object. Here they will look the same on the canvas except for how they are shown in the layers palette.

Now, After I a re-sized the canvas to 25% then back to its original size, then back to 10% then back to it’s original size you can really see where the Smart Object does it’s magic. Notice the pixelation that has occurred with the normal image layer on the left. You will notice the Smart Object layer on the right has maintained it’s original resolution throughout all the transforms that I put it through! Awesome.

Remember, both these images are layers in the same document canvas. The Smart Object clearly shines. The normal layer is highly degraded. The Smart object holds it’s original quality because during the resizing transformations that I put it through, each time I transformed the image the Smart Object re-sampled the original Smart Object image.

This is just a prime example on why the usage of Smart Objects is a wonderful thing.

Flickr Farm: Illustration

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:16:28 +0000

Here is a very large collection of illustrated images. Great for inspiration on those days when you brain just locks up!

Flickr Farm: Illustration

Del.icio.us Bookmarklet Tag for Google Chrome

admin — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:00:21 +0000

As designer’s and web heads, I know we are always bookmarking those awesome websites we find with great tools, fonts, ideas, images, etc… (At least I am)… Many of you may use del.icio.us to tag these pages, if not.. try it .. you will LOVE it… The thing is, I had a little problem that I needed to fix to use Delicious Tagging…

Ever since Google released their Chrome Browser I have been wanting to use it but was never happy because I could not use the Del.icio.us Tag add-on for Internet Explorer in the Chrome browser. I do a ton of tagging, so using Chrome was just not possible. There is a fix! I am so happy because I really like the speed and simplicity of the Chrome browser.

Internet Explorer Del.icio.us Tagger I’m Talking About

Here goes.

All you have to do is drag this link –> Delicious Tag to your Bookmarks Bar in the Chrome Browser. This uses Javascript to get the magic done. Make sure your Bookmarks bar is showing first of course. Now all you have to do to tag that awesome web page that you found is to click on that new Delicious Tag Bookmark and it will pop up a new window just like it did before in Internet Explorer! And from there you can also choose to view your bookmarks. So sweet and simple. So.. load up The Chrome browser and give it a whirl!

Google Chrome Delicious Tag Bookmarklet