These oversized kraft boxes reintroduce the alphabet not as 26 distinct letters, but as the result of combining geometric parts. The 4-inch cubes may be viewed and stacked from any direction, creating unexpected shapes and letterforms. Letterboxes by The Design Office
The 50 Most Popular Web Design Blog Posts, Resources & Cheat Sheets of 2007
Some personal highlights:
The Importance of White space – One of the oldest principals of design is white space, and knowing how to use it properly could mean wonders for your design. Popular site A List Apart tackles the subject.
35 Designers x 5 Questions – What better way to learn technique then to speak to those who know it best? 35 of some of the brightest minds in web design get put on the spot and share some insightful expert advice.
(via muhsashum)
This tip comes in handy for graphic designers who need a quick way to get pedestrian-free photographs of their signage or environmental projects. There is a classic digital photography technique for removing unwanted people: Take several shots of the same scene using a tripod — then layer those photos in Photoshop. People move around between shots, so you can use parts of one photo to erase an unwanted person from another. A good tutorial is available for this technique: How to remove tourists from your photos.
Creativetechs‘ twist is to use Photoshop CS3’s improved Photomerge feature to automate this task. Simply shoot a collection of photos, erase the unwanted people in Photoshop, and let Photomerge stitch together a finished image.
Slate presents Donald Gunn’s list of the twelve types of ads. Read the accompanying article (by Seth Stevenson) here.
(via hello.bauldoff)
The unclutterer links to an interesting article on using plants as a mosquito repellent solution. G, worth looking into?
Do you know how to moonwalk?
Check out these free university lectures. A few that stood out to me:
“The Power of the anecdote is so great…No matter how boring the material is, if it is in story form…there is suspense in it, it feels like something’s going to happen. The reason why is because literally it’s a sequence of events…you can feel through its form [that it’s] inherently like being on a train that has a destination…and that you’re going to find something…” — Ira Glass
Ira Glass: Tips on storytelling
(via chrisglass)
If you find yourself needing to quickly remove the background from an image in Photoshop, take a moment to play with the background eraser tool. (Click-and-hold on the eraser in Photoshop’s tool pallet to choose this tool). The background eraser samples the color in the center of the brush. It deletes that color and softens the edges so that color halos are not visible if the foreground object is later pasted into another image.
Watch the short two-minute video tutorial demonstrating this technique in action. Over at CreativeTechs.
Getting Your Work Out There Interesting article by Grace Bonney from Design*Sponge
If you haven’t done it before, preparing high-quality, low file-size video for the web looks daunting. What are the shortcuts and gotchas? How do you navigate your way through the new terminology and the myriad options in software? Flash video expert Tom Green guides you step-by-step, from the moment someone hands you a video, to putting the final product online. In part three of his series, The Rise of Flash Video, Tom provides the sort of tips that will make your work look professional from the start. Read more
DigitalWeb Magazine has a wealth of interesting articles. Here, pick your article by topic.
Apparently, if the soda machine has an LED screen, you can hack it using a combination of buttons and find out all kinds of fun facts, including how much money is in the machine, the inside temperature and how popular each variety of pop is. All I can say is, I know what I’m doing tomorrow at work.
(via diyhappy)
