It’s time for a fresh start! Seize the New Year and streamline your calendar. We stumbled across this great resource; several free and quite unique planners are available for download. Definitely worth checking out!
“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
~ Thomas A. Edison
(www.aiga.org) – Designers like to share. If we were honest, many of us would admit we also love to brag. Sometimes a tool comes along that enables us to do both simultaneously. Brilliant.
What is Dribbble? You likely have a Dribbble account, are desperate for an invitation, or have elected to turn a deaf ear to the latest online-community-sharing-feedback-design-tool. If you use Twitter, you have almost certainly had a “sweet shot”—a screenshot in Dribbble’s basketball-themed parlance—come through your stream.
Read the full article here!
Never feel like there’s enough time in the morning? Find yourself struggling to get up or into work mode? We know the feeling. Try out these tips on waking up, getting energized, and getting things done in the early hours.
“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” ~Salvador Dalí
(www.readwriteweb.com) – Whether they’re for clients, customers or colleagues, visual presentations are an unavoidable part of doing business. For years, Microsoft PowerPoint has been the standard bearer of slide presentation applications, but several Web-based alternatives have emerged.
For the most part, the alternatives offer similar functionality to PowerPoint, sometimes more, sometimes less. One obvious advantage to Web-based presentations is that they’re stored in the cloud, eliminating the potential for nightmare scenarios involving lost or corrupted thumb drives.
Check out more here!
(mashable.com) – Quick Pitch: JumpScan provides a custom “all-in-one” QR code to link your physical and digital world.
Genius Idea: QR codes have been all the rage this year for big brands, and now ordinary consumers and small businesses can get in on the fun, too. JumpScan lets users create customized QR codes that combine all your contact information, including social media profiles, for on-the-go sharing. Think of it as a QR-powered iteration of Flavors.me or About.me especially intended for mobile phones.
Read the full article here!
“Seattle GiveCamp happening Jan 14-16, 2011 – NEED YOUR HELP!”
Seattle GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations.
If you know a charity or non-profit that needs a new website? Or needs help to escape those Excel spreadsheets and get a real donor database? Or trying to figure out how to build their social media presence?
…if so, then please let your favorite local charity know about National GiveCamp happening early next year!
Also if you are a designer, web developer, database administrators, marketer, web strategists, or something in between or all of the above PLEASE join the Seattle GiveCamp’s team – all you need to do is apply.
Charities apply here: http://bit.ly/gaw7qi
Volunteers apply here: http://bit.ly/dGepKs
(blog.designcrowd.com) – Startups have flourished in 2010. The last 12 months have yielded some fantastic success stories. Groupon is a standout and is currently receiving a lot of attention, buzz and press. Some believe the latest wave of start-ups are driving a dot-com recovery. Either way, as designers, it is interesting to reflect and see what design trends and styles are used by some of the world’s newest and most innovative companies.
Below are 50 logos for tech start-ups that were launched in 2010 or that came to prominence in 2010. We’ve categorized them into 3 groups: “The Good”, “The Average” and “The Ugly”.
Read the full article here!
“You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.”
~ Jon Stewart
(CNNMoney.com) — For the first time in more than two years, the number of Americans filing for their first week of unemployment benefits fell below 400,000 last week — a ray of hope in the one of the longest job droughts in U.S. history.
The number of initial claims fell to 388,000 in the week ended Dec. 25, down 34,000 from the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Read the full article here!
(www.openforum.com) – According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, the tendency of a body in motion is to keep moving; the tendency of a body at rest is to sit still. In other words, it’s a lot less work to keep moving once you have some momentum, than it is to start moving from a dead stop.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a marathon or running a business – momentum is key. If we can take small steps to execute our big, bold business objectives every day in 2011, it will be infinitely easier to stay focused, make great strides, and blast through the roadblocks that inevitably come up.
Read the full article here!
(mashable.com) – The small business professional’s workday can be both tedious and mundane when it comes to necessary daily, weekly and monthly tasks that feel more like chores than accomplishments.
Presentations for meetings or keynotes can take hours, if not days, to perfect. Building dynamic accounting reports is a labor of love (or heartbreak), and everyone dreads monthly must-complete expense reports.
While there’s no escaping these unfortunate tasks, newer web and mobile applications, like Prezi, inDinero and Expensify, make the time spent doing them much less arduous, and in the end, you might be infinitely more pleased with the results.
Read the full article here!
The designer is a visually literate person, just as an editor is expected by training and inclination to be versed in language and literature, but to call the former an artist by occupation is as absurd as to refer to the latter as a poet.
— Douglas Martin
(Alison Doyle on About.com) – This is a good time of year, and you should do it at least annually, to check and revamp your resume. It’s important to take the time to write a resume that reflects why you’re a top tier candidate who should be selected for an interview. That means your position descriptions should be as quantified as possible – numbers, percentages, achievements – concrete evidence of what you have accomplished.
Read the full article here!
With more than 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a professional social network worth using, understanding and optimizing.
After you’ve covered the basics of setting up your LinkedIn presence, features including recommendations, applications, LinkedIn Answers, and the Resume Builder can add value to your profile. Many of these highly useful features, though, are often overlooked or underused by newcomers.
We spoke with four LinkedIn aficionados to get their top advice on making the best use of these tools. Read on for their thoughts and let us know which tips you’d add for optimizing LinkedIn profiles in the comments below.
Read the full article here!
To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
— John Dewey
Photo Flash Technology Creates After Image Visible When Eyes Are Closed
(AdAge.com) — BMW Germany is literally getting into consumers’ heads, by burning its logo onto the insides of their eyes. Using pioneering new “flash projection” technology, BMW is testing a cinema spot in Germany that does not feature a visible logo. Instead, a bright photo flash occurs during the ad, and a few moments later the audience is asked to close its eyes. At this point, the audience sees an after-image of the brand that has been created by the flash. The letters “BMW” appear before them, in the same way that you might see a bright spot if you had been looking at the sun and then closed your eyes.
Read the full article here!
(mashable.com) – Facebook users are showing off some serious creativity by taking advantage of the new profile page photo layout.
French artist Alexandre Oudin (below) has been identified as the creator of the craze, and more and more designs are now emerging. People have been playing around with their profile pics since Facebook first launched, but the new redesign allows for some inspired fun including clever animations, typography and photography magic.
See full article here!
Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.
— Tate Linden
