Friday Awesomeness: Film Noir Piano Cat
This awesome video comes way of io9. Totally won me over in less than 40 seconds. I could watch a feature-length version of this.
Have a good weekend folks!
Archive for September, 2009
Use Google to Easily Embed PDFs and PPTs
A neat hack of sorts comes our way via Google Operating System. Apparently you can utilize Google Docs to embed PDFs and PowerPoint presentations online. They files don’t have to be hosted on Google Docs, but do have to be available online.
As a test-run I tried it on a PDF of my portfolio at the top of this post. Hit the link to check out the code snippet you need to use. The only downside I see is that the document doesn’t completely load during the “loading” portion, making it show up blurry and skewed for a couple seconds. Other than that it’s really easy to take advantage of, and is something I’m sure all designers will be able to utilize at some point.
Inspiration: How to Be Inspired Without Copying
Vandelay Design posted a great article entitled Practical Tips for Taking Design Inspiration without Copying. The author aggregates views from a handful of different articles and discusses general design, logos, and web work. This should be required reading before looking at one of the many “logo inspiration” posts that appear online, and well worth the time for any designer to read.
See Mona Lisa Wave
This video comes courtesy @HABurton and showcases a new “living art” exhibit in China that utilizes real-time rendering to allow people to interact with the “art.” Reminds me a lot of Disney’s Turtle Talk with Crush attraction that they’ve installed at some of their parks (a video of which I’ve placed after the jump for those who are curious). Read the rest of this entry »
Understanding Logo Design
Coming from @Cabel of the fantastic Portland-based app studio Panic, is the awareness of this amazing video. If it’s a joke, it’s hilarious. If it’s serious, it’s terrifying. Hit the jump for a bonus video on making logos with wingdings (yay….). Read the rest of this entry »
Friday Awesomeness: Nike’s Colorful History
Coolhunter tracked down an amazing installation for Nike’s 1948 in London by designer Kustaa Saksi. The installation is themed around the historical journey of Nike. Really incredible project. I’m amazed at how un-garish it looks for something with such an explosion of color…and I must say it is a bit of a trip to see “OREGON” emblazoned on an Finnish designer’s installation in London.
Top Grass (?) Based Webpages
We’ve all seen collections of the best dark webpages, light webpages, colorful webpages, type-based webpages…but only Designer Daily was brave enough to assemble a look at the best grass-based webpages. While not all of them are grass-themed per-say, they do incorporate grass as a design element. I was quite happy to see that they all seemed to tackle grass in a different way as I had assumed we’d be seeing lots of this type of image treatment.
For Photography Neophytes
Smashing Mag has put together a good list of sites and resources to help improve your photography skills. The list contains links to tutorials, as well as the websites of various professional photographers and sites from which to glean inspiration. I know a lot of designers who end up using their own photography as a resource for projects, so this collection should offer some great help.
Type Tuesday: Helvetical
As a “sequel” of sorts to Helvetireader, Ad Taylor has released Helvetical, a Helvetica-based reworking of Google Calendar. This once again shows how Google could use a bit of a UI facelift these days. Helvetical works with Greasemonkey, Stylish, Fluid, and others.
