Archive for the 'Design' Category

• 12.12.07 On Mindmeister, XMIND and Mind Mapping posted in Design, Geekery

  It’s my personal opinion that mind mapping doesn’t get enough attention. Of course, I spend a lot of time in the “real world” blabbing on about mind mapping. Evangelizing, even. So I’m going to expound (again) on thoughts and tools for few bytes…

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• 12.12.07 A Few Quick Finds posted in Design, Geekery

  The “market” for Quick Look plugins is heating up, and there are some really handy additions coming out. These are not hot off the press, I held on to them for a little too long, but they bear mentioning nonetheless…

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• 09.13.07 My Biggest Work Yet posted in Design

  Well, when I’m not trying to write software, I’m usually designing. I just got pictures back from California of my biggest published piece to date. It’s a barricade for a shop installation, and I’ve forgotten the measurements because I got the job at 9:30pm and it was due by 11am the next day. But you can see in the picture the scale next to a human being. I’m finishing up a 24′x12′ billboard for another client right now, so that will rival it for large scale design…

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• 05.04.07 Tangerine: Sticky Sweet Color Management posted in Design, Web Design

  Tangerine is a new color management app for OS X that provides designers with a consistent palette for creating color palettes that translate between applications. It functions as a floating palette available from all applications and adding colors can be done with copy and paste, a dropper (magnifying glass) or with input sliders. The colors are then available with the click or drag of a swatch in any of your applications. It works with profiles and adjusts for different screen modes. In my short time experimenting with this program I’ve fallen in love with it. This is an excellent extension to the built in Color Picker and in tandem with a good Color Wheel makes for an excellent color management setup. If you deal with color, in print or web, check this out!

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• 03.29.07 Kuler Re-released posted in Design

  Adobe’s online color tool, kuler, was re-released along with Adobe Creative Suite CS3. I’m having a little trouble telling what’s new and what was previously available, but I can tell you that it’s still very cool. It features social networking aspects which allow sharing of palettes (downloadable and editable) and RSS feeds. I’m particularly enjoying the RSS feeds which, if you can keep up with them, let you find exciting new color combinations at a very rapid pace. Inspiration by the bucketload.

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• 02.14.07 I Think I’ve Got It posted in Design

  It has long been a soul wrenching divide in my personality: I love crazy, well designed desktop patterns, and I like to design and work with dark background screens. I like having a ton of windows open, hate minimizing windows and using the dock, but like uncluttered workspaces. I was taught that a designer should work with a 50% grey desktop. Eck, I can’t stand it. So what am I to do? Along comes Think, yet another wonderful piece of mac freeware.

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• 02.04.07 Regarding my pants and other news posted in Design, Web Design, Random Thoughts

  First off, I sincerely apologize for the last two movies. My lack of decorum is disturbing. Not disturbing enough to make me delete them from the blog, though, as it’s probably about time I showed my true colors. That’s right, I’m a Minnes-oh-tan with a very lame sense of humor. ;-).

  Meanwhile…

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• 02.03.07 Small Business Tools posted in Design

  I’ve been working on filling a few holes in our day-to-day operations, and trying to find the most elegant solutions. I wanted to share a couple of them here in the hopes that they would help out people in similar situations. The business we run is a very small design and marketing agency, but the tools I’ve found apply to any small business that bills for services and needs to manage sales contacts. I’m looking for comments and suggestions!

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• 12.14.06 Naturally inspiring posted in Design

  I had to post this image, and I’ll give you a short explanation as to why. I’ve got 4 websites racked up on my to-do list right now, and I’m suffering from a total brain cramp. I’ve even got wireframes and layouts approved for 2 of them and I just can’t get […]

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• 11.29.06 kuler: Color palettes for the masses posted in Design, Web Design

  Adobe is offering a relatively new color tool for free, called kuler. It lets you put together color palettes using the usual color theory, with tools like RGB sliders for adjusting parts of each palette. If you have (or create) and Adobe I.D., you can save and publish your palettes. Each […]

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