Do you own an American or Australian Blog?
Published on Friday, December 14, 2007 – 4:07 pm | leave a comment »
Judging from my stats, the majority of my readers are from America however I wish to help you few Aussies out there as well. If you own an Australian or American blog, there are communities out there that help you out!
Australia: I want to bring awareness to Blogpond - an Australian Blog community as they are there to help you out in your blogs pursuit of happiness. I have actually just recently been added to this community and in the short future wish to be in the top 100 Austalian Blogs. At the time of writing, they have 236 Australian blogs listed in their community.
And just so you know blogs are ranked by:
AU = Alexa Rank in Australia
X = Global Alexa Rank
T = Technorati Rank
America: I also want to bring awareness to a similar service based in America called Best American Blogs (though it doesnt seem to modereated to me). You can submit your site to be part of the American community and get your own ranking. At the time of writing, they have just under 450 American blogs listed in their community.
Other Communities:
There are heaps of other communities out there that are generic such as the ones I am a member of below.
- MyBlogLog - Blogging Community
- BlogCatalog - Blogging Community
- LinkedIn - A business networking website.
- Del.icio.u - My bookmarks.
- Digg - Websites I find useful and great.
- DesignFloat - A digg like website but only on design.
- Technorati - Blogosphere
- SpicyPage - Share your favorite sites or blogs.
Anyway, I just wanted to help the communities that support you.
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FUNNY Graphic Design Jokes and Humour
Published on Friday, December 14, 2007 – 11:23 am | 7 brilliant comments » 
Below is a list of the most humorous video clips, pictures, jokes and parodies from around the world wide web, with most of the list being courtesy of AllGraphicDesign and the rest being added myself.
My favourite ones have a smiley face
Funny Graphic Design Videos
Original Design Gangsta’ - Great Rap Video
John Stossel 20/20 - Short & Sweet Humerous Clip
Enter The Serif - An Asian fight between Serif & Sans Serif.
Make My Logo Bigger - Parody of clients asking for their work to be the way they want.
Trust Your Graphic Designer - The Graphic Avenger - A video parody.
South Park - Mac vs. Pc - Computer Commercial
PC vs Mac Spoof - Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs
Holiday Photoshop Advert - A very humerous photoshop.
How Not To Use Powerpoint - A parody of how people use Powerpoint in the wrong way.
Humourous Graphic Design Jokes & Parodies
8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad
As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them are communists. So to do my part to save the world from them, i made a list of things you can do when working with a graphic designer, to assure that they have a burn-out and leave this business FOREVER.
Graphic Designer’s Judgment Clouded By Desire To Use New Photoshop Plug-In
The aesthetic judgment of Paul Gaskill, a graphic designer working on a brochure for Valley View Apartments, was “severely clouded” by a desire to use a new Adobe Photoshop plug-in, coworkers at Blue Moon Design said Monday.
Hillarious Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine Front Page Graphic Design Error
This really ‘rights’ itself. The major magazine of Fort Smith, Arkansas’s partners in education issue that just came out has the following front page. Partners in Education help our local public schools educate (indoctrinate) our children often working with an elementary school or other individual school. Try to find the huge typo.
25 Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer
A list of signs that you might be a hardcore designer. A lot of these signs can overlap other professions too. From my experience, the following list contains mostly truths, mixed in with a little humor.
Another You Know You are a Graphic Designer When
Another list of ways to know that you are a graphic designer
You Know You’re a Graphic Designer When
A list of ways you know that you are a graphic designer.
Mac / PC Commercial Parodies
A Parody of the well known Mac / PC commercials.
You Know You’re a Font Fanatic If
A top 42 list for font fanatics.
The UnSpoken Rules of Graphic Design
37 funny rules for being a graphic designer.
The Patron Saints of Graphic Design
A humorous and beautiful page about the unknown saints of Graphic Design.
The Way Graphic Designers Used to Work
Pictures of the tedious way graphic design and layout used to work. Not funny, but put a smile on my face because I’m so happy that things aren’t like this anymore.
Ad-Agency Print Buyer Can’t Believe They Want To Add A Perf This Late In The Game
A fake news story by The Onion.
Area Man Knows All The Shortcut Keys
A fake news story by the Onion
Indexed
Makes fun of his life as a graphic designer.
Pay attention, professionals –or not- in Communication, Marketing and Advertising. These things happen almost every day; sometimes we don’t even notice them. But they’re here to stay. They are verbatims. And yes, they’re REAL.
Murphy’s Graphic Design Laws
A cute set of laws for graphic designers.
This is What Happens When Your Dad is a Graphic Designer
Look to see what this baby’s dad does to her pictures. Cute.
Worst Company URLs
Want a laugh? Look at these web site URLs that spell things a bit different than what the owner was hoping.
Logo Design Humour
Redesigned Logos 2.0
Redesigned Logos in Web 2.0 Format
Listen to the song made for logo designers.
Hmmm…some of these logos are um…just look for yourself.
Flickr Photos Tagged with yay2dot0logoparody
Well known logos redesigned for web 2.0 for fun.
Logos designed for terrorists
Web 2.0 sites are all the rage and if you’re lucky enough to be bought out by Google or Yahoo there are millions of dollars to be made, but how do you fake it as a Web 2.0 site? Well, all Web 2.0 sites have one thing in common … they look the part.
Like fake google logos?
KFC’s Logo First to be Seen From Space
KFC Created a logo to be seen from space. Not that funny but still cool.
Gasp, this is the worst and most shocking logo ever.
Here are some funny rejected holiday logos.
Logo design gone wrong.
Really seems like it is a joke, but this logo is for real.
Corporation’s New Logo Changes Everything
A fake news story by The Onion.
Font humour
Ugly fonts, cutesy fonts, unreadable fonts, bad fonts . . . they have terrorized us for far too long, infiltrating our homes via e-mail, IM, and low-rent ValPak ads. Here, LMNOP presents the seven worst fonts–and the people who use them.
During a late night online conversation with another black, white, and orange website fan, it was decided that certain fonts should be retired. They’ve had a good run, but some things must come to an end. Whether, by overuse, obscurity, or just plain ugliness, here are some that just don’t make the cut.
Extra-Slanty Italics Introduced For Extremely Important Words
A fake news story by The Onion
DT&G Typography: Ask Yourself How it Will Read
Choose font and kerning well.
Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys
A fake parody news story by The Onion.
A List of Design and Fonts Jokes
Another list of design jokes and fonts jokes
A parody of the song, ‘Baby Got Back’
Alpha-Bits Now Available In Serif Font
A fake parody news story by The Onion.
Another fake news story by The Onion
These are cheesy jokes, but enjoy anyway.
Even cheesier fonts joke than the one above it.
You Know You Are a Fontaholic When…
Much of the following has been ‘floating around’ the USENET comp.fonts list for a couple of years.
Your Monkey Called - White and Sajak on Fonts
Not really so funny, but cute.
Adobe Photoshop Jokes & Humour
A fake news story by The Onion.
It all started with this, the hilarious Marquis de Sade picture, which was made in a flash of inspiration at work, one day. Within minutes of sending it to friends, jpegs started coming in thick and fast, as everyone began jumping on the comedy bandwagon. T
You Know You’re Addicted to Photoshop When
A list of ways to know that you are addicted to Photoshop
Photoshop Thread on Fark
A comic of what Leonardo Da Vinci Would have Been Doing if he had access to Photoshop
Acquired Paint Shop Pro Syndrome
The Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta today announced the identification of a new disease.
Jokes for freelance designers
Difference Between Freelance Designers & Onsite Designers
The difference between working in-house and freelance…
This smart entrepreneur thought of this great idea, putting cartoons on the back of business cards to be remembered. They are called ‘blog cards’ and some of the cartoons are funny…and if you ask me, a great idea for freelancers.
Printers Humour
A very funny document giving advice on printers that will just make things much worse.
Have any of you ever reacted this way?
Cute Xerox commercial
A picture that will make you smile.
Hope you enjoyed the list, there is many hours worth of humour here so don’t view it all at once 
101+ Places To Get Design Inspiration
Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 – 5:43 pm | 75 brilliant comments »
Looking for design inspiration? I have collected a list of the best posts and websites out there that really got me inspired.
Inspirational Collections
DesignFlavr - A gallery full of hand chosen design. 100% quality.
60 More Places To Get Design Inspiration - A list like this of 60 more websites where you can get design inspiration. All quality.
34 Places To Get Design Inspiration - 34 more websites of where to get design inspiration.
12 Links for Web Design Inspiration - A great list of where to get web design inspiration.
Great Illustrator Designs - A great pictured post of great illustrator designs.
32 Inspirational graphic design pieces - Another great pictured list of great graphic design.
The Best Inspiration from 2007 - A huge collection of awesome graphic design pieces from 2007.
Thinking For A Living - This is an awesome collection of only high quality websites and resources that have been broken down into smaller categories. Not so much visual inspiration but a list of good places where to get it.
Design Inspiration Galleries:
HOWDesign.com Design Inspiration Directory
Design Studios / Artists
Blogs (Resourceful Articles + Inspiration)
Many more recommended design blogs here.
My Many BookMarks
Search Engines
Try Googling ‘Design Inspiration‘.
Use Digg and their design search.
Use StumbleUpon and their design search.
DeviantArt - A quick search will find many results.
18 Search Engines for Creatives
What are your favourite design inspiration links?
75 comments thus far »
Can’t Figure Out Why Your Drawings Suck? Try this.
Published on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 – 7:21 pm | 5 brilliant comments » 
I was just reading a uni friend’s blog and he mentioned this interesting tip about drawing and tunnel vision. This really stood out for me as I am not the best drawer and any tips wouldn’t go astray…
When you’re working on illustrations and drawings, and find yourself stuck or unable to put your finger on flaws, try viewing it mirrored. Both on the computer and on paper.
By holding the design in front of a mirror, and viewing it afresh you can easily pick up flaws - especially when drawing the human body. The proportions between differents parts of the body often tend to get out of line, even though it seems perfectly correct when drawing it.
Have a go for yourself.
5 comments thus far »
Customise Your Wordpress Login Screen
Published on Thursday, November 29, 2007 – 5:30 pm | 5 brilliant comments »
Did you know you can customise your Wordpress login screen? Above you can see my modified version or you can check out the live version here.
You may be looking for the Wordpress 2.5+ version?
This is more important for blogs with multiple authors or blogs designed for clients.
The process is way to easy - You create two images (login-bkg-tile.gif and login-bkg-bottom.gif) and then put them into your wp-admin/images/ folder from your wordpress installation.
For a full tutorial on how to do this visit Asara Myshan or BinaryMoon.
For some inspiration visit this Flickr photo album.
It’s the attention to detail in your work that makes all the difference when you deal with your clients. If you have designed a wordpress blog for a client I would highly recommend making this small, yet important, inclusion. For myself, its not as important as I am the only one who writes on this blog, however for those with multiple authors it surely is a must.
Have you got any login screens you want to share?
5 comments thus far »
How To Be Creative
Published on Monday, November 26, 2007 – 12:40 am | 24 brilliant comments »
Do you ever get asked ‘Where did you get that idea from?’ in any of your projects or pieces of work and you couldn’t answer the question? Well, I have actually come across that a few times and it made me think to myself, where do I get my creativity? How do I get my creative juices flowing? How do I boost my creativity?
I made a short list of where I usually got my ideas from and came down to two things I always did to get my creative juices flowing, that being mindmapping and finding inspiration. I then compared my ways to other creative individuals on the net but we will get to that in a bit.
Mindmapping
So what? Everyone has heard of mindmapping but are you doing it in the best possible way - the way that suits you best? The key to perfecting mind-mapping is creating your own personal style.
- Do you use keywords? Images? Both?
- Do you use a variety of colours?
- Do you use a hierarchy system? A number system? Outlines? Circles?
- Do you use random words for inspiration or do you relate words? Both?
- Are all lines & thoughts connected? Or do you loiter off into new mind maps?
You must find the best method that suits you, as the key to getting great ideas and getting your creative juices flowing is by perfecting your own personal style, as not everyone has the same way of doing things.
Finding Inspiration
If you are really stuck for ideas (even after mindmapping), I have always found that by getting an idea of what other people have done and what has succeeded (or failed) is a great way to get your feet off the ground again.
Try looking in books, magazines, newspapers, on then internet, journals, and any where else you can think of! Check this post on where to find design inspiration.
Although mindmapping and inspiration are two great ways of getting creative, there are many other ways to help you out. For example, a creative blog by the name of Think Simple Now outlines in an article how to get to your inner creativity. See below.
Other Creative Methods
Have you ever tried practicing any of the methods below? Give it a try, you’ll be surprised.
- Get Relaxed - Take a moment to do something that makes you happy; that brings you joy; that you love; that centers you. Meditate, take a walk, go for a swim, read something that puts you in a good mood, write a diary - writing down your thoughts.
- Give Gratitude - Thinking about all things you are grateful for produces a positive energy flow and vibration. As you feel the love in your heart for all the wonderful blessings and gifts in your life, you will instantly relax and feel all warm-and-fuzzy inside. In that moment of warmth and love, you are open to creative energy.
- Tickle Your Imagination - Imagination is highly visual. Try closing your eyes, and imagine that you are in a scene, any scene. Okay - pick your ideal scene, practice seeing the details of your environment in this scene. See the colours, the textures, touch something. What does it feel like? What do you hear? What do you smell? What is the temperature like? Etc. This makes you more relaxed and gives you gratitude also.
- Be In the Moment - Every outstanding musician or artist will tell you that when they are creating great music or art, there are no thoughts, they are completely in the moment, and experiencing flow. Athletes call this ‘being in the zone‘. You can practice present moment awareness by giving full attention to whatever you are doing: eating, washing dishes, making your bed, etc. Meditation helps tremendously. The book “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle is also highly recommended.
- Be Inspired - Practice seeing beautiful things that moves you emotionally. Flip through a book containing thought provoking images, go to an art gallery, read something inspirational, talk to someone who calms you.
- Draw - This may sounds funny, but one of the effective ways to practice getting in touch with your creative side is to start drawing. Drawing forces you to see things differently.
- See Alternatives - Be curious. Practice asking yourself how to do something differently. When seeing the solution to a problem, ask yourself, “What are some alternative ways to doing this?“. Develop the mental attitude that “there is always another way” even when alternatives seem ‘impossible’.
- Be Open - Never shut down any idea that comes your way, do not make judgments about it. Appreciate any idea that comes to you, even ones that seem “stupid” or “obvious”. This way, you encourage more creative ideas to surface from your being.
- Think on Paper - With a bunch of loose paper, start jotting ideas down. Write everything down that comes to your head: random words, phrases, ideas, thoughts… sometimes you might want to circle things and draw lines to connect ideas. When an inspiration hits, follow it. If you suddenly have a different idea, jot it down somewhere on the page or in a new page.
What other methods do you use to be creative?
24 comments thus far »
WordPress Plugins You Must Have
Published on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 – 11:29 pm | 24 brilliant comments »
Below I have composed a list of the 20 must have wordpress plugins I am currently using with my WordPress self hosted blog.
Update: I have a new updated list of 29 must have wordpress plugins.
I have thoroughly researched blogging (and wordpress plugins) for the past 2 weeks, about 3 hours per day and have fiddled around with many, many plug ins and I have finally chosen these 21 great plugins to keep, which will aid in making my blog more search engine friendly, efficient and user friendly.
I hope that you find this information useful as I sure wish there was a full list like this when I starting up my blog. The list is in alphabetical order with links to the plug in page.
Any other comments or suggestions of great wordpress plugins would be appreciated.
The 21 Must have plug-ins
This plugin allows you to add MyBlogLog.com or Gravatar.com or Avatars.pl avatars to Wordpress comments. By b4it.
Why? This is very useful for adding personalisation and a human feel to your comments.
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. By uberdose.
Why? This is a must have for search engine optimisation, no questions asked.
This shows an overview of the recently active articles and the last people to comment on them. Original idea and code fixes contributed by Michael Heilemann.
Why? This is a must have for user interaction and gives readers more reason to comment on your blog.
24 comments thus far »
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