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 Thursday, November 29, 2007
Go Elf Yourself
Building on the success of last year's holiday campaign, Toy New York and EVB, are bringing back the online phenomenon, ElfYourself.com, for OfficeMax's holiday effort. Last year, the site generated more than 11 million elves and kept users glued to the site for the equivalent of over 600 years. I visited the site to turn myself into an Elf, which was both fun and a bit disturbing. The dance moves are great, though.  Posted by Megan Just for Fun
11/29/2007 11:24:29 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Design and Wine
Designer Josh Jakus's Wine Pocket is constructed of industrial wool felt collected from factory excess. It's both eco-friendly and stylish and now it's on sale at DWR for $29 with free shipping.  Posted by Megan Gifts and Goodies
11/29/2007 8:39:07 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Green Paper
PaperSpecs is sponsoring a free webinar, Sustainability-Hands On, with guest speaker Brian Dougherty of Celery Design Collaborative. The event, which takes place on December 13, will provide practical information about spec'ing sustainable paper and other ideas to decrease the environmental impact of your designs. Posted by Megan Events
11/28/2007 1:43:27 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Design On Sale
During the month of December, you can get 15% off all orders from Inhabit, purveyers of graphic sheets, pillows and wall decor (just enter HOLIDAY07 during checkout). All the products are designed by husband and wife team Jennifer and Mike Tuttle who also run a design firm called Planet 10.  Posted by Megan Gifts and Goodies
11/28/2007 9:02:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Overcoming Barriers To Creativity
by The Creative Group
Breaking new creative ground can be a challenging proposition for
designers. In a recent survey by our company, eight out of 10 in-house
designers said it's difficult to convince senior management to accept
ideas that deviate from the prevailing corporate style. And more than a
quarter of respondents cited their company's unwillingness to take
risks as the most frequent obstacle to creativity.
On the bright side, many in-house designers feel they can
exercise more creativity than they did five years ago. However, it
remains difficult to break certain barriers. Following are seven
strategies for overcoming challenges and enhancing creative freedom. Posted by Megan Creativity
11/27/2007 10:03:10 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Readable Script
Ventura, a recent relase from TypeTrust, is a legible script with a nice set of alternate characters. The single-weight face sells for $26.  Posted by Megan Typography
11/27/2007 8:59:35 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Listen Up
I first saw Jason Munn of thesmallstakes.com speak at this year’s Design Camp, from Minnesota AIGA. I just got word of an interview he did with Dave of grainedit.com, which features some great design examples (much it being beautiful vintage ones, but other categories of the blog cover “designers bookshelf,” “thrift hawks,” and “how to/diy”).  Design Resources | Designers
11/20/2007 2:52:56 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Applying Made Interesting
Trying to clean out the HOW inbox before we all disappear for Thanksgiving weekend, I just received an enigmatic postcard, not surprisingly from Wieden + Kennedy. As per their hallmark of piquing your interest and leaving with a cliffhanger, the postcard included removable stickers and simply pointed to a website, wk.com/seeking. Of course I followed, and found that they're hiring, but even if you're not looking, the site itself is worth a gander, having the ability to make a call for applications actually interesting and enticing. Industry News
11/20/2007 11:24:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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(Not) Staples
From our favorite OFFICE supply store in Portland comes news of an upcoming exhibit and a few cool new products: They're featuring 10 nationally recognized female letterpress artists in a show called (natch) LET HER PRESS, which opens November 29 and runs through January 19. Creative gals from Hammerpress, YeeHaw, Egg Press (all of whom have been featured in HOW) and others are participating; each artist has produced 5 prints, which will be for sale during the show. During opening weekend (November 29 to December 1), OFFICE is offering discounts on letterpress cards and papergoods in its shop. Also new to the store: These cute (almost sexy, in a schoolgirl-fantasy sort of way) Japanese book bags.  Gifts and Goodies
11/20/2007 10:02:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Monday, November 19, 2007
Yeah, it's Quiet Around Here, Too ...
Just for Fun
11/19/2007 2:30:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Feed the Monster
Russel Quadros of AIGA Jacksonville recently sent us a little reminder about next spring's re:Charge08 conference in J'ville, April 3–5. HOW editor Sarah Whitman attended two years ago and had a blast. It's a great opportunity to, as they say, feed your creative monster.  Events | Industry News
11/19/2007 11:04:32 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Friday, November 16, 2007
Music House
I just got an email from designer Jeff Harrison about a CD cover project he recently designed for the band Vonnegut Dollhouse. You can see images of the finished CD here and images of the design process on Flickr. (Did I mention how cool I think this is?)   Posted by Megan Designers
11/16/2007 11:53:23 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wrapping Roundup
Gifts and Goodies
11/16/2007 11:45:32 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Greeting Cards
The Nov/Dec issue of HOW features a roundup of well-designed business cards. You can see the cards and read the stories behind them in an online exclusive: Hey Good Lookin'.   Posted by Megan HOW Magazine
11/16/2007 10:00:26 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Thursday, November 15, 2007
Typeflakes
We just looked out the window and it's totally snowing! Sure, it won't last, but suddenly we're in a winter-time mood. If you want to generate your own flakes, check out TYPEflake from Firstborn Multimedia. Just type in a phrase, choose a font and watch your words get turned into a beautiful snowflake. You can even email your creation to a friend.  Posted by Megan Just for Fun | Typography
11/15/2007 9:42:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Nickels & Dimes
Having spent most of yesterday compiling data from HOW's recent hourly-rate survey, I must have money on the brain. That, and the third HOW webinar, which is tomorrow (Thursday), is all about pricing—how to set your rates, how to stick to them and how to talk money with your clients and prospects. Sign up now for the hour-long online seminar What Should I Charge? Smart Pricing Strategies for Designers; you can watch it live or later. Events | Industry News
11/14/2007 3:36:16 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Nice Signs
Check out the website of artist and sign painter Jeff Canham for some great examples of hand lettering.  via Oh Joy!Posted by Megan Typography
11/14/2007 1:46:27 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Stop Motion
Designer (and friend of HOW) Steve Gordon just emailed us a link to a creepy, cool stop-motion animation. I poked around the web and found the site of the clip's creator, BLU. His site has a great collection of his drawings and animations which I find disturbing, yet compelling.   Posted by Megan Illustration
11/14/2007 10:30:28 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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News You Can (Maybe) Use
A bunch of news updates on this dreary Wednesday: • We've heard of designers donating their creative talents to a worthy cause, but this—wow! A group of Pittsburgh design and marketing folks are teaming up to raise money for breast cancer research not by doing some pro-bono work, but by climbing really tall mountains. The group, working with the Pittsburgh Ad Fed, is part of the national Climb for Hope. Friend of HOW Ted Williams let us know about the project; he and fellow creatives Nick Cobler, Todd Lepley and Laura Willumsen are climbing Ecuador's second highest peak, Cotopaxi, in January; a fifth team member, Karen Kern, is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in June. Dennis Brown of Giant Ideas in PGH is managing campaign. • Pantone and onOne Software recently announced a bundle of digital-imaging products geared toward improving color fidelity in creative projects; it includes the Pantone hueyPro calibrator and onOne's Genuine Fractals 5, a Photoshop plug-in for image scaling. • CTI Paper USA is now stocking 180+ Strathmore Writing and Script envelope styles. • Rocky Nook, a division of O'Reilly, has released "Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom." For a review of Lightroom and two other photo-workflow applications (Nikon NX and Apple's Aperture), pick up the December issue of HOW. • Appleton Coated Paper's 10th annual design competition, U B the Judge, is accepting entries through December 31; use the online entry form to submit work printed all or in part on Utopia. Designers at U B the Judge events in 5 major cities will select the winners. • VT3 Studio released VT3 Video Suite Limited Edition, a one-click tool for converting video into 33 different formats, including Flash, for display on players including the iPhone and iPod; sadly, for Mac users, the product is currently available only for Windows machines. • The School of Visual Arts Masters Series retrospective exhibit on Steven Heller, featuring the prolific designer and author's books and design work, continues through December 8. Industry News
11/14/2007 9:05:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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 Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Design Against Fur
Every year, the Fur Free Alliance, an international coalition of animal protection groups (including The Humane Society of the United States), invites college and university students around the world to enter the Design Against Fur poster design contest. You can participate by looking at the top 19 prize-winning posters and voting for the one that you think should receive the "People's Choice Award."  Posted by Megan Thought Provoking
11/13/2007 11:45:31 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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