Creativity Fluid

A Tribute to Beer & Design

(And a very cool one page web site from Northbound Design.)

A Round Up of Links for the Job Hunter

On Networking

Jessica Hische — Non-Creepy Networking: Party Etiquette

How To Sell Yourself in 30 Seconds and Leave People Wanting More

3 Reasons Networking is a Job Search Priority

How Selfless Networking Can Boost Your Design Career

How to Network (Successfully)

Cheat Sheet: 9 Professional Networking Tips

Job Search

18 Good Reasons You're Still Unemployed

10 Tips for an Awesome Coffee Meeting

Social Media

What Does Your Social Media Profile Say About You?

Job Interviews

Interview Questions for Creative Professionals: How to Answer the Usual Suspects

Mastering the Art (and Science) of Thank You Letters

18 Things to Bring on a Job Interview

Time Management

6 Time Management Tips to Help You Better Control the Clock

Inspiration

The Science of Great Ideas (I'm glad someone is finally calling bullish*t on that cool looking left/right brain illustration.)

The Write Stuff: How to Improve Your Writing Skills

Continuing Education

The Beginner's Guide to SEO from the cool folks at Moz

Cool Links Wednesday

Just a few links this week:

How Disney simulated the snow for Frozen

How Huge Door-stopper Fantasy Novels get made. This is super cool. I love print shops and bindery machines are like magic.

Noah Fecks Photography

Artist Paints the Human Body in Ways You Cannot Imagine (The headline is overwrought, but the work of painter Alexa Meade is super cool….)

Children's Art Re-imagined

Dave Devries

Dave Devries, author of The Monster Engine, starts with a children's drawing and then paints them as realistically as he can. I'm sure I have seen this done in 3D as well, but I can't find the link. In looking for it I discovered this is kind of a thing though. You can turn children's drawings into 3D-printed sculptures via the Crayon Creatures service, and a whole bunch of plush toys that have been made based on children's work.

Coincidence?

Via an article on Careerealism.

Zoomquilt

Whoa….
Don't ask my how they did this, because I have no idea….well, that's not entirely true. It is using the html5 canvas, and javascript, and they are taking the idea of a quilt painting, i.e., one where multiple artist paint their own section of a painting to create an larger piece onto the Z axis, but how they actually planned and executed this…I would really like to see the storyboards.

Flying Ships, Pixel Art, and Illustrator Sheilah Beckett

Flying ship models. Gorgeous craftsmanship, and they really fly!

http://fool.deviantart.com/gallery/

Really cool examples of pixel art. We spend so much time trying to get the perfect brush for photoshop, that it is easy to forget how cool illustrations can be when they are created one pixel at a time with the pencil tool…

And sadly, illustrator Sheilah Beckett has died at the age of 100. She became an illustrator in the 40's and worked for Coronet, Esquire, and American Artists Greeting Cards. The Female Illustrators of the Mid-20th Century blog has a great article about her career.

If You Wouldn't Put It On a Billboard….

If you wouldn't put it on a billboard, don't write it on social media.

Great conversation on The Design Recharge show with TCG's Terah Brossart on the In's & Outs of Business Etiquette.

Also check out the TCG Business Etiquette Guide for further reading.

The Bear & The Hare

The Bear & The Hare,  John Lewis's Christmas advertisement has been making waves across the internet. Some folks are already saying it is the best holiday ad of the season and we haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving yet! Notice how it is part of a larger campaign that not only goes across platforms, but encourages continued interaction with the John Lewis brand.

The way it was made is super cool since it combines traditional hand drawn animation, stop motion, tons of hand made models, and a big laser cutter!

You can read more about The Bear & The Hare on FastCo.Create and there is another making of video  as well as where you can see more of the sets and models.

Update: I was disappointed in their store window displays though. They continued the Bear & Hare theme, but rather than picking up the look and feel of the commercial, they went with giant robot versions of the woodland creatures. The robots are cool looking, but it feels to me like they are violating one of the most important adages of marketing and advertising. Frank Stanton, President of CBS in 1951 said it best, "Just when you're beginning to get bored with what you have done is probably the time it is beginning to be noticed by your audience." It feels like they got bored, or the team in charge of in store wanted to be "original" at the expense of telling a consistent story.

Other cool design this week:

Social Networks Are Making Us Lonely. Really well done motion design by Shimi Cohen.

Five cool book designs via CreativeMarket.

A gorgeous one page scrolling web site from National Geographic about the Kennedy assassination. HT: Methodologie

Home Bases and Outposts

A great framework for how to think about building your online presence from 99U: Home Bases and Outposts: The Smart Way to Manage Your Online Presence.

Blade Runner Concept Designs

Mentor Huebner's concept designs and conceptual story boards for Blade Runner.

Caturday: Stretch!

The most important part of using a computer as your main tool is to remember to get up and stretch from time to time.

The Empire invades fine art

From the Creative Contest site Worth1000, Star Wars mashed with fine art:

Worth1000

And Artist Jeff Bennett has invaded the world of Thomas Kincaid with the full force of Imperial might.

Links for Business Entrepreneurship class

Entrepreneurship Panel: No Pain, No Gain: How to Identify Pain Points to Build Your Business

And, Open Site Explorer for doing research into your competitors traffic.

Write Another Cover Letter

Some people feel the terms, "cover letter" and "letter of inquiry" have become antiquated. The terms, and their appearance as the cover page of a resume, carefully printed on beautiful, toothy paper, are perhaps showing their age. The words contained in a cover letter however, whether in the form field of on online application or the body of an e-mail or the first page of a PDF, are as relevant and vital today as they have ever been.

Cover letters may be fairly casual in the body of an e-mail, or up to four paragraphs in more formal situations. In all cases what you need to communicate is the same. Let the person know why you are writing, draw a connection between their needs and your skills and potential, and end with a promise of action. Whether you are applying for a job, or seeking an informational interview, the goal is to be someone they want to meet.

Responsive Web Design

Ethan Marcotte has a new article out on screen size, responsive design, and where we are going with the future of content.

Ten Rules for Drawing Comics

Ten Rules for drawing comics by the incomparable John Allison, author of Bad Machinery.

Caturday: On Networking

Don't network to get nose boops. Network to meet cool people and give nose boops.

Interactive Resume

Robby Leonardi has created an interactive resume that is getting a lot of attention. It is good reminder about what you are up against for competition, especially a couple years out of school.

At the same time though, while it functions as a great portfolio piece, he is not only creating a barrier to getting his contact info, but he is missing an opportunity to link to his design portfolio and to a resume that can be saved and kept. Unless they hack his url to get to the homepage, a potential employer would have to go into his Dribble portfolio to get back to his main site to find the info they need research further whether they want to hire him.

The upshot is, clever look and feel isn't enough. You still have to start with your user and work backwards or you risk talking to yourself.

A great series on digital painting on Chris Oatley's web site. Oatley is a Disney character designer and concept artist who teaches digital painting and he has a lot of outstanding information to share. Especially check out the Animal Farm color comp demo. Too many illustrators, especially student illustrators, dive right into the finished illustration without really exploring all the possibilities and he talks a lot about the power of working things out in a comp, usually multiple comps, first. Plus, just watching him paint was a huge education in painting in photoshop.

Caturday: The difference between UI and UX.

The refrigerator is the UI. The tuna inside is the UX.

Don't Smile for posterity

From the Atlantic magazine online, an article on why people didn't smile in old portraits. The reason isn't what you think (but it is similar to why you make sure you don't have pictures of yourself doing beer bongs on Facebook.)

A realistic look at what it takes to be a cartoonist written and illustrated by Spike, owner of Iron Circus Comics and author of the successful web comic, Templar Arizona.

Similar to the book How to Make Webcomics, Spike is really clear that it isn't enough to make great cartoons, you need to be constantly marketing yourself, networking with your peers, and producing good work. Being a cartoonist, or an illustrator, photographer, fine artist, or any other profession that produces a creative product for sale aren't for the faint of heart. But, you love to do the work, and you will be doing it anyway, so why not give it a shot?

Forced Perspective

Amazingly detailed dioramas using model cars and forced perspective from photographer Michael Paul Smith. You can see more of his work at his flickr page.

The Creative Group 2014 Salary Guide and Salary Calculator

The 2014 Salary Guide and Salary Calculator from The Creative Group (TCG) is out.

This is incredibly useful for recent graduates since even though you won't usually be able to command these salaries in your first job, it is important to know what you should be aspiring to once your skills have solidified.

For folks who have been out a few years, if you aren't within the range of salaries listed, its time to either ask for a raise, or start plotting your move to a firm that can pay you what the market says your time is worth. (and FYI, depending on your skill set, TCG might be able to help you make that step....)

The super nice thing about the TCG guide is that is lists salaries for illustrators and game artists as well as graphic, motion, and interactive designers so everyone can get a feel for what they should be making.

Motion Graphics Pioneer Iginio Lardani

Over at Art of the Title there is a tribute to Iginio Lardani, who with director Sergio Leone and composer Ennio Marricone defined what we now think of as the Spaghetti Western. Lardani's titles looked like no other titles for a western and have more in common with animated titles of Saul Bass and Maurice Binder. While the effects used are easily achieved via computer now, Lardani used a creative mix of in-camera optical effects, practical effects, and a repurposed multiplane Pace 1 camera.

His irreverence, low-budget ingenuity, and unvarnished design style split a new branch off the title design family tree, stemmed from the modernism of Bass and Binder via Andy Warhol to become a rallying cry for B-film productions everywhere. Quoted liberally in subgenre and exploitation films throughout the ’70s, his work has since become shorthand for indie credibility and gritty nihilism... 

One thing the article incorrectly calls out is his use of doutones. Lardani is using fake doutones in the titles, but that is a minor quibble with a great profile of one of the pioneers of motion graphics.

ht: NCAD Alumni Noah Read

Caturday: Your wireframes need work.

I'm editing your wireframes. They need more tuna.

iPhone Movies

You don't need fancy equipment to make movies. Dave Altizer and Ben Worley shot this movie to show off the powerful new features of the iPhone 5s (and composed the score using only iPhone ringtones.

Matt Morris iPhone 5s Adventure

And, in the world's first Instagram TV show, three friends struggle to find their way back to Palm Springs after being transported to a distant galaxy.

Desert Friends

San Francisco Zoo Web Site Redesign

This spring, San Francisco Zoo in-house designer Brenda Fletcher redesigned the web site for the zoo. It wasn't an easy process:

the zoo has about 250 animal species, and each one has its own information page on the site. Plus, every department of the zoo is represented on the website...

In addition to wanting the site to be easier to use than the old site, the new site would include online ticketing. She did the front end coding while the dev team worked on the back end. The project took nearly nine months from concept to launch.

Resources for Unity3D

An extensive list of Unity resources for folks just getting started with Unity from my friend Adam at UK based game studio, The Ant Ranch.

Impostor Syndrome

http://www.boothedog.net

Zach Leatherman noticed a common thread among people giving talks at conferences and meetups:

They’d often start their talks with “I’m not the most qualified person to speak on this topic,” or “I’m sure you guys are all smarter than me.”

In response he gave a talk about Impostor Syndrome.

It is a short talk, and very fun. It is also a pretty good example of a really good projected presentation. He is breaking the rule about not projecting what you are saying—you should only project the high-level bullet points—but he is mostly doing it in meme form for comedic affect, so it is effective anyway.

One Page Web Sites

Everyone knows how much I love one page web sites. They are such a potentially brilliant solution for sites that don't have a lot a content but need more interactivity than a typical static brochure site.

Front End Development

Everything you wanted to know about being a front end developer.

Post Graduation Internships

As you are looking for job opportunities, don't forget the possibility of doing another internship. Some internships are paid and are designed with recent graduates in mind. If your networking got off to a slow start, another internship would be a great way to gain more experience, get more mentorship working in an agency setting, and be in Seattle regularly so it will be easier to attend networking events.

I would not do another unpaid internship, or a remote internship. You want the face-time and networking that an in-house internship could provide.

Craigslist, Internmatch, Idealist.org, and the SVC Jobs Board are all good places to watch.

There are lots of "for credit only" and unpaid internships mixed in, so watch out for the ones that just want to exploit you. You want to make sure you will be learning a lot, that you will be able to contribute, and that you will have access to networking opportunities.

Box & Dolly

This is amazing not just for the technology on display, but for the all the thinking, planning, creativity, and teamwork that it took to create this piece.

Cool lettering and die cut

A shot glass built into a greeting card with lettering by Joel Felix