Tech & Design (intersection of tags)

The screenshot tool is so incredibly handy tool. (also known as screen capture on Windows). With the Mac, if you hit command-shift-4, you get a crosshairs to click and drag the area you want to capture. Today I accidentally dragged…

When you Google a color’s hexvalue, the entire browser should turn that color. A couple other thoughts related to hexvalues: What are the most popular hexvalues used on websites? Certainly search engines that crawl billions of websites would have stats…

Looking for some creative sources? Here are 60 (formerly 45) websites that bring interesting posts. You could subscribe to them using an RSS reader like feedly.com. 3quarksdaily: 2,000 readers A Creative Universe: 664 readers Art in America: 232 readers Art…

Yahoo trying to be like Google Google has an embossed logo. Yahoo now has a beveled logo. Google has a logo with super-thins. Yahoo now has a logo that is very thin. Google does many variations on their logo. Yahoo…

What do all these logos have in common? They are all designed by Ruth Kedar of Kedar Designs. Notice how all the logos are very pointy. The sharp pointy aspects of Google’s logo has always been awkward. The serif on…

If your company is desperate for new customers, you would probably respond to customer inquiries, right? Quark was the king of the design layout world in the 1990s. Every single professional designer used QuarkXPress for layouts. However, in 1999 Adobe…

The 15-year-old blogging platform Xanga is about to shut down. To revive the site, they are asking users for $48/year. However, Xanga demonstrated three things not to do when asking for money. 1) Don’t use two spaces after periods. My…

When i’m on the phone, instead of doodling, sometimes i like to type random repetitive letters. The f and j fit together rather nicely: Yes, these are all hand-typed. There are ten ff’s, 23 jj’s, and 389 fj’s. Photoshop says…

Flickr determines the most interesting images by a combination of views, comments, and favs. Here are my ten most interesting photos from 2012. Along with each photo I give one photo technique that helps make the image interesting. Nostalgia with…

Can Myspace get people to come back and rejoin their network? Check out their video: Josh Burns blogged, “The New Myspace“, and this is my comment I left on his post: I will personally always join any social media network…

Oh the print publishing world, often they just don’t understand the digital world. Lovers of paper and ink. I come from that world. From 1997-2007 half my job was designing for print and working with printing companies. The other half…

Did you know your friends can pin stuff to your boards? Yeah! You can add contributors to specific boards on your pinterest. Ideas on how to use collaborative boards on pinterest: 1) Research at work Does your company want to…

Changing your book format preference from hardcover/paperback to Kindle Amazon wish lists are great. See something you like? Just add it to your wish list. It’s not only a handy list for yourself, but your friends and family will appreciate…

I was curious what would be the top result for a google search of design. The first result is wikipedia’s entry for design. I was very happy with the second result, IIT Institute of Design, aka the Bauhaus. My brother…

If I ever threw my office computer out the window, I would attach a parachute to it, so it wouldn’t get damaged. 11:53 AM Jan 25th tweeted by @mattmaldre (my twitter account for design, marketing, web and tech things) I…

Two questions: 1) Do I know you? (in real life or from online) 2) Do you administer a Facebook Fan Page? If the answer to both questions are “yes” then I want to follow your Page, and actually read it…

What is your first photo posted to flickr? Here’s all the first flickr photos of my flickr contacts: And my first photo on flickr: I like that it’s a set of stairs that I climb every day. To think those…

The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago has a 42-inch Panasonic display to show off their Apple TV product. Being curious how flickr photos show up on the Apple TV, I pulled up my Chicago HDR set. I stood…

First Geocities. Eight years later MySpace. What will come next? I’m guessing around 2012 we’ll have another attack of extremely poor design online. But you still have to hand it to Geocities and MySpace. Despite their total ignorance of design,…

Pilcrow Lit Fest has a lot going on this Saturday May 23. Matilda‚Äôs: 3101 N. Sheffield and Trader Todd‚Äôs: 3216 N. Sheffield, Chicago There‚Äôs a ton of free panels and workshops. http://pilcrowlitfest.com/panels.html For every time slot there are three different…

Here are my notes from the Society of News Design meetup on May 16, 2009. (Pictured above is Theresa Carter, Audarshia Townsend, Whet Moser, Brad Flora, and Jeff Daugherty on the Social Media Roundtable) ———————— Matt Mansfield (president of SND)…

Someone on reddit linked over to my Biden-Palin word cloud and gave me 4,400 visitors. Interesting that out of the 5,406 views (an addition 1,000 came from places other than reddit), this image has gotten only one favorite. I wonder…

Let’s say you want to know which of your friends are fans of the tv show “Lost.” Just search for “lost” and hit the “people” tab, and it will bring up all your friends who are fans of Lost. Recently…

Facebook retooled their website and totally changed the user experience. Now users have to click through to several pages to read what used to be on one page. You know why? To increase pageviews. The formula for why facebook did…

I’d love to see all the words that have origins in the 20th century. All the entries would be sorted by year. Random House’s little online section is cute, New Words: Sixty years of new words. It lists a handful…

Are you on a PC and have problems when Mac people send you fonts? One of my co-workers on Windows was having problems with Macintosh fonts that would get sent to her for ad layouts. Here’s part of an email…

Whenever you computer starts acting strange, check to see if any of your keys on your keyboard are stuck. Just now I thought that my computer was wiggin out. In Quark i could only get the hand tool. In all…

Creativepro.com reports “Adobe has officially announced that it won’t release new versions of FreeHand — not even maintenance updates.” Heh. Good ol’ Freehand. Does anyone out there have any memories of this program they would like to share? Here are…

It’s fun to look back at all the different Macintosh models you have used. Here’s my list: Mac Classic (1993-1997) This was the first Mac that I learned Photoshop on at an Art Institute class. Also used at college to…

Recently I gave 13 recommended design links to a graphic design student: Advertising: A must for anyone interested in advertising. www.adrants.com Publications and newspapers: A must for anyone interested in publications and newspapers. www.newsdesigner.com/blog Illustration: The essential illustration blog. www.drawn.ca…

I’m thinking of making website called “i don’t know how to cook” and it will follow through my progress as a bachelor cooking, cuz I’m like REALLY bad at cooking. My big ah-ha moment today was putting a can of…