Says Feminist Review, “Make a Zine! is an inspiring, easy, and digestible read for anyone, whether you’re already immersed in a cut-and-paste world, a graphic designer with a penchant for radical thought, or a newbie trying to find the best way to make yourself and your ideas known.” Illustrated by an army of notable and soon-to-be-notable artists and cartoonists, Make a Zine! also takes a look at the burgeoning indie comix scene, with a solid and comprehensive chapter by punk illustrator Fly (Slug and Lettuce, Peops). Part history lesson, part how-to guide, Make a Zine! is a call to arms, an ecstatic, positive rally cry in the face of TV show book clubs and bestsellers by celebrity chefs. As says Biel in the book’s intro, “Let’s go!”

    It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters, all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, color and imagery.This book does not set out to teach lessons, but it is full of wisdom and insight collected from all over the world. Describing himself as a visual jackdaw, master designer Alan Fletcher has distilled a lifetime of experience and reflection into a brilliantly witty and inimitable exploration of such subjects as perception, color, pattern, proportion, paradox, illusion, language, alphabets, words, letters, ideas, creativity, culture, style, aesthetics and value.The Art of Looking Sideways is the ultimate guide to visual awareness, a magical compilation that will entertain and inspire all those who enjoy the interplay between word and image, and who relish the odd and the unexpected.

     It isn't enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today's marketplace, all of us-even the accountants-have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand. Business creativity expert Todd Henry explains how to establish effective practices that unleash your creative potential. Born out of his consultancy and his popular podcast, Henry has created a practical method for discovering your personal creative rhythm. He focuses on five key elements: *Focus: Begin with your end goal in mind. *Relationships: Build stimulating relationships and ideas will follow. *Energy: Manage it as your most valuable resource. *Stimuli: Structure the right "inputs" to maximize creative output. *Hours: Focus on effectiveness, not efficiency. This is a guide for staying inspired and experiencing greater creative productivity than you ever imagined possible.

    Aimed principally at the student market, the book shows where ideas and inspiration come from and helps unlock the reader s creativity, providing numerous strategies to help solve creative briefs and design problems. Using an upbeat, dynamic and easy-to-understand A Z format, the book reveals techniques that can be exploited to deliver ideas with greater impact, with each entry offering a different starting point. Entries include everything from Intuition and Instinct to Happy Accidents and Hidden Messages, and feature a section explaining how to use the idea or technique, providing readers with an infallible tool kit of inspiration. Including hundreds of inspirational quotes from creative people and packed with great examples of advertising campaigns, posters, book and magazine covers, illustrations and editorial images, this indispensable creative primer also includes previously unpublished photographic work.

    Nineteen challenging assignments and over one thousand pieces of solution art executed by the authors' students are presented. Each visual problem shows the actual assignment sheet given to the students and includes an analysis of the problem's underlying intent, addressing principles such as framal reference, negative-positive relationships, cropping techniques, and other important issues.

    The ability to effectively articulate design decisions is critical to the success of a project, because the most articulate person often wins. This practical book provides principles, tactics, and actionable methods for talking about designs with executives, managers, developers, marketers, and other stakeholders who have influence over the project with the goal of winning them over and creating the best user experience.

    Pub Date: 2006 Pages: 176 Publisher: Ava Publishing. SA Click on the Google Preview image above to the read some pages of this book! Creating great illustration work the requires specialist skills and knowledge. and in addition to practical applications. this text teaches a comprehension of basic communication theory and creative strategies. Contents: IntroductionContentsp. 4How to Get the Most from this Bookp. 6Forewordp. 8Introductionp. 10Communicating IdeasThe Blank Sheet of Paperp. 18Why ??Ideasp. 20The iefingp. 24Investigation of the Subject Matterp. 26Gathering Inspirationp . 30ainstormingp. 34Explaining the Visualp. 38Longevityp. 44The Medium is the MessageThe Power of the Pencilp. 50Material Worldp. 55Art School Ethosp. 60Illustration as a Disciplinep. 65A Demanding Lifep. 70Mixing Mediap. 72The Digital Dividep. 74The New Wave of Illustratorsp. 80From Outc...

    Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability. That's why he founded Behance, a company that helps creative people and teams across industries develop these skills. Belsky has spent six years studying the habits of creative people and teams that are especially productive-the ones who make their ideas happen time and time again. After interviewing hundreds of successful creatives, he has compiled their most powerful-and often counterintuitive-practices, such as: •Generate ideas in moderation and kill ideas liberally •Prioritize through nagging •Encourage fighting within your team While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it's better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen-a capacity that endures over time.

    Think Nike, Starbuck's, Xerox, and Kleenex, and you're thinking brands in the biggest and most lucrative sense. In The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, marketing guru Al Ries, together with Laura Ries, has put together the authoritative work on brands and branding -- organized in a short, pithy book that can be read and digested in as brief a time as an airplane ride.

    Now you can learn the same techniques he uses in his own retouching workflow, in the only book of its kind-one written expressly for photographers who do their own retouching.As a pro photographer himself, Scott understands that photographers make their living shooting, not retouching. But, delivering fully retouched images is now expected by clients. That's why Scott put together this amazing resource for teaching photographers the quickest, easiest, and most effective ways to create professional-looking, retouched final images without spending hours grinding away at painstaking, detailed techniques. LEARN HOW THE PROS DO ITIt's all here-the step-by-step methods for fixing, enhancing, and finishing your portraits in Photoshop. Using the techniques in this book, you'll create images that will absolutely wow your clients. You'll learn: - How to soften skin and still retain detail and texture - The best tricks for beautifully enhancing eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes - How to selectively sharpen portraits without complicated masking - How to create gorgeous-looking lips - How to remove blemishes fast and keep the most detail - The pros' tricks for body sculpting - How to make your subject's hair look fabulous - How to give your retouches that natural look that sets them apart - Plus, you get Scott's complete 5-minute, 15-minute, and 30-minute start-to-finish workflowsIf you're ready to learn the "tricks of the trade"-the same ones that today's leading pro photographers use to retouch, tuck, tighten, and tone their images for that pro-retouched look-you're holding the book that will do exactly that. It will radically change the way you retouch your portraits from here on out, and give you the best-looking, most natural retouches you've ever done.

    This new edition, the first in nearly five years, is completely updated for the age of digital photography. It continues the book’s tradition of introducing astoundingly effective, previously unknown methods of image enhancement. The original photographs found in the book come from a variety of professional sources, and all correction exercises are on the included CD. Professional Photoshop has changed radically from edition to edition, and this time is no exception--with almost 90 percent new content and completely overhauled coverage of curves, channel blending, and sharpening.Professional Photoshop offers a full explanation of: How curves bring out detail in the most important areas of the imagen A comprehensive strategy for blending channels to create deeper, stronger images The strengths and weaknesses of CMYK, LAB, and RGB, and when to use each one The first detailed look at the Shadow/Highlight command--and even more sophis-ticated ways to enhance contrast in the lightest and darkest parts of the imagen Sharpening strategies, in three full chapters, including the innovative hiraloam method (High Radius, Low Amount). Plus, a fiendishly effective method of merging hiraloam and conventional unsharp masking The realities--and the politics--of preparing files for commercial offset printing and how to deal with colors that are out of the press’s gamut What Camera Raw and similar acquisition modules can offer Typical problems of digital captures that were not found in the age of film--and how to correct for them

    And now there’s a sure-fire way to solve their problems and test solutions: the sprint.While working at Google, designer Jake Knapp created a unique problem-solving method that he coined a “design sprint”—a five-day process to help companies answer crucial questions. His ‘sprints’ were used on everything from Google Search to Chrome to Google X. When he moved to Google Ventures, he joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky, both designers and partners there who worked on products like YouTube and Gmail. Together Knapp, Zeratsky, and Kowitz have run over 100 sprints with their portfolio companies. They’ve seen firsthand how sprints can overcome challenges in all kinds of companies: healthcare, fitness, finance, retailers, and more.A practical guide to answering business questions, Sprint is a book for groups of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to non-profits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

    In 1925, he had started drawing alphabets and printing books, and in 1931, this plainspoken little book was a fustian and forceful argument for common sense in design, composed for anyone remotely interested in the subtle and evolving challenge of the typographic arts. Set rag right, with tight word spacing, it is a model of composition. The text, like most of Gill's, is exasperating, exorbitant, and exciting. But Gill was, above all, a craftsman, whose work always reflected his philosophy and whose hand always followed his moral convictions.

    The first book to reveal how thinking like a designer can help solve the greatest challenges we face in business, society, and our daily lives. What can we learn from the ways great designers think--and how can it improve our world? In this highly original book by journalist Warren Berger, in collaboration with celebrated designer Bruce Mau, ten groundbreaking principles of design are shown in action--addressing business, social, and personal challenges and improving the way we think, work, and live. "Glimmer" takes readers on a journey through today's fascinating world of design, where the formerly distinct disciplines of graphic, product, and social design are undergoing "smart recombinations." In the cutting-edge studios of Mau and other visionaries, everything is ripe for reinvention--including the ways businesses function, children learn, and communities thrive. Designers are solving problems at an unprecedented pace today by using improved technology and the highly practical design principles described in this book, such as "Ask stupid questions," "Make hope visible," "Work the metaphor," "Embrace constraints," and "Begin anywhere." "Glimmer" inspires readers to apply these same principles to their own life challenges. While celebrated designers work on re-creating the world, Berger reveals the growing grassroots "glimmer movement" in which everyday people are emerging as designers and problem solvers. Readers will be fascinated by how "transformation design" is reinventing companies and addressing thorny social problems. Berger shares stories of how burned fingers, wrenched backs, and mixed-up pills all led to ingenious new product designs. In a time of anxiety and retrenchment, this hopeful yet hardheaded book illuminates "the glimmer of possibility and potential--that first spark of an innovative idea or a life-changing plan." According to Berger, "This faint light is all around us and also within us, if we can learn to recognize and nurture it." The best designers already know how to transform that glimmer of possibility into the steady glow of creation and innovation --and with the inspiration of "Glimmer," we're now all able to do the same.

    A comprehensive introduction to the history of typography, typographic detailing in practice, and font generation for print and the web, this book covers type in the past and the present--and speculates on the future. Basic principles are explained with detailed presentations, illustrations, case studies, and examples from leading design studios around the world.