It generally doesn’t take long for the work-from-home creative to become disillusioned by the small space allocated for his/her workstation, the mayhem emanating from the kids when they arrive home from school or the sudden extra attention one receives from the household pets.
It’s about this time that an OFFICE FOR RENT sign appears in the [...]

As an illustrator and print graphic designer (from a time when there was no ‘web’ version of the profession), my first interest in creating web pages arose when I realized I could slice up a page-sized Photoshop image and carefully place all the slices into the cells of a table.
Alas, with dial-up internet hovering around [...]

All programs crash. Today’s applications and operating systems are considerably more stable than their counterparts of a decade ago. But they still crash. Files will also corrupt.
It’s a fact.
These applications are extremely complicated, and the files they create have so many variables that perfection is still a long way off. And it’s not always [...]

The first thing one realizes when becoming a Lone Designer is that you really are… alone. Whether you’ve come out of a corporate environment, or just graduated from college, there comes a single moment in time when you’re sat down hard on your backside and faced with the realization that…
Wow, the buck really stops with [...]

Creative Suite 4 is about to be released. But from what I’m reading of it, I think I’ll stick to CS3 for a while yet. Those lucky enough to have received early BETA releases (alas, not me) have reported a few minor improvements, as you’d expect. But with Adobe’s hefty upgrade bill, it hardly seems [...]

A little off topic, but I’m sure this might amuse a few younger designers…
As an illustrator and print graphic designer (from a time when there was no ‘web’ version of the profession), my first interest in creating web pages arose when I realized I could slice up a page-sized Photoshop image and carefully place all the slices [...]

A graphic design qualification lies in proof and reputation, not a piece of paper. With graphic design it’s the result that counts.
Unlike engineering or medicine, it’s not necessary for a graphic designer to attend university. While you may not want an ‘unqualified’ surgeon operating on your favourite spleen, if the logo your ‘designer’ produces is [...]

And if not, why not?
As we all know there are dozens of aspects to modern graphic design, ranging from solid text page layout to complex vector illustration, with side excursions along the way into logo development, CSS coding and prepress for offset print.
The fact is that nobody – with a capital Nob – knows it [...]

It seems that the standard answer to all the economic troubles hitting our world right now is to ‘economize’. That is, spend less; buy cheaper food, investigate budget brands, use the car sparingly, cut down on luxuries, etcetera. I’m sure you’ve heard the score. Cut down your outgoings in order to pay more for the [...]

Doom.
Gloom.
Catastrophe.
Lock up your gold and barricade your doors! The world is coming to an end!
Well… at least that’s what several sectors of media and society would have us believe. The ‘credit crunch’, the stock crash, the spiraling economy. All of these things fill our nightly news, as somber anchorpersons (wow! My spellcheck let that one [...]