Choosing the right colour for any design is sometimes not that easy. For web design, selecting the default colours in Illustrator or Photoshop often results in boring or an inharmonious colour balance. A nicer colour balance can be reached by precisely selecting the desired colours. A good taste for colours is needed when mixing colours manually. Good inspiration can help!
For exactly that purpose, Adobe is offering a very usefull website: Kuler. This online community and internet application allows you to browse and download colour schemes which you can use freely when in need for some nice colours or complementary colours for a design. You can browse for specific colours, tags or colours associations. It also allows you to try out some colours by yourself and upload your own scheme to share with the world. Have a look by clicking on the following link:
Tip: If you create and use a free adobe account, you are able to save your favourite schemes and most importantly, to download them in a file which can be used directly to import the colour-scheme in photoshop, illustrator and co.
Hey folks,
first of all I apologize for not updating my blog over the last weeks. I was really really busy doing all my assignments for the college! Please Ruairi….don’t be to hard! ^^ I will keep on updating again from now on!
And so everyone believes me that I was really working all day and night and not lying on a sunny beach with a frozen cocktail in my hand, enjoying the warm Caribbean summer breath and sound of crushing waves…ehm…stopp…I’m dreaming now….no seriously, I was working and her is an example of one of my projects I was working on: my music video for the course video production with the title “Exposed”.
The video is embedded as high quality. People with a slow connection can go directly to youtube and see the video in default quality here. Enjoy!
Please feel free to comment here or on youtube itself. :).
As real as it gets: The advertising agency bates 141 recreated the photoshop interface, replacing the graphic user interface elements with real world objects. Photoshop with a twist! Quit funny to see how they represent the different tools and interfaces with real world objects which themselves try to represent real objects in the digital version. You can also check the flickr gallery how they created the ad showing also more details.
Oh yeah….and it’s not the latest version, I know ;).
Today we watched Gary Hustwit’s documentary film called Helvetica. A film about a font? Sounds boring, but I must admit that I was positively surprised. The film gave a very good view about how typography exists in our daily life and how widely some fonts are used, especially the font helvetica. The documentary included also the history of the font and interviews with designer and typographer. It is actually quit funny to see the different opinion about the font, especially of the one who really gets into it ;).
After the film we had a small discussion in class about the use of helvetica. There seems to be a lot of people who hate helvetica due to its wide use as a ‘default’ font but also a lot of people who totally love this font and call it the ‘perfect font’. Our lecturer (a helvetica fan ) asked the class what we were thinking about helvetica. I thought a bit about it because I wasn’t really sure if I like or dislike this font. I try to resume and explain my opinion about helvetica:
The font is very neutral…it don’t really say something by itself and can be used to expressed almost everything. Maybe that’s the reason why this font is so successful! In some cases I like the font because it’s just the perfect font for that use. In other cases the font is really boring because of its ‘uncreative’ or common use. Actually a font is just a medium to transport a message. When looking at it, normal people (not the typography fetishists ) should see the message and not the font. The question if I like it or not has a simple answer: It depends on the context and message. Even if a lot of people complains about any use of this fonts I would use it if I think that it is the matching font for a specific artwork.
So what’s about you? Do you like or dislike Helvetica?
I was wondering if i should switch over to the new Adobe CS4 including Photoshop CS4 and co. As I am very satisfied with the older CS3 version I was asking me what CS4 brings more. Does upgrading to CS4 bring any new feature that I would really use?
Tom, a good friend of mine send me this video, showing one of the new feature of Photoshop CS4: content-aware scaling. Seems to be a very handy addition. I didn’t try it out by myself because I first have to upgrade to CS4 but I’m looking forward to do that in the next weeks. I will write some impression on my blog after upgrading ;).
As I’m actually learning html and CSS I found two useful cheat sheets on addedbytes.com. It is a nice help for all of you also starting up with html and CSS. It really helps you visualize and remember the syntax and some principles/possibilities of html or CSS. All on one page, handy to print out ;).
You can download the two cheat sheets as PDF or PNG from the following links:
A very interesting and well made animation about trusted computing. It’s is a nice example how to illustrate a complex and controversy topic clearly and easy understandable as an animation. Personally I like the style of the video, especially the transitions and nesting.
The Video is a bit older but still some people don’t know it yet. Enjoy ;).
Welcome to my first personal blog…about internet, media and other interesting stuff. I would enjoy if you take part to my contributions in making comments. Feel free to write, discuss and debate ;).
I created this Blog as an assignment in the “Internet Authoring” course at the Griffith College Dublin and it should reflect my thoughts about media and especially the internet. Expect content to be added at least weekly. The blog will be running until next year….if I get to catch some regular visitors I may keep the blog up and running after this period also :).
The design is only temporary. I will custom the blog in the comming days and maybe adapt the features too. Any comments and critics welcome!
) asked the class what we were thinking about helvetica. I thought a bit about it because I wasn’t really sure if I like or dislike this font. I try to resume and explain my opinion about helvetica: