Brandon, Sarah and I had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff Parks and the I.A. Consultants podcast after our mini-workshop at the VizThink conference. In our discussion, we discuss five elements which “illustrate” why pictures are a powerful way to communicate with multi-disciplinary teams, including:

1. Disambiguation
2. Efficiency
3. Emotion
4. Telling a Story
5. Leadership

Check it out on the web here. It’s also available via iTunes.

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by Doug Black

Long the de facto home of techno music, it's no surprise that Berlin is bursting at the seams with electronic music. But it is a rare feat when one of these artists transcends the club scene like Modeselektor. A staple of the German capital's underground party circuit dating back to the mid-'90s, the group produces a genre-straddling brand of glitchy beats that are equal parts bedroom noodling and dancefloor ragers. They use a wide range of samples and self-developed software to produce an intricate mix of dub, hip-hop, ambient and various other classifications that don't begin to define the sum of their parts. In live settings, they employ innovative MIDI-controllers that allow real time beat manipulation, creating a much more engaging experience than your average DJ just throwing down a record.

Members Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary made a name for themselves in 2000 by signing to Bpitch Control (the label founded by fellow German electronic musician and kindred spirit Ellen Allien), but didn't release a proper album before 2005's Hello Mom! Their lone follow-up, Happy Birthday!, came out last September and features more than an hour of far-flung influences and celebrity collaborations. One of the finest examples is Thom Yorke—who frequently cites the duo among his favorite bands and earlier solicited a Modeselektor remix off his album The Erasure—when he lends his chilling voice to album highpoint, “The White Flash.”

You can hear a handful of tracks on their MySpace page, buy both albums on iTunes or pick up Happy Birthday! from Insound. You can also find the group playing a string of European dates, as well as the very same Berlin clubs where it all started.

Research from internet ad network Mindset Media confirms the ad's personification of Mac users as superior and self-satisfied. Its recent Mac user "mind-set profile" -- a psychographic ranking system that scores respondents on 20 different elements of personality -- found them to be more assured of their superiority, less modest and more open than the general population.

Really?

I would not have known! lol

Men all over the world have a common passion: cars. It doesn't matter how old a car is, because if it's a classic or just a beautiful car, we'll love each part of it... even its mechanical parts. That's what a cut-away brings us: sweet extra information.

1951 BRM Type 15

1959 Volkswagen Bus

1965 Hillman IMP

1992 Mazda Efini RX7

It is astonishing how many parts are in a vehicle. In my view, it represents an ideal examle of what the human mind can accomplish. We take it for granted that each and every component, from a gasket to a piston must be, and is, made by human hands, but more importantly, is manufactured to standards that are sometime difficult to comprehend. As if this was not impressive enough, every single one of these pieces must fit together, and stay together in ways we simply lose sight of. From Cartype

2000 Opel Speedster 2000

2004 Volvo S60R

2005 Bugatti EB16-4 Veyron

2006 Cadillac CTS-V

2007 Pontiac Solstice

2008 Porsche 911 GT2

Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com

If you've ever asked yourself, "What was that amazing watch Lieutenant Ripley wore in the 1986 movie 'Aliens?'" I have the answer for you. It was a Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed Seiko Speedmaster Chronograph. The vertical stopwatch pushers placed inside the asymmetrical case extension are what makes the watch entirely unique. Personally, I think he may have been influenced by the design of the 1973 LIP Mach 2000 that came out 12 years earlier. Many of Giugiaro's other designs for Seiko between 1985-86 had asymmetric qualities as well, which you can see on Watchismo.

For those of you who don't know, Giorgio Giugiaro was one of the most important car designers of the 20th century. Credited with the "folded paper" car designs of the 1970s and '80s, he was responsible for such classics as the Lotus Esprit, De Lorean DMC 12, Maserati Merak, Bora, Quattroporte, BMW M1, and most interesting to learn, my first car, the Volkswagen Scirocco.

Based on the big blob of write-ups at the ol' Techmeme, tech bloggers are all abuzz about Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo! My guess is the acquisition will happen. Some thoughts:

• Is this really all about ads and search? I'm guessing that's a big part of the story. So I'm left asking - is Microsoft's value heading to the Web, or is Yahoo's value headed to the desktop? Or both?
• Redundancy anyone? Who survives:
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery vs. Flickr
  • Windows Live Favorites vs. Delicious.
  • The list goes on: maps? chat? shopping?
• Related to the last point, how does a Flickr or Delicious culture survive a Microsoft-ification?
• An operating system has acquired a suite of web services in many respects. I'd expect Google and Apple to continue to draw closer.
• What of all the great developer support Yahoo!'s contributed over the years? Does that get swallowed by the big MSDN monster?

So how big of a Web presence will MS+Yahoo be? Add the red and green lines and subtract some for "overlap tax":

There's nothing better than to play with the tool if you want to learn it. Bert Monroy always mentions that on his podcasts and I truly agree with him. I think the best way to learn is trying to recreate images and effects we like.

Here I list my 10 tips to improve your skills in Photoshop, but they can be applied to other tools as well. Besides of that leave a comment with tips and links that you think will help us to improve our Photoshop Skills as well.

1 - Start with something

I know this might sound obvious but you need to have something like some drawings, sketches, or an image rather than just a white page. Otherwise you will end up doing the same effects every time you try do design something. Get inspiration from sites like Flickr, there are some very good photoshop groups. Or just look for inspiration on the web. Below are some inspirational links. 2007 inspiration

• 10 Photoshop Masters
• Masters of Illustration - Smashingmagazine
• 12 Invaluable Sites for Web Design and Design Inspiration
• 2007 Graphic Design Inspiration

2 - Don't be dissappointed

Don't be dissappointed when your image or effect is not turning out the way you want, keep working. That happens with me all the time. When I first start designing, usually I get frustrated that my design is not becoming exactly what I had in mind. However it turns out that after I have all elements in my design it's easier to make it look the way I want.

 

3 - Try to recreate the effects you like.

Every time I find an image that has an effect I like I save it and try to create that effect in Photoshop. The Fire effect I did trying to reproduce an Nike ad, and the gold effect when I saw a Jewelry Ad as well.

4 - Read tutorials before start doing your design.

We usually go straight to Photoshop and try to figure out how to do the effect, it's nice but we can save a lot of time if we get some clues or ways to do that before we start the Photoshop work. There are very good sites where you can learn how to create all sorts of effects from gold text to glowing effects.

• pixel2life.com
• good-tutorials.com
• psdtuts.com
• veerle
• 100 Photoshop Tutorials

5 - Learn how to use Masks.

I know this might sound odd but there are a lot of people that don't understand how to use Masks. So stop deleting parts of your image and start masking them. There's a very cool video that shows us how to learn Masks

6 - Play around with filters

You can do all kinds of effects with them from blur to lighting effects. The most fascinating thing is if you mix some filter you always get a new result, like the Render Clouds.

7 - Spend some time learning the Layer Styles

Layer Style is one of the most useful features in Photoshop. You can create amazing text effects without applying any filter or even touching the font.

8 - Brush Engine

To be honest I had never payed much attention to this feature until 6 months ago when I was creating a falling star. After that moment I simply cant stop using it. You can create sparks, stars, clouds, and unlimited number of shapes. You can make your brush random or uniform, with different colors and opacity, and I could go on and on because the possibilities are endless

• Very good video explaining how the Brush Engine works
• Photoshop Brushes - Lynda.com

9 - Listen and watch podcasts

I think podcasts are an excellent way to learn Photoshop. The Pixel Perfect with Bert Monroy is definitely a must see podcast if you want to learn Photoshop and Illustrator.

• List of Photoshop Podcasts
• Adobe Photoshop Quicktips - Video Podcast

10 - Share what you have learned with everybody

I think when we learn something there's nothing wrong in sharing our skills. Besides of the fact that you can help others, you can promote your work and even get money from writing tutorials. Psdtuts.com pays you for each tutorial you write and then publish it if selected.

• Your Design Forums
• PSDTUTS - They pay you for tutorials
• Flickr
• Deviantart

When you have a lot of text selected which you have kerned and/or tracked out and you simply want to reset all of it to zero, you can either go to the tracking and kerning input boxes in the Control Bar and do it manually, or you can do it the easy way.

With all your text selected, simply hit Command (Apple) + Option + Q. All your kerning will return to normal. Don't you just love keyboard shortcuts! This works in Adobe CS2 and CS3.

Xerox has a new logo.

They announced it here and here on the 7th of January 2008.

I like the smaller, lowercase type for the name but the ‘ball’ is a little too much. There are just too many around - there’s no differentiation. Sure, this one has an ‘X’ overlayed but it’s a ball still. They could have experimented with something else - if they had to settle with a ball, I’m sure they could have taken a bit more risk and tried something else - if they HAD TO have a graphic element.

But then I think of Interbrand [ the agency who did the re-branding ] : sometimes, in fact, most of the times, the designer / agency does not have a completely free hand on how they want the logo / brand to develop - the client has a huge say in how they want the visual to develop. If the client has a penchant for shiny glass balls visually, well, then it’s a decent conclusion to the re-branding exercise.