In this week, besides our selection of Sites of the Week we will announce the winners of the 2 iconsets from Iconshock and the 2 licenses for the In the Mod application. Don't forget to check the sites they are really great and congratulation to the winners.

ICONSET WINNERS

• Youri
• putera_aladin

IN THE MOD WINNERS

• Zach LeBar
• koczek

DESIGN / CSS

Slydial - www.slydial.com

Slydial is a free voice messaging service that connects you directly to someone's mobile voicemail. slydial is a service of MobileSphere

FLASH SITE

Bustin' Down - www.bustindownthedoor.com

The movie - During the winter of 1975 in Hawaii, surfing was shaken to its core. A group of young surfers from Australia and South Africa sacrificed everything and put it all on the line to create a sport, a culture, and an industry that is today worth billions of dollars and has captured the imagination of the world. With a radical new approach and a brash colonial attitude, these surfers crashed headlong into a culture that was not ready for revolution. Surfing was never to be the same again.

COMMUNITY

iLike - www.ilike.com

iLike is the Web's leading social music discovery service and the dominant music application on the Facebook®, Orkut, hi5 and Bebo platforms. With more than 27 million registered users, iLike helps people share music recommendations, playlists, and personalized concert alerts.

WEB APP

pixily - www.pixily.com

Pixily is an online service that helps you save time, space and money by making your paper and digital documents available at your fingertips. You no longer need to deal with paper clutter and don't have to worry about not finding an important document when you need it.

PORTFOLIO

upstruct berlin oslo - www.upstruct.com

upstruct berlin oslo is a design studio committed to work hard for all our clients. We are passionate about both the commercial and cultural scene, and always meet our clients with good humour and interest. We believe in talking openly together.

Probably one of the biggest questions for me was "how do color blinds see world?" Evad, from COLOURlovers answered that for us in a awesome article!

It's incredible to see that these people manage to live seeing only part of the light spectrum... but probably they just don't miss seeing all the colors, since they are born this way, and have never seen some colors like they really are... or at least that's what I think so.

Google, as seen by a color blind.

Digg, as seen by a color blind.

Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, as seen by a color blind.

To read the full article, please, visit COLOURlovers blog! It's pretty awesome. ;)

The program formerly known as "Project Wukong" has been released a few days ago as Essential HDR. I've no idea why they would drop an awesome code name like Wukong, maybe the guys from Imaging Luminary aren't real Ninjas after all...

But they are certainly nice people: You can download the demo version for free (called community version), which is essentially a demo with a bottom frame watermark and 1 megapixel size restriction. Even better, the first 1000 copies are on sale for 30% off ($48.99 instead of $69.99).

Essential HDR is an HDR generator and tonemapper. It has a global and a local tonemapping operator. The local TMO (Detail Revealer) is the big selling point. According to the developers it is a new algorithm that produces less artifacts (halos, over-saturation) and runs at a decent speed (multicore support). I can wholeheartedly agree: this is indeed a very powerful tonemapper. Without much fuzz I got a very natural images, the preview is pretty accurate, and it is super-easy to use. For control freaks there might be too few sliders, but I find it very intuitive.

Side-by-side comparison.

The overall interface is kept simple and it blends right in with other Windows Vista applications. There is no Mac version, but it runs fine on Boot Camp or VMWare Fusion.

My test image #1.

My test image #2.

My test image #3.

We have 2 copies to give away, so just leave a comment and we will announce the winner next week.

Although it was what I actually studied while in Italy and I haven’t given up on it yet, nowadays I do very little of interior and furniture design work.

The logo for A.G. LOW CONSTRUCTION was an instant favourite. I’m not entirely sure if the idea is instantly recognisable if you’re not that familiar with how plan drawings look, but it works for me 100%.

Drafts from the design process:

Identity Applications, Business Card Design

Identity Applications, Website Design

I love how the site navigation fits into the design concept…

Submitted by & Credits:

Rebecca Low is in her third year of a BA (Hons) Graphic Design degree at University College Falmouth.

Tell us how you overcome isolation, distractions, and temptation. How you deal with kids and deadlines. How you walk the blurry line between work and home. Share your best practices on working from home so we can present them in an upcoming issue of A List Apart.

 

Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

Working from home as a freelance contractor or remote employee can be a great thing, particularly if you live alone. But what if you have a spouse and/or children at home with you while you work? Every work environment offers distractions, but those who work from home with their families face a unique set of issues—and need equally unique ways of dealing with them.

 

Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

Last night I was reading the news and I saw that PSDTUTS now has a video page on VIMEO. I checked that out and it’s really good. They are making videos of the PSDTUTS tutorials. There are some of my tuts in video already, so I decided to share them here too.

Web 2.0 Badge in Photoshop from godonholiday on Vimeo

3D Web Design Effect in Photoshop from godonholiday on Vimeo.

Digital Smoke in Photoshop from godonholiday on Vimeo.

Also I will try to make some video tutorials as well, even though my voice and speaking skills are terrible, so, maybe I will need somebody to help me, any volunteer?

After 2 excellent weeks in North Carolina, I’ve arrived in New York. It's the 4th time I've been here and it’s still awesome. Lots of people, I’m always walking around, most of the time lost, but it’s really cool. This time I’m staying with my aunt Terry in her super cool apartment. Thanks for having me.

I had the chance to meet an old friend that I’ve been talking to him via AIM for almost 2 years. Also tomorrow I will go to a place called Barcade, in Brooklyn, where I will meet two other readers and it would be awesome a meet up with more people. So if you are from NY and you like design, join us. We will get there 6:30pm ;)

Below there's more information, that Francisco sent me, about how to get there.

For all of those in NYC. Sorry this is short notice but we're meeting up at Barcade tomorrow around 6:30pm. Figure it was a fitting place to meet. Hope you can make it!

Here's how to get there.

Barcade - www.barcadebrooklyn.com/

388 Union Ave.

You take the L train to Brooklyn and get out at the Lorimer Stop.
Exit the train station at the Union & Metropolitan exit. (when you step off the train go to your right)
Go to the street and walk south on Union Ave and look for the address 388 Union Ave. You can't miss, it's on your left.

Here's a Google Maps link:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=388+Union+Ave+Brooklyn+...

Some pictures

It's been some time now that I'm developing a big crush on Toy Art. Another day I caught myself stealing some. No, just kidding... I caught myself in a store taking a look at many toy art books... drooling all lover the place.

And now I was checking some Munnies at Flickr, and man, these are really great! I've also checked who much it costs at Kidrobot's, and it's kinda cheap, isn't it? Did anyone make a custom Munny? What about dropping a link to it? And for now, enjoy these awesome pieces. :)

Hi, here's my first post on Abduzeedo. I want to spend my very first one for an artist I recently discovered and I loved since the very first second, her name is Audrey Kawasaki.

This is a short description of her art directly from her site "The themes in Audrey Kawasaki's work are contradictions within themselves. Her work is both innocent and erotic. Each subject is attractive yet disturbing. Audrey's precise technical style is at once influenced by both manga comics and Art Nouveau. Her sharp graphic imagery is combined with the natural grain of the wood panels she paints on, bringing an unexpected warmth to enigmatic subject matter."

She also has great pencil works