book cover design for web design inspiration

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On the topic of books on March 9th

In a recent effort to step outside the online realm of web design inspiration I decide to head over to the local bookstore this past weekend and soak in the beauty of book cover design.

My iPhone came in handy—see images below—to capture many beautiful covers with brilliant typography, color palettes, layout, texture, and style. Often when designing we, including myself, start by looking at a variety of online web galleries, and while there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, it could lead to a stale, similar (in comparison to others) looking portfolio over time. Our brains remember elements and it becomes natural for us to design something “unique” while making it look similar to what you have already seen on the web even if we are not directly inspiring from a particular site.

Sometimes all it takes to get inspired is looking at a beautiful typeface used throughout a book or a unique color palette used on the cover. I included some photographs I took on my journey for inspiration below.

For more inspiration check out the awesome online book cover design archive for more inspiration.

use twitter on your resume

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On the topic of marketing on February 19th

A few months ago I applied for a few upcoming part-time teaching positions (which I’m excited to let you know that I’ll be teaching digital portfolio class at a local college). Prior to applying, I thought my resume might be in need of a few touch-ups and additions before getting in touch with a few schools.

With a large portion of my work coming from clients I never meet face-to-face, supporters and blog readers from all over the online world, and work consisting of mostly online media, I thought it might be fun to incorporate some online interaction into my resume; invite the resume readers into my “online home” if you will.

The words “branding” and “personal branding” have been catching all the buzz in the past year or so because of services like Twitter and Facebook make it easy to monitor your brand through real interactions and word of mouth. Your customers, followers, supporters, etcetera are able to share their thoughts and feelings with you about your brand very easily. On the receiving end you are able to make adjustments if and where needed based on the feedback received.

twitter testimonials

Getting to the point: While I do tend to get both negative and positive feedback, I started favoriting (“starring”) the positive feedback I receive on Twitter and then linked it to my interactive or static PDF resume. I consider them my online testimonials! It’s also important to point out that I also jot down the negative, so I can improve later on.

A few of the resume recipients really enjoyed the idea, as it served as a pleasant creative twist on the standard testimonial and recommendations.

adobe acrobat color problem fix

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On the topic of software on February 16th

Last week I had emailed a client two final PDF full-color logo mockups that were created in Adobe Illustrator. I received an email yesterday stating that they “didn’t like the color of brown I used.” Slightly confused, since there was only shades of blue and black used in the logo, I investigated further.

Typically when viewing PDFs on my Mac I use Apple Preview (it loads much faster and render much cleaner than Adobe Acrobat). However, my client was using Adobe Acrobat, which was causing weird discoloring of certain elements of the logo—even though some of the same parts were the exact same colors as other parts that were appearing fine even on my Acrobat. My initial thoughts was that it was possibly their settings or something similar in Acrobat).

Still confused, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone had similar experiences. Many of the responses resulted in what I thought and tried, but a tweet by Edward Qwertsih (@ludoedoed) told me to try the following (to which solved the problem):

• File » Save As…
• Type <PDF> — Click Save
• In pop up: Choose Output on the left side
• Set the Profile Inclusion Policy to ‘Include All Profiles’
• Click Save PDF

Problem solved.  To everyone that offered help: Thank you! All of your help and feedback is always greatly appreciated.