Creative Opera

Manda Szewczyk

There is nothing quite like opening an email from a talented blogger. Especially when they sharing a blog of the quality of Creative Opera.

Creative Opera features creative advice and inspiration for graphic designers and web designers.

Creative Opera is a blog for new designers, future designers, and anyone who loves design. Creative Opera posts are full of useful information, creative inspiration, and professional advice.

Because Manda spent years teaching design, many of her posts are targeted toward students and new designers. It is fantastic, however, when experienced designers stop by to add to the discussion by sharing their own experiences and advice.

Manda is hoping that Creative Opera will continue to grow as a collaborative environment where designers can find inspiration, lively discussion, and the advice and motivation needed to help them succeed in the design field.

Manda covers many subjects on Creative Opera, so I wasn’t sure whether to put her. In the Web design category, or in the Graphic design category? So Design it is.

Looking through Manda’s Popular section we have some beauts: Design Trends: Self Portraits, Beautiful Design Resumes & their Matching Portfolio Sites, and 7 Reasons Why All Designers Should Twitter.

So now we know that Manda twitters. And of course I twitter. Do you?

Enjoy…

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Daniel Gross

Daniel has an interesting blog covering various angles of the design industry. He also has a great sense of humour. I mean, just check out the Sexy People Blog (a new one on me). I expected it to be a blog focused on taking the micky, but there are honest to goodness sexy people there. And some not so much, up to your taste really.

About: aNEW designs. A design and art blog that explores the passions of our professions.

On to the serious side is Daniel’s Posters of Conflict post, pointing to vads.

All good stuff… enjoy.

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Jesse DenHerder

working class designer

Working Class Designer is very simply a blog about my cultural perspective on design from a small northwoods town.

I like to write about good branding, freelance design projects, new clients, worthy causes, flea market treasures, and other various inspirations.

Check out Jesse’s work at Dil’s Home Foundation and Self Promotion.

enjoy…

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Netdiver’s Best of the Year 2008

Last year I was on time when Carole contacted me about their Netdiver: Best of 2007.

But a lot can happen in a year and this year I’m running late. And admittedly, running late could easily be my middle name for the whole of this year, so stay tuned.

Netdiver Best of the Year 2008 released!

Netdiver has just released the list of projects and whose talents have made a strong and lasting impression in 2008. We aimed to list 100 and just could not. So how about 110 because we feel they gave their 110% best!

Now in its 7th edition, the crop of the year is for us, the top of the year. Refresh your memory and (re)encounter new sources of design inspiration.

Looking though the array of sites, I chose what I believe are the best blogs of the the lot… (it’s what one does on a site called Designers Who Blog, right?)…

• Information Architects
• EffektiveBlog
• Veer: Ideas
• Funkbuilders
• DesignPorn

It only took me a short while to select the ones I fancied. As I was clicking and listening to all the music and watching my browser enlarge and bounce around, I just had to wonder how long it took Carole to choose Netdiver’s Best of the Year 2008.

I’m betting it wasn’t quick. Or easy.

I’m betting it was a whole lot of work putting it together.

So once again, way to go Carole!

Enjoy…

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Todd Bertsch

Design Dump

Yeah for Design Dump! Yeah for Deb! Yeah Todd!

Design Dump Announces First Book Give-Away of 2009

We are very excited to kick off the new year with two FREE SIGNED books donated by acclaimed author Debbie Millman.

Debbie has kindly donated her books, How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer and Essential Principles of Graphic Design.

About Design Dump:

Design Dump has a team of seasoned professional designers and teachers that continue to share their time and knowledge into the idea of keeping us all in the loop.

Our staff and correspondents consist of design professors, professional graphic designers, seasoned web designers, marketing analysts and students.

We collectively scour the Internet, design magazines, books, conferences, publishers, and more to bring our audience the latest trends and topics in the design community. We do the grunt work so designers can concentrate on being creative.

So, what are you all waiting for?

Enjoy…

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Chain Change

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Year of Creativity – YOC – is designed to stimulate something we all have in common: creativity. It is a starting point from which to explore the amazing potential of small changes and the infinite opportunities they offer.

YOC is an invitation to be more curious and more imaginative. It is a catalyst that promotes real and virtual opportunities for us all to discuss and compare our own creativity.

It is a space in which the endless personalities inside us can express themselves, as only those who are inwardly creative can also be creative with the world at large.

My favourite from Chain Change (the blog)?

:-D

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Romain Colin

Introducing fubiz and Romain Colin…

Since May 2005, the Fubiz site is centered on the subjects of the graphic world, the urban culture, the products tendencies and numerical arts. A baseline: Daily proportions inspiration off, and a version available in 5 languages.

And it is. For design, check out the Super-bastard Toy. Photography? Julia Fullerton-Batten is a beaut. Inspiration? Radiohead – House off Cards is eye-catching.

And like it says on the label, it comes in 5 sweet languages. Nice.

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Jonathan Sandridge

When Jonathan sent over two photos to create a banner for Standing Thought, it was like, wow. Nothing like dropping right into DWB’s template, yes?

To make my job easier, he also sent over extra (needed) information.

• I grew up in Baltimore, MD.
• Attended Art school in Washington, DC from 2001 – 2005.
• Currently working as a designer at JDK design in Burlington, VT.
• Started design blogging on standingthought.com May 15th 2007.
• My biggest inspirations are sunshine and kittens.

And if you rush over there right now, you’ll be able to see the beautiful work of Alex Trochut and Hedi Slimane.

Jonathan’s personal work can be found at www.jonathansandridge.com.

Nice, right?

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Sarah, Tess, Meghan and Meghan

The crew at Crew Design has a load of great stuff on offer. To start you off, there’s Brand Tags.

Brandtags.net is a very interesting social experiment about the idea of what defines a brand. The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads.

Other interesting posts found at Crew are Every Person In New York, Boston Branding, a video of Stephen Wiltshire (the amazing savant), and A Look Inside Vanity Fair.

Sites I’ve found so far? Every Person In New York and Stephen Wiltshire’s website and Oddwall.com gallery of the streets, as well as Susan Burghart’s It’s all about the work.

And there’s still a ton more. Like, their Interview with Blythe Russo and and and … sigh … The Design Conspiracy and inkymole. And more …

So, who and what is a Crew?

Back in our school days the four of us were practically inseparable around the College of Fine Arts. Somewhere along the way the nickname “the Crew” caught on … and we gladly embraced it. So “Crew Design” just seemed like the natural name for our collaborative blog.

And just like my crew, they are spread out all over. Two in Boston, one in Austin, and the final other ended up in San Francisco. Indeed.

And here’s a final word from Crew:

We hope that you’ll come into the office in the morning, sit back with a cup of coffee, and get your morning dose of Crew Design. Oh, but check back in the afternoon, too. With four of us working on this blog we’re fortunate to have multiple posts throughout the day.

Sounds like a good deal to me. How about you?

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Eric at ideasonideas

Eric is writing a book. And like many of us, his book is still at the draft stage. Luckily for us, Eric is generous. And who knows, if you contribute ideas to Eric’s Blockbusting post at ideasonideas, you too could be in Eric’s book.

This passage is for when you find yourself stuck. At such a time, just open up to this chapter (again, it’s supposed to be part of a book), and try a random exercise. As you face more problems, you’ll likely uncover which approaches work best for you.

Out of necessity (and a brain not caffeine-clicking yet) I’ve left a few out of my patter. But, no matter, here is the overall gist of what Eric is saying:

Mix up, break up, talk out, walk out, take out, throw out, take more, make more, look more, breath more, reorder, restart, back up and tidy up.

What I do when stuck is sit on the floor in my office with a spread of design books, magazines and artistic clippings around. They won’t have anything to do with the project (it’s better if they don’t). They just get my creativity flowing forward. Eventually it’ll flow back to the project at hand.

Another trick I use is to act like I’m giving advice to a friend. What would I suggest to do different? What would I argue against?

And you? How about you? What do you do when you get stuck?

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