Opinion

There is an exciting new medium about to become mainstream. It's a combination between a magazine and web design. It's rich and exciting. And it's pioneered by the the iPad. Soon, we'll be getting requests to design rich media brochures for companies that will be read on tablet devices. Get inspired and get ready for it. Watch the videos of two publications showcasing some of their designs.

Now that the iPad is out let's think about whether it is a useful tool for us designers. Sure it can serve all the business and entertainment needs we have, but does it have the ability to help us professionally? Can the iPad makes us more creative, more efficient and can it help us with our everyday design tasks? Let's take each activity we do as designers and see if iPad has a place in it.

1. Find the right place to gain as much experience as possible in the shortest amount of time. This may mean a small independent design studio, a large multinational or hopping jobs every 2 years depending on the available options you may have.
2. Work somewhere that's worthy of your time and talent. Don't settle for any job.
3. Put more effort into your job than expected and do it cheerfully.
4. Become the most positive and enthusiastic designer at your workplace.
5. Be forgiving of yourself and others. We're humans and we make mistakes even when we only have good intentions. Don't allow such mistakes make you lose sight of long term goals.
6. Be generous with your contributions to the team's work. Do not try to take credit for every idea you came up with.
7. Persistence, persistence, persistence. Great work never just falls into your lap. You need to work for it, refine it, perfect it.
8. If you clearly see you're going into the wrong direction with your strategy do not be afraid to stop and rethink everything even if it means you have to start everything from scratch.
9. Discipline yourself to save money on even a modest salary. This will give you the freedom to change jobs when things go bad and will allow you to take meaningful holidays that refresh your mind and body.
10. Commit yourself to constant improvement. Technology and the industry is developing really fast. You have to keep up.
11. Commit yourself to quality. Do not ever settle for something less than your outmost best. Perfect your work till time allows.
12. Your professional happiness isn't based on the number of awards or how much you make, but on the relationships you have with your colleagues and clients. Treat them with respect.
13. Be loyal to your clients and your employer. It will be appreciated even by the competition.
14. Be honest with your work. Never lie or mislead the audience. If you do you will feel miserable about your profession.
15. Be a self-starter. If you identify an idea take charge and go for it.
16. Do not blame others. If you're unhappy about something take the initiative to change instead of whining about it.
17. Be decisive even if it means you'll sometimes be wrong. Trial and error are the best ways to experience, learn and improve.
18. Be bold and courageous with your work. When you look back on your professional life, you will regret the the things you didn't do more than the one you did.
19. Do not overestimate the value of formal education. Many successful designers never had formal design eduction. Real work experience is more valuable than any education.
20. Eat healthy, do sports. Your mind and body are your only tools available to you. Do not abuse substances. Save them for those critical special times when you really need a boost.
21. Don't take all advice for granted. Pick what's useful for you. Make up your own rules and change them at your will.

There are obvious benefits to spending the extra time and effort grouping your layers into folders and naming them appropriately.

For one you will appreciate the organization if you have to work further on the file after considerable amount time went by. Second, your coworkers or your css programmer will appreciate a neat file as well.

There are some less obvious and immediate advantages to such tidy practices. Design is not done on paper or on screen. Design is something you do in your mind. You continuously evaluate your work and make further design decisions while you work. Design is an internal dialogue and the result is your design work.

Suddenly some explosively positive and futuristically pragmatic policies about the Internet and global e-commerce are creating amazing galaxies of business naming. With already 1.7 billion online users and 1 billion more on its way the new business naming capabilities befitting advance and intricate platforms of global cyber branding provide mega opportunities. Depending on types and styles of businesses, for a fraction of cost, several dozens of multiple websites in multilingual formats with right type of domain names skating worldwide can easily catapult sales many folds and increase visibility to brand new stratosphere.

The winners were announced today:
We are pleased to announce that Drupal has won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award. This category featured a very close contest between the top three, Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla! in which Drupal ended up as the overall choice for the judges and the public.

While Drupal and Joomla! have always consistently featured among the top three in this category, WordPress made its way into the top five for the first time. The fact that it was outranked by Drupal by a very slight margin indicates how popular it has become with users as well as developers over the past year.

Creativebits runs on Drupal since 2005 when we switched over from Google's blogger and phpBB forum engines. So far it served us well because it was relatively easy to maintain and upgrade when there was a need.

I would be highly interested to hear what is your preferred platform of web development and why?

It's great to see that Apple constantly innovates their input devices. They brought the mouse to the mainstream (by taking Xerox's design further) in the first place. Later they brought in the hockey puck design which was innovative in it's shape and design. Next, they came up with a simpler one button design, which was used by millions. The mighty mouse really broke new ground, but unfortunately the nipple broke too easily. Here is the history in detail.

Now the Magic mouse combines the best of the mouse and the trackpad into one input device. Hopefully this new design eliminated all the problems the previous designs had and we finally have the ultimate mouse. Well done Apple!

Have you noticed that the more pressing the deadline the cleaner your apartment gets? Procrastination is a problem almost every designer struggles with. Group hug guys.

We make excuses like: I work better under the pressure of time, close deadlines make me more creative or I'm not inspired to do work today. It is true that stress caused by an approaching deadline releases adrenaline and other chemicals in your body, which can make you think faster and be more focused. However increased productivity is only a perception. You're doing great considering you only spent 3 hours of the job before the very deadline, but you would've done much better spending those 3 working hours by spreading them out over a week.

There are 3 reason why people procrastinate. If you can recognize why you do it you can make a mental effort to overcome the internal block.

Apple after suing the The Victoria School of Business and Technology in Canada (logo on the left) for the similarity of their logo to the Apple trademark, now decided they are going after Woolworth and their newly launched identity (logo in the middle). While the logos clearly not similar, other than showing the same fruit, Apple's problem is that Woolworth may in the future sell electronics, which may create confusion for consumers.