Tag Archives: design

43 #Free Career-Advancing #Courses You Can Take (And Actually Finish) This Summer | Mashable #skills #education #MOOCs

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Yes, summer is the perfect time to relax and recharge. But, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a few new skills. Put that relaxed brain (and work schedule) to good use! How accomplished would you feel if, when September rolls around, you could open up your resume and add another skill to it? Very, we’re guessing.

Before you start stressing, know that we’re not asking you to sacrifice your summer nights to a droning professor. Instead, we’re suggesting devoting a few hours every week to advancing your career with an online class. (Online equals your couch and your sweats and an optional glass of wine.)

To make the process easier for you, we did two things. One, we only chose classes you can complete in less than 10 weeks (with some that can be completed in an hour). Two, we hand-curated this list to ensure it’s only courses that are valuable and interesting. The best part? All of them are free. So, without further ado, here are 43 classes you can sign up for today.

READ MORE: 43 free career-advancing courses you can take (and actually finish) this summer | Mashable

‘Her Story’ is a Compelling New Type of #Interactive #Storytelling | Ars Technica #video #gaming #transmedia

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To anyone who was paying attention to video games in the mid-’90s, the term “FMV game” probably still inspires snorts of derision. The handful of titles that shoehorned simple gameplay on top of highly compressed full-motion video (FMV) usually suffered from low-quality sound and images, poor production values, limited interaction options, and ponderous repetition of a few short video clips through multiple plays. The results ranged from mediocre at the high end to some of the worst games ever made at the low end. By the end of the ’90s, filmed, live-action video clips gave way to polygons and animated, pre-rendered sprites as the gameplay and story-telling engine of choice.

But just as failed ’90s experiments in virtual reality are leading to a resurgence in the form today, the FMV gaming failures of decades past are finally being explored with the technology and game-design advancements of today. Her Story is proof that FMV games don’t have to be awful and that filming actors on a set could be a criminally underexplored form for interactive storytelling. READ MORE: Her Story is a compelling new type of interactive storytelling | Ars Technica.

35 #Books Every Designer Should Read + 27 #Apps Designers Can’t Live Without| Co.Design #design @FastCoDesign

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Some great design app suggestions that I had not heard of before (like Axure, IFTTT and Processing) and a wide range of design books recommended. Something for everyone.

35 Books Every Designer Should Read | Co.Design | business + design We asked some of the world’s top design schools to share their favorite books. Here’s what they recommend for your summer reading list.

27 Apps Designers Can’t Live Without | Co.Design | business + design
Maybe it’s just Gmail, or maybe it’s something more esoteric like Processing, but there are certain apps we rely on so much that if they suddenly went missing, we’d have a hard time getting by. That’s especially true for designers. Their livelihoods depend upon great software. What’s more, as people who dissect design details all day, they have unique insights into what makes an app great. They can see UI/UX friction points the way Superman can see microscopic structural flaws in steel. So we combed out rolodexes and reached out to more than two dozen designers to ask about the apps they couldn’t live without.

The 5 Best #Fonts To Use On Your Resume | HuffPost #resumes

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While resume font choice may seem trivial, experts say it’s actually pretty important. A bad font can take the focus off the accomplishments you’ve listed. READ MORE: The 5 Best Fonts To Use On Your Resume | HuffPost

The Problem With The Color Blue | Co.Design #business #branding

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Blue may seem like a safe bet for a brand’s identity. The data suggests otherwise…There is plenty of psychological research on reactions to blue and other colors, but to evaluate the strategy of choosing blue for a brand, we wanted to measure how blue actually performs, to examine how it measures up against other colors in competitive environments. After all, brands have to compete—they have to work against the idea of sameness and command a premium. So we looked at the comparative performance of blue and other colors in several real-life contexts

READ MORE: The Problem With The Color Blue | Co.Design | business + design

Google’s Guide To Designing With #Empathy | Co.Design #design #accessibility #tech #UX

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According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 billion people worldwide have a disability. To Astrid Weber and Jen Devins, Google’s resident accessibility experts, that stat should be stamped on the back of every designer’s hand, because it means that one out of every seven people on the planet is potentially left behind by thoughtless design decisions. At this year’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, I sat down with the two UX experts and asked them what designers could do to make their apps more accessible. The key, they told me, was using your imagination and having a little more empathy. Here are six ways designers can reach that extra billion.

READ MORE: Google’s Guide To Designing With Empathy | Co.Design | business + design.

Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup | Fast Company #tech #government

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There may not be many of you interested in government bureaucracy, operations and technology…but if you are, this long form article from FastCompany is a very good read! Its also a reminder of the sad state of government affairs in Canada and how important it is for a country to be run by an insightful leader focused on building and creating instead of an authoritarian focused on suffocating innovation, responsiveness and transparency. 

President Obama has quietly recruited top tech talent from the likes of Google and Facebook. Their mission: to reboot how government works. READ MORE: Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.

Browse More Than 1,000 Original Sketches Of Mid-Century Fashion | Co.Design

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Browse More Than 1,000 Original Sketches Of Mid-Century Fashion | Co.Design | business + design

Image Credit: The New York Public Library Digital Collections: Art and Picture Collection

In 1957, three New York designers Walter Teitelbaum, Leo Boren, and Howard Steel founded a company called Creators Studio that produced fashion design concepts. With the tagline “Not yesterday’s but tomorrow’s fashions today,” they’d draw up original garments based upon notable fashion trends, and design manufacturers would receive these sketches on a subscription basis.

Walter Teitelbaum gifted the New York Public Library with 1,067 of these drawings of women’s and children’s ready-to-wear fashions from 1957 to 1969, and the collection has been digitized for you to explore online.

READ MORE: Browse More Than 1,000 Original Sketches Of Mid-Century Fashion | Co.Design | business + design.

Tony Fadell: The first secret of design is … noticing | TED.com #design

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As human beings, we get used to “the way things are” really fast. But for designers, the way things are is an opportunity … Could things be better? How? In this funny, breezy talk, the man behind the iPod and the Nest thermostat shares some of his tips for noticing — and driving — change.

Link to Transcript

via Tony Fadell: The first secret of design is … noticing | Talk Video | TED.com.

How Google Designed An E-Book Font For Any Screen | Co.Design #fonts #typography

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In January of 2014, a Pew study showed that nearly a third of American adults had read an e-book in the last year, and 50% of adults owned some kind of tablet or e-reading device. Many of these readers are using the wide variety of Android devices on the market, which can present a problem for those trying to create a standardized experience for e-book readers. Google faced this challenge while designing their new font, Literata, which will replace Droid Serif on Google Play Books. READ MORE: How Google Designed An E-Book Font For Any Screen | Co.Design | business + design.