El futuro de un diseñador

En el diseño (como en muchas otras cosas de la vida) no hay un solo futuro posibe, sino varios. Va este inspirador artículo para mis colegas diseñadores y/o artistas, sobre todo para los que aún no tienen ni idea de qué es lo que van a estar haciendo dentro de 10 o 15 años…

What do you really want to achieve as a web designer?

To answer this question, look back at how you got into the design profession. Go back as far as you wish, into your childhood even, when you first put pen to paper and designed the layout of your bedroom.

What feelings, qualities or desires compelled you to become a web designer? Did you fall into the profession by accident? Did you plan for it immediately following high school? Do you plan to continue as a web designer in the future, or is this just a stepping stone to success in another field?

Whether you did it for the money, the creative opportunities, the work-from-home lifestyle, or your dream of designing bigger, better and more famous websites, you’ll find that different aspects of web design hold different futures…

http://bit.ly/pTR1wA

El futuro de un diseñador

Advertising is dead

Segun este artículo de webdesignerdepot, ya no hay una situación de “convivencia” entre la forma tradicional y la nueva de hacer publicidad. Por “nueva” me refiero por supuesto a todos los medios digitales, que llegaron a cambiar todo el paradigma de comunicación entre una marca y un público. Por vieja, me refiero a todos los medios y canales tadicionales, formatos preestablecidos y unidireccionales, donde no se puede medir casi nada, ni mantener una conexión y un diálogo, ni recibir ninguna retroalimentación, segmentar, crear engagement, lealtad, dar seguimento… nada. Ese tipo de publicidad ya no es sustentable por sí misma desde hace mucho tiempo y esta condenada a morir.
Ni modo, sea bueno o malo, la tecnología cambió las cosas para siempre. Se aconsejó por mucho tiempo a la gente dedicada a esto que se subiera a este tren tecnológico. Ahora ya no hay ningún otro tren al que subirse…

Advertising as we know it is dead

Advertising as we know it (TV commercials, radio, commercials, print, and some web) is no longer going to cut it, especially by itself.

Campaigns are going to have to draw customers into a brand and lifestyle or something greater than just a product or service. I will say, it’s a bit easier for older companies—they’ll get repeat customers just because of their age and reputation, but the newer companies are really going to have to take some time and figure out what makes them new and unique and cater to that small niche so that it can grow.

I remember our first family computer back in the 90s was a Macintosh and folks laughed at us—now, 20 years later, Apple practically rules the technology world and folks laugh at you when you don’t have a Mac. Advertising as a cut-and-dry proposition is dead and gone. Clearly, putting in extra time and effort now is a requirement, much like it was in the early days of advertising…

http://bit.ly/qPAXvh

Advertising is dead

Food & pills

A man of considerable humor and imagination, portrait artist Jason Mecier is known for his collection of portraits made from diverse objects such as food, pills, junk, and more. He began his life puttering with beans, noodles, yarn and other inexpensive craft materials so invaluable for bizaars, scout troups, gifts and home decor. While his artwork may fool the eye, there’s no fooling about his artwork-no gimmicks…no trick shots…no studio touch ups. They are one of a kind hand-crafted mosaics created with painstaking care. Mr. Mecier has a deep love for people, art and collecting things; he wants to help others enjoy what he likes to do best. “I hope to one day trade art with Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Manson, Jane Seymour and Yoko Ono”

A portrait of “Tina Fey” made for the Washington Post

http://t.co/Qo7rLOg

Adobe Edge

Con este programita el que no le entre al HTML5 ya no será por otra cosa mas que por decidia.

No se las pueden poner más fácil: interface gráfica basada en timelines, keyframes y tweenings (tal como en flash), efectos y animaciones pre-diseñadas, complatible con todos los  formatos de imágenes y programas de abobe, y (temporalmente) versión de prueba gratis para descargar…

It used to be that if you wanted to create an animated, interactive interface for a website, you needed to use Flash. You might be able to get away with some basic animations using JavaScript, but if you made it too complicated, all you’d end up doing is bogging your visitor’s computer down and causing problems.

Plus, JavaScript was potentially more complicated to use than Flash, at least for those who aren’t fond of coding. But, of course, Flash doesn’t always work well (or sometimes not at all) on mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

Enter HTML5. HTML5 works on just about every mobile platform out there. Anything you could create in Flash can be created with HTML5 (and sometimes added JavaScript and CSS3): animations, interactive elements, and more.

But it reintroduces the coding issue for a lot of designers, who might not be crazy about hand-coding everything. That’s where Adobe Edge comes in…

http://t.co/V0JF153

Adobe Edge

25-sec history of Gestalt

Ahora un poco de Psicología Gestalt aplicado a web, principios de percepción, de agrupamiento y ortas teorías…

Strengthening behavioral cues in UX web design with Gestalt principles

The field of Gestalt Psychology aims to explain how the mind perceives and organizes visual, auditory and somatosensory stimuli. As web designers and user experience (UX) professionals, you will find the research of Gestalt Psychology to be an invaluable tool as you go about optimizing not only your product’s usability but also its engagement.

Introduced around the 1910s, it is credited to the work of psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. Gestalt, German for “form,” gives us insight into how to orchestrate user experiences by exploring the relationship between a given stimulus and the cognitive response of the user.

By understanding the perceptive organization involved in the cognitive process, we can develop stronger strategies for emotional and behavioral triggers in our user experiences.

• Coupling emotional and behavioral triggers in some form of cognitive grouping — whether by proximity, similarity or something else — strengthens the motivation to act on the behavioral cue.
• Industry standards aren’t necessarily the most emotionally engaging, as seen in the YouTube embedding comparison above. Learn to curate your experiences, instead of subscribing to a standard.
• Gestalt principles can help UX professionals leverage trust to increase sales-based conversions.

http://t.co/9JIwvbr

25-sec history of Gestalt

historia del arte y diseño web

Muchas nociones en diseño web y en arte hacen ver que las dos prácticas, se alimentan de una misma cultura visual, formada a través de varios siglos, y obedeciendo a muchos principios comunes de estructura, composición, forma y lenguaje visual en general. Lean este articulo de webdesignerdepot…

Web design inspiration from the history of art

When it comes to the creative arts, a fundamental way to better understand the trade is to look to the past. People in every trade do this, including those in photography, painting, sculpture and architecture. Why should web designers be any different?

Of course, we look to the very recent past through our countless web design showcases. But we can go much further back for inspiration, to the masters of old. Let’s review some key art movements and the fundamental design principles they embraced. Based on these, we can review current web designs for elements to apply to our own work.

We’ll focus on Western art before the 20th century, and we will highlight only a few movements from among the many that took place…

http://t.co/bnApSjX

destructive art

Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, also known as “Vhils” is an incredible sculptor and graffiti artist who is challenging assumptions by creating artwork using destructive methods.

He started out as a graffiti artist but got tired of illegally touching up walls. So, he turned his attention to billboards, painting them all white and then putting his own artwork on top, usually as a critique of consumerism and advertising.

During one of his “interventions,” he found that walls, metals and other hard material could be used to equally interesting effect.

The awesome videos below demonstrate part of his working process, including a video clip that he did in partnership with the Portuguese band Orelha Negra, with slow-motion scenes of his exploding artwork.

If you know of any other artists who do interesting work like this, please comment below…

http://t.co/T6ezmxA

Design errors

Va una interesante notita de webdesignerdepot.com sobre algunos de los más famosos -y caros- errores de diseño que se conocen, cometidos por empresas que parecerían ser tan grandes y existosas como para pensarlas incapaces de cometerlos (Google y Yahoo, específicamente). Y sin embargo los cometen…

Why developers cannot afford to ignore design

We developers sometimes take design for granted. And let’s be honest: who doesn’t hate taking things for granted.

Some say we will never truly appreciate the importance of design until we have been trained in the essence of design and beauty. Well, I say BS to that. I want to break us our of this box and clear away the cobwebs from our code-oriented minds.

Development, by its very nature, reflects the knowledge base of the person in charge. And the skills required to develop such a knowledge base can leave us in the dark about design. Developers often sweep design under the rug in order to be able to learn the intricacies of PHP and MySQL.

But as someone who has been writing code for 13 years, I can tell you it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, many of the world’s greatest developers have an excellent grasp of UI and UX and of what their users want. The best way to get a handle on it is to figure out what you want in a UI…

http://t.co/qcOjQzV

Design errors

Celebs caricatures

Caricatures, by their very definition, exaggerate the physical qualities of a person and yet do so in a way that leaves the subject of the caricature entirely recognizable.

Celebrities are some of the most popular subjects of caricatures, primarily because they’re so easy to recognize, and often become known for specific physical traits.

Anthony Geoffroy is an illustrator and graphic artist who has created some of the best celebrity caricatures you’re likely to see.

He’s done caricatures of everyone from Dr. House to Robert De Niro, and he does caricatures of both celebrities and the characters they portray.

In this post, you’ll see some of the best Geoffroy has to offer, with caricatures including Bruce Willis, Leslie Nielsen and Stephen King, among many others…

http://bit.ly/mB7707

Celebs caricatures

experimental typography

(Webdesigner depot)Take a look at typography used as an experimental form of art. In this post we feature over 100 amazing typographical experiments, crazy compositions and funky fonts that ooze creativity.

These examples were collected from Behance’s Typography Served, a truly amazing resource for all typeface enthusiasts. You can read more about each piece and their authors by clicking on the respective images below. Enjoy!

http://bit.ly/k46KNm