Von Glitschka design tips

Every once in a while I check Von Glitschka's blog at http://www.artbackwash.com/.

He has a new website about illustration design that your students might learn from-- http://www.illustrationclass.com/.

There's a recorded session he did for the HOW Design Conference that has some great lessons and examples. Unfortunately he just uploaded a SWF of his presentation and an MP3 and you have to play them together. It's tricky but, worth the effort.

Control and Creativity: A Match Made in Heaven

From CreativePro.com:

Organization, structure, and habit aren't threats to your artistic freedom. In fact, they're tools that help you carve out the time you need to let your creativity fly.

Some people think of creativity and organization as opposites. But Mark McGuiness believes that concentration is a must for the best creative work. If you don't consciously make time for being focused, you're vulnerable to interruptions that can stop your creative flow mid-stream.

In his book Time Management for Creative People, he goes into the theory and practice of maintaining your creative focus under pressure, and of managing the information flooding in on us all.

There's a link to download the entire 32-page book.

TypeTalk: Text Fonts versus Display Fonts

From CreativePro.com:

Q. How can I tell the difference between a text font and a display font? Are there any rules for their use?

A. The bad news is there is no easy, automatic way to tell if a typeface was originally intended for text or display usage. But the good news is no matter what their intended usage, many fonts can be used for both.

Click the link above to read more.

Gimp Brainstorm

I really want to use Gimp, but I can't deal with the interface. Tried GimpShop but it's really unstable. There's some hope... a new release is due (finally), and there are some nice design mockups that may inspire developers.

PhotoShop online... because everyone else is doing it

From Business 2.0:

Adobe Systems (ADBE) CEO Bruce Chizen said earlier this year that the company would release a Web-based Photoshop product, and on Thursday at the Photoshop World conference, the company gave the first peek at its efforts to do just that.

But don't throw out your shrink-wrapped version just yet. Details are scarce so far, but it's already clear that Adobe's online product, Photoshop Express, won't be a replacement for the real thing.

NOT A SUBSTITUTE
Just because of the inherent differences between PC software and online apps, the online version of Photoshop is sure to be slower and less capable of multitasking than the other versions. Those limitations will be enough to keep Adobe's base of professionals and enthusiasts paying for the more complete versions to run on powerful computers with high-end chips from Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) that run operating systems from Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).

So why is Adobe doing an online version of Photoshop at all? I talked to CEO Bruce Chizen about that earlier this year. I gathered that it's a defensive move as much as anything.

PLAYING DEFENSE
Companies like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft are increasingly using the Web to chip away at established software franchises. For example, Google's Docs & Spreadsheets application is a challenge to Microsoft Office; and Microsoft's Silverlight platform, which competes with Adobe Flash and Flex, might allow Redmond to challenge Adobe's standing as a supplier of rich Web 2.0 developer tools.

Chizen sees the handwriting on the wall, and doesn't want to wait for Google or Microsoft to roll out their own online Photoshop competitor – or wait for them to buy one of the many that already exist. (See Fauxto, Picnik, PXN8, Snipshot and others.) By stepping out now with its own online Photoshop clone, Adobe hopes to set the standard for online image editors, and learn a lot more about Web-based apps along the way.