You! Be Inspired! #0002

We’ve had quite a lively and green weekend – we've got the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival closing out, and on the same day we had Earth Day. Well, if you're going to count the Friday before the weekend, it's more a lot more greener than we thought. Talking about the recent Coachella Festival, we have a feature interview with gig poster maker and ad man extraordinaire, JP Cuison! He's made unique poster designs featuring some of our beloved cartoon characters. Aside from an interview, we'll be talking about industrial designer, Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design and how you can use it as your graphic design inspiration. So after a short break we are back to being awesome and we've got a few interesting things for this week's edition of You! Be Inspired! A few things the team talked about the past week is food and web design. I know there's nothing much in common between them except the design/presentation side of it. But lo and behold we stumbled upon a tasty website that caters to delicious food reviews and practices Apple's design philosophy in their web design. Check out Pepper for some quirky solutions to your food cravings. What we love about creatives is their auteur tendencies. One fella we found online is Kyle Steed. His works covers typography, icon design, photography, and rebranding. His simple hand-drawn sketches provide a unique character to his different projects. If you're the sketch first, render later type of graphic designer, you should check out Kyle Steed's portfolio. We've been taking inspiration from tumblr lately, taking advantage of their interesting "Spotlight" section where they feature interesting blogs. These blogs are categorized based on interest, and the categories are wide-ranging – from typography to young adult literature. Here are some tumblrs that tickled our interest: Typostrate: typography focused tumblr with samples on how you can use type in different ways. Visual Poetry: A poetry-cum-typography tumblr. The site's owner, Anatol Knotek, features images that inspire his work and as well as his original artwork. The Impossible Cool: A tumblr that features vintage, sometimes never-before-seen, photographs of well-known artists and performers. Our team here at You The Designer are a bunch of nostalgic bunnies. We talk about the nineties and the things we did as kids, and just enjoy the memories. It's an endless conversation about time and existentialism – anyway, Dear Photograph’s one of the few sites that actually lets you feel that deep nostalgia just by looking at pictures with old photos placed in its modern backdrop. Another nostalgia-infused photo gallery is Sergey Larenkov's rephotography of images from the Second World War. (the link goes to a Russian language site) Something related to photography, here's an interesting theme on tumblr that utilizes HD photographs. The theme, aptly called Maximalist, gives photojournalists and photographers the advantage of using their HD photographs, and post them online. If you're both and a tumblr user, this theme will suit you well.  (Source) It may sound a little bit off or awkward, but artists have to dress up, too. Dear Designer is another tumblog that not only caters to design and fashion, but also provides ample advice to designers who are troubled by their trousers. Print design may sound so 20th century to some, but it won't be going anywhere. If you appreciate books and the design on its covers, Book by its Cover features quirky book cover designs and their designers.

“Rocker Girl Stock Photos: You The Designer’s Freebie Pack for April 2012!” plus 1 more

Geno had some photos from a rocker girl shoot he didn’t get to use, so we’re giving it away here so this great resource won’t go to waste! We’d love it if you could share with us what you can come up with these photos if you do get to use them, so we can share it with our other readers/followers too. Let us know how you liked it, and if you’d like us to make other kinds of stock photo sets too!

“Street Photography: Taking Inspiration from Strangers” plus 1 more

Street Photography: Taking Inspiration from Strangers When I started photography 4 years ago, I had a basic point-and-shoot camera that I brought everywhere. I took photos of trees, interesting cloud formations, even cats that are lounging on small patches of sunshine. I was also fascinated with buildings that have intricately-patterned arches, carved doors, and high ceilings. Taking photos of strangers, though, is more exciting. The thought of capturing a fleeting moment in a photo that can last a long time makes it more special. Taking photos of ordinary people, for most photographers, is more gratifying because situations are neither staged nor forced. Henri Cartier-Bresson, considered to be the father of photojournalism said that "[…] a photograph could fix eternity in an instant." His photos, like those of Robert Doisneau's and Vivian Maier's, are perfect samples of candid street photography. Theirs are photos that include spontaneous portraits without having any influence on the scene at all. Street photographers can find subjects everywhere. The streets are filled with moments waiting to be captured. One's timing, sensitivity, and agility are important to capture moments that would've been lost forever. Take your cue from these photos that inspire me (and hopefully, you) to become more observant in my daily strolls.   Watch out for upcoming articles about street photography and the awesome people behind the lens! In the meantime, visit the HCSP (Hardcore Street Photography) Flickr Group for more street photography goodness. Subscribe to our blog feed and follow us on Twitter for updates on our upcoming features!

Announcing the Winner of Our Newsletter Launch’s Wireless Wacom Tablet Giveaway! Posted: 17 Apr 2012 12:10 AM PDT Thank you to everyone who signed up for our very first newsletter! We will be launching the first issue around the end of this month. We got well over the 1k subscribers mark, though there are still some people who haven’t confirmed their subscription yet. Don’t worry though, we included all the confirmed subscribers when we did the random drawing for this giveaway – and for those of you who haven’t confirmed yet, please double-check if you’ve entered your email addresses correctly or put admin [at] youthedesigner [dot] com on your Contacts list so we don’t accidentally get into your Spam folder! The winner of the You The Designer Newsletter Wireless Wacom Bamboo Create Kit is… Cynthia Wenslow! Congratulations! We’ll get in contact soon to guide you through the next steps.

Stock Photos: Pros, Cons, Fixes, and Strange Examples

Stock Photos: Pros, Cons, Fixes, and Strange Examples Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:21 AM PDT Stock photos may be indispensable design resources, but they are also very prone to design abuse. Like this. (And hey, this post will also be adorned with a few stock photos too! Explanation’s in the next paragraph.) The Pros of Using Stock Photos (and 1 Con) They’re here to stay because people actually look for them. There wouldn’t be so many stock photo websites, both free and premium, otherwise. Here’s a simple example: if you’re a blogger too, I’m sure you’ve had to resort to them a few times to preface abstract concepts you’re about to talk to your readers about, as well as to break the monotony between walls of text. Add to our number the people, both newbie and experienced, who’ve had to put a face on their website, a cover page for their newsletter, or just the right photo on their slideshow presentation at one time or another, and you’ve got a demand that goes by the millions. They’re convenient resources for when we need human faces or points of reference in our designs; the kind that can elicit a desired human response from the people we’re designing our creations for. A direct look right into your eyes paired with a winning smile, for instance, coming from just the right kind of person. Chosen based on what we’re looking for and what our general preferences are, as can only be guessed by the demographic we’re classified into. Whether we like it or not, we react to that. In a way that, oftentimes, is exactly how the people using the stock photos want you to. Like this… Or this. Unless you’ve already seen that stock photo 14,378 times before. In other, completely different contexts. Maybe even on a website, in combination with a drab, simplistic template-based page designs and walls of text full of trite corporate jargon and meaningless generalizations. Remember these? All of these? More of the Cons of Using Stock Images Seeing stock photos used carelessly is like hearing canned lines from awkward pick-up artists, or getting automated voice prompts on the phone when you’re trying to reach a real person. I know those of you who’d rather not waste time choosing a few stock photos among thousands don’t like to hear this, but it’s the uncomfortable truth. That “good enough” stock photo you got in the first set of results may not fit the concept or emotion you’re trying to convey as well as if you searched longer (aside from the great likelihood that many other time-pressed individuals like you, in similar circumstances, may have chosen the exact same image before, the earlier you see it in the search results). If, at first glance, a person from your target audience looks at what you’ve made and immediately gets a gut reaction screaming “PHONY”, then you did it wrong, dear, you did it very wrong. It will also royally suck if you later find out that you broke a law or two by using the stock photos you chose ignorantly, and the site you lifted them from is now on your heels. (Hence, you will see that we did not take any chances with our demo image above.) Did you really think you could get away with that? Fixing the Cons: How Not to Commit Stock Photo Abuse If you must use stock images, Make sure you’re not using clichés. The stock photos used in the collage above are not the only photos you should avoid using in your designs; of course, you should also avoid using stock photos that are similar to them, in the sense that they also convey a similar, generic feel. Granted, sometimes you really have to use a photo of a call center girl, globe in the hand, or skyscraper in your design, but it should have to feel more real. There are other ways to make that image more interesting, but we’ll tackle those ways in another list below. Make sure your selected stock photo makes logical sense with the entire intent and purpose of the design. For example, if you’re making – or directing – a website design that you’re saying has to have a globe somewhere in it, is the business it’s representing actually international? Does its customer service come in several languages? If not, and you can’t reasonably justify why the globe should be there… well, maybe the globe shouldn’t be there. Check with TinEye to see if they’re already used too often. TinEye is a reverse image search engine that lets you upload your image or enter your image’s URL, and then shows you how many times that image has appeared in other sites. Chances are if you get results as many as – or more than – these: You need to get another image. Search diligently; bookmark a few alternatives to that first image before you choose your final candidate. Give it at least fifteen to thirty minutes to get just the right image. If you weren’t able to find it by that time, you’ll at least have several options on hand to choose from, not just the first one you saw, on some site (or another?), using a search query you barely remember. Respect the power of gut feel. Even if you searched for and carefully selected that as-close-to-perfect-as-possible stock image after much time and deliberation, that amount of time may also have helped deafen you against what your gut feel is really saying, as well as given you reason to be biased towards that image because you worked so hard to get it. For the sake of the effectiveness of your design, make absolutely sure your image is giving you the right impression. Have a few unbiased people look at your creation and give you their thoughts of what they think about your chosen stock image within your design. Here I have to point out, before anyone else raises the issue in the comments, that there is a potential, and relatively popular, argument against making too much effort to make your creation aesthetically pleasing, and it is conversions versus creative standards. Like this post on KISSmetrics or this forum post on a thread debating this same topic demonstrates, there are just some cases where aesthetics does not factor into the effectiveness of your design. And it is here I also point out that in the previous paragraph I said nothing about aesthetics being important when it came to making an impression. Just because we are designers does not mean we always need to make pretty, lovely, aesthetically pleasing things. We design things for certain purposes, whether our own, our clients’, or our employers’, and those purposes don’t always go with being aesthetically pleasing. If you have to produce something awful to get a desired response, then the more awful you get, the more effective you are. (Sorry, Steve Jobs fans.) — You know what, I can already feel some of you raring for a debate after that point of contention from here, so I’ll leave this sentiment here and move on. Just one example, though: the site Web Pages That Suck has a design that looks like it should nominate itself, and they do get a lot of email saying so. But what they don’t get is that it’s done on purpose. Also, the stock photo caught in the screenshot is very appropriate, in several ways.   Make sure you acquire / have permission to use your chosen stock photos legally! I cannot stress this enough. Back when I was still a noob, I’d haphazardly lift images from wherever and use them however I liked, thinking attribution and all that would take care of itself, only to be called to my boss’s office later on and be told that the legal entity that owns the rights to the image I stole is threatening to sue. You do not want to get that feel, trust me! This is supposing that everything else in the design is of good quality, functional, and makes sense, since if it’s not then you should probably be looking at several other articles too. If you can afford to use images that are not from stock photo sites, Consider taking your own photos – hire someone, ask a friend, or do it yourself. Instead of searching for hours for that perfect photo to represent what you’re trying to convey, why don’t you just grab a camera and capture what’s in front of you yourself? (Stocking, though, is a different thing altogether.) Illustrate. Many businesses have started catching on that their customers aren’t buying their stock photo splash pages as much as they used to, and have gotten better first impressions when they started using illustrations. Replacing photos of people with illustrations of people, for instance, helps the audience get over any unconscious biases about race, gender, perceived social status, etc., lets them view the overall design more objectively, and lets them appreciate the sentiment/overall concept of the design better. Stylize. Try a combination of photos and illustrations, play more with typography, or the like to give your audience a more unique experience. For example, consider our newsletter signup splash page. We could have easily featured stock photos of the prizes only and left it at that, but since we’re all design-oriented and think creatively, we knew adding that illustration above will make you more interested in signing up, for many internal, creative, designer-type reasons. Yes! Also, you should really sign up for our newsletter and early-subscriber tablet giveaway if you haven’t already – we’re naming the winner on the 15th. /shameless plug These articles/blog posts talk more comprehensively about alternatives you can use to stock images, you should check them out: Stop Using Stock Photography Clichés | Boagworld Inspiring Web Design Imagery | Creative Flavor How to Avoid Overused Stock Photos | Radii Production Now that we got the serious stuff out of the way, uh, what were these stock photographers thinking? Maybe I’m just not up to date or it’s a secret only cool kids keep, but I don’t know why these baffling stock photo genres exist or why we would imagine people in the future to have this kind of eye wear or love their fruits/vegetables this much. The other examples listed here I can probably understand (“Eating salad is so awesome you can have fun doing it while you’re alone!” or “Technology is SO awesome I want to kiss it silly!”) but I really don’t get the deal about the apples. If you know why these things exist, could you help me – and the rest of us confused public – understand in the comments? Here are a few more examples here, if you don’t feel like clicking through to the links above right now: “Heeey, this isn’t Aubercy! Where are the diamonds on this thing?”(Link) The pursuit of beauty can take you to strange places. “I am working. Ribbit.” (Link) “Don’t worry, my lovely pencil, I’ll protect you from people with bad handwriting and amateur doodling skills…” (Link) “My work is eating me alive!” (Link)