Background Image Grid to Lay Out Your Web Site | Smiley Cat Web. 4Google + I recently came across Khoi Vinh's post about using a background image of a grid to help you lay out your page as you are building it [via Garrett Dimon]. Simply put, you apply the grid to the body of your page as a background image so that it displays behind your site. Thus you can use it to precisely line up your layout. This seems like such a useful technique, especially when it comes to resolving cross-browser differences, that I'm surprised I haven't seen it referenced before (maybe I just don't move in the right circles). As Khoi says himself: …coming up with this little trick left me very pleased with myself, as it allowed me to produce easily the most precise layouts of my career. I thought it might be useful expand upon this idea and create a generic grid template that one could use with any layout, and so I came up with the example below: Or, you can add them yourself – I've included the Fireworks source file for you to customize as you see fit.
Overcoming Depression. Earlier this week I wrote about How to Help Negative People. But what if you’re the one who’s feeling chronically negative? In this article I’ll give you a process for helping yourself out of negative emotional states, not just temporarily but permanently. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll use the example of depression, but the process works for other chronic negative emotions like anger, worry, resentment, etc. Understanding depression Depressed people often seem to have good reasons for feeling down, and from the outside looking in, those reasons may appear perfectly valid. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by saying your problems aren’t that bad.
If you currently find yourself in such a situation, you have my compassion. The upside is that once you permanently overcome your depression, you’ll be able to use your experience to help many other people. This quote from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet contains some deep truths: The real cause of depression Let me be very direct. Designing For Clients Made Easy. So you’ve done the marketing, found the client, signed the deal. Now you only have to do the work! This article isn’t going to focus on selling your services or the actual design process or even Photoshop techniques, but all the obstacles (and there are a lot) that many of us run into while trying to complete a project for a client.
I think there are many common pitfalls we all run into, which can be avoided. You are going to be working with your clients for quite some time. How does the process of working with clients affect your business? Client referral – if you work well with your clients, they are more likely to refer you to their friends.Time – if you reduce the amount of time you spend "dealing" with clients, the quicker you can complete projects and work on others.Stress – the less you have, the happier you will be! Be A Pro One of the first and most important things you should establish is respect and professionalism. Set Realistic Expectations The Development Process Research.
F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (Jakob Nielsen's A. How to Write a Thank-You Note, by Leslie Harpold. Question: I have a crushing inability to write proper thank-you notes. Can you offer me some guidelines? —Helen Answer: I was wondering when you were going to ask that question, and frankly, I’m a little disappointed it took you so long. Somewhere in between your mom making you sit down with your Peanuts® stationery and you shooting off an email, you completely lost touch with the concept of simple thank-you notes. Now that you’re a grown-up, an email just won’t do, and more is expected of you than scratching out ‘Thanks for the present, you rock!’
Grandma might not say anything to you, but trust me: She and her friends are probably at this very moment sighing over how young people today just don’t have manners. As extra motivation, I will also grudgingly tell you the hidden secret of thank-you notes: They improve the frequency and quality of the gifts you receive. I assure you, writing thank-yous is easier than you remember. 1. Dear Aunt Sally, 2. Thank you so much for the slippers. 3. 4. Binding Your Own Paperback Books.
How to find happiness. In order for soul to lift us into awareness and inspiration, it's got to have fuel. Happiness is the fuel. Happiness is like gasoline in an airplane. Take it away and nothing gets off the ground. Happiness has two frames, the present moment and the future. Some of the spiritual gurus advise people to live only in the present. If we would just live in the "now" and not think about the future, they say, life would be bliss. On the other hand, if you only think about the future, you're never going to enjoy what's right under your nose.
I once had a friend who took a vacation with his family to Hawaii. "Lousy," he said. "How could a trip to Hawaii be lousy? " "All I ever did was take photographs," he said. " That's what you call living in the future. So we're going to focus on how to achieve both present-moment happiness and joy about the future. Let's start out with how to be happy in the present moment.
Make a list of 25 things you think you need in order to be totally happy. "Terrific," she said. How to addict your audience to powerpoint. Perception of Fonts: Perceived Personality Traits and Uses. Read Go It Alone! for free. The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 1 » Entrepreneur’s J. I joined Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Club to get my copy of the Definitive Guide To Google AdWords at the discounted rate, however I’ve started to realize there is a lot more value in it than just the AdWords eBook, which I guess makes sense since Perry wants people to stay subscribed to his club, so he must keep dishing out good stuff. Just this morning I had a listen to one of the CDs you receive when you first join the club.
This one was with Brad Fallon, the search engine optimization (SEO) expert. It formed the third part of the Jay Abraham’s Power To Profits seminar series that was completed earlier this year with Perry, Brad and Ken McCarthy. You get this CD, titled “The 8 Essential Things You REALLY Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization“, when you first join Perry’s club, along with the two other CDs that make up the seminar. Who Is Brad Fallon? The 80/20 Rule For Search Engine Marketing The Top 8 Search Engine Optimization Techniques On-Page SEO 1. 2. 3. 4. Color Psychology. By David Johnson Like death and taxes, there is no escaping color. It is ubiquitous. Yet what does it all mean? Why are people more relaxed in green rooms? Why do weightlifters do their best in blue gyms? Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. Black Black is the color of authority and power. White Brides wear white to symbolize innocence and purity.
Red The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing. Blue The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. Green Currently the most popular decorating color, green symbolizes nature. Yellow Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter.
Purple The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. Brown Solid, reliable brown is the color of earth and is abundant in nature. Colors of the Flag In the U.S. flag, white stands for purity and innocence. Food for Thought. Top Five Dell Shopping Tips. Dell is a company that built its reputation in part by driving prices down, so it would be easy to assume that when you buy a Dell you are automatically getting the best deal. However, there is a fair amount of variability built into their merchandising model. Nevertheless, by applying a few basic strategies, you can ensure you are buying the best computer for the lowest price. 1. Buy one step below top-of-the-line. You always pay an extra premium for the top specs. Therefore, buy near, but a solid step below the top of the line.
This is true both when selecting a model and when configuring any particular computer. For example, we recently priced out options on the Dell Vostro 1320 , a small lightweight business laptop. 2. It is very tempting to upgrade each choice to the highest available option but in doing so, you might well spend a lot of money on features you won't necessarily use.
Instead, before you sit down to configure your computer, spend some time thinking about your needs. 3. Have a say in what Google says about you - Lifehacker. I Stopped Working for a Minute and Started Thinking. Forgot your username or password? Create account x Close I am A… New here? Feed your creative appetite with interviews, essays, profiles and personal stories of designers near and far, past and present. Get inspired! Collections Top Ten Tags Showing 1 - 6 of 200 Read more at designobserver.com Designed By: Lella Vignelli March 26, 2014 Photo of Lella Vignelli from the new book via vignelli.com To celebrate their partnership of more than 50 years, Massimo Vignelli has created a freely accessible book dedicated to the work of his wife Lella. Section: Inspiration - Tags: book design, environmental design, exhibition design, graphic design, identity design, product design, corporate design, Celebration Read more at fastcodesign.com How Do You Know When A Design Is Really Done?
March 25, 2014 Photo of fiber optics testing from Wikipedia via Fast Company Section: Inspiration - Tags: design research, experience design, interaction design, user experience, user research, advice, technology March 21, 2014. C.K. Prahalad Business Prophet. Take a cab ride through Bombay, and these are the scenes that will likely strike you first: raggedly dressed homeless families sprawled on blankets amid shacks. Traffic hopelessly clogged with every manner of soot-belching vehicle and wooden cart. Gaunt hawkers and beggars tapping on your window at red lights. For foreign visitors, such jarring images of poverty and desperation are hard to shake. View those same streets through the eyes of C.K. On every block he points out the intriguing enterprises tucked into the nooks and crannies. By the end of an hour it's hard to look at Bombay and its impoverished citizens in the same way.
Street-smart innovation In the world according to C.K. -- short for Coimbatore Krishnarao -- poor nations are incubating new business models and innovative uses of technology that in the coming decade will begin to transform the competitive landscape of entire global industries, from financial and telecom services to health care and carmaking. Evolving insights. Link to mousetrap with image at recruitment com. 8 mistakes when creating PowerPoint presentations - SympleByte. I've just come back from a gruelling week of corporate meetings, a 5 day marathon of seemingly never ending PowerPoint presentations. As the person in charge of marketing and IT, part of my job is to be the contact point for all of the attendees, folks ranging from 1st year sales reps to divisional presidents, COO's and CEO's. Everyone is required to send me their presentations in advance, so that they can all be put on a single computer. If I get them in time, I usually go through them quickly and fix any of the obvious problems.
Human nature being what it is though, most people actually gave me their presentation the morning they were presenting, usually on a memory stick with the words 'I made some last-minute changes, just put this one in instead...'. Sometimes this doesn't work quite as well as they would like: Using Fonts in PowerPoint - Microsoft PowerPoint doesn't embed fonts by default, which means that you may have a font on your computer that someone else does not. Creativity techniques and creative tools for problem solving.
This A to Z of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, provides an introduction to a range of tools and techniques for both idea generation (Creativity) and converting those ideas into reality (Innovation). Like most tools these techniques all have their good and bad points. I like to think of these creativity and innovation techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the same way as my toolbox at home for DIY. It has a saw, spanner, hammer, knife and all sorts of other things in it, they are all very useful, but you have to pick the right tool (creativity / Innovation technique) for each job.
This site will try and provide a little guidance along with each tool to let you know whether it's best used for cutting paper or putting in nails. For the future, the aim is to also have sub-categories which will identify Techniques for; Problem Definition - including problem analysis, redifinition, and all aspects associated with defining the problem clearly. Subcategories. Learning Resources: Graphic Organizers. What are Kidspiration and Inspiration? What are some different graphical organizers I could try? How can graphical organizers be used in learning?
Graphic Organizers in the Classroom Visual thinking can be expressed in many ways. Graphic organizers are one way for visual thinkers to arrange their ideas. Read Inspired Investigations by Jamie McKenzie in (From Now On, 12(5), January 2003). Read Methods for Measuring the Influence of Concept Mapping on Student Information Literacy by Carol A. Advantages of Graphic Organizers Why use graphic organizers in student projects?
Exploring the Possibilities Examine the following ways to organize your ideas about your topic or problem using graphic organizers. Creating Graphic Organizers with Technology There are many technology tools that can be used for creating graphical organizers. Online Collaborative Tools. Teaching about Graphic Organizers Using Graphic Organizers for Sensemaking (Grades 2-12) from 21st Century Literacies. Smart business cards. BY CHUCK GREEN A smart business card is a “tool“—a device that aids in accomplishing a task. It gives your contact a reason to keep your card within reach—it adds function to form. Yet, in an effort to save a few pennies in printing, millions of business cards are printed with a blank back—surrendering half the real estate on what is often our most widely circulated print piece.
What should you include? Simple: create a card with information worth keeping--a list, conversion chart, table of measurements, glossary of industry terminology, and so on--something that encourages your prospect to keep your card within reach. Some examples: A bike shop proprietor incorporates a metric conversion table: A copywriting teacher provides a list of proofreader's marks: A guitar teacher includes basic chord diagrams: A cafe shares a recipe that has brought it acclaim: A pastor provides a list of local help line phone numbers: Other prime elements to consider including on your business card: The EQ slider method How to come up with Breakthrough Ideas. « Thank you, and I'm back : ) | Main | Never Underestimate the Power of Fun » How to come up with Breakthrough Ideas Brilliant, wildly creative people can pull breakaway ideas from thin air.
The rest of us need tools. EQing is the tool we used to design the Head First series, and we've been using it ever since. Bert, Eric, and I are all audio freaks -- we lust after the giant mixing boards at live shows, confident (and delusional) that we could do it so much better, if only we could get our hands on those sliders. So, an audio equalizer was a natural metaphor for us, and this is my first attempt to explain how we use the concept of EQing to brainstorm new designs. (If you aren't familiar with how audio equalizers work, click here for a nano review.) In our EQ model, when all the sliders are in the zero/middle position, this represents "the norm" for whatever that product, service, industry typically does.
Example One: Typical, non-breakthrough EQing How do they compete with one another? Where can you find good images? Catching The Surfer in a Blink. How managers get the monkeys off their back. 10 Secret Ways Of Getting Your Website Listed on Google. Personalized and Mass customized products, Mass Customization an. How to Make Your Speaking Easier and More Effective.
HOWTO: Be more productive (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) Passion Turn Me Round and Round. Income, Tenure, Age Spurs Online Banking. E-Gov't Growing, Phone Still Preferred.