Three Easy Steps To Start Your Creative Process - Pick the Brain The creative process is in our genes – handed down to us by our ancestors who created out of necessity. With their bare hands and rudimentary tools structures were formed, food was grown, garments were made and entertainment was discovered. We reached a point where we no longer have the need to create. Our homes are filled with gadgets that do our work for us. Every day new items are on the store shelf and we snatch up the latest and greatest.
Catalyzing Creativity: 7 Playful Activity Books for Grown-Ups by Maria Popova Greenlighting mess-making, 101 ways to astonish yourself, and how to flowchart your way to happiness. The intersection of childhood and adulthood is a frequent area of curiosity around here, from beloved children’s books with timeless philosophy for adults to quirky coloring books for the eternal kid. Today, we turn to seven wonderful activity books for grown-ups that inject a little more whimsy and playfulness into your daily grind. about Hey there. My name is Maria Popova and I’m a reader, writer, interestingness hunter-gatherer, and curious mind at large. I’ve previously written for Wired UK, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, among others, and am an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.
35 Creative Portrait Effects Photoshop Tutorials Portrait effects are no longer constrained to vignettes or simple stencil effects. This area has vertiginously evolved to an unbelievable level of creativity and complexity. So, don’t expect to find your average two step special effect. Many of these require a lot of work, which in the end will result in a lot of Photoshop techniques learned. As usual, don’t try this with your average bad quality family photos.
How to get started as an online teacher of English Have you thought about teaching English online? Emma Segev Opens in a new tab or window., second-time winner of the British Council's Teaching English blog award, gives some practical tips and useful websites for getting started. When I first started teaching ten years ago, I was extremely sceptical about the effectiveness of online teaching, but since then I have accumulated a lot of experience. I'd like to share with you a few things I've learned along the way. Getting started
20+ Surprisingly Useful Inventions The World Didn’t Know It Needed You may never eat Pringles in the same way again. Advertisement 1. The chair that has a notch cut into it for your bag. 2. Nabokov on Inspiration and the Six Short Stories Everyone Should Read by Maria Popova “A prefatory glow, not unlike some benign variety of the aura before an epileptic attack, is something the artist learns to perceive very early in life.” “Show up, show up, show up,” Isabel Allende advised, “and after a while the muse shows up, too.” “Inspiration is for amateurs,” Chuck Close famously proclaimed, “the rest of us just show up and get to work.” “When you work regularly,” Gretchen Rubin asserted, “inspiration strikes regularly.”
You Are A Mashup Of What You Let Into Your Life Aaron DeOliveira alerts us to a wonderful presentation by writer/artist/poet Austin Kleon called Steal Like an Artist. It's a little less than 8 minutes, but worth watching: There's a lot in there that will sound familiar if you're a regular reader, but it goes over the simple fact that content creators always build on the works of those they come across, whether on purpose or not. There were two lines that really caught my attention. 25 Useful Free World Map Vector Designs Due to the increasing use of API’s for vector based maps and application programming interfaces, vector maps have proven to be particularly useful in all kinds of projects. Regardless if, you are a graphic designer, a web designer, or a software developer you might need a high quality vector map. However, free vector maps can be quite hard to find.
Content is no longer king. Here are five things that are. Who said content was king? Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.— Bill Gates, Content is King, 1996 1996 was a long time ago. In 1996, the first iPhone was still almost a decade away. In 1996, Mark Zuckerberg was 12. Intelligent YouTube Channels Below, we have gathered together some of the most intelligent video collections on YouTube. A great place to find culturally enriching video... General Universities Spotlighted Collections
Why I Let My Students Cheat On Their Exam by Peter Nonacs| On test day for my Behavioral Ecology class at UCLA, I walked into the classroom bearing an impossibly difficult exam. Rather than being neatly arranged in alternate rows with pen or pencil in hand, my students sat in one tight group, with notes and books and laptops open and available. They were poised to share each other’s thoughts and to copy the best answers.
Austin Kleon on Cultivating Creativity in the Digital Age by Maria Popova The genealogy of ideas, why everything is a remix, or what T.S. Eliot can teach us about creativity.