And through the friscalating dusk light comes Cameron McEfee. Cameron was also annoyed with the guide system in Photoshop, but he decided to do something about it and built GuideGuide. GuideGuide is a Photoshop extension that makes it easy to add “pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines” with just a few clicks of the mouse. I’m been using GuideGuide to design all morning and it’s placed guides right on the money. It’s so nice to not have to guess anymore!

Here’s the Smashing Magazine article that pointed me to it.

Thanks, Cameron and Smashing Magazine!

Graphic designer, Julien Mercier, created a typeface that combines both serif and san serif font details to create a really interesting and elegant approach to typography. It’s called Otsuki-Sama and you can check it out here.

Well, now you don’t need to worry about designing your next holiday card! Cartolina Post is an iPhone app that allows you to take a photo, insert it into one of several postcard templates and mail it out…all from your phone. See what I mean??

Check out his post here: Choose your web fonts wisely

Comic Sans Pro Typeface Family Makes its Debut

We all know that Comic Sans has gotten a lot of flack for being one of the worst, most overused typefaces in computer based graphic design history. I wonder why the blog post doesn’t touch on how bad of a name Comic Sans has gotten over the years?

This was my favorite part: “Hats off to Monotype Imaging for enlivening Comic Sans and getting it back to its roots as a comic book lettering face. Now everyone can write with more panache – and look even more like a pro using swashes, small caps and other typographic embellishments,” said Connare.

I love that Twitter takes me places I would never go on my own, but sometimes I need to get creative when looking for inspiration (and motivation). I sit down and color with the kids or go for a walk around the park. I open a magazine I’ve never checked out before or even read the inside of a book jacket. I’ll pick out a few random words in a book and try to create a visual for the combined words.

Turn things upside down and see what happens. Get creative when you’re creating.

It’s when I step out of my comfort zone and ‘every day’ that I get inspired. That’s why travel is so good. New sights, smells and experiences are so motivational and exciting.

You can’t help but change and grow with each new experience.

Their recent poll of the creative community came up with some interesting numbers. Apparently the Home Office is catching on because 38% of people polled are doing most of their work there. This number is increasingly encroaching on the 49% that work at the company office. Also, 39% of people work alone while 32% work in a small office environment.

Some of the most interesting numbers dealt with e-mail. E-mail takes the number one spot (beating out Facebook) for biggest distraction AND most popular method of communication at 59%. Face-to-face communication came in low at only 22%.

What about the actual “creative” part of the industry? 63% of creatives polled have their best ideas when theyʼre taking a break while only 25% have their best ideas when theyʼre focused on work.

I have to say that as a part-time employee, I concur with the last statistic. I feel like Life is my brainstorm session, and my 20 hours a week are my production time from that brainstorm session.

Read the rest of the poll here and see if any of the numbers apply to you. And better yet, how you can use
them to work for you.

Anyway, you can find the full article here at PCMag.com. You can also read this article that was posted yesterday about Google’s latest doodle (also found on PC Mag).

Click here to have a look. These autobiographies have new life and have taken a normal book and made it into a sculpture.

I love that the envelope is still being pushed in print as well as web. Since books have so much competition these days (Web, Kindle, audiobooks, etc.), it might just take some creativity to turn heads (ha!) and turn the attention back to printed matter.

Remember this? That’s right, it’s the 2012 London Olympics logo. The logo was designed by Wolff Olins to the tune of £400,000. Wolff Olins is a world wide leader in brand development and management. They’ve been a large part of the reason brands like (RED), Target and General Motors (to name a few) are so successful.

Yet, with all of their successes and incredible talent, they still created a logo that was received quite negatively by the general public when it was introduced in 2007.

Well, now the Iranians are angry about it too. Ali Akbar Dareini of the Associated Press reports, “Iran objects to the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, contending it is racist because it resembles the word ‘Zion’ and warning of a possible boycott of the games. The secretary general of Iran’s National Olympic Committee said Iran sent a letter to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. The letter claims the 2012 logo spells out ‘Zion,’ a biblical term widely recognized to refer to the city of Jerusalem.” You can find the rest of the article here.

This just goes to show that graphic designers carry a lot of responsibility in their work. And just for funsies, here are the new mascots.