This is so cool! It’s called “tilt-shift photography” and basically its the opposite of what you are used to seeing in the movies. Instead of using miniature sets and filming them so that they look life-sized and real (remember that old HBO intro that pans over the city?) this technique takes real life-size photographs…

Check out all 40.

Tilt-shift Photography

The 400 for 400 promise:

If 400 people download a free chapter today (October 6), we will donate $400 to the Scholarship Fund at the Advertising Club of Cincinnati. So ask your friends and colleagues to download a chapter here too.

Join the Revolution:

It’s time for marketing that people choose to engage with.

It’s time for marketing that itself improves people’s lives.

Read how marketing with meaning is working today and how to use it for your business. And join the movement at the Marketing With Meaning site.

Download the FREE Chapter at www.readmarketingwithmeaning.com and spread the word!

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Origami. The Chinese art of paper folding.

It would figure some creative went and designed a downloadable template for a do-it-yourself dock. I’ve often wondered how much benefit you get shelling out the cash for basically another USB cable. Just to sit it upright next to your machine? Maybe its because I use AirTunes anyways that I don’t see the need. But this is just fun to do!

Thanks to Nicole at Cult of Mac for the post.

Download the template here.

Origami iPhone Dock

Good design is relative. Think about fashion. Or interior design. Or automotive design. Rarely does anyone have the same taste in design as their neighbor. You might have the capacity to appreciate it, but you just KNOW when you try on a sweater and it was meant to be yours. Well at least I do. As a designer, I work with all types of tastes, and the biggest part of my work is to listen to each client and merge what they inherently “like” with what delivers, and let me tell you, sometimes that isn’t very easy!

So.. here I am. I’ve made the decision to market myself. Write an ad. Get the word out a little bit in the neighborhood where I live. Reach out to a new audience. Now, I get it, I’m really really difficult to please. I could design a new business card for myself every week because I see something inspiring and mentally apply the thought process to my own work. Bingo! New plan. My favorites always change, and I think it helps me grow and offer more inspiration to my clients, but sometimes it just makes things difficult for myself.

Now the million dollar (actually in my case, about $300.) question – Which way do I go? All of my clients have different core markets. I have to gear this ad to each one, at the same time. If I go one direction, will I turn off another? Lots to think about. But, that’s me I guess, overthinking everything. Not unlike my website makeover. I loved the flash site and how slick it was, but it was also limiting. My SEO was crap. I’ve already exploded up the Google rankings since I changed to a blog, and that’s great news. It’s such an intricate balance between art and work. This teetering right on that edge. I’ll keep you posted with what I do.

I came across Eleanor’s site while looking for some inspiration for a project that needs an illustration of an egret. Here vector work is so simple and so cool! What got me was that her work is more than just “Hey, if I put these geometric shapes together it looks kinda like a fish” but you can feel a personality in the illustrations. I personally love this one of a golden retriever, but she has so many more, and some interesting photos from her many travels around the world too. Nice work Eleanor!

Golden Retriever

You gotta love TheDieline.com, whether you are familiar with package design or not. Just a quick click-through makes you realize how good graphic design can affect how we feel every day. With so many packages that flood our stores, the beauty of work artists produce is completely overlooked sometimes.

As I was thumbing through today, I found the work of Hampus Jageland, a Swedish designer, who designed packaging with the intent of bringing the excitement of packaging design to the visually impaired. As some of you that know me well may know, the challenges of blindness is something that is close to my heart. The smallest efforts made to help the visually impaired can make such a huge difference in their lives, and Jageland is really pushing those limits further back with his design for Alton Brown spices. Kudos to him on a project well done. Even the logo is the initials “AB” in braille! Awesome.

Alton Brown Spice Packaging

DuPont Cellophane Babies

Here’s a fun little step back in time from consumerist.com showing some of the worst “oopsies” in American advertising history. Happy 4th!

David Lanham has some new work that he did for Mozilla promoting Firefox. I dig it. So now I have a new desktop image. “Blob Attack” is now gracing my iMac, but I grabbed a couple of others too.

"Blob Attack" by David Lanham