May, 2013 | CreativePro Network

50 Designers’ Desks: Part 1

Where and how we work directly influences our creativity. What does your workspace look like? Is it neat or messy? Is your desk adorned with toys and gadgets to inspire the imagination of your inner child or is it a picture of minimalism, providing as blank a canvas as possible for your uncluttered creative inspiration? […]

Painting with…Excel?

Probably not too many folks are familiar with the term “golden hammer,” which refers to the habit of obsessively using a familiar tool for every job, no matter how ridiculous. But you may have heard the related phrase, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Since 2000, Japanese artist Tatsuo […]

Bob Dylan’s Hand Lettering Experience

We all spend many hours in front of our various screens, wrestling inspiration from the pixels in front of us. But sometimes you just have to unplug and step away from the digital realm to create something truly fresh. That’s what designer Leandro Senna did when he set out to create a hand lettering project […]

Macworld Follow-up: Simple Slimline Protective Cases for iPhones

Probably the most frequently hawked products at Macworld/iWorld this year were cases. Shiny cases, cases with famous characters, happy flowers, customized photo cases, changeable cases—really almost anything you can imagine. I briefly considered getting some of my art files printed on a set of cases for a distinctive look, and then realized that there are […]

MAX Sessions on Adobe TV

OK, so maybe you didn’t get to make the trip to LA this week for Adobe’s mega creativity conference, aka MAX. You missed out on seeing the big screen with eleventy-nine billion pixels, and the Black Keys. But all is not lost. You can still check out of literally dozens of the sessions via the […]

Adobe Enters the Hardware Market with a Smart Stylus and Digital Ruler

As if Adobe didn’t make a big enough splash with their Creative Cloud bombshell this week at MAX, they also revealed that they’ve been hard at work in the hardware realm as well. Two new devices were unveiled that will offer users the ability to draw, save, and sync assets between devices. The first device […]

Fine-Tuning Your Type: Setting Fractions

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Q. How can I typeset diagonal fractions? A. Fractions are a fairly common element in typeset copy. Whether used in recipes, manuals, or body text to indicate size, dimension, and quantity, good typography calls for professional-looking fractions, which in most cases are diagonal (or slashed) fractions. Prior to OpenType, setting diagonal fractions was a challenge, […]

Adobe Illustrator CC: First Look

The Creative Suite applications are now Creative Cloud applications, and will no longer be available (beyond CS6) except as part of a Creative Cloud subscription. Illustrator has provided us with a full set of new features and productivity enhancements that include major changes to how you will work with type, create brushes, and prepare your […]