Tips and suggestions on how to prime the mental pump and keep your creativity fountain flowing by tapping into the unconscious

Alicia Buelow is one of those Photoshop artists whose unique style helps her produce memorable images. Once you’ve seen her work, it can be difficult to get the images out of your head. In a tutorial written by Buelow and in a follow-up interview with her, you’ll learn how this illustrator and designer uses Photoshop […]

In early summer 2005, the United Kingdom book publisher Friends of ED asked multimedia designer Corné van Dooren to create a new range of designs for its Foundation book series. Van Dooren explains that after five years of using images of movie theaters as the source for artwork on the covers, the publisher decided it […]

London-based Steve Caplin creates 12 editorial photomontages during an average week. He also reviews software for MacUser magazine, and he’s written or co-written five books (some with multiple editions). Throw in the odd lecture and you have one busy man. Lucky for us, he recently took the time to explain step by step how he […]

Creation isn’t always the tidiest process in the world. Sometimes it gets caught in the snarls of daily life or grinds to a halt completely while you earn a living. For years, that was the case with my Web site, which was supposed to be a key piece in the promotional plan for my writing […]

A while back, I wrote a column that mentioned the scarcity of postage-stamp designs suitable for Valentine’s Day cards. So I was delighted to hear that the postal service is making it possible for people to create stamps using their own designs and images. Of course, I had to dive in and make a few. […]

It’s nice to have friends with hard-to-find talents. I have such a friend — a skilled carpenter and furniture maker who actually returns telephone calls and shows up when he says he will (well, most of the time). My friend has done a lot of work on my house through the years, including building the […]

I’d seen this particular book in the new books display at the library for a couple of weeks. Even though I found the title intriguing, the cover image discomforted me. Finally, I got up the nerve to pick up the book and flip through the pages. After glancing at a couple of the images, I […]

Jef Raskin, a gifted technology designer, artist, educator, musician, and pioneer of the original Macintosh, died on February 26, 2005, at the age of 61. Raskin was responsible for some of the things creative professionals like best about computers today, and he never stopped trying to improve on some of the things we hate the […]

The other day, I was talking to a friend who wants to expand his fledgling freelance writing career. He has a small business creating oral history tapes for families, and he wants to write about the process for a woman’s magazine. He’d asked me to critique his article query; that is, the letter he’ll send […]