Seeing as How Magazine was nice enough to bring their annual design conference to Denver, I thought it made sense to go down for the day and take in a few sessions. I’ve always been a fan of How Magazine. They tend to have business focus in a lot of their articles and are less about just showing lot’s of nice design work. I have also been to a How Conference before and felt that I got a great deal of inspiration out of the experience. I still remember David Carson’s talk and his great sense of humor.

For this year’s conference I chose to attend sessions by Tony Mikes, Sam Harrison, and John January & Tug McTighe. Tony Mike’s session was titled, “Is Your Agency Interesting.” As an agency owner I was drawn to this session as we are always trying to better differentiate ourselves. I came to the conclusion that I think Imulus is interesting, but that we could probably communicate that more effectively than we are currently and we could also be doing a lot more interesting things. Tony was a very compelling speaker and I will definitely be checking out his Second Wind company.

Next came Sam Harrison’s session on “How to Sell Your Ideas to Bosses, Clients and Other Decision Makers.” An author of several books, I found Sam to be a very polished and interesting speaker. His ideas were well organized and I learned a lot that I can apply to how we present ideas at Imulus. The idea that he left us with, that it was “All About Energy,” really summed it up for me. If you put all your energy into preparing and presenting your idea your chances of success are much higher. If you aren’t excited about your own idea, how can you expect the person on the other side of the table to be excited.

By far the most unusual session was “Everything I Needed to Know About Advertising I Learned from Star Wars.” John and Tug were very entertaining in their cleverly constructed presentation. Utilizing lessons drawn from all the Star Wars films, they were able to show parallels where those lessons apply to the life of a creative. And while the lessons were good, the heart of the presentation was the humor and clever concept. I will always remember that there is a Death Star out there ready to kill my next great idea.

The resource center had some interesting booths and lots of quality shwag. Adobe was showing off CS5 and bunches of paper companies were hoping that designers will continue to design printed pieces for a bit longer. Threadless was nice enough to give out free drinks at the happy hour at the end of the day. Thanks for the beer!

Before I dive into this review, you should probably have some background information. First of all, as the title suggests, I am a graphic designer for a web design company. I spend 90% of my time on Adobe Creative Suite programs (most of that time is dedicated to Photoshop). Second of all, I am a female. This piece of information applies to this review because as a woman, I am genetically predisposed to have smaller hands than (most) men. Lastly, I have run through the gambit of Apple mouses since 2004. That being said, lets get started, shall we?

The good:

1. The size. I love the way this thing conforms to my hand. So much so, I feel like all other mouses feel too large and clumsy. I have read reviews where people have claimed this mouse is too small and light. I have not had this problem – however as stated previously, I have normal sized hands for a 5′8″ female which means they’re relatively small.

2. The scrolling. The predecessor to my Magic Mouse was of course the Mighty Mouse. One of the main problems I would have with the 360 scroll ball on the Mighty Mouse was it would become gritty and would stop being functional. This could always be cured by holding it upside-down and puffing can o’ air into the recesses of the 360 ball. Obviously this problem is cured by Magic Mouse. Please note – being a control freak while using Photoshop, I turned off the momentum scroll. I have been told this is a nice feature, but I can’t say that from personal experience.

3. The right-click. Although the right click is functional with the Mighty Mouse (as long as that is specified in the system preferences), I feel like the Magic Mouse’s right-click is more responsive and intuitive.

The bad:

1. The sensitivity. This is a double-edged sword. Sure, it’s nice when you WANT to scroll, but when you don’t it’s a pain. This rears it’s ugly head often when I am using Photoshop. An example of this is when I have the color picker window open. Notice on the screen shot the field next to the “R” (meaning red) is highlighted; this happens by default when one opens this color picker window. What happens when this field is highlighted is the scroll functionality on your mouse can easily add and subtract the color red. Many times I have barely brushed the top of the mouse and it will change my selected color without my consent. There is no clear area on your mouse where the scroll sensitivity begins, so just laying your hand on the top of the mouse can create a scroll with any slight movement.

2. The two finger swipe. This also goes back to the sensitivity problem. I had to turn this option off after I was working on code in our CMS and my fingers brushed the top of the mouse. The mouse somehow gleaned from this that I wanted to go back to the previous page in my browser, and thus losing all of the work I had just completed.

The conclusion:

After turning off the two finger swipe functionality, life has been easier along with learning how to deal with the problems in Photoshop. I haven’t yet ditched this mouse for the older Mighty Mouse (which is still in my possession), but that’s only after adapting to its downfalls. Basically my conclusion to this review is I would NOT recommend this product to a Graphic Designer, but I would recommend it to people who don’t use Adobe Creative Suite.

Work on Spec has long been a very dirty word in the design industry. The AIGA’s stance on this issue is very established. But recently a number of big agencies such as Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and a new agency created by two former CP+B executives, Victors & Spoils, have embraced the concept under it’s new politically correct name of crowdsourcing.

Under this new model the company works with the client to define the project and then posts the project on sites such as crowdSPRING. Designers, or anyone for that matter, can then read the project requirements and submit a design. The agency and the client then choose the design they like best and pay that person the specified fee. So potentially thousands of designers spend their time on the project and one gets paid for their work. In the case of a CP+B project that was $1000.

Sounds like a great model for the agency and the client. Get thousands of hours of work for $1000. In the case of Victors & Spoils they come right out and say that the new model will lower their overhead and lower costs for clients. Heck it’s a win for everyone right? The clients pay a lot less for creative, the agency lowers it’s costs by hiring less full-time employees and not having to pay benefits, and creatives all over the world get a shot at doing work for big name clients.

A perfect model for the death of an industry. For the industry to survive it requires a continual infusion of new talent from a strong system of schools that educate the next generation. If the future career path for a design school graduate involves spending hour upon hour working away on projects that I have little to no chance of getting paid for, how long can a designer sustain this? If I am choosing a major and a career path I would find this a very scary choice. What career counselor would advise anyone to pursue this career?

Let’s do the math. Say I’m a hotshot designer and I can knock out a great logo or homepage design in 20 hours. I can work on two of these spec projects a week, 8 in a month. Say the prize is $1000 and I manage to actually win 25% of the projects I do. I just cleared a cool $2000 for the month. I’m guessing most people could probably work less hours and make more money waiting tables. And this assumes I get paid for 25% of the projects I do. WIth thousands of people competing for these projects the reality for even the best designers is probably much worse. And does this really even reward the best solutions? Every designer knows that the client doesn’t always pick the most innovative design you show them, so even being the best designer competing for a fee doesn’t guarantee you will get paid.

There will always be those who think only of themselves and how they can make the most money with little regard for the future. What legacy will they leave? Will there be any creatives left to care? Maybe they should go read the Lorax.

We spent much of Friday down at MATTER Studio collaborating on a t-shirt design, experimenting with the presses and exchanging ideas. Here are a few photos of our outing.

To start, paste your image into a new Photoshop file. Be sure to leave some room at the bottom for your reflection.

Next, duplicate the layer your image is on by right clicking the layer and select: Duplicate Layer.

Now select the bottom layer, and under edit > transform> Flip Vertical

Use the selection tool and move the image down so that the top edge is touching the bottom edge of the top layer.

Still using that same bottom layer, create a new layer mask.

Select the gradient tool, and make sure that your foreground color is black and your background color is white. In the gradient options, select linear foreground to background.

Make sure you still have the mask layer selected (you will see lines bordering the corners). Hold down shift and apply a gradient from the bottom of the canvas to the top of the bottom image.

Apply an opacity to your bottom layer, and you’re done!

NOTE: When working with reflections, it is important to note that reflections SHOULD NOT overlap. This is an example of what NOT to do:

This is correct:

More reflection tutorials to come. Stay tuned.