Christmas free-style, Caga Tió

There are as many Christmas traditions as cultures in the world. But sorry, I can’t help myself, as I read in the NY Times once “like so many things in life — soccer, sex, pigs’ feet with snails — Christmas is better in Barcelona”.  So today I want to present you the closest christmas tradition to me: the Caga Tió. It’s a funny way to give presents to children in Catalonia, where I come from.
It consists in a customized trunk that “shits” presents for children after they beat it with a stick while singing a song. Ok, like that it sounds kind of stupid, but not more than an old fat dude dressed in red who come through the chimney to deliver presents… it’s a question of culture… If you are interested, read something else about the Caga Tió or the Catalan Christmas, then I’m sure you wish you were there…

Here you have a beautiful video showing really cool Caga Tió. Once again, design is everywhere!
Have a happy december!

Month of Design in Ljubljana

Here in Ljubljana (Slovenia) autumn means cold, rain (and sometimes snow), beautiful colors and inspiration. A lot of events about design, theater, cinema are happening and the new light invites to see things as if it were the first time. Perhaps one of the most popular events is the Month of Design, the capital becomes a traveling museum, with exhibitions, pop-up stores, conferences, performances, parties…

Darma visited the core of the celebration just the day it opened and we were fortunate to attend the conference about Helsinki World Design Capital 2012.

Here more information about the event in the words of the organizers:

Month of Design is an annual festival of know-how and creativity in design. It offers platform for a discourse focused on exploring the role of design in creative industries, business, culture and social practices. The main aim of Month of Design is to increase the competitiveness of businesses and society, establish knowledge transfers between developed and less developed economies, and emphasise the strategic, economic and cultural advantages of design.

This unique month-long design event is held in and around the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana. This year it is dedicated to a specific topic of global relevance – Thinking the Future.

Inspiring workspaces

That obsessive pleasure

The London born artist based in Brooklyn, New York Shantell Martin has definitely written her name all over it.   When Ms. Strauss and her partner, Holly Hobart invited Shantell to move into the top floor of the 1890s brownstone they own in Bedford-Stuyvesant, it was understood that she would draw on the walls. “It seemed natural we’d let her have this large canvas on the top floor to do her thing,” Ms. Strauss said.The plan was to only decorate a smaller section in her bedroom, but she couldn’t put the pen down.The result makes it clear and obvious.

Via NYtimes, photos by Trevor Tondro

Related articles:

Related articles:

• Eyeo Festival, Shantell Martin.
• Digital artist Shantell Martin: Rethinking the box
• Shantell Martin: be more, do less
• From London to Bed-Stuy, These Doodles Don’t Stop
• Springsessions 2012 conference for electronic art, technology and design

The art of logo design, tips and tricks

We are back from our short vacation in Vienna with a very interesting video about how to design successful logos. Enjoy it!

Great idea: Creative Suite Toolbar Shortcuts Wallpapers!

Are you a designer? Unless you know all the Creative Suite shortcuts by heart, you are not a “real” designer. If you are not sure of your level, take a look at the pictures below and check how many shortcuts can you recognize (and how many are you using).

Well, if the result was not as good as you thought, you can always start using them now. People from Hongkiat make this process easier, they have created these great wallpapers for Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash, so you can learn the shortcuts and get rid of the click-and-search method.

Download them here.

Don’t give up, beginner! Inspiring visual advices for new creative professionals

More than once I cursed myself for not having another profession, “I should have been an accountant”, “Had to studied philosophy” “Must become a plumber” (and make a lot of money).  What? Impossible! I had to dedicate my youth to a profession in which a simple comment can strike down your motivation and mark you for life. All creative professionals remember a heartless teacher or a senseless criticism and  despite all, here we are! We can’t imagine ourselves in the shoes of any other professional, we love what we do and we don’t give up!

This is a message to all students and trainees: you are not as bad as they say, and not as good as you think. You can survive and, sometimes, even have fun! The secret? work, work work and work, and, after that, keep on working! And if even then you have “one of those days”, take a break, refresh your ideas and reinforce your motivation with these inspiring and beautiful posters.

NOTE: If you are not a beginner, you will surely encourage yourself too, life’s also hard out there…

The ten commandments of creativity

Even if you are an experienced creative, sometimes it’s good to look back and remember these sacred rules that all  trainees know by heart. Recall will give a bit of fresh air to your ideas and get you out of a mechanical method of work. I love going over and over again my books from college and challenge myself, looking for different creative techniques. I would say that, almost always, this helps me when I’m blank.

1. Stay engaged with the objectives

2. Open your mind, use the five senses

3. Separate the creation phase of the evaluation

4. Avoid the spoilers of ideas, surround yourself with a proactive team

5. Use sketches

6. Bring the product to the limit: do not stop picking up new ideas even if you have found a good one

7. Mistakes are good, can lead you to better ideas

8. The quantity (of ideas) leads to quality

9. Develop your sense of humor

10. When the brainstorming is finished do not test the ideas immediately, keep a safe distance, more objective.

13 websites that will make your virtual life easier

Really useful websites that will help you to save time and keep your inner peace in critical or stressful moments in front the computer. The sites solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web addresses that you can easily learn by heart thus saving you a trip to Google.

If you know other good websites, leave us a comment and contribute to the virtual good karma. =)

1. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.

2. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.

3. printwhatyoulike.com – print web pages without the clutter.

4. myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – quickly determine the font name from an image.

5. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.

6.  polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.

7.  marker.to – easily highlight the important parts of a web page for sharing.

8. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.

9. google.com/history – found something on Google but can’t remember it now?

10. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.

11. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.

12. talltweets.com – Send tweets longer than 140 characters.

13. fiverr.com – hire people to do little things for $5.

The personality of the typography

Found that beautiful typefaces at Nicole’s classes. Enjoy them!

By the way, all of them are free, so you can download them fearless.