Link Wrangling, part deux

Things have been pretty hectic over here, and I couldn’t begin to tell you everything that have been flying around since early July. But a few recent things of note are preparing a presentation for the World Usability Day event here in Austin, writing a proposal for a site realignment (using this article as an excellent guide), and switching this site over to new hosting. I was worried about switching due to having to backup and restore my blog, which is powered by Wordpress, but in the end I was shocked at how easy it was. I can’t recommend Wordpress enough.

These days I’m working closer to home, which leaves more time for my latest endeavor- honing my graphic design skills. I’ve found some amazing Illustrator Tutorials on Smashing Magazine, and highly recommend you browse around.

Basically, I’ve been busy. But I’ll have more scintillating ramblings on design soon, don’t you worry. In the meantime, check out a few links:

Swiss Miss, a great blog for whimsy, ideas, and inspiration.

Ffffound is a site “that allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!” Very cool way to find and share ideas.

In the vein of taking inspiration from the “analog world”, here’s a cool little blog full of surface pattern designs: Print & Pattern.

Another Smashing Magazine link, naturally. The Ultimate Round-up of Print Design Tutorials intrigued me because I don’t have much exposure to the do’s and don’ts of print design. Especially helpful to me were the multiple business card tutorials.

Finally, A Beautiful Mess is a crafty girl’s blog that I love checking every now just to see what she’s making. I always find it inspiring to see people creating beautiful things, so it’s a good blog for me to check in my afternoon slumps.

Hope all is well with you!

Drawing Inspiration

I love link roundups, so I’m going to attempt to make that a regular feature here. The reason I love these so much is it’s an eclectic yet inspiring collection that always exposes me to a lot. Hopefully you find these helpful.

I’m getting into print media more and more and Studio on Fire’s blog, Beast Pieces, is great for inspiration and seeing what they’re getting up to.

I’m always looking for creative business card inspiration so I was happy to find a wealth of resources from The Design Cubicle.

Speaking of inspiring, Dude Craft has some amazing links to artists doing some amazing things, such as Ann P. Smith and her sculptures of robots made of old electronics.

I am absolutely enamored with Jessica Hische, a designer that specializes in hand-lettering.

Another great designer that specializes in illustration and typography is Linzie Hunter, and you can even take a look at her sketchbooks.

The sketchbooks , this article by Jason Santa Maria, and  the flickr community Pretty Sketchy got me thinking about a quote from “Sketching User Experiences” by Bill Buxton.

In it, Hong-Yiu Cheung says:

“We are often very self conscious about proposing ideas because they are not thought through and hence embarrassing ourselves in front of others. The sketchbook is an environment where it can be safe for us to articulate these thoughts to ourselves.

“The value…does not come from the degree of finish, but the authenticity of the tracking of a person’s ideas…a kind of long-term development of criss0crossing streams of consciousness.”

And so I’m going to make it my personal challenge to brainstorm a sketch a day, whether it’s all drawings of a workflow or maybe a magazine cut out that inspires me to doodle some ideas. I am not an artist, but I can communicate ideas and even  improve my communication through sketching in this way.