David Airey

Category: Resources

  • Samsara

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    David Airey
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    Samsara is a stunning visual journey around the world, filmed without commentary, and with a brilliantly original soundtrack composed after the film had been “silently edited.”

  • Keep experimenting

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    David Airey
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    Job applicant advice from design business owner Drew de Soto.

  • Context is key

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    David Airey
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    A valuable lesson on dealing with design clients, from Chermayeff & Geismar’s 2011 book Identify.

  • A few Adobe alternatives

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    David Airey
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    I doubt any of these can do as much as the Adobe option (except Quark), but they might do as much as you need, and it’s something I’m asked about now and again. Image via Fstoppers Photoshop alternatives Acorn (OS X, $49.99) Pixelmator (OS X, £20.99) GIMP (OS X, Windows, Linux, free) Illustrator alternatives Sketch…

  • On negotiating your design salary

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    David Airey
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    A chapter from Ted Leonhardt’s new book Nail It: Stories for Designers on Negotiating with Confidence — a collection of true stories about designers getting the salaries they deserve.

  • Brand naming resources

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    David Airey
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    It’s easy to think anyone can come up with a good name, but it’s more complicated than that. “An idea can come from anywhere, but getting buy in and seeing it through is tough. In fact, naming can be one of the hardest parts of a branding project.” From a naming handbook by Wolff Olins.…

  • LiveSurface Context

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    David Airey
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    LiveSurface Context is an Adobe Illustrator plugin by Brooklyn-based Josh Distler that renders your flat artwork onto a wide range of contextual photos. I had a go with the free trial. Excellent. And at $9 per month (or $89 for a year) it’s a fair bit cheaper than a stock photography subscription. You can cancel…

  • Paul Jarvis shares good advice for designers

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    David Airey
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    Designer and writer Paul Jarvis has a useful website. Here are some posts and resources of interest, and some thoughts I agreed with. Paul talks about how to build an audience from scratch. Many of you are, or once were in this situation. If I found myself transported back to when I became self-employed eight…

  • Fontfabric free fonts

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    David Airey
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    Free fonts, more often than not, lack attention to detail, but some of these from Fontfabric make a nice change. One of them — The Kabel — has a few lovely application shots, like this… Not that I’m religious, or having a bad day. Top Photoshop skills though. Not to be confused with Rudolph Koch’s…

  • Interactive mind maps

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    David Airey
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    To help my thoughts at the start of a project I’ll usually create a few word-maps (or mind-maps). Sometimes I’ll use a thesaurus if there are particular words I want to focus on. Late to the show, I stumbled upon Visual Thesaurus, a kind of interactive mind-mapping tool. It was invented by Marc Tinkler of…