Entries tagged with “design” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

I just saw this twitter: @EmanuelPM sent his 360 away in it's coffin. The ups guy knew the box was a 360 by the shape since they get 10-12 bad ones a day, he said....

Here's a clever Web service: Find a CD or DVD online, click the Paper Case link, and it will print the cover image and details. Then you fold the paper, tuck your disc inside, and slide the package into a binder, saving lots of space.

Just back from teaching for my 4th time at the Maine Media Workshops. What blast! My students learned: painting with light, low light photography, shooting with reflectors and diffusers, Photoshop... and the big hit HDR. We used Photomatix Pro to craft our indoor and outdoor pictures - my HDR image of the Pemaquib is attached. More of my HDR images on the HDR page of my site.

I have exactly one yellow musical instrument, and since the moment I unboxed it, I've dreamed about somehow painting it a different color without damaging the controls. Now comes something much slicker. At StyleFlip.com, you can design your own adhesive vinyl skin for a variety of music gear....

Over at Deke.com, I've written about how we use anchored notes to communicate between the team members who work on our bestselling One-on-One series books. As much as I like having graphically oriented authors work directly with the layout, it certainly brings up issues when it comes to editing passes. Although we've tried InCopy successfully, on books by Stephen Johnson...

DekePod is back with an insane vengeance. Here's a behind the scenes look.

Why is this man jumping off the wall? The return of DekePod. I shot this on the set of Deke's soon-to-be-released next installment of DekePod, a podcast from our own Deke McClelland that made its first irreverent appearance a while back to great acclaim. The latest round will feature plenty of in-your-face, World-According-to-Deke information on all things digital imaging....

I was pleased to actually find out I could get image previews of the contents of my iDisk folder via Adobe Bridge.

After three years of tweaking, I finally dropped off the files for my new book, The Moon Princess, at the printer today. One of the last design challenges was creating a drop cap for the opening word, Long. The white space at the L's right edge broke the flow. Googling around for ideas, I found this vintage screencast by O’Reilly...

Deke McClelland joins the InDesign Secrets podcast, and the hosts help untangle some of the knots Deke encountered when creating his latest book in (and about) InDesign.

Adobe Bridge's Flatten View feature allows you to see all the contents of your subfolders in one window. Working with a large project becomes easier when you can visually scan your entire project. Here's where to find that handy, if obscure, button in the Filter panel.

For most of the 1990s, the design market was shared by three programs: page-layout software QuarkXPress, image editor Adobe Photoshop, and drawing application Macromedia FreeHand. (Some shops preferred Illustrator, but FreeHand tended to be the more popular choice of page designers.) This benefited users by inspiring fierce competition between the suitors, with each doing its dead-level best to remain on...

A sculptor I know likes to say, "Art is a hammer knocking at your eyeballs." Architect Robert Venturi described one of his approaches as "contradiction juxtaposed." Amy X Neuburg, here live at EXIT Theatre, juxtaposes fiery operatic vocals with electronic audio loops. (Photo by Rob Thomas) Much successful art, it seems to me, takes concepts—or symbols of concepts—and squishes them...

One of my jobs as a book editor is to advocate for the reader, making sure the information is accessible independently of whatever inside knowledge I might already possess. So when Derrick sent out an announcement to O'Reilly team that the new Digital Media Newsletter was ready for viewing, rather than just have him send me a copy, I thought...

The man of the hour in my book at the moment (and actually for a number of years now) is my friend and colleague Terry McBride, Founder & CEO of Nettwerk-- an artist-centric, forward thinking artist management firm that also houses a label and a publishing arm for its artists. Terry is an artist advocate; we are cut from the...

NPR did a clever demonstration on Morning Edition this week. To illustrate how much money the 2008 presidential candidates raised last quarter, the announcer played a music clip—one beat of a song for each million dollars. Of course, NPR can't show graphs on radio, but for me, the audio "visualization" was much more visceral than seeing a bar graph. One...

The old saying, "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" expresses a deep truth about creativity: two things that differ in characteristics but share a common domain may yield fruitful results when combined. The people at Frontier Design have taken that lesson to heart. They've taken the wireless network and the audio control surface, spread one all over the other,...

Silicon Valley’s vaunted technology showcase was designed to “engage people of all backgrounds.” So why is it failing miserably?

Thursday, Nov 3 is the first World Usability Day, so designated by the Usability Professionals Association. A gimmick? Maybe, but let's face it, making technology serve humans instead of vice versa is a cause that needs all the help it can get.

Simply shrinking a large frame of video to fit the display of a portable device, such as an iPod, just won’t work. They key is to shoot with your final output in mind.