Get some Photoshop (and GIMP) brilliance

A while back, a blog called lifehacker posted a really nice, pretty comprehensive Photoshop tutorial some of you might want to take a look at. It's got lots of good tips for designers at a variety of levels, and the vast majority of it transaltes perfectly to GIMP. You might go check it out, but keep in mind that there are bazillions of Photoshop how-tos out there on the interwebs.

While I'm on the subject of Photoshop tutorials, I don't know how I missed the Photoshop rap when it first came out, but it is - no exaggeration at all - the greatest thing ever created in the history on mankind. Yeah, I said it. Well, it's at least tied with a couple other human accomplishments.

Serendipity in visual rhetoric?

Notice that, while the due date for our data visualization project has shifted a little, the assignment has been on the syllabus since January. The reason I point it out is only so that you'll marvel - as I marveled - at the coincidence (is there such a thing?) of Chart Porn (a favorite blog), has a recent post featuring a data visualization about data visulization.

Check it out, and prepare to be dazzled!

ENG 3393 Homework due 2/11

Post your links and criteria for effective/ineffective persuasion as a comment to this post (below).

HOMEWORK for ENG 3333 due 1/26

For this assignment, I want you to take a look at how the design principles of similarity, alignment, and proximity are at work on a website. It goes like this:

1. Find a website. (There are roughly 20 billion, by some accounts. Pick a good one.)
2. In a comment to this post, submit the URL and a few sentences explaining how you think , similarity, alignment, and proximity are / are not at work.

Just look at the main page of the website, often called the "index." Submit your comments no later than 1/26, early a.m.

Free software for our ENG 3333 class

Check out this old post on my blog for links to free design software.

Also, here's a link to the companion website for our text, Document Design.

Remember that Photoshop and Dreamweaver are on several of the computers in JM 103. GIMP and Kompozer should be on most (all?) of the rest. Over the course of the semester, we'll be using these programs to produce some of our class assignments, so if you want them on your personal computer, these links will help you get them.