is Useful

Just read the excellent ‘Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality‘ by Scott Belsky, founder of the Behance network. You may know Behance from their excellent Action Method system and series of related notebooks, all of which - along with the book - are aimed towards helping people in creative industries be productive and get things done. Of course these days pretty much all of us work in creative industries if you’re not stuck in a McJob (in which case get out…).

As the book’s title suggests, Belsky wants to help you get the genius creative thought in your head out into the real world where it can either flourish or fail - but at least it will be real. To make this happen he’s gone round asking a number of successful people in the sphere of creative execution as to what they’ve done just to make stuff happen. The book distils this down into easy to understand sections backed up with good real-life examples.

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The National Geographic has a fascinating article on how scientists and engineers took inspiration from nature for a swathe of inventions, new and old. Combined with some beautiful photography, the inventions covered range from glare-free screens, through cars with less drag to the classic velcro. It’s a fascinating read, and reminds us how inspirational the world can be.

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know?” - Steve Jobs, in an interview with Fortune magazine this month. Great words from a great man.

People often talk about the ‘art of Pixar’, with their wonderful ability to breath life into computer animation. Now you can find out, in brain bursting detail, the technical innovations of Pixar - in their online animation rendering library.

Today’s design sites that caught my eye are Dysturb.net and Atypyk, both fun spellings with great selections of design related info. Atypyk is more humourous, Dysturb is more informative. Make sure you check out Atypyk’s re-designed ideas such as Coke bottle sugar dispensers or cut up soft toys - clever enough for me to forgive them for using popups in their site design. Ug.