Raven - the first online vector editor

Aviary vector icons from mpeutz on Vimeo.
Raven is the first web-based vector editor, very intuitive and with a good performance.

The Photographic Dictionary

The Photographic Dictionary "dedicated to defining words through the literal, figurative, and personal meanings found in each photograph".
(via colourlovers)

Adobe Kuler - Creating color schemes

For those who depend on color the get the job done, Adobe Kuler is a web-hosted application for generating color themes. One of the best color resources I've found.

Oberlin College Digital Collections

While doing a research for a school project, I stumbled upon a wonderful resource - the Oberlin College Digital Collections - a digital collection of... art. Thousands of images are displayed, some of them with none or only a few lines of information, but enough to be delighted...
I picked the images above within the artist's book collection. The first on the top by Julie Chen named "Personal paradigms [kit]: a game of human experience", the one in the middle "Double game" by Sophie Calle (with the participation of Paul Auster), and the other one simply "Love", illustrated and designed by Vanni.

The Book Cover Archive Presents

An Archive of Book Cover Designs and Designers. A resource not to miss!

Flipping Typical

Flipping Typical created by Stuart Robinson is a web based tool that allows you to compare text in the typefaces you have installed.
In a personal note I think it's a very useful tool and I congratulate Stuart for his wonderful work, but not every typefaces installed are displayed (I have only the basic ones)... Maybe I'm being naive but does this happen, due to the browser I'm using or because it's a recent project still in progress?

(via swissmiss)

Europeana is back again!

I have already posted about the website Europeana. At the time (22 Nov) I announced the launch and the simultaneous crash of the new European digital library, museum and archive, but now it's online again in a beta version. A great resource not to be missed. Here´s a hint about what is it:

Europeana: think culture

Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 2 million digital items.

• Images - paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects
• Texts - books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers
• Sounds - music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts
• Videos - films, newsreels and TV broadcasts

Some of these are world famous, others are hidden treasures from Europe's

• museums and galleries
• archives
• libraries
• audio-visual collections

You can use My Europeana to save searches or bookmark things. You can highlight stuff and add it to your own folders.

This website is a prototype. Europeana Version 1.0 is being developed and will launch in 2010 with links to over 6 million digital objects.

Europeana.eu is funded by the European Commission and the member states.

The 50 Most Popular Web Design Blog Posts, Resources & Cheat Sheets of 2007

The 50 Most Popular Web Design Blog Posts, Resources & Cheat Sheets of 2007

The Importance of White space - One of the oldest principals of design is white space, and knowing how to use it properly could mean wonders for your design. Popular site A List Apart tackles the subject.

8 Design Tactics to Help You When You're Stuck -Every designer goes through hard times of "designer's block"; Matt Inman (also known as "Oatmeal") gives us 8 tactics to help you get back to work.

35 Designers x 5 Questions - What better way to learn technique then to speak to those who know it best? 35 of some of the brightest minds in web design get put on the spot and share some insightful expert advice.

(via swissmiss)

MFA Designer As Author

"Since its inception as a profession, graphic design has been primarily service-oriented, with a few original creators emerging in every generation who guide the way and set standards (as well as styles).
In recent years, new media have changed the role of graphic design in various ways. Graphic designers are more in demand to develop a client's branding, identity, and packaging programs. But with the means of production on their desktops, designers are also becoming glorified production "artists." The danger, of course, is that graphic designers will be edged out of the creation process, relegated to only the mechanical follow-through.
The “MFA Designer As Author” is predicated on the growing need for content providers throughout the visual media. Drawing on ones' fluency with the graphic design language of type and image, this program is the first designed exclusively to encourage authorship and entrepreneurship in a broad range of media."

It seems to be a great resource for professional designers, sad to me it is in NY... maybe latter.

Color in motion: Amazing

Color in Motion is an animated and interactive experience of color communication and symbolism. Created by Maria Claudia Cortes this engaging and interactive Flash presentation has technical info about the three primary and secondary colors, a lab to manipulate the colors and play with them, and the most wonderful videos where the "personified colors" represent actions related to the symbolism of each. It's an excellent resource about the impact color has on communication.

Google and Life magazine: historic photos

Google launched a new feature that allows the search through millions of photos from Life Magazine archives. It can be found at http://images.google.com/hosted/life , or we can add "source:life" to any Google image search to search only the LIFE photo archive. Example: portugal source:life.
The best of it all, the photos are in high-res!

Europeana: digital paintings, books, films and archives

Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a multilingual prototype website that gives users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers.
The website europeana.eu was launched on 20 November but it seems that they didn't expect so many interest - 10 million hits per hour - that caused a crash in their system the same day. Now we must wait until they launch Europeana in a more robust version...I hope it will be soon.

50 Great Photoshop Tutorials for Clever Beginners

Here's a great resource with very useful Photoshop tutorials.
http://psdtuts.com/articles/web/50-great-photoshop-tutorials-for-clever-beginners/