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New Images on Photos.com  We've recently added more than 2,000 new photos to the Photos.com collection. We'll lead off with two photo sessions shot by Colin Rowe, the first of which features two young folks hard at work in a shipping/receiving warehouse. Also from Colin, and continuing our ongoing exploration of occupations and trades of all kinds, is a series of more than 80 shots of butchers at work. But of course family is at the heart of all our lives, and accordingly we have a new batch of images devoted to both childhood and parenthood. We've featured the contributions to the Photos.com collection of shooter Trevor Lush in past issues. This time you'll find more than 400 evocative shots from his recent sojourn to Miami. Save On a Clipart.com Subscription  More than just clipart, a Clipart.com subscription also provides access to thousands of professional, royalty-free stock photos. For a limited time, Clipart.com is offering newsletter readers a 1-year subscription for only $129.95—a savings of $30.
Designer Spotlight: Brian Hays  The relentless flood of new technologies has made it hard for those involved in Web site design and development to stay current. But you wouldn't know it to hear Brian Hays, a Senior Flash Developer in the medical/healthcare industry, who has made a point of staying abreast of new developments since beginning his design career in 1994. Brian tells us that, "There is nothing better than being a designer in the world today. With the Internet, computers and software of today the possibilities are truly endless! I create Web-based training materials for one of the largest hospital corporations in the world. I never dreamed when I began in professional design that I would ever be doing the work I do now." When it comes to imagery, Brian has been a Photos.com subscriber for more than three years. "Photos.com is an incredible resource in the work we do. It is important to incorporate the human feel in our work, since sometimes our content focuses around procedures, or forms and regulations, so it is easy for that information to become downright boring. Photos.com has enabled us to keep our pages fresh with new visuals without heavy repeats of the same shots over and over." An example of this, from a Web-based corporate training module, can seen be above (click to enlarge) and uses two Photos.com images. View Brian Hays' Designer Spotlight > The Fun Stuff  At left is one of the four July wallpaper and desktop calendar images, each of which is available in six resolutions. This particular calendar is ingeniously based on one of our new computer-generated background images. Recent Blurb items include a look at the unusual sculptures of Levi van Veluw, some very high-tech shoes in Run Like a Porsche and Really Good Logos Explained, in which four designers mercilessly critique a wide range of logos. Photos.com Design Challenges The July Photos.com Challenge  In June, participants were given the challenge to use at least part of any one of five silhouette images from Photos.com as elements in an original work. Contributors once again provided an astonishing range of variations on the supplied imagery. Congratulations to June winners Dalibor, LoupGarou, Alex Preiss, Rensor, Mtabor and GMLehmann. For July we've provided six distinctive computer-generated backgrounds from the Photos.com collection. The challenge is to use at least part of any three of the six images in a new composition. The creators of three of the winning images will receive three months of access to Photos.com, while three more will receive one month. Photos.com Philter Phrenzy 3  The second round of the Photos.com Philter Phrenzy ended recently, with some imaginative entries contributed using the combination of DAZ Studio, the DAZ 3D Bridge plugin and Photoshop. Congratulations to Artroland, Dwindt and Popeslatz, who receive 3 months of access to Photos.com, as well as a copy of DAZ Bryce 6 and the DAZ 3D Bridge plugin. The Phrenzy takes a new turn this time out by expanding to include Photoshop actions and brushes. The challenge is to create an original image making use of one or more of the nine free cross-platform actions created by PhotographyBB.com. The creators of the three winning images will receive three months of access to Photos.com, as well as copies of three commercial PhotographyBB.com actions. Save 10% on One Year of Photos.com Photos.com is the convenient way to download all the top-quality royalty-free, model-released photographs you need. For a limited time, Photos.com is offering newsletter readers a 1-year subscription for only $399.95. • More than 360,000 model-released, royalty-free photos • Fresh images every month. Three sizes at up to 6x8 inches, 300 dpi • Up to 250 downloads a day, managed via your drag & drop lightbox • Free professional image research This reduced rate is valid through July 23, 2008, and is only available via this exclusive promotion. The Perils of Postage Stamps by Rick Altman  I have encountered a new and disturbing phenomenon among current slide deck design. I call it the Postage Stamp Disorder. It is created by the convergence of two common tendencies: 1. The compulsion to place untold amounts of text on screen. 2. The belief that adding photos to a slide makes the slide better. The first tendency is a well-documented and all-too-familiar cause of Death by PowerPoint in today's culture. Well-intentioned presenters place complete sentences and fully-formed thoughts onto their slides and then get derailed by the challenge of not reciting the text on the slide. The second practice certainly has merit—photos are more evocative than text. However, after all of that text has been dumped on the screen, there is rarely enough space for anything more than the smallest of photos—the postage stamp. At this point, a photo cannot contribute positively to the slide; it just becomes more visual clutter. And as you can see in Figure 1 (click to enlarge), there is no real opportunity for the photo to figure in a nice slide design, instead being relegated to being dumped into open space. To be honest, it would have been better to have left the photo off a slide with this much text. And that's too bad, because this is actually a pretty good photo representing an industry not known for its photogenic nature. In fact, one of my clients, the Port of Long Beach, hires professional photographers for all of its newsmaking and community events, and has many dramatic and powerful photos of the port in action, similar to this one that I found in the Photos.com collection.  But the potential appeal of this photo is lost in its usage—doomed to becoming a postage stamp amid all of this verbosity. Watch what happens when you make the photo more prominent, as shown in Figure 2. Two important phenomena occur when you enlarge the photo to cover the entire slide: 1. It becomes much more powerful and invites the audience to study its details. 2. It makes it practically impossible to even consider the volume of text that you might otherwise be tempted to include. This is a wonderful development! Figure 2 has enough open space along the bottom to include just the basic ideas of the slide and that is welcome news to both the audience and the presenter. The audience won't become zombies when having complete sentences inflicted upon them and the presenter will be in a much better position to share real ideas about these points, instead of just reciting projected text like a drone. Everyone wins when you make your photos bigger. Rick Altman is the host of the PowerPoint Live User Conference, to be held September 21-24 in San Diego, CA. It covers the whole of the presentation community—message, slide design, software technique, and delivery—and limits enrollment to 250. Complete details are available at PowerPointLive.com. Graphics.com Network Highlights News • Webcast: Launching an Identity • Zevrix Updates Graphic File Checking Utility • MPS CopyFit Now Available for Adobe InDesign > More graphics news Articles and Blogs  Using Color in Graphic Design: DynamoAdams Morioka and Terry Stone examine the use of color in the work of Irish design consultancy Dynamo.  Really Good Shelf-Savvy LogosFour prominent designers critique successful logos and explain what makes them work.  Stockxpert Contributor Profile: Aleksey Telnov Aleksey Telnov's illustrations, mostly floral backgrounds, boast quietly surprising color combinations and pictorial qualities. > More graphics articles  STEP inside designSTEP 2008 Type AnnualSeven articles from STEP's annual type issue: Type Camp, For theLove of Letterpress, Matrimonial Times, A Fire in the Béziers,InDesign CS3 Type Tips & Tricks, Critical i and GailAnderson: Versatile Typophile.Dynamic Graphics Magazine7 Winning TipsTriumphant design: We examine several common elements amongaward-winning projects—past and present—to see what it takes to bringhome the prize in design competitions. GraphicDesignForum BlogsScannable Items - Oranges, SchmorangesWriting Ad Copy: How to Prove Your Product's SuperioritySo Long, MarianneI Am Red, Hear Me RoarTheCreativeForumLiquidTreat New on Graphics.com/Learning We're proud to announce that Steven Brower, acclaimed designer and professor at School of Visual Arts in NYC, has joined the faculty at Graphics.com/Learning. Steven's focus as an educator is to demonstrate and advocate for unconventional methods of thinking about and practicing design. A little time spent with Steven will help you achieve the idea(s) that will set your projects apart from the rest. One of his video tutorials, The Human Touch: How to Not Work on the Computer, is available now; another, Creating the Unexpected, is coming soon. As this month's featured Graphics.com/Learning instructor, Steven shared his thoughts on inspiration, book design, his own successful career, and more in an interview that will be published in the July edition of our e-newsletter. If you haven't already, why not sign up to receive the free newsletter today? Jupiterimages Stock Content Sites • Find stock photos on Jupiterimages.com, Comstock Images, Photos.com, AbleStock.com, Thinkstock Images, Creatas Images, PictureQuest, Comstock Complete, Goodshoot, liquidlibrary, Brand X Pictures, FoodPix, Botanica, Nonstock, Stockxpert and Jupiterimages Unlimited • Find photo objects on PhotoObjects.net • Find broadcast quality clips on Thinkstock Footage & Creatas Images • Find clipart on Clipart.com and ClipartConnection.com • Find Flash imagery on Bigshot Media • Find music loops on BBM.net, Crank City Music, RoyaltyFreeMusic.com and eStockMusic.com. • Find illustrations on Liquidlibrary.com • Find animations on Animation Factory Contact Information Have a comment or question about the newsletter? Please contact: editor@jupiterimages.com - Chris Dickman, Editor How to Unsubscribe You are subscribed to Photos.com as cbiaent.cbi16@blogger.com. 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