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30 Stunning Whiteboard Art That Impress

Posted by Harshad

30 Stunning Whiteboard Art That Impress


30 Stunning Whiteboard Art That Impress

Posted: 23 Aug 2013 08:01 AM PDT

The thing with talent is, if you have it and you love expressing yourself, you wouldn’t be held back by a change in medium. Whether you sketch on paper, on a screen or on discarded Starbucks cups, people know it when they see talent, even when they find it on a very unlikely canvas: the whiteboard.

We’ve looked and saw some of these artists showcase their amazing skills on the whiteboard, a tool usually reserved for classes and meetings – a temporary canvas at best for artists. But there’s no stopping these guys. With just a few markers of limited colors, they have taken the art of sketching to a whole new level.

These are 30 amazing whiteboard art that were created with whiteboard markers, and a whole lot of imagination.

Colors

Even with the limited colors one can work with on whiteboard art, a real artist will find a way to bring out each stroke, shade, depth or illusion just to bring their artwork to life. Bear in mind that unlike a pencil drawing where you can sketch and criss-cross your pencil strokes, on a whiteboard, it’s one stroke at a time or none at all.

Monotone

Sometimes color get in the way; it distracts and interrupts the flow of marker ink and the artist may decide that the imagery can be brought out better and more beautifully with just the one color. After looking at these examples, you might even agree and prefer the monochrome versions compared to the ones in technicolor.


Sources: Tumblr, Reddit, Imgur, Deviantart, whiteboardartist, Instagram, and cubicleism.


    


Freelancers: How To Change Your Professional Focus With Minimal Downtime

Posted: 23 Aug 2013 06:01 AM PDT

As you progress through your career as a freelance designer, you may discover that the kind of work you’ve been happily doing for years just isn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe you’re a web designer, but really want to do consulting, or go from writing front end code to working as a more intensive back end developer.

Maybe your clients have pushed you to the brink, enough to quit dealing with clients altogether and switching to working behind the scenes to produce a product based on your knowledge or personal ideas. Switching over from one type of work to another can alienate potential clients who want to hire you for your normal freelancing work, and that can wreak havoc on your bank account, your reputation, and even the quality of your work, at least in the transition stages.

Luckily, there are a few steps to follow to make sure you aren’t undercutting your own chances of success. Here’s how you can change your professional focus with ‘minimal downtime’.

Save Up Some Money First

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to forget when you’re nearly at the point of chewing your own arm off to get away from a job or a client roster you hate. Before you decide to go from one area of focus to another, you’ll want to make sure you have enough of a financial cushion to rest on just in case things get difficult.

That may mean you’ll have to take on a couple more of your normal client jobs for the next few months, and also cut back on your spending. Keeping a budget is helpful for many reasons, not the least of which is making it easier to get by without your normal workload.

And don’t forget to adjust your income for taxes if necessary. Depending on what you’re going to be doing next, you’ll need to make sure you’re making enough to pay your income taxes and any other required fees.

Keep The Cashflow Secure

If you’re just making the leap, it’s a good idea to retain some means of income that’s separate from your new business. If a job is relatively painless to do, and you’re getting much needed income from it, there’s really no good reason to discard it before it’s time.

It may seem like you’re wasting your time, but trust me, the longer you take to plan for your new career path, the smoother the transition will be. Which brings me to my next point.

Plan Your Escape

Always have a concrete, specific plan of action when making any major career moves. Don’t just leap from one business venture to another without considering all the possible outcomes. Of course, you want to figure out the logistics of how you’ll be supporting yourself and/or your family but there are other things to consider as well.

Among the most important: your place within your new chosen industry. Is this new service or product of yours in high enough demand that it will sell to enough customers? How are you going to market yourself? Can you use your old networking connections to procure new work?

Sometimes we dream of making the switch to doing something else, and by the time we actually do it, it turns out that we had miscalculated what would actually be involved in terms of selling and marketing.

Start Small and Test Often

A gradual transition is key. Start small and gradually work your way up to your ultimate goal. For example, if you’re planning on writing a book, you can start with a blog, and slowly start compiling your posts into book form.

Take on a few new projects every month; go outside your normal pool of potential clients and start courting the types of people you’d like to work with next. Also, test, test, test. If you’re not sure whether something will actually work, it’s a lot less painful to run a small test for a few months than dive in and devote a year or two to a full-blown development and launch.

For example, if you want to try selling an information-based product, like a course or paid tutorial series, rather than creating the entire thing in one go, try creating a shortened version of it and releasing it quickly to see if there’s any demand. Don’t simply take it on faith that you’re right about something, or that you’re wrong. When in doubt, always experiment.

Change of Identity

If practical, you may find it helpful to change the name under which you do business. This can be your personal alias, or simply your brand name. A name change will make a clear separation between your old and new work, and can also allow you to start over fresh, without bringing over any client-related baggage to your new enterprise.

You’d be surprised at how much of a difference a new name will make, not just for your business, but to your personal sense of identity as a working professional. This is also a perfect time to ditch any embarrassing names you may have felt stuck with ever since you chose it many years back.

Going from “digiboy2000” (worst case scenario) to something a bit more professional will give both you and your business a new lease on life. If you can’t change your name or you don’t particularly want to, you can always adopt a new name under your professional “umbrella” that specifically caters to your new work.

It’s up to you to decide whether to link the old work to the new. Sometimes this won’t make as much sense as you’d think. Some potential clients might get the wrong idea and make requests that are inappropriate for what you want to do next.

Say Goodbye To Your Old Work

So you’ve planned out your goals and your financial ducks are all in a row. It’s time to make your transition permanent. Make sure your past clients know what you’re up to now (it’s a good idea to keep them in the loop with a short email every quarter or so). You never know when they might be able to assist you in some way you hadn’t thought of.

Potential clients need to be aware that you are definitely no longer available for your previous type of commissioned work. It’s can be tough to have these conversations, especially if they’re offering you a tempting paycheck. But waffling on your decision to quit your old line of work sends the signal that you’re wishy-washy and this can have a negative impact on your professional reputation.

In Conclusion

One final caveat: you will likely lose a bit of income at first, especially when you bid your last client goodbye. But it doesn’t have to be as much as many freelancers fear, especially if you follow the steps above.

It’s been said that success in any business is mostly determined by how willing you are to make yourself uncomfortable. The earlier and more often you get the tough stuff out of the way, the easier time you will have in your new business venture. Good luck!


    


Creating Long Shadow Effect Easily with Long Shadow Generator

Posted: 23 Aug 2013 03:01 AM PDT

We have discussed a new emerging design trend called Long Shadow Design in the previous post, and today there are various more examples of long shadow design implementations we can find online – particularly in Dribbble.

In addition, one of our readers named Simon Rahm also shared a nicely crafted icon set with long shadow. But if you have ever wondered how you can create this shadow effect yourself, you’re on the right post.

In this post we are going to take a look at this matter and will show you how to create long shadow effect, and in an easy and quick way. Let’s get started.

Long Shadow Generator

Shortly after this trend had become a buzz in the design community, Raul Taciu of GraphicBurger created this Long Shadow Generator, which is a PSD file that consists of a bunch of layers.

You can download the file here (or here), open it up in Photoshop, and we are all set. It is worth noting, however, that you need at least Photoshop CS5 to open the file.

In this file you will find 2 group folders, which allow you to create long shadow in 45 degrees and in two direction, left and right.

Within these folders, you will find a Smart Object layer named “You design here“. It is obvious that we should insert our design, an image or text, within this layer. To do so, right-click on the layer and select.

This will bring you to a new file .psb tab. Put your design in this file, in this example I added the Google Mail logo from the flat icon set by CarlosJJ, like so.

After saving the file, the Smart Object will be updated, and the shadow will reflect our inserted design. Then go back to the orginal PSD file, and turn off the overlay effect.

That’s all, you have applied long shadow in your design. Now you can show it off to your friends and peers.

Final Thought

Using a generator tool like this is really a time saver, and also a great place for beginners to learn how this effect is built. However, the generator shadow might not fit all design circumstances, and customization will likely require more work than creating our own from scratch.


    


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