Adobe After Effects is a digital motion graphics and compositing software. Its main purpose is for film and video post-production. With Adobe After Effects it’s possible to create so great looking visual effects as in “Hollywood style” movies. Adobe After Effects is mainly used to create visual effects for commercials and movies but you can also create image slide-shows, some small videos, transition effects for websites and stuff like that.

It is not difficult to learn by your own. You only need to find some good tutorials and you are ready to start. There are a lot of good tutorials these days, just try to search for them on the Internet. Here is a massive collection of Adobe After Effects tutorials which, in our opinion, are very useful for learning After Effects. They are categorized in these following section for your learning convenience: Beginners, Intermediate users and Advanced users. Enjoy the beauty of Adobe After Effects!

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On the past few weeks I’ve been working on a new venture centered around the iPhone. The process of building our app has been quite an adventure and we’ve experimented with several technologies that were new to us before reaching our current technology stack.
As we’ve finally got our stuff together and made an initial release to a group of testers I thought I’d share some of the technology choices we’ve made and the reasons behind them.

First some information about the team

…because technology choices are affected by the team’s technical skillset.

• We’re 3 developers (Yosi, Udi and myself) and one designer (the awesome Naor Suki).
• We’ve allocated two developers for the iPhone and one for the backend APIs & website.
• We’re all veteran developers with experience mostly on Microsoft’s Development stack. This project meant going out of our comfort zone to a whole new set of technologies. Experience does make a difference easing the learning curve…

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Google is widely known as the Internet’s best search engine. Everybody with access to the internet uses Google at some point to find something (or many things) on the web for a particular web page, or a certain piece of information.

However, Google has several built in functions that will help you make your searches more successful, and to enable you to spend less time searching. I have written a post about some tricks that will help you with your image search and that will ‘give you the power’ to Find Images by Exact Dimensions, File Type or From Specific Website. That should make your search for new wallpapers that perfectly fit to your screen resolution as easy as walk in a park.

But today I’ve decided to expand that post and to tell you about a list of 5 functions that you did not know before (I think), all accessible from the main Google search box (frontpage), which will help you find every piece of information you are looking for.

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Google is the most powerful search engine available, but when it comes to searching for something specific, Google may churn out general results for some. For instance, a search for a song in Google may return the singer, the lyrics and even fan sites – depending on the keywords you entered.

This is when niche-specific search engines comes into the picture. These search engines allows you to search for the things you’re looking for, and because they are more focused, their results tend to be more accurate.

E-books & PDF files, audio & music, videos, etc. are probably the most commonly searched items everyday and with this list, you’ll be able to locate them easily from now on. Enjoy!

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MS Word 2010 has a good number of new features, including the single click graphical enhancements to images, in-built screen capture tool and Paste Preview options. One of the newly added features is the Navigation Pane and advanced search included within this pane. You no longer have to scroll through paragraphs of text to copy and paste sections manually within a document. The Navigation Pane gives an easy way to navigate through your document and a simple to use drag and drop functionality to move sections.

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CSS is a technology that web designers use everyday, but yet it is something that most struggle with as well. Whether it’s keeping stylesheets for large sites manageable, or creating image effects that are cross browser compatible, there are plenty of things to cause frustration. This article is an attempt to provide you with a few resources that might help you with your CSS woes or introduce you to a few tricks you didn’t know about.

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I had a great time in design school, I was constantly learning and surrounded by lots of like minded people. However, after five years of freelancing as a graphic designer, I’ve learned many new things. The following list is the top ten things that I had to learn the hard way.

1. Your diploma doesn’t help you to find a job

But your portfolio does! Of course it’s a good thing to get a design education and a proof of it, but when it comes to get money out of their wallet clients want to see what you are capable of, not a diploma. When looking for work, I never had to show my diploma, not even once.

Picture by ajschwegler

2. Good design takes time, don’t set too tight deadlines

When you are in design school, the teacher sets the deadlines for you and tries to give you enough time. Your boss or your client will not be like your design teacher, they will try to push you to be more productive and give you too little time to get work done. All my worst designs have been created when I agreed to work with unrealistic deadlines.

Picture by Swami Stream

3. You clients don’t think that you are an artist

They just think you should help them to sell more. This doesn’t mean you should give up on good design, it just means that you’ll have to be convincing when you want to bring a more artistic touch to a job. I’ve been very frustrated with this when I first got out of school, but I learned to deal with it by educating my clients.

Picture by Neil T

4. You must be able to handle irrelevant criticism

When you are in school, you learn a lot from getting criticized by your teachers and classmates. Obviously these people all have some design skills, sometimes more than yourself. It is much harder to handle critics about your work when they come from people with no design education. You can be sure that you’ll hear some insane things and have to deal with it.

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5. You should backup your data on a regular basis

Most people learn this the hard way, the day their computer crashes. Usually it happens at the worst time, before a client meeting or something similar. If you think that this isn’t design-related, you are totally wrong.

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6. Start networking, now!

Be sociable, even if you are the best designer out there, nobody will know it if people don’t get a chance to meet you. You don’t even need to attend work-related events, just join a sport team, drama group or whatever suits you, the most important thing is that you meet some like-minded people. When with people, don’t oversell and talk about your work all the time, but be sure never to miss an opportunity when you think that someone could need your skills.

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7. Make sure your client signs a contract

This is sometimes annoying, especially when you think that you can trust the client, but it can save you a lot of trouble. You should make it a habit to have you clients signing a simple and comprehensive contract before starting to work. If you have no clue of how to write a contract, take a look at this article by Andy Clark.

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8. Learning design is an ongoing process

Getting your diploma doesn’t mean that your design education is over, far from it. As a designer you have to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, software updates and industry news, or you’ll quickly lose touch.

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9. Being a good designer is not only about talent

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”. This quote by Thomas Jefferson says it all about the importance of hard work in creative fields. As a designer, you need to read, work and experiment constantly, it is the only way to let your natural talent explode.

Picture by Marcin Wichary

10. Your printer will stop working when you need it the most

Need to print your design to go meet your client? Chances are that your printer will chose that moment to die. Make sure you have some friends or working partners willing to help in these cases.

Picture by sheffnermarc

Written by Mirko Humbert

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