So, you're a business owner or manager looking for a way to liven up the place. Employees are sluggish and unengaged, just ...

I often share short news snippets on Twitter & Facebook however this news doesn’t often make its way to my blog so here is a quick run down of some recent news.

I’ve posted some new work to my portfolio, including work for Funding Gates, a “one stop shop to manage your receivables” and Forexware, a trading technology company. This site also got translated into Chinese which is kinda neat.

The 2012 Annual Design Awards will start accepting entries on June 3rd. I will be on the Jury again this year, alongside ...

Summer vacation is a lot different for my kids than it was for me. Aside from regular swimming lessons and a weekly trip to the library, my childhood summers were mostly unstructured, spent playing outside with the neighbors' kids, watching "The Monkees" reruns and bickering with my siblings.

Now, we live in a neighborhood with fewer kids, in a society that would charge us with neglect if we let our kids play outside unsupervised. So we have to plan activities, set up play dates, choose day camps and create a schedule that will make the summer fun for our children ...

Recently, I designed some graphics for a 10m length of white and blue bunting. I had never designed for any vinyl bunting before, but the process was quite simple. After receiving the brief from the client, I found a supplier here in the UK, followed their instructions and dimensions for a triangle-template shape, got the proofs approved after a couple of iterations, and saved the files as PDF’s before sending them via email.

I can’t show all of the design and logo on this piece, as the logo was for private internal company-use, but I’ve included a couple of photos ...

Portfolio: www.neiltasker.com

Twitter: @neiltask

Dribbble: dribbble.com/neiltasker

What is the most important aspect of ...

I love, love, love signing books. I’m used to people saying, “I wish I could draw,” but there have been a surprising number of folks on this tour who remark on my handwriting. Sometimes people just like it, and sometimes people are really surprised that it’s the same handwriting that’s in the book. (A lot of people think that the writing in the book is a font.)

The underlying notion here is that handwriting is somehow magical, that you’re just naturally gifted with lovely penmanship. But as I explain to folks on tour, just as I learned to draw ...

He launched his own business around 2 years ago and has been quite successful.

One accomplishment I couldn’t help but noting is that he works with some of the biggest brands our community has to offer. Brands that, if you’re from the U.S., you’ll recognize immediately (Wendy’s, Cafe Rio, Walmart, and the like) and, for major brands that some of you outside the ...

So when I finally had enough money to make one of those coveted purchases, my heart seized when this thought crossed my mind – “Is it worth it?”

How “worth it” are larger monitors?

Are Pantone color books really going to ...

But with every version of Photoshop, Adobe adds more functionality to layers. In Photoshop CS6, there are several important new features, such as the capability to assign blend modes, fills, or opacity to multiple layers simultaneously.

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One of the first priorities will be to either develop a specific area of your home as a workspace, or convert a spare, unused room into an office. Along with actually providing you with a place to do your work, this will also help to reinforce to other members of the household that ...

You’ve got your web site up. You’ve got some school projects in your portfolio. You’re ready to start calling clients and pitching your services.

So what’s stopping you?

If you’re like a lot of designers I talk to regularly, you don’t know how much to charge for your first freelance project.

Believe it or not, I think this is one of the most common reasons freelance designers don’t take the leap into freelancing.

After all, none of us want to get to the point in the pitch with our potential ...

Processed Identity and Ottawa’s Westboro Nursery School are included in the book as examples of designers personal favourite work from around the globe. Rather than focussing soley on the beautiful, the book also explores the passion designers feel for their work. The book accomplishes this by including insights into the creative process, thereby providing inspiration beyond a picture gallery. Hexanine has managed to gather intimate stories that remind designers why we constantly search ...

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The woman standing next to me on the platform finished checking her email, and I smiled knowingly. It was my afternoon off, all my clients knew it, but I still felt compelled to acknowledge a couple of messages myself.

She was headed to the dentist, running late because she had tried to get that "one more thing" done before she took off. And she was still trying.

Does workshifting tether us to the job more?

Don't get me wrong - I love the freedom that technology brings. And Wi-Fi is awesomeness. But it used to be that when you left ...

It’s been less than a year since I first wrote them, and already I have reached some of them (and set new ones)! (PS: Preston also posted a video blog about the importance of setting annual goals.)

Okay, okay, so you know you should have business goals, and hopefully you developed some great ones, but now months have passed…

are you sticking to them?

Equally as important as writing goals is sticking to them.

Making sure you don’t cut corners, shred them when ...

The applications affected — Flash Professional, Illustrator, and Photoshop — have security holes that let hackers take control of your system after you open a malicious file, for example, a .TIF file in Photoshop. Versions 5.5 and earlier on both Mac and Windows are vulnerable.

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Why do I love it?

Because now I get to ask you and learn from you!

That’s right. Today, the tables are turning and I need your help answering a reader’s question. Here’s a summary of the email I received from Suzy:

My name is Suzy and I am a graphic designer for a small graphic design business. We were recently ...

In my previous posts about CD’s that I have designed, I’ve gone through the process via explanations under the CD design images. In this case, however, I’ve made a short video about the design, which is available to watch at the end of this post. Here’s a few images of the design, and then onto the Video…

About a year ago, I ran a series on my website where readers sent in photos and descriptions of their favorite bits from their workshifting kits. I find it's one of those topics that most often crop up when I talk with home workers face to face or online. They mention the items that they couldn't work without or that brighten their home-working day, and I began to notice that these items always fit into the same groups:

But does location matter? Are freelancers elsewhere enjoying more business success due to their location? Would your business benefit from moving?

Whether you’re enjoying a steady stream of work or hoping for that next client, answer the questions below to determine whether your location is helping or hurting your design business.