Serif Group

Christmas is upon us, and with it comes time with loved ones, decorating, caroling, cooking, wrapping and parties. To show appreciation to our friends and clients, we’ve designed some cheerful items to brighten your holiday.

Pretty up your wrapped presents with these gift tag printables, designed by us just for you. Download the PDF, print on cardstock, trim them out and add string or ribbon to make them your own. There are tags for eleven pretty presents on the sheet.

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” –Pablo Picasso

Are our souls just way too dusty? I recently came across a video that got me thinking. Is there too much great stuff out there? Are we so overly-programmed to tune out stimuli from meaningless and unverified sources that we will ignore great work when presented to us?

World-renowned and notorious artist Banksy set up an experiment recently on a street in New York. He offered his work for $60 and hired an older man to sit at the booth all day to see if he would find any buyers. For perspective, Banksy’s work Keep it Spotless went for $1.8 million in 2008.

Would you pay $60 for a Banksy?

Another similar sting operation was set up in a subway station in Washington D.C. with famous violinist Joshua Bell… would you stop to listen –would it even phase you?

Check out this article from bloomberg.com for more on art vs. hype.

Color is a huge inspiration for me. Fashion, nature, interior design, and pretty much anything else I may come across during the day often gives me ideas for color combinations. I can’t count the times I have passed some glorious spot of color and thought “Gee, I wish I could make a palette right now!” Lucky for me, I now have Adobe® Kuler in my life. With this great app, you can take a picture of something, and the app automatically creates a 5 color palette with pixel sampling.

The app is pretty simple to use, allowing you to freeze the image on your screen, and then, if you want to make alterations to your palette, you can simply drag the samplers around the image until you get the color you want. There is also a color wheel mode, which allows you to work with traditional color theory (complementary, analogous, compound, etc.) or in a custom mode to create your themes.

After making your theme, you can edit it, name it, and share it in a public forum at https://kuler.adobe.com. If you don’t have a smart phone, you can also use this website for creating themes. BEST of all, you can send your themes to yourself or a friend in eps format, which makes translating the palette to a project that much simpler.

I think this FREE app is an excellent tool for designers of all types, and well worth downloading for use on projects or, if you are a complete nerd like me, it’s a great way to waste time playing.

Among the numerous things that fill a normal week with work, family, exercise and the occassional game on my iPhone is the routine of catching a TED talk.

If you’re not familiar with TED. From the TED website –”TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. ”

(more…)