Ivan's blog

When Siri works it's great, but what if you have a Scottish accent?

Melanie D is one of StockLogos's best selling designers. Here is a selection of her work for your inspiration.

The Deeply Graphic Design Podcast is a fairly new show from The Deep End Design Studio.

Here is a quick interview I made with Wes McDowell, who leads the podcast.

CB: What prompted you to create this podcast?
I have always been a fan of the talk radio format, and over the last few years I have subscribed to a number of other design-themed podcasts that I really enjoyed. Over the past year, I have noticed that many of them have started going away. I don't know if its because they got too busy to keep putting them out, or if they just weren't getting enough listeners to justify spending the time doing it, but in either case, I thought that I could fill the void left by them. Also, I find myself giving design advice to others in person, or on forums, etc, so it seemed like a natural fit to start a podcast.

Here is a cool poster designed by Julian Hansen that helps you find the right typeface for your project. Click image for a high-res file.

Landor Associates announced today the launch of a complete brand transformation for ITG, the independent research and execution broker. Currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, ITG has recently expanded its capabilities through acquisitions on the research side of its business.

Available free on the Mac App store, iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.

The Steve Jobs Moment of Silence is an 8 second silent audio file officially available on iTunes. The 8 seconds symbolize the 8 years Steve Jobs fought pancreatic cancer. This small break in our iTunes library will remind us to never forget the man who brought us the very device The Steve Jobs Moment of Silence will live on.

All proceeds are donated to several pancreatic cancer organizations listed on the official site: http://stevejobsmomentofsilence.org

Adobe® Creative Cloud™ is a creative hub where you can explore, create, publish, and share your work using Adobe Creative Suite® desktop applications, Adobe Touch Apps, and services together for a complete ideation-to-publishing experience. The vision of Adobe Creative Cloud is to turn previously difficult, disparate workflows into one intuitive, natural experience, allowing you to create freely and deliver ideas on any desktop, tablet, or handheld device.

2012 will be the year when most businesses will finally make the move to the cloud. Email, calendars, documents and other files will all reside in the cloud on services like Google Apps.

1. No need to maintain servers or hosting packages, thus everything becomes simpler and cheaper.
2. No need to update software or synchronise data on different devices, therefore less time spent on tech support and more time spent on design.
3. Significantly less spam, thus you not only save time with a leaner inbox you're also safer as you will get less malicious code in email.
4. Collaboration with you colleagues and clients is much easier in the cloud. You can share presentations with your client and they can annotate it live.
5. Most designers do a significant part of their non-design work on mobile devices, which works much better in the cloud. Tablets great work not only for presenting your work, but also to get stuff done while on the road.
6. Easier upgrades and downgrades of the system according to business needs. If you have to hire new team members you can get their accounts ready in minutes.
7. Less chance of losing data due to hardware failure or other disasters like fire or theft. Upload your graphics files to the cloud too, not just documents and presentations. Keep everything safe automatically with services like Insync for Google Apps, Dropbox and Carbonite.

Possible Downsides of the cloud

1. It is possible the cloud is not accessible at certain times, but so far Google and other cloud services demonstrated a very reliable service.
2. If there is no Internet connection, the system may stop working unless you enable offline mode in advance.
3. Theoretically the data in the cloud can be compromised, but the chance of this happening is very low.

Have you already made the switch to the cloud or are you planning to? What is your experience and do you have any advice designers should be aware of?