“The idea behind the project was to create a community to fight cancer together online and offline,”Jennifer Kuhn, an Art Director at Jigsaw who worked on the project said. “We didn’t focus on technology, but to utilize technology to create an emotional and environmental experience that unites everyone whose life has been changed by cancer.”

The messages submitted during the event are displayed in their original handwriting on an experiential minisite which was launched last week. The “Hope Is___” site invites people to share their message of hope with the community and read other inspirational messages that individuals have submitted during the event or directly on the website. The project will soon be finalized with a traveling mini version of the interactive wall. The travel exhibit will be seen at cancer walks, cancer screening in schools and other cancer-related events in Northeastern Wisconsin. All messages entered during the exhibit will be saved on a server and automatically be fed to the minisite.

“Hope means different things to different people and we wanted to give them an opportunity to share their messages of hope,” Miguel Jasniewski, an interactive director at Jigsaw, said. “Partnering with Adobe’s Experience Design team helped us with the execution of the project and allowed us to bring this great idea to life.”

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Using Creativity to Empower

I stumbled across one of these the other day, it’s called “Notable.” Notable is a new web app from ZURB – a 12 year old interaction design & design strategy firm which has helped clients such as Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, NYSE, Playlist, Photobucket, and many others. Simply put, Notable is a communication tool that allows you to easily provide feedback on websites.

Through all the great things that going digital has done for design, one drawback is the ability to effortlessly and uniformly make notes and comments for an onscreen design. In order to communicate his or her ideas the designer has two options:

1. Take a screen shot, open it up in Photoshop or another program, mark it up with circles and arrows, type the comment text, then re-save the files in order to send them to others.
2. Print out the screen shots and mark them up by hand. Setup a meeting with the team to go over the feedback.

In both cases it’s usually hard to track iterations easily since context is lost after first iteration. The feedback itself becomes less directed and as keeping track of it becomes a nightmare. We’ve all been there. “What do you think of the color we used on the box on the left?” “My left? Stage left? This box? That box?” Notable is the tool which makes those communication blips go away.

Anyone who is developing a new website or maintaining an old website can use Notable to improve their website. The tool is used internally with your team in the following workflow:

1. Designer captures a site or uploads an image they are working on
2. Designer adds commentary and questions and shares them with Creative Director
3. Creative Director responds with their feedback and answers
4. Designer works through the feedback and posts an updated version pointing out the changes
5. Cycle continues by designer soliciting feedback from engineers and marketers on the team

Notable is used externally with your clients in the following workflow:

1. Designer captures a site they are working on
2. Designer shares the post with the client and asks them specific questions
3. The client responds by adding notes on the visual capture of the website
4. Designer works through the feedback and posts an updated version pointing out the changes
5. Cycle continues until you have a killer product.

What I really like about the tool is that it keeps feedback contextual and forces feedback givers to be specific. I also like the fact that it stores your history. Being a graphic designer has given me a small case of OCD in the form of me loving to delete things. As soon as I finish something, I delete it, as soon as I change something, I really want to delete the original. As you can imagine, this has once or twice been a bit of a problem.  Thankfully Notable keeps a history of your conversations and mark ups. Not only does that save delete-happy creatives, it can also save time by knowing what has already been covered. There is nothing more frustrating than a meeting of topics that have already been talked to death.

There are a few productivity apps which complement Notable greatly in helping folks create awesome websites faster and easier.

Clicktale

Clicktale is a great app for making data driven decisions around updates for your website. The tool provides the data behind how users actually interact with your website. Want to know which key strokes a visitor hit? Where they clicked? How about their mouse movement? All of this data is neatly reported in a customized report. Your argument for a feature on your website becomes concrete when you act on data vs. intuition.

Balsamiq

Planning a series of website screens demands cohesive and precise drawings. Balsamiq Mockups is great wireframing tool for quickly putting together visual representations of your interface. While wireframing with Balsamiq “feels like you’re drawing” the process is fast, easy, and requires no coding.

Remember the Milk

“Getting things done” has been a buzzword all over since David Allen presented the methodology in his book. Remember the Milk is the task list app to get stuff done in my opinion. The app gives you an Inbox list for all of your tasks as well as Sent list for all the tasks you sent other folks on your team. It’s one of the cleanest organization systems for a task list I have ever seen.

Notable and the rest of the apps I point out may not change the face of the design process as we know it, but what it will do, is make the task every single design has to do, a hell of a lot simpler.

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Notable: A Huge Leap in Communication

Use SlideDeck For:

• Product Tours
• Service Descriptions
• Explaining Complex Processes
• How-To Tutorials
• Feature Rich Slide Shows
• Landing Pages

SlideDeck is currently available as a customizable JavaScript Library. It takes only minutes to add to your website and is available as a plugin for jQuery 1.3+. See the usage documentation for more information.

Demo

SlideDeck has setup a sleek demo site for Basecamp. It shows you exactly how you could utilize their product. This could be super effective for employee training, new app training etc. The possibilities are indeed endless.

It’s very easy to identify and navigate through a SlideDeck presentation because of the tabs on the left and the windows that switch on the right. It’s an effortless tutorial, that puts the user in control of the speed they view it and whether they can come back to it or not.

More About SlideDeck

SlideDeck was created by a user experience design company, digital-telepathy. Digital-Telepathy stumbled into the concept when trying to simplify their own message and process. D-T uses SlideDeck to share ideas, processes and products in a clear and simple way.

Social

Twitter: Follow them

Facebook: Become a fan

The Giveaway:

How to Enter

• Follow @slidedeck on twitter
• Comment with what you would use it for.

The Details

• There will be 4 competition winners
• Contest will end this Friday at 11:59p EST.
• Winners will be announced on or before Monday

Winners

1. Zack C.
2. Juarez Filho
3. Jesse Anderson
4. Rob Simpson

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4 SlideDeck Pro Licenses up for grabs, comment to win. **Updated with winners**

The webs are full of inventive applications that, while not necessarily being vital to the day to day function of our routines, are valuable tools for keeping the creative mindset active and inspired! Odosketch, is one such application. We discovered this site recently thanks to one, @adellecharles, who turned us on to this creative little online outlet. Odosketch allows the user to either take the time and use the tools provided on the site to create their own drawings, or to click on an already completed drawing from the gallery to see a fast-play rendition of its creation. With intuitive usability, and a number of different tools at your disposal, Odosketch can provide hours of inspiring entertainment as you sort through the gallery or even prepare to add a sketch of your own to the collection. Either way, it promises to be a good time!

Below, we have gathered a few of our favorites from the massive gallery on the Odosketch site, which believe me, was no easy task selecting. So many interesting and unique pieces to choose from, that we had to narrow it down to just the handful we have for you here. We hope you enjoy this creative little online app and the showcase it has wrought as much as we have.

Showcase

That’s All Folks!

…No, really. That’s it. There is definitely more waiting for you at the site, but that’s all the Odosketch goodness we’ve got for you today. But if you have some time to kill or more inspiration to collect then swing by Odosketch and see what comes of it. We may do a feature later of reader created sketches if we get enough links in the comments to ones you all have done, but that will be later down the road.

An Added Word of Thanks

If you like this post and the other great content from Fuel Your Creativity then make sure you thank Firehost for all of their support. Firehost is a web hosting service built on the mission of supplying true peace of mind to their customers through advanced, multi-layered web based security for their information. With a professional staff of ‘web-savvy superheroes’ ready to tackle your web needs with a cache of expertise and range of dedicated services, it is no wonder this secure hosting alternative has made such a name for itself. If you are shopping for a new host or not, you owe to yourself, and your site, to check out what Firehost can do for you!

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An Ode to Odosketch!

Communication Tools

Yammer

Connect and share with the people in your company or organization. It’s like twitter but for companies. Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address.

Skype

Free calls, video calls and instant messaging over the internet.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application for twitter.

Netnewswire

RSS Reader for the mac. Nice UI.

Organization Tools

Things

Task management for the mac.

DropBox

Dropbox syncs your files online and across computers. Up to 2GB for free.

Wufoo

Great way to keep track of forms in a database.

Delicious

Organize all your bookmarks in one place and never lose your local bookmarks.

Curdbee

Web based billing via PayPal or Google Checkout. Free and simple!

Zendesk

Keep track of emails, feedback, requests & helpdesk system. This is one amazing tool and I will be writing a review on it within the coming months.

Design/Dev Tools

CSSEdit

CSS Editor with live preview built in.

Textmate

Code/text editor, simple!

Coda

Just getting into using Coda: CSS, text editor, file transfer and integrates nicely with Transmit.

Transmit

Best FTP client ever. (In my opinion of course!)

Paparazzi

Take screengrabs quickly and easily with just one window. I like that it’s a stand alone app & it runs quickly.

Firebug

Web development within Firefox.

ColorZilla

Eyedropper Firefox extension.

Scrnshots

Screenshots right from your desktop. Easily share, tag and upload!

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18 Tools I use as a Designer & Blogger

Image Spark enables people to instantly capture, tag and upload images to a community-based site. To make uploading images as easy as possible, they have created a FireFox plugin and a Mac application. You can see what’s inspiring others by browsing the community library. Image Spark also lets users drag images onto moodboards that they can share with their team to help determine the visual tone and style of any given project. Have client work you don’t want others seeing? Just mark them private when you upload them and they won’t be seen by others.

Image Spark lets you upload and create a library of images that inspire you in whatever it is you do. Whether you’re a fashion designer, web designer, or just redesigning your bathroom, Image Spark can help harness the visual direction of your projects. But it’s not just about collecting and storing images — you can converge images using Image Spark’s moodboards and help set the visual tone or style you’re after.

Upload Tools

Best of all: It’s free

Follow image spark on Twitter

If you check it out, let us you know what you think!

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Image Spark

Are you interested in creating animated flash advertisements for yourself or clients? If so, then this is the web site for you. Without any experience in flash or action script, you can create fully animated advertisements with all the bells and whistles on the cheap.

BannnerSnack.com is a web site that most anyone could have some use for. Continue reading to find out why.

Intro

When you first come to BannnerSnack.com you are welcomed by a very clean web site with all the frills of a “Web 2.0″ site.  You have the option of viewing examples of what you can do with their banner maker, signing up for a free account, or purchasing a premium account.

If you are new to Banner Snack, I would suggest signing up for a free account and trying out their banner maker before you go premium as you can freely create banners of almost any shape and size with tens of effects and transitions. Be aware though, that the free account does place a watermark on all of the banners you create.

Now that you have signed up for the free account, let’s get down to business.

Interface

The interface of Banner Snack closely resembles that of most flash programs, although missing some of the more advanced panels and libraries. When you first come to the interface you have the option of creating a new banner or viewing some of the public banners that have been created by other members. I would advise against viewing the public banners, as most of them are very simple and don’t do justice to what you can really accomplish with the banner maker.

Upon choosing to create a new banner, you are given a plethora of banner sizes to pick from. Or you can create your own custom size, along with customizing your canvas background with an image or color. One thing that did strike me as odd is that when you import an image as a background it is brought in at the proper size. Yet if you bring in an image as an object it is imported at about one quarter of it’s actual size. This is done so that an image fits within the canvas, but can be quite annoying when you are trying to bring in another image that will be a secondary background. The fix is as simple as dragging an anchor point out to your desired size, but you can have problems with your images losing their quality upon doing this.

Pros

• No experience necessary.
• Easy to use interface.
• Tens of effects & transitions.
• Great free membership for non-client advertisement creation.

Cons

• No “back” action. (Be careful of what moves you make.)
• Images come in at one fourth of actual size.
• Lacking precise control for filters. (A drop shadow is a drop shadow, no option for changing distance or opacity.)
• Possibility of being expensive. (If you aren’t going to use it frequently you may find their prices a little steep. It would be nice if they had a single pay-per-use option.)

Summary

Over all Banner Snack is a very useful tool for someone with no experience, or need for flash software. But if you have any professional use for it, a premium membership may come in handy, you just may find it a little pricey if you are only going to use it once in a month, and are paying $9. It would be nice if they gave an option to pay for a single banner creation. It also, would make the interface more complicated to use, but further options for some of the filters would be nice. I would prefer to be able to control how far away from an object my drop shadow is and how intense it is, without having to change the specifics of the parent object. By all means, head over to BannnerSnack.com and give it a try, overall I think it is worth it.

Video Walk Through

Below you can view a quick video walk through of how to use the Banner Maker.

BannerSnack.com Walk Through from AJ Troxell on Vimeo.

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Contest Details

We are giving away (3) licenses for BannerSnack. (2) Will be given away to people who tell us why you’d like to win in the comments below! That’s all you have to do. Contest will close Friday 23rd at 9p EST. Winners will be announced the Monday after. The last (1) license will be given away at our big Creative/Design Essentials Giveaway at the end of January, so stay tuned!

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Banner Snack Review & Contest

As Community Manager for a community-based creative website, I use many marketing tools to manage our blog, Twitter account, and other social networks to enhance the presence of our brand, as well as strengthen and form relationships with creatives worldwide.

Here are some great tools for social media, marketing + PR purposes that freelancers can also use to help increase their personal brand’s presence both online and offline, in no particular order:

1. Ping.fm
Ping.Fm is a “multicast” site that allows you to let all of your social networks know what you are doing without having to individually update each one. For you aspiring social media butterflies, Ping.Fm is a time saver, as you can update your statues, blogs, or micro-blogs all at once across Twitter, Liverjournal, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Wordpress, + more.

2. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great, professionally-oriented networking site that allows designers a lot of opportunities to market themselves. Whether it’s connecting with existing clients or finding new work, there are many ways for a designer to utilize the site. Asking clients for a recommendation on your profile boosts confidence with potential clients. By utilizing LinkedIn groups, designers can connect with fellow designers or seek out niche groups who may need design services. LinkedIn Answers also provides an opportunity for freelancers to find people looking for creative help.

3. Tweetdeck
Tweetdeck is a favorite amongst Twitter fiends. The Adobe AIR app makes it easy to divide your followers among groups. This feature is especially useful for several reasons. You can create niche groups to display certain Twitter members (i.e. “clients,” “designers,” “inspiration”) to keep up with specific topics. The ability to filter tweets by keywords is also useful for branding and promotion. When people say they “need design,” you can engage in a conversation, or if you have a tracker on your company name, you will be able to monitor what people are saying about you.

4. Retaggr
Retaggr is essentially a virtual business card that includes your entire online presence. Your Retaggr profile can be embedded into email signatures, blogs, and on other websites for people to see where you are located online. It helps take the guest work out for people to find you on other sites, allowing you to be more connected with your network.

5. SEOMoz Tools
Modern designers know that an online presence is undoubtedly important to have in today’s freelance world. Stay on top of your website / portfolio’s search engine optimization with the free tools from SEOMoz.org. These tools allow you to determine the strength of a website, whether or not pages are being indexed on the big search engines, and analyzing how targeted a page may be for specific keywords.

6. Google Analytics
Pie charts, graphs, and map overlays may seem boring, but Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool in tracking web metrics, determining referring websites, length of time spent on a site, what keywords were searched to get to a site, where your visitors are coming from, and more. By knowing these statistics, you can optimize against them. If people are coming to your site after searching “logo design” or are being referred via Twitter, then you are able to determine your strong and weak marketing points.

7. Shozu Desktop
Shozu Desktop is similar to Ping.Fm, but for photos and video. This website / application is known for making mobile media content easy to upload and distribute. Their desktop application is a great way to share photos or videos on your computer across over 30+ networks with one click, which is nice if you want to post a logo or illustration you’ve just created to multiple networks without having to update each site manually.

8. Pictobrowser
If coding isn’t your forte and you just want to display your best work, Pictobrowser is a way to convert your Flickr gallery into a portfolio. The easily customizable and embeddable app allows designers to showcase the work simply. Plus, it allows your portfolio to maintain the benefits of having the actual images live on Flickr. With group pools, tags, and ease of search, you never know who will stumble upon your work and want to hire you!

9. Mars Edit
Mars Edit is a powerful blog publishing tool made for Macs that allows for offline writing. The program plays nice with Wordpress, Moveable Type, Blogger, Drupal, and more blog publishing services. It’s organizational system allows for easy re-blogging, media file management (which can be extremely helpful when dealing with tons of images that can be re-used). The ability to write blogs while not connected to the internet is a huge benefit to busy freelancers on the go.

10. Yelp iPhone App
The Yelp iPhone app (or even mobile browser) is a great way to find good meeting places for clients. Especially when in an unfamiliar area, it’s great to read reviews and find out whether or not you are inviting clients to a nice environment. The “search nearby” functionality also allows you to find locations of interest. At a meeting in a coffee shop and need to fax something quickly? Yelp can locate the nearest FedEx/Kinkos. It’s also a great way to find + research local businesses that may need your design services.

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10 Useful Marketing Tools For Freelancers

This is broken up into 4 parts and to make this a useful article, I am asking the creative community to participate as much as possible to gain insight into the applications/process you use and/or even worth paying for. Your answers don’t have to be long just concise. Of course I will weigh in with what I use (in the comments below).

The first 3 parts received detailed responses with some very helpful information. I hope you’ll continue to weigh in with parts 4!

The 4 Essential Parts:

1. Project Management & Contacts
2. Invoicing, Time Tracking & Contracts
3. Collaboration & Proofing
4. Paid Services (non-management)

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4. Paid Services

Can be a paid web app or a paid app that you host yourself.
*Feel free to include services like hosting, domain names, basecamp – by (non-management I mean the focus of this article is not just management apps).

a. Which online paid Services do you use? (Ex. Flickr Pro, PSDtuts)
b. How much do the services cost a month or per year?
c. Do you prefer up front or small reoccurring costs?

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Paid Services / Creative Freelance Series

This is broken up into 4 parts and to make this a useful article, I am asking the creative community to participate as much as possible to gain insight into the applications/process you use and/or even worth paying for. Your answers don’t have to be long just concise. Of course I will weigh in with what I use (in the comments below).

The first 2 parts received detailed responses with some very helpful information. I hope you’ll continue to weigh in with parts 3-4!

The 4 Essential Parts:

1. Project Management & Contacts
2. Invoicing, Time Tracking & Contracts
3. Collaboration & Proofing / Approval
4. Paid Services (non-management)

–

3. Collaboration & Proofing / Approval
(ex. Mind Maps, GetSignOff, BackBoard )

The following questions cover both paid and non paid services:

a. Which tool do you use (if any) to collaborate on projects?
b. What do you use for managing the proofing (feedback) process and edits?
c. What process or tool do you use to get approval on projects?
d. What problems do you face in using your current processes?
e. Which tools / apps do you wish would communicate with each other?

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Collaboration & Proofing / Creative Freelance Series

This is broken up into 4 parts and to make this a useful article, I am asking the creative community to participate as much as possible to gain insight into the applications/process you use and/or even worth paying for. Your answers don’t have to be long just concise. Of course I will weigh in with what I use (in the comments below).

The first part received detailed response with some very helpful information. I hope you’ll continue to weigh in with parts 2-4!

The 4 Essential Parts:

1. Project Management & Contacts
2. Invoicing, Time Tracking & Contracts
3. Collaboration / Proofing
4. Paid Services (non-management)

–

2. Invoicing, Time Tracking & Contracts

The following questions cover both paid and non paid services:

a. What applications do you use for billing/invoicing?
b. How do you receive payment (Check, Cash, Paypal etc)?
c. What applications do you use for tracking your time?
d. How do you send contracts to clients?
e. What problems do you face in using your current application(s)?
f. Which tools / apps do you wish would communicate with each other?
g. Is there an application that doesn’t exist that you wish was available?

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Invoicing, Time Tracking & Contracts / Creative Freelance Series

This Creative Freelance Series on Fuel Your Creativity is broken up into 4 parts and to make this a useful article, I am asking the creative community to participate as much as possible to gain insight into the applications you use and/or even worth paying for. Your answers don’t have to be long just concise. Of course I will weigh in with what I use (in the comments below).

The 4 Essential Parts:

1. Project Management & Contacts
2. Billing / Invoicing / Contracts
3. Collaboration & Proofing / Approval
4. Paid Services (non-management)

–

1. Project Management & Contacts
(ex. Basecamp + Highrise)

The following questions cover both paid and non paid services:

a. What applications do you use for project management?
b. What components are essential in a project management tool?
c. Do you email updates to the client or use the project management app? Do your Clients?
d. What problems do you face in using your current application?
e. What application do you use to manage contacts?
f. Which tools / apps do you wish would communicate with each other?
g. Is there a tool that doesn’t exist that you wish was available?

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Project Management Apps / Creative Freelance Series

For the budding photographer who wants to step up his game (or the individual who wants to increase his chances of getting a date by doing some basic editing to the photos he’s putting on online dating sites), these are the best image-editing applications available online for free.

Read the rest of this article via #. Thanks to cartridgesave for this great roundup.

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30 Of The Best Free Web-based Image Editing Apps

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100+ Toolset for Freelancer’s

First let’s talk about Remember the Milk. The basic app is free and works really well. I can schedule tasks, reminders and I even put when my bills are due so that I am reminded on a daily basis. You can integrate it within gmail, that’s actually my favorite feature since I barely use a calendar program, it’s just easier since I am checking my email all the time. You can organize anyway your heart desires, get reminded through SMS, email and IM. I highly recommend checking out this app if your into GTD.

Next up…SHIFD. It’s currently in beta but you can sign up on their website. I’m new to this app so I will have to add more on this one later. As far as I can tell it’s a pretty simple interface, very clean looking and sorts items by Notes, Places & Links. You can also use the tag feature. This app is probably for you if you use more than one computer and a phone with web features.

If you have anything to add to this GTD list that looks promising, drop me a comment.

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GTD Apps