To be a world explorer by Maria Popova “Every morning when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift!” As a longtime fan of guerrilla artist and illustrator Keri Smith’ s Wreck This Box set of interactive journals, part of these 7 favorite activity books for grown-ups , I was delighted to discover her How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum ( public library ) — a wonderful compendium of 59 ideas for how to get creatively unstuck by engaging with everyday objects and your surroundings in novel ways. From mapping found sounds to learning the language of trees to turning time observation into art, these playful and poetic micro-projects aren’t just a simple creativity booster — they’re potent training for what Buddhism would call “living from presence” and inhabiting your life more fully. It all began with this simple list, which Smith scribbled on a piece of paper in the middle a sleepless night in 2007:
Online Charts Builder Hohli Online Charts Builder New version: Try new version of Charts Builder, it based on new Google Charts API Load From Image URL: Chart Data can't equal to original, but very similar to it. The Rise of the New Groupthink But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature. One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation.
46 Tools To Make Infographics In The Classroom Infographics are interesting–a mash of (hopefully) easily-consumed visuals (so, symbols, shapes, and images) and added relevant character-based data (so, numbers, words, and brief sentences). The learning application for them is clear, with many academic standards–including the Common Core standards–requiring teachers to use a variety of media forms, charts, and other data for both information reading as well as general fluency. It’s curious they haven’t really “caught on” in schools considering how well they bridge both the old-form textbook habit of cramming tons of information into a small space, while also neatly overlapping with the dynamic and digital world. So if you want to try to make infographics–or better yet have students make them–where do you start? The 46 tools below, curated by Faisal Khan, are a good place to start.
Painting by Numbers Data Visualisation may be a hot topic right now but a new poster show at London's Transport Museum reminds us that getting complex information over in attractive ways is not a new challenge for the art director or designer Figures for 1923, by Charles Shepard, 1924 Painting by numbers - making sense of statistics will feature 20 London Underground posters, many dating back to the 1930s or earlier. The posters were designed not only to promote the benefits of travelling by London Transport but also in order to wow the travelling public with details of the remarkable service they were (hopefully) enjoying every day. Here, Speed, by Alfred Leete from 1915 reminds passengers of the dizzying speeds possible on the Tube, compared to alternatives of the time.
12 Most Striking Tendencies of Creative People Ever wonder what makes those wacky, creative types tick? How is it that some people seem to come up with all kinds of interesting, original work while the rest of us trudge along in our daily routines? Creative people are different because they operate a little differently. They: 1. Are easily bored How Does Google Work? Learn How Google Works: Search Engine + AdWords The following infographic was created years ago when Google had a content-first focus on search. In the years since then, the rise of mobile devices has caused Google to shift to a user-first approach to search. We created a newer infographic to reflect the modern search landscape here. Vote on Hacker News, or Bookmark this on Delicious
'How Creativity Works': It's All In Your Imagination iStockphoto.com What makes people creative? What gives some of us the ability to create work that captivates the eyes, minds and hearts of others? Digital Artist - The Best in Digital Art - Tips, Tricks and Advice Looking for disc files? Click here Improve your portrait paintings by ensuring you get the perfect hues for your skin Mix textures with illustrations for realistic fantasy maps Create authentic demons by sourcing ideas from traditional and modern mythology Take inspiration from winter and start working on a character created out of ice Quick tip for drawing the mythical hippogriff Use this great tip for improving your steampunk pictures by ensuring your metals gleam A quick tip for the best way to use colour in your manga work Learn how to draw convincing evil witch poses in issue 39 of Fantasy Artist Immerse yourself in Frazetta's style and paint better fantasy femme characters This Japanese digital art program is popular with manga artists. We demonstrate the basics of how to find your way around it
How to Find Your Creative Sweet Spot nice try. the research cited doesn't back up the claims made, let alone the prescription. You're likely most creative when you're groggy: The cited study didn't actually measure creativity. Creative problem solving is typically assessed by the use of ill-defined problems, which don't have a clear, or single, right answer. Insight problems like those used by Wieth & Zacks incorporate logic and have a single right answer. 40 brilliant design portfolios to inspire you The internet is full of thousands and thousands of awe-inspiring creative resumes and design portfolios. To stand out in this tough market, it's important to make your online portfolio as impressive as you can. It's not just the examples of work that need to blow away your potential clients (although they do help) it's the way they're presented. You don't have to be a superstar creative director or web designer; a touch of creativity and innovative thinking will get you a long way. And there are plenty of free online tools, such as Behance, to help you build a portfolio without any coding knowledge.
Resources - The Graphic Mac You may recall that I’ve written about Advise in the past, but they’ve changed their name and domain to adJelly. If you missed my previous write-up about them, adJelly offers a fantastic collection of specs for all the most popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. You simply select the social media site you’re creating ads, images or graphics for in the left column and you’re presented with all the specs you’ll need. The site is particularly useful for designers because sites like Facebook offer numerous options for sizes. For instance, Facebook offers sizes for single image ads, carousel ads, video ads, video slideshow ads, cover and profile images, post images, event images and more.
#56 – Creative thinking hacks All of us possess everything necessary to be more creative. The problem is we’ve been trained away from our creative instincts by schools, parents, movies and workplaces. The word creativity is frequently inflated by association, frequently appearing with overused, hype-laden words such as genius, brilliance, revolution and innovation. Hype mongers and creative intimidators throw those labels around like candy, scaring most people out of their own natural creative instincts.