attention Kansas drivers

Are you heading to the DMV? If so, I wish you short lines, helpful and friendly employees, and a photo that resembles more of you, less of the haunting-form-of-self that you wouldn't recognize even on a bad day.

Even if all the above wishes were to come true, there is yet another thing that would be new to this visit—the overall design of the license itself.




BEFORE
Courtesy Kansas Department of Revenue





AFTER
Courtesy Kansas Department of Revenue



The new license design boasts numerous security measures which make it even harder for fakes to be produced. According to a news release from Fox 4 News KC, those updates include:        

• Ultra-violet image of the cardholder’s portrait and date of birth on the back of the card (viewable with UV light)
• Multi-colored, highly detailed holograms
• Highly detailed ultra-violet (UV) image of the state flower (viewable with UV light)
• Two ghost images of the cardholder’s portrait in addition to the conventional photograph
• Tactile printing that you can feel

You had me at tactile printing!

As mentioned before, Kansas’ driver’s license and ID card design was last changed in 2004; states typically change their designs every four to six years.

"The new Kansas driver’s license card is among the most secure in the country," said Alcoholic Beverage Control Director Dean Reynoldson, who also oversees the department’s Office of Special Investigations, which investigates driver’s license fraud. "The card, combined with a new more secure driver’s license and ID card application process, makes Kansas one of the most difficult states to commit driver’s license or identification card fraud."

One thing hasn't changed—the format for printing cards for drivers who are under 21 years of age. Those licenses will remain in a vertical format so it's easier to tell if the cardholder is of a legal drinking age or not.



the 'under 21' license
Courtesy Kansas Department of Revenue



pumpkin type

Freshly Carved Pumpkin Typeface

by Jessica Kuhn for How Magazine Blog

One Kentucky-based advertising and branding agency combined their flair for creativity and love of Halloween to create a typeface carved from pumpkins. Intrinzic, the firm that brought this ghoulish typeface to life, carved each letter and character from slabs of ripe pumpkins, which were gathered from a family farm in the rolling hills of Kentucky.

In a true collaborative fashion, each employee created a letter of the alphabet for what they call Pumpkin Face. Check out the results below!

Read more: Freshly Carved Pumpkin Typeface | HOW Magazine Blog http://blog.howdesign.com/typography/pumpkin-typeface/#ixzz2Au0lBrk6

hold on tight, Kansas

According to the Associated Press, Kansas driver's licenses are about to get a new look and some new features.

The Department of Revenue is unveiling the new design at an event Tuesday with Governor Sam Brownback and Revenue Secretary Nick Jordan.

Motorists will begin receiving the new licenses this week. Among the elements are new security features to protect against identity theft or illegal duplication.

Revenue Department spokeswoman Jeannine Koranda says Kansas updates its driver's licenses every four to six years as technology changes.

Stay tuned for the results...

new colors!

Pantone has added 336 brand new colours to its Pantone Plus series, giving designers more choice and flexibility when it comes to creative work

The 336 new colours - which range from pale pastels to intense deep tones - bring the total number of hue variations in the Pantone Plus series to 1,677 in both coated and uncoated formats. Pantone Plus is the relatively new name for the 50-year-old Pantone Matching System, which, was extensively revamped in March 2010.

Pantone says the new colours were inspired by the Pantone Goe System, which brings new ink combinations and depth to its colour library. “The Goe System represents important technical improvements in the area of ink film consistency and coatability and these benefits have migrated to the 336 New Colours,” Pantone said in a press statement. “Formulated for consistent ink-film thickness, the 336 New Colours can be easily reproduced by printers worldwide.”

Pantone guide updates

To help designers and other creative pros discover and use the new colours, Pantone is updated its range of colour guides, both as standalone volumes and as supplements to existing guides. It’s also rolling out updated versions of its Pantone Colour Manager Software (May 4th) and myPantone iPhone and Android apps (early June). The company’s Capsure system will be updated with the new colours by the end of May.

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source: Robert Mead-Green  |  As Computer Arts' deputy editor, Robert writes, commissions and edits a whole bunch of content for the magazine, ranging from cover features and studio profiles to tutorials and our 16-page Manual section. He's also a frequent contributor to the Computer Arts blog. When he's not doing his day job he also writes for several other Future Publishing titles including MacFormat and Tap. In the little spare time Rob has left he tries sleeping, toying with his Mac and iPhone or playing Harry Potter and the Peppa Pig Pirates of the Star Wars Caribbean with his kids.

do you follow?

This is a book review of sorts. The book:

344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide

to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment.

[It] was the most popular book amongst Brain Pickings readers this year — a delightful pocket-sized compendium of flowcharts and lists to help you figure out life’s big answers by ever-inventive designer Stefan G. Bucher, he of You Deserve a Medal and Daily Monster fame.

Besides Bucher’s own questions, the tiny but potent handbook features contributions from 36 beloved creators across various disciplines, including Brain Pickings favorites Christoph Niemann, Stefan Sagmeister, Marian Bantjes, Doyald Young, and Jakob Trollbäck.

Check out what lies within.

Let’s be clear: I want this book to be useful to you. There are many great how-to books and biographies out there, and even more gorgeous collections of current and classic work to awe and inspire. But looking at catalogs of artistic success won’t make you a better artist any more than looking at photos of healthy people will cure your cold. You’ve got to take action!”

—Stefan G. Bucher

“If you keep this book in mint condition, I’ve failed,” says Bucher.

We are all different people, but we face a lot of the same questions. The point of this book is to give you lots of questions you can use to look at your life — in a new way, with a different perspective, or maybe just in more detail than you have before — so you can find out how you work, what you want to do, and how you can get it done in a way that works for you. Specifically.”

—Stefan G. Bucher

[source: Maria Popova]

Page images copyright © 2012. Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders
Note: you can click on the images for a larger view.

photography

Photography is a true passion of mine. That said, hours spent devouring an issue of National Geographic is never time 'lost.' The National Geographic photo contest is upon us...the deadline for entries for this year's is November 30.

Photographers of all skill levels (last year more than 16,000 images submitted by photographers from 130 countries) enter photographs in three categories: Nature, People and Places. The photographs are judged on creativity and photographic quality by a panel of experts. There is one first place winner in each category and a grand prize winner as well. Follow this link to see 54 amazing moments as selected from each of the 3 categories. Here are a few of my favorites..




LONE TREE YELLOWSTONE: A solitary tree surviving another harsh winter in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
(Photo and caption by Anita Erdmann/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)




IS HE STILL THERE?!: One morning while on the Big Island of Hawaii, i exploring my surroundings to see if i could find something to photograph. I almost went back inside when something on this huge palm tree leaf caught my eye. I stayed around and it was this little gecko, startled by my presence he was hidden between the ridges of the leaf. He would pop his head up periodically to check his surroundings, as soon as he saw i was still there he would hide again. We played this game for a while until i got the shot. Holualoa big Island, Hawaii.
(Photo and caption by Lorenzo Menendez/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)





FLESH AND BONES: In a world where no one understands the importance of nature, all that is left of our nature is just these flesh & bones. Toronto, Canada.
(Photo and caption by Amirhassan Farokhpour/Nature/National Geographic Photo Contest)

 


LOVE OF PARENTS: The emperor penguins fight for survival and to protect their only baby in the frozen Antarctic ice desert. Antarctica: Atka Bay, Weddell Sea.
(Photo and caption by Claus Possberg/National Geographic Photo Contest)




MY OWN LIGHT: Pinki Kundu, a 13 yrs old girl is suffering from a chronic disease & is being treated in Mother Teresa TB Hospital in Kolkata.She is under CAT 1 drug therapy & is doing well.The day I photographed her she was very hopeful mood that she would be returning back to her parent soon. Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
(Photo and caption by Saibal Gupta/People/National Geographic Photo Contest)



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Photo 47 never did load on my computer...did you see it?

Which photo(s) was your favorite?

dribbble & such

While reading an article about the difference between art and design (as it relates to websites) I followed a separate link and found more than I was bargaining for. What started as a reading exercise quickly became much more. Dribbble what? Enter the writer's philosophical standpoint on art vs. design (the age-old argument). I'll recap some highlights but click here for the entire article.

Dribbble in 24 Seconds

I find it hard to believe that any designer that’s even slightly in touch with the design community hasn’t heard of Dribbble yet. But in case you haven’t, let me quickly fill you in.

Dribbble, in its simplest form, is a community site designed to give creatives a platform for showing a small snapshot (400×300 pixels or less to be precise) of designs they’re currently working on.

Rather than upload a snapshot of a finished design or uploading snapshots solely meant for the Dribbble community, the creators of the site intended Dribbble to be used as a sort of "Twitter for creatives" — a feed of what they’re doing right now.

Content on Dribbble is uploaded by players in these three forms:

1. Shot: When a player uploads an image of 400x300px or smaller for people to view, comment or mark as a favorite
2. Rebound: When a player takes a previous shot (either their own or another) and changes that image in a way they feel enhances the original
3. Competition: Usually seen as rebounds, a competition will have a design brief steering the designer towards creating a specific image

How Dribbble Is Being Used By Some

The problem I’m seeing on Dribbble is that the design work I often encounter isn’t design at all; they’re art.
People will have their own list of differences between art and design. For me, the difference is simply one of purpose.

Art may often lack a function; it may be created for no other purpose than to look good or to provoke emotions. Thus, art can often prioritize form (aesthetics) over function.

Design, on the other hand, must work functionally to suit a myriad of purposes. A design is meant to be used by those who encounter it; whether it’s in the innovative design of a laptop or as a way to attain information.

Are most images being uploaded to Dribbble design or art? From what I see, many of the shots fall under the latter category.

Even worse, many snapshots are being created simply to be uploaded for admiration on Dribbble.

Why are some players creating designs that will never be used or seen outside of Dribbble? Much of it appears to be a game of vanity and competition. Rather than spend time creating work within the constraints of a client brief, some designers feel they can create their best work without real-world constraints and in a timeframe that allows them to create something simply for the purposes of eye candy. Some designers seem only concerned with showing off their skills in idealistic forms. Most of the work appearing on Dribbble is generally fantastic and wonderful to look at, but so are many art pieces in an art gallery.

As I mentioned earlier, I use Dribbble as a source of inspiration. I’m willing to bet many other designers do as well. With so much art being uploaded to Dribbble, coupled with its ubiquity and authoritative standing in the industry, it’s easy to see that it can have an influence on the direction of Design.

The web design industry, in particular, has reached a point where we’re capable of creating such complexity in our work that the edges between Art and Design can easily be blurred if we choose to do so.

With only milliseconds to make an impression, we’re also under constant pressure to produce visually impressive websites to capture the attention of visitors. But is this shift towards form over function good for Design and its users? Are site performance, usability, functionality and purpose being sacrificed over artistic and subjective choices?

This is an issue I’m having to deal with in my own work, and luckily clients are there to keep me grounded. But Dribbble is making it difficult for me not be tempted to jump on the bandwagon of form over function; work that you couldn’t possibly recreate within real-world industry best practices, deadlines, budgets, and demands.

So rather than take from Dribbble the ideas that provide unique solutions to design problems, some designers are instead absorbing the aesthetic beauty and complexity of the designs being posted, instead of remarking on the function and purpose of the design. A quick look at comments on popular snapshots on Dribbble will show you that the discussions are around aesthetics and not about design.

I think the situation affects new designers the most; those not yet experienced with the demands of real projects. They can see the snapshots being uploaded on the site as being reflective of what their peers are doing right now and assume that’s what Design is. They may mistake work being presented on the site as an indication of the work they should be producing.

 

It’s Not Dribbble’s Fault

It’s not the fault of the fine creators of Dribbble; they created a site that could facilitate the purpose they set out: To provide a social platform that allows designers and creatives to share "small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on."

Instead, it’s down to the players to use the site under the spirit in which it was created for.

[source: Kean Richmond is a full-time web designer and developer based in Yorkshire, UK. Working as a generalist in most areas of web design and development he currently works at Bronco, tweets as @keanrichmond and rants on his personal blog.]