In this Filmspiration installment we’re curating all the animated shorts nominated for the latest edition of the Oscar Movie Awards, starting with Logorama – this year’s winner! Let us know what you think about this edition of the Oscars, and what’s your favorite short movie.

Logorama | Directed by François Alaux (France) | 16 min

Spectacular car chases, an intense hostage crisis, wild animals rampaging through the city and even more in Logorama!

French Roast | Directed by Fabrice O. Joubert (France) | 8 min

In a fancy Parisian Café, an uptight businessman is about to pay the check when he finds out that he has lost his wallet. To buy some time he decides to order more coffee.

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty | Directed by Nicky Phelan (Ireland) | 6 min

Granny O’Grimm, a seemingly sweet old lady, loses the plot as she tells her version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ to her terrified granddaughter.

The Lady And The Reaper | Directed by Juan Recio Gracia (Spain) | 8 min

A sweet old lady lives alone on her farm, waiting for death so that she can see her beloved husband once again. One night, she is invited to enter death’s domain, but someone will ruin it for her.

A Matter Of Loaf And Death | Directed by Nick Park (U.K.) | 30 min

Wallace & Gromit are back! They’ve started a new bread baking business, but Gromit is concerned by the news that a dozen local bakers have ‘disappeared’ this year and turns sleuth to solve the escalating murder mystery – in what quickly becomes A Matter of Loaf and Death.

Bonus: Wallace & Gromit – A Matter of Loaf & Death – How They Donut (The Making of)

A glimpse behind the scenes at Aardman as they make Wallace & Gromit – A Matter of Loaf & Death

And hey, what’s your favorite?

MediaLoot is brand new site created by Jon Phillips and Mason Hipp. It would be best described as an online toolbox of premium design resources. It is a subscription-based site offering resources to designers and artists including icons, textures, vectors, print templates, etc…

We have partnered with them to give away 3 one-year accounts to InspiredMag readers, to celebrate the launch of MediaLoot.

About MediaLoot

A one-month subscription to MediaLoot normally costs $29, but to start things off with a bang they have decided to make it $14 for a while (so even if you don’t win, joining is still quite a deal). Members are allowed to download everything in their catalog and they will be releasing new resources on a regular basis, many times per month! In fact, members will even be able to request new resources and interact with other designers on their forums and ‘vote’ page.

Giveaway Details

The giveaway is open to international readers and ends on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at midnight GMT.

In order to be entered to win, simply suggest some resources that you think MediaLoot should have. It can be very broad, like textures or brushes, or you can suggest more specific resources, like grunge business card templates or wood textured icons for example.

So here’s what you should do:

• simply leave a comment below with your resource suggestions
• make sure you follow MediaLoot on Twitter
• tweet this – Win a Free One-Year Account To @MediaLoot from @InspiredMag http://inspiredm.com/8VA0 RT to enter!

Please make sure you leave your real name and a valid email address when you leave your comment so we can validate the entries and contact the winners.

Good luck everyone!

Our guest today – Dave Thackeray fuels ordinary people with extraordinary ideas to be the best. He’s a pen for hire and a higher pen you’ll never find. Join him on his quest to write a blog post of note every day until 2011.

If you’re a web designer – should I say, if you’re not, what the hell are you doing here?! – then let’s join hands and pray that our next project doesn’t end up like this.

I remember my first web design job. And as you know, I’m not even a designer, which as you can imagine, posed a significant challenge to my inner strength.

It went exactly like that cartoon. No excuses, no concessions. My naivety versus the client’s ignorance of customer wants and needs.

It was like Clash of the Titans, in reverse. We were both at the bottom of our game, technically-speaking, and thankfully I’ve just about put the elephant back in the bottle, to coin a never-before-used phrase.

This situation perfectly defines one road we should never choose to tread. In reality, it’s binary: there are two kinds of designers at opposite ends of the scale. There are those, like me, like your man lumbered with the Boyd’s Toast Store brief, who will go out of their way to placate even the most granular of client requests. The smile is often real, and only occasionally can you discern the sound of gnashing teeth behind the complicit veneer.

And there are artists to whom customer service is a redundant art. You employed me because I’m the best you ever had, biyatch. Now beg me to finish this job else I’ll wreak emotional havoc on you, your company, and everyone you ever met. So there.

Which means there are few who know the score. Who understand what it takes to complete a job that not only matches the client’s expectations, but satisfies your lust for career and creative development. And you know why? It’s because we fear to fail.

If you’re overly sycophantic, you fear your skills are not in line with what is asked of you. You’re concerned someone might find you out.

If you deny the client basic human decency, you’re living in fear brought on by insecurity and angst. You fear the acknowledgement of your insecurity, and therefore the failure to break down barriers and address the remit that is your own art.

There is a Third Way. Few know it, even fewer choose to follow it. It’s called minimalism, and it’s about to change the way you do business, forever.

And its very core, it is making sure that everything you do is to benefit you, and your client. No chasing tails. No harking back to moans and gripes and being bewildered and confronted by demons of the past. Only looking forward, being confident in your own abilities and making sure that, from the moment you wake up to the moment you hit the bar (this is your moment, damn it, and even if you spill that JD down your Santana t-shirt, it doesn’t the hell matter because you’re on Mr Downtime now) everything – every little, last thing – is meaningful and relevant.

To add value you have to focus on the art of minimalism. Minimalism is a concept best lived by artisans, the creative types like you who can, should, adapt to every change in circumstance with delight. Your mind is inadvertently transient, in a perfect state of flux and flow. This is why you can best eschew minimalism. For those stuck in their ways, doing what it takes to get the job done in the most efficient yet effective way possible is about as familiar as Darth Vader in a three-way with Roseanne Barr and Nicolas Cage.

For you, it is your birthright. And it’s the art of minimalism.

Understand prior to shrieking banshee-like that minimalism is not about living frugally, but it does involve going back to basics.

Everett Brogue has written a stellar book on the basics of thrifty thinking for maximum gain. It’s only a few quid/dollars/Martian phringles, but what’s better than that is you can get the first 30 pages free  here. I’m not selling you some affiliate hokum here – there’s no benefit for me. But I do hope that indirectly I’m helping to extract something incredible value from inside you that will last you a lifetime and totally change your mindset. That’s where I get the kickback, by helping to evolve your psyche.

Why, Dave, why the hell is this so relevant to me as a creative? I need more to achieve more – I need so much stimulus. Don’t leave me here, alone!

I’ll tell you exactly why, my favourite worshipper of cake and Absinthe. Minimalism at its core is about focusing on your passion, not being bogged down by baggage. Everett’s a photographer, and a damn fine one at that.

Minimalism is:

• Ditching the grind of 9-5 in favour of opening your eyes.
• Maxxing out your time while killing the constant distractions of email and social media. Check the damn thing twice a day, will you? Autorespond with a ‘I’m being ultra-efficient and will only be checking your messages at 11am and 3pm. Anything urgent, contact me by phone. (just like the old days when we got stuff done)
• Having the courage to make decisions – and changes – to better yourself
• Ridding the valueless tasks in favour of automation. At its most fundamental we’re talking things like AutoHotkey to macrotize your computing processes;
• Sharing and delegating the load.

I want to stop there to tell you a little bit about why Google Wave is your saviour when it comes to collaboration. You know how buzzed I am about collaboration, despite it sounding a bit like cauliflower, which I don’t like at all.

Imagine starting each day with a roadmap that you can contribute to, change, update, enhance, that colleagues can dive into to instantly understand the big picture – how your world is progressing. This is the stuff of cyborgs and Spocks. It’s also the world we live in, and its alibi is Google Wave.

Google Wave also works beautifully in replacing email as your communication of choice. An important distinction, here: Wave relates directly to the job in hand; email does not. Wave can stay on track; email, well, you know the score.

The Relationship Value of minimalism is infinite. You stay on track. You have more time to work on adding value to every project you have in hand.

Minimalism in the context of a project is this: do only what’s asked of you, but do it better than anyone else. Look around and the latest trend is to overdeliver with fancy crenellations and decorations to make the client go ooh. The ooh is a temporary state. When it gets down to the skinny, you only give extras to compensate for the lack of jazz at the heart of the project that’s been commissioned. The long-term oohs of a core job well done far outweigh the temporary nature of superficial offerings.

Minimalism means not taking jobs with Boyd’s Toast Store and being a delighted – and progressive – artist.

Minimalism is the future of you and me.

Today we have the honor to offer our readers a free chapter from a stunning new book – 10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives – by Alex Mathers of Red Lemon Club. Hands down the most complete and entertaining e-book about online promotion & social marketing for designers & bloggers. A must read for every creative!

I doubt many of you haven’t heard of the use of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace in building networks and connecting with others.

They are of real value in not only this, but in storing, recording and sharing files, gaining access to information, being inspired, engaging in discussion, advertis­ing, receiving advice from experts in your field, making announcements and sharing updates. Of course, all of this will prove very significant for promoting yourself and your work.

There are so many relatively novel things that has been brought along with social media that will enable you to put your self promotional efforts into super-drive.

What is social media, and where does networking fit in?

Social media is media that is shared through online social interaction.

Highly accessible and scalable publishing platforms like Facebook, Digg, and Twitter have enabled for this kind of interaction to take place on a huge and ever-growing scale.

Social networking sites form part of the social media arena, but are more specifically tailored and structured for networking. All social media sites enable networking and interaction to varying levels, for example, social bookmark­ing/news sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon, which are primarily for internet users to share, search and manage bookmarks of sites, as opposed to being primarily used for networking (more social networking and bookmarking sites are listed in the back of this book in sections R13 and R14).

The methods in this particular step focus on four of the current main social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

The exciting thing about it all is the rate at which social media sites are growing, particularly the current big networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

At the time of writing, Facebook is the second most visited site on the planet, with well over 300 million registered users. Both MySpace and Twitter’s traffic levels are in the top fifteen of all sites, with Twitter’s rate of growth at a stagger­ing 1,382% year-on-year in February 2009 (source: mashable.com). LinkedIn has over 50 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories across the globe.

So, you can see that engaging with these networking platforms, having access to the millions of active and targeted members within them, and addressing all four stages in the sales cycle in the process, can potentially yield some signifi­cant benefits for boosting promotion and attracting clients, if harnessed properly.

I’m going to run through how to get set up effectively with each of the main social networking sites starting with Facebook. You don’t need to get set up on all of them, but doing so will greatly benefit your promotional campaign.

We’ll look at exactly how to set up and best optimize your accounts on these sites to best make use of them.

Getting set up with Facebook

What exactly is Facebook, and why would I use it for promotion?

Facebook is essentially an online means to network with friends, fans and col­leagues.

It’s primary components are the homepage, containing aggregated updates from all your contacts, your profile page, containing your information, your activity and your wall. In effectively promoting yourself through Facebook, we will be focusing on setting up a fan page as well, which is to have a place to drive your fans without a limit, whereas there is a limit on the number of friends you can have (currently 5000).

What Facebook enables you to do is connect with relevant and key people; build relationships with them; create exposure in front of them; expand your network; build traffic to your sites; showcase and store your work and other content, and much more. We will be treating Facebook purely as a marketing tool here, and don’t worry about mixing private and public elements, as we will come to that.

With so many members, you’ll need to use Facebook and its tools in just the right ways, in order to make use of its promotional power.

Set up your personal profile

It is important to have properly set up a profile page for the purposes of adding credibility and building trust amongst those you engage with on Facebook. It also acts as the platform from which you add new contacts as friends, so that you can grow your network.

If you haven’t yet got a personal profile on Facebook, i.e. you don’t have an account, go to Facebook.com and fill in the details it asks for.

If you don’t want a personal profile, and simply want to set up a business page, you can click the link below the sign up area that says: ‘to create a page for a celebrity, band or business, click here’.

Add a decent profile picture, ideally of your face and one that you use consis­tently in association with all your online promotional work.

Add a mini bio in the box beneath your picture. Click on the pencil symbol and, in the first person, briefly introduce yourself and the work you do. You could add a brief description of your referral policy and link to your site’s referral policy declaration on your base.

Fill in the information on the info page including your web links. Put your links within your website contact details in the info tab, as well as in the sidebar bio box on the left beneath your personal introduction if you want (not forgetting to use the full web address including http://, otherwise they won’t work).

I would recommend putting in your interests, favourite films and so on in there, for the sake of appearing human and building trust. Having a personal feel will make it more likely for people to confirm you as a friend/contact later on when they check out your profile before confirming.

Privacy settings: Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Profile Information to make sure your profile privacy is addressed. You might want to hide personal photos from people you add, and you can customize exactly who it is that sees certain photos.

You can tailor your privacy very specifically with Facebook, so tweak the settings so that you are happy with everything. I would suggest allowing new people to post on your wall, as this encourages interaction and relationship building, and will come up on that person’s news feed whenever they interact too, creating further exposure for your own wall. You can always delete unnec­essary posts from others.

Have a look through the other privacy settings including Privacy Settings > Search and make sure you are visible to everyone searching for you and that you allow your profile to be indexed in public search results on search engines (unless you want to remain more private, then have this box unchecked).

Put together a photo or video album that contains the best of your portfolio or other work-related media for all to see. You would do this by clicking on the Photos tab and choosing to Create a Photo Album or clicking the + tab, scrolling to the video icon, then choosing to Upload Video.

Get rid of unnecessary clutter from your profile page, especially games and unnecessary applications. You need to view Facebook as a fairly personal but still professional web presence for your brand.

Set up options to import content from some sites through the Options button above your profile wall > Settings then choosing sites you have a presence on that you want to import from, and entering your sign up details so that they can be recognized as your accounts.

Import your blog feed to your profile wall. In the search bar, search for ‘Notes‘and with ‘Applications‘ highlighted, click View Application next to the Notes application then Go to Application. On this page, go to Import a Blog and enter the blog site or blog feed address (which you set up at feedburner.com) into the box and click Start Importing and then once happy with the feed preview Confirm Import.

Add relevant apps by searching for apps within the search bar and being sure ‘Applications’ is highlighted in the menu on the left. You might want to add your Twitter feed or your LinkedIn profile to your profile for example.

You can add these newly installed apps to your boxes tab or elsewhere on your profile. One way of doing this is by clicking the + button on your tabs bar above your wall, and finding the app to incorporate into your profile. Think about apps that will add value and relevant content to your profile, as these will ultimately be seen on the news feeds being seen by your contacts.

Add a mailing list opt-in box to your profile by searching for and installing the app called profile html. Copy and paste the opt-in box code given to you by your mailing list auto-responder service like Aweber into the application’s profile box (as opposed to the tab, so that it appears in your profile’s sidebar), preview to test, then submit. You may have to play around a bit with the design so that it fits.

If you find your opt-in box does not appear on your wall, but in your opt-in box’s tab, just click the pencil that appears on the tab, and select Move to Wall Tab.

Customize your Facebook homepage

This is the default non-profile area which you see on clicking either the Facebook logo button top left, or the Home button in the header. This area shows the combined updates and feeds of all your contacts in a micro-blog format, with newest updates at the top. It is also a place where you can keep track of upcoming birthdays and events, as well as various requests.

Set up friends lists

Especially once you have many key contacts, you’ll want to get in front of specific people and you’ll want to have a news feed on your home page that is not full of clutter and unhelpful updates.

Setting up lists allows you to sort people into groups, whose updates you can show or hide as you specify. You’ll want to make a list of people that you pur­posefully want to interact with and engage.

Click Friends in the menu on the left side of your homepage and click the button that says Create a list. Add your key contacts to the list from your list of already confirmed friends. These could be potential clients, key influencers in your industry, potential referrers, enthusiastic fans and so on. You might want to leave this until later, when you have more relevant people added to your Facebook network as friends.

Once saved, this list will appear in the left sidebar under Friends and can be selected when you want to view the feed of your relevant people, instead of viewing a mashup of everyone you know on Facebook.

Set up your fan page

A fan page is an area where businesses and organizations have a presence on Facebook, which its fans and followers use to stay connected them. A fan page also applies to you, as a freelancer or your company, as a means to promote yourself.

Fan pages are great for addressing the second stage in the sales cycle: securing contacts that you can connect with and building relationships with. I like to see fan pages as your secondary mailing list, as it allows for contacts to effectively subscribe to content you are posting up and it allows for you to contact fans. You should see fan pages as a means to secure new contacts and remind people of your presence, and your mailing list as a more concrete and effective means to communicate and share content.

You do not need to be a friend on Facebook with someone for them to be your fan.

Click on Advertising, at the bottom of any page within Facebook. Making sure you are in the ‘Pages’ area, click Create Page.

For the category of your page, choose one that suits what you do, for example ‘visual artist’.

For the name of your page, make sure you choose this well and include some keywords that relate to your work. You will not be able to change this in future once this has been saved. The great thing about fan pages, that you won’t get with groups and events, is that they get indexed by Google, based on keywords and the activity within them.

If you are a digital artist, for example, you might want the page name: ‘John Smith, Digital Artist and Photoshop Expert’. Now click Create Page to be taken to the new page.

Add a picture that represents you or your work, ideally a decent picture of you if the page focuses on your services.

Get your settings just right by clicking on Edit Page within the fan page, then clicking Edit under ‘Wall Settings’ and choosing Posts by Page and Fans as the default view for the wall, as this will allow better interaction with your fans.

Change your ‘Default landing tab’ to Info, which means that when people first arrive at your fan page, they will see all your details and juicy information straight away, before moving to other tabs if they choose.

Have all the boxes within ‘Posting ability’ checked, as you want to encourage as much interaction with fans as possible.

Have a look through all the other fan page settings on this page and edit them the way you want if you like, but generally everything should be ok to leave at this stage.

Add your information by clicking the Info tab on the page itself, and clicking Edit Information. Fill in the boxes, including adding your full web addresses, making sure you introduce what exactly it is you do, where you are based, what sets you apart and how you will benefit your clients. This will be the first thing people will see when they come to your fan page, so make sure it provides information in a succinct and interesting way.

Add a brief introduction to your service in the box to the left, under the picture, and include your site/s underneath, clearly spaced out, and in full.

Add the best of your work to the Photos tab by uploading an album so that visitors can see your work within Facebook itself. If you have other forms of media, consider clicking the + tab and searching for applications (either default ones or ones you have previously added) that allow you to add in other formats, such as video.

If you are about to launch your page, you might add some media files to the wall, so that they are seen for a while when people come to your wall. To do this, click on the relevant icons under the ‘What’s on your mind’ wall comment box and attach the media you want, such as a picture that will be posted on your wall. Remember that your wall acts like a blog, so that new content at the top of the wall will constantly replace older stuff.

Import your blog to your wall, which is described in the section on your profile, previously.

Incorporate your mailing list opt-in box to your fan page. You do this by firstly installing the app ‘Static FBML’, which means Facebook Markup Language and allows you to add code to your page.

Run a search for Static FBML in the Facebook search bar. Click the app and add to your page.

Then, go back into your page, (which you can find by typing it into the search bar, or going to your homepage and clicking Ads and Pages and finding it under ‘Pages, and going into ‘edit page’, and selecting the FBML app > ‘edit’.Name the box and drop in the code you acquired from your auto-responder, such as Aweber. Click Save Changes.

Your opt-in box will appear as part of the tabs, but you can transfer the box to the more visible side-bar by selecting the pencil icon and choosing Move to Wall Tab. Again, like with your profile opt-in box, you might need to tweak the design for it to fit properly within your fan page.

Now, you should be basically fully set up with Facebook to make the most of promoting yourself and networking through it, which I’ll explain in Step 6.

10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives

The 200+ page book is going to be launched on March 10th and it’s a must read for every designer, blog owner and any creative soul working in the social web. Grab it at the launch for a special price!

Today we’re happy to announce a special edition of our Inspired Giveaway series, in collaboration with the coolest brand for Apple fans! Yes iLadies and eGentlemen – we’re happy to give away some goodies from the cool chaps at Incase – six fresh Monochrome Slider Cases – three for iPhone & three for iPod Touch. Grab’em now!

Incase

If you own at least one Apple product there’s now way you could not be aware of Incase. They protect the technology that enriches your life. They create products that reflect the passion for design, innovation and personal expression. They’re Incase and they have an awesome blog, Twitter account, Facebook profile and even a top notch iPhone app.

The Giveaway

Enter to win one of the six iPhone & iPod Touch Monochrome Slider Cases:

• tweet this: Win uber cool cases for iPhone & iPod Touch from @goincase & @inspiredmag http://su.pr/2gKbMU RT to enter the giveaway!
• leave a comment and tell us if you want a case for your iPhone or – au contraire – for your iPod
• fan Incase & Inspired Mag on Facebook right here and you’re done!

These days is a lot easier to set up a business website. Got a brilliant idea? Then get the domain name (2 minutes), buy a cool theme (5 minutes), set up the host (15 minutes), tweak the theme (20 minutes) and you still have 18 mins to drink a beer before launching the business in one hour! So today we’re here to help you choose the best theme for the real web business lifestyle. Also, check out 10 Outstanding Corporate Wordpress Themes for Freelancers and Small Business Owners

Movement | $32 | Demo | Download

Movement WP theme was designed to suits best for the corporate site with integrated blog, gallery section, services section and contact page.  This theme comes with a lot of javascript modules and with 6 predefined styles. Make sure to check screenshots or try clicking on the theme switcher at the demo page

Nonprofit Theme | $69 | Demo | Download

The NonProfit Theme is a clean and unique layout created to suit a variety of eco-minded businesses and organizations. The theme is designed with subtle gray tones and neutral colors for easy customization

GEN20XX | $27 | Demo | Download

GEN20XX is a slim fit Wordpress CMS , designed to meet your personal, portfolio, business and blog requirements

Clearity | $27 | Demo | Download

Clearity is Wordpress Theme packed with powerful additions that will save your time and make your life easier. Whether you are a Wordpress Master or a beginner you’ll have no problem setting up and customising this theme

Dark ‘n Clean | $27 | Demo | Download

This is a great theme to suit just about any purpose with 4 great looking themes! Theme also includes a neat featured item slider, portfolio page and a twitter feed for the sidebar! Forget resizing and uploading images all day, this theme requires you to upload only one image for blog posts and portfolio items and it does all the rest by itself!

Idea Business Shop | $27 | Demo | Download

There is a fully designed and coded Blog section of the site and also one page represents how a open post should look like. For all of you who would ever need a shop, well, you got it here! Please note that the shopping system is not included inside the Worpdress. This is just a page representing a Shop.

The PaperCare | $37 | Demo | Download

The PaperCore is an unique, elegant and minimal WordPress theme and it is here to present your business and work in the best way.  There are 4 different professionally designed and unique styles. There are 2 stylish Portfolio/ News/ Featured Item sliders that are great to emphasize and present your products. The PhotoShop files are easy customizable and well organized

BitWork | $27 | Demo | Download

Bitwork is a clean web 2.0 style wodpress theme suitable for portfolio and business company sites. There are five color version for this template (reb, blue, orange, blue, silver)

Bold Theme | $69 | Demo | Download

The Bold Theme is a modern, simplistic and bold design that doesn’t overwhelm viewers with excessive content. The layout and design is universally appealing for a variety of clients. The site is ideal for portfolio’s, alternative lifestyle companies, extreme sports and much more

BigBusiness | $27 | Demo | Download

BigBusiness is one of the most customizable business/portfolio Wordpress themes by highthemes . The theme comes with 6 different color schemes, with fantastic unique custom pages, including 3 portfolio pages, 2 inner pages, blog page, and 2 pages for homepage and of course 1 unique contact page

So, what’s your favorite? And shoot if you have other suggestions!

We’re notoriously fickle. We jerk from project to project or multitask with crippling effects on the success of each individual project. We hate criticism, since it relates to us as people.

Negative attitudes can crush an artisan as a lumberjack would an ant. We’re caught in a perpetual spin – too much work, too little time. We rapidly get overtaken by the immediacy of every situation, instead of auditing our incredible contributions and spending more time where we belong, on Cloud Nine.

The main reason we’re on the defensive is because we don’t listen. We have two ears, yet our one mouth is deafening. Sound about right?

Most design projects fail because someone else knows best. Someone else is in the hot seat.

What we need to remember is that everyone involved has, to varying degrees, passion for and commitment to a mutual goal.

What we need is the power and positivity to stay on track.

So how do we stay focused on the task in hand while we have all these thought-consuming distractions, worries, challenges and concerns (hint: they’re in the first sentence)?

We – you and I – both know that you’re an exceptional talent. I can say with authority that on account of you being here at Inspired Magazine, you’re already a great player in this game, but you’re striving to be even better.

In itself, that’s applaudable.

But let’s re-address those objections you have:

You’re fickle

Why’s that such a problem? To be fickle means you want to achieve greater things. Fickle is a synonym for professionalism. If you’re blase, you’re on the road to failure.

You move quickly between projects

You’re a creative – you seek and crave new objectives, new things to see, experience, feel. This is a perfectly natural part of the job. Why see this as a problem? The stumbling block is in distraction. If you can master the art of discipline, and by this I mean setting yourself rigorous schedules to stick to, then you can swing by as many projects as possible. In fact, if you can master a range of jobs that would stymie your peers, your reputation as a craftsman of planning will be cemented.

Constructive feedback is all about the idea, not your personal credibility or ability

When someone remarks unfavourably on the job in hand, think about the reasons. Ask them to expand on their judgement – not in a derogatory sense, but in a way that lets them know you’re totally on side. All too often the designer is thought of as the guy with the pen, but you can instantly challenge that stereotype by asking the kind of questions that builds these people up, and builds your position up in their expectations.

Overcome your negative sentiments towards these three challenges to the designer and you’ll race ahead of the pack. The key is to understand those limits you have placed on yourself – and exceed them, time after time. Be inspired, constantly.

The power of positive thought is all-consuming. To truly understand your plus points, you simply need to change your mind.

And the negatives? They’re all in your head.

As we come to the end of February, it would seem like a nice idea showcase some of the lovely business card designs that have been lovingly created!

Lucky Boy

Claudia Brown

Rawkes

Maple

Megan Lavelle

The Odin

Fraher

Kyle Vanhorn

We Are Foil

Steve Bargas

Jason Permenter Design

Alex Griendling

Weightshift

New Freebie Friday here at Inspired Mag and this time we’re offering the latest release of the legendary Eye Candy filters for Photoshop from Alien Skin. The Photoshop ninjas in the room sure know what I’m talking about! Check out the winners of last week’s edition here.

Alien Skin Software

Alien Skin Software has been producing cool graphics software since 1993. In the early days they made the first drop shadow filter for Photoshop. Since then, they have released a steady stream of highly regarded tools for photographers and graphic designers. We distill advanced math and cutting edge research into simple tools that render beautiful pictures. Their reputation for bug-free software and fast, friendly tech support has created an ever growing band of loyal customers.

Eye Candy 6

Eye Candy 6 is a set of 30 Photoshop filters that elegantly handle a wide range of design tasks, from slick Web interfaces to tasteful logos to spectacular titles. Realistic simulation of natural phenomena gives beautifully detailed results. Eye Candy’s simple interface makes it easy, saving you loads of time in Photoshop. Effects now adapt to your current image size, making for less slider adjusting. Over 1500 carefully designed presets are organized into categories for quick browsing.

The Giveaway

Alien Skin Software is giving away a copy of Eye Candy 6.  To participate, post a comment here containing your favorite Alien Skin employee and their social position in high school.  Yes, that info is easy to find.  Just run Eye Candy 6 (trial mode is fine), bring up the About Box, and you will see the answers. You can get Eye Candy 6 here and try it free for 30 days.

Then tweet this: Win Eye Candy 6  – the coolest set of #Photoshop filters from Alien Skin & @InspiredMag http://su.pr/1WIk9A RT to enter!

Good luck!

Our guest author today – Anthony Licari – has a passion for literature and posts about the nuances of life on his website, plus dissecting contemporary subculture on Lounge Nouvelle.

I think most of us who design or develop websites have run into the phrase: “Make my site like Web 2.0ish” followed by a far off look in our eyes and a smile waiting to explode. I saw the phrase “Web 3.0″ used in a Mashable article so casually it was as though it’s an understood and accepted fact. As several leaders in the discussion of the world wide web have pointed out when asked about Web 3.0, it’s more or less a marketing term.

Now to clear some things up before we continue on here I will say that I’m not arguing that Web 2.0 isn’t used to describe certain things that are identifiable. What I’m arguing is that the word and these continual version numbers should not exist.

Web 1.0 is a term never used yet is imperative for the existence of Web 2.0. O’Reilly Media are the people who made the phrase Web 2.0 popular. What I have never understood is that for some tech people why they would add a version number to the word. Either they’re really stupid or they’re really smart. Changing the first number of a version implies that we are dealing with something completely different. Night and day. Yet here we are in 2010 and I can still do a Google search, have a Web 1.0 site pull up and find it useful. That’s all that matters I thought. That a site is able to properly meet its goals.

It doesn’t help that O’Reilly’s definition and explanation is five pages long. In the taxonomy of the world around us, outside of the scientific community, we don’t create words that encompass five pages of description. This is getting closer to the root of the problem and why it’s a marketing term and a marketing term only. You can Google “Web 2.0 colors” and get a result, “Web 2.0 designs” , “Web 2.0 applications” , “Web 2.0 penguins” and as such when someone says “Oh that’s Web 2.0″ , I don’t have the slightest clue as to what they’re referencing other than the site appears fresh and new.

Fresh and new. Imagine the past 100 years of cars. How many of you are driving a Car 10.0 right now? Most of us probably have a car and our car is either new, used, or old. How would you describe a car from the 1940’s? Now think of a car salesman in the 40’s. You weren’t just buying a new car, he had all these buzz words to describe this new technology from the war. Airplane technology being put into cars. Your car is going to fly. At the end of the day though, it’s just a car and after all the hype has gone down and something new comes out those buzz words will be lost in time and all that’s left is what it was in the first place: a car.

Websites and applications are the same. We don’t refer to websites in the 1990’s as “Web 1.0″. They’re old looking sites or a website built in the 1990’s. In 5 years when “Web 3.0″ is all the talk the phrase “Web 2.0″ will be gone. We’ll still use it, or know of it because it’s overused. The average internet user has never used the term “Web 1.0″ or thought about it, and they won’t think of “Web 2.0″ in 10 years because it’s just a buzz word. It doesn’t describe anything specific it’s only fodder for promotion or demotion like this article. At the end of the day all that you really have is just a website. Maybe you’ll use strategies from the Web 1.0, 2.0., or 3.0 era to make it achieve your goals.

My biggest gripe as I’ve eluded to is it being non specific and too much of an umbrella term. We all know that things change, like with cars. That’s the evolution of something. There’s no need to say that we are now in version 3 of the web. Just call it the web, everyone knows that things change and evolve and get better. Cell phones, cars, televisions, guns, stereos, speakers, etc. We all use a computer, the same computer that once took up the space of an entire room and had huge tubes powering it. What changes about the computer are the specifics. The processors have version numbers, the monitors, the video cards. Everything that is evolving in the guts is what changes but the computer still serves the same function and as such it is and will always be called a “computer”.

With that we have HTML5, Ruby on Rails, Cloud Computing, the guts of the web.. the specifics and the trends are what change and it is those things that version numbers and language really matters. The web is just the web and as much as it evolves and methods are created to make it faster and better and more useful it is still and always will be the “web”.

Unfortunately there’s nothing anyone can do to stop this monster of a misnomer. Hopefully for the sake of my sanity it gets overplayed and dies out. It’s kind of silly even writing an article now in hindsight. I think the fact that needing to read a multiple page definition of what “Web 2.0″ and “Web 3.0″ is; pretty much says it all.

So, do you think Web 1.0/2.0/3.0 are practical terms to use in design & development or are they marketing lingo?