Evolutions of an Industry
Creative pros are accustomed to industry change: Photographers muscled out portrait painters. Desktop publishing replaced phototypesetting, which supplanted hot-metal type. Photoshop did away with darkrooms. Soft proofs took the place of match proofs... I could go on like this for a while, but you get my drift.

As the result of these industry shifts, people lost their jobs. Some of them were able to adapt and find careers in the new workflows; other people couldn't or didn't want to change and went in different directions.

Today online spec work and its cousin, crowdsourcing, are shaking up the industry. I pulled the random sampling of images below from a Crowdspring project to design a realty firm logo. Two days before this competition closed, there were 136 entries. The winning design will receive $300.

Pamela Pfiffner has written a provocative article about spec/crowdsourcing, and I'd love to get your feedback on it. You can read the article here. To respond, click the Comments bottom of the bottom of the article.

WordPress for Creative Pros, Part 1
WordPress is a user-friendly way to get a blog up and running fast, yet it can also be the basis of powerful, well-designed sites. Chad Neuman's two-part series combines helpful instructions for beginners with tips for advanced users.

Do you know when to use WordPress's remove formatting button, shown below?

Related Reading: Chad has written killer tutorials on everything from Photoshop grunge to public domain goodies.

Scanning Around with Gene: Paste-up Limericks
Gene Gable's musings on old-school paste-up techniques are always popular. He recently came across more images of this almost-extinct art, and to accompany them, he wrot limericks! Here's one:

Rub-down letters we’d seek to forsake,
for they’d crack, peel, and otherwise flake.
But the worst thing indeed,
was when you gave them a read,
and discovered a spelling mistake.

Related Reading: For those of you who enjoy the topic of paste-up but are allergic to limericks, there's this.

TypeTalk: Tongue-Twisting Type
I love type, but I don't like looking like a dimwit. So in the past I avoided saying font names like "Benguiat" and "Peignot" out loud for fear of mangling them. If you're in the same boat, read Ilene Strizver's pronunciation guide.

If Fenice's name wasn't spelled out phonetically below, would you have known how to pronounce it?

Related Reading: The typeface Benguiat was designed by Ed Benguiat. This bio of the man is both amusing and educational.

Easy Video Editing in Photoshop
There's no need for a dedicated video application. As Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion demonstrates, you can apply adjustment layers and filters to video without leaving Photoshop Extended CS3 or CS4.

This Layers panel reflects what Anne-Marie did to get rid of a color cast in one of her videos:

Related Reading: Anne-Marie's articles are always full of useful information and a few laughs. Have you missed any?

This Week's Podcast
The most recent episode of the weekly podcast by Jay J. Nelson and Jeff Gamet includes info on a free acronym converter for QuarkXPress, book plug-ins for InDesign, and three hot tips from Photoshop pro Lesa Snider.

Related Reading: You'll find links to sites and products mentioned in this and previous episodes on the podcast's main page.

New Blog and Podcast Help You Print Successfully

Photoshop Marketplace Debuts

Quark Launches School Volume Licensing Program

Inkd's Online Marketplace for Print Design Templates

New dekePod: Trash the Cache


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