Like Little Creative Bombs Going Off In Your Head
Recently, I spent a day at Maker Faire, a crazy conglomeration of science nerds, craftsters, Burning Man devotees, and excited little kids dragging around their parents.

It's really hard to convey the magic of Maker Faire in words -- just watch the video, browse the many Flickr photos (a few examples by rustman are below), and keep an eye out for the next one. So far the Faires have been in California, Texas, and Newcastle, UK, but who knows where it will be next? Even if it's not in your town, it's well worth going out of your way to attend. As I overheard someone say this year, just walking through the event makes "little creative bombs go off in your head."

Scanning Around with Gene: If Only You Weren't So Offensive
Even friends might not want to say you have bad breath or body odor. But as Gene Gable's scans prove, vintage advertising had no trouble delivering the bad news!

TypeTalk: The Importance of Style (Sheets)
If you don't use style sheets, let Ilene Strizver introduce you to them. There's no better way to maintain consistency and make fast changes to text formatting than to use style sheets.

You can create a new character style sheet in QuarkXPress by clicking on New on the bottom left of the Style Sheets palette:

Get the Nesting Instinct in InDesign
Maybe you already understand how useful styles are. But have you tried InDesign's nesting styles? They let you pre-build one or more character styles into a paragraph style and trigger those character styles with specific conditions; for example, InDesign will bold the beginning text in a paragraph until an em dash appears.

Author Michael Murphy automatically formatted this entire series of paragraphs with prebuilt styles:

Related Reading: There's lots more of Michael's good advice here.

The Ins and Outs of ISO
For many photographic techniques, the proper ISO is key to good results. Pro photographer Bryan Peterson explores three ISO components: its affect on exposure, its role in grain, and how low you can go and freeze action.

Would you believe that Bryan got this shot hand-holding a camera set at ISO 100?

Related Reading: Camera gear to expand your shooting options.

Designer's Dream Giveaway Deadline Extended
At the request of people who need a little more time to gather project files, we've extended the contest submission deadline to June 29, 2009. Enter soon to win a sweet bundle of Pantone goodies.

The PANTONE Reference Library is one of the prizes for the first-place winner:

Related Reading: Enter here.

Weekly Podcast: Screen-sharing service; QuarkXPress-to-Flash tutorial; vintage ad Web site

Adobe's BrowserLab Quickly Tests Sites Across Web Browsers

FontAgent Pro Plus Includes 750 OpenType Fonts

Free Photoshop Plug-in from Filter Forge

10 Free Grunge Swirl Vectors

CreativePro.com Poll: Peanut butter and bacon: legitimate sandwich, or crazy food?

Is it mean to giggle at this? Maybe a little.

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