Coming from the world of corporate in-house design, I understand the notion of “no time, no budget”. Which is the reason I kind of love Cover Action Pro v2.

First, let me point out the obvious. Mark Monciardini, a highly-credible Photoshop guru did not create this for designers–he developed it for non-designers, which makes it even better. Its well organized and simple to use with killer results.

Cover Action Pro v2 levels the playing field when it comes to beautiful, life-like client presentations. As an in-houser I’ve worked with dozens of advertising and design agencies–firms like Hornall Anderson, Turnstyle, Saatchi & Saatchi NY, v3 & Wolff Olins–and they all spend a considerable amount of time crafting the way they present their work.

Now, in-house designers and freelancers alike can quickly and easily position their work in the best possible light–like the big guys. And with more and more work being ‘presented’ via PDF, it helps your work stand out. It comes pre-loaded with artwork for books, binders, web pages, business cards, CDs, DVDs and more.

Cover Action Pro (admittedly, not my favorite name) is easy to use and a steal at $197 ($297 for the deluxe model).

Take a look and tell me what you think.

1. I Love This Site! Chart Your Day Online. (Daytum)

2. The Evolution of 50 Classic Logos (Best Ad)

3. Interviews with 3 Old School In-housers (Conncreatives)

4. Shoot Your Alarm Clock, Literally (TokyoMango)

5. Half-Full: Points of View Shirt (DespairWear)

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I Have Seen The Light.

Why in the world has it taken this long to bring out a great book on presentation design?! Is it because we all avoid slide work like the plague? Is it because real designers don’t “do” slides? Or is it just a misunderstood medium?

Enter into the picture Nancy Duarte and her beautiful new book, Slide:ology: The art and science of creating great presentations. (Nancy’s firm created Al Gore’s Oscar-winning presentations for An Inconventient Truth)

Here’s what Presentation Zen author Garr Reynolds had to say in a recent review, “…(it’s) my favorite presentation book of all time”—that’s a significant endorsement considering his book’s huge popularity.

From his review:

Slide:ology is practical, it’s highly visual, and it’s beautiful. I love this book. Slide:ology should come bundled with every copy of PowerPoint or Keynote ever sold from now on. I received a draft copy about three months ago that blew me away — the final product is even better than I expected. I just got my copy over the weekend. At 274 pages, the book is meaty without being bloated. This book is not the last word on presentation, but it’s the best book on the art (and science) of creating and delivering presentations with the help of multimedia written to date. Period.

And I need to mention they have a great site, blog and mini-library of downloadable PowerPoint slides from the book case studies?

Source: Thank you Rachel Nussbaum & Presentation Zen

1. New Steven Heller & Lita Talarico Book. The Design Entrepreneur (Core77)

2. Cool InDesign Trick: Align Guidelines with a Click (CreativeTech Labs)

3. Hungry Scientist: Nerdy Cookbook for Kitchen Hackers (boingboing)

4. The Missing Stage in the Digital Design Process (Digital Web Magazine)

5. Back to the Future: Check out “The Delorean” of Rubber Band Guns (Make)

6. Long-awaited Chicago Tribune Redesign (NewsDesigner)

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1. Moustache Revival Month coming to an end. (RustyGeorge)

2. Amazing Site With 3D Navigation from Pentagram. (Pentagram)

3. FORE! New iPhone Golf Game Swings Into Action. Literally. (iSmashphone)

4. Street Corner Science Lessons with a Nobel Laureate (ScienCentral)

5. Thinking Bigger (Seth Godin)

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Image: Power to the people: Miguel Cardona

Here’s a great way to fill a few minutes of downtime and brush up on your typeface anatomy knowledge. Here’s a quote from the site:

Parts Of A Character is a typography project that originated as an educational print, aimed at typography students, created by artist and designer Susanne Cerha of Silo Design, Inc. The print in turn inspired José Rodriguez of JRVisuals to create the public interactive project Type Is Art.

On the website visitors are invited to create their own visuals, using the 20 basic typographic shapes that make up the characters of the Latin alphabet. Those character fragments (from Adobe Caslon) become abstract elements, removed from their communicative capacity. They can be freely scaled, rotated and arranged to form new and surprising compositions.

And your creations can be saved in a gallery and shared with all the friends.

It’s a lot of fun.

In-house reimagined.

The process of being a top-notch in-house design department is never ending. The same is certainly true for outside design firms but it’s the pressure of proximity and attitude that makes it more difficult for in-housers.

Working for the same company, where clients have access to you any time they want, is not the easiest environment for fostering brilliant work. One reason is it makes dumping rush jobs on you easier, generally speaking. I call it “drive-by” design. But it’s not just about working unproductively-close.

It’s also about wanting an identity or personality that’s all your own. I’ve worked for both agencies and in-house and there’s something special about working in a space that’s “yours”. But that’s difficult to do in most corporations. But it’s worth fighting for if you can.

The second half of the equation is attitude, or better yet, gratitude. Business units and in-house design departments tend to take each other for granted. But in this scenario, the design department loses because most business units can “go outside” to get work done. Unfortunately, the work falls mostly on us. So what’s an inhouser to do?

Marty Neumeier’s article, The Power of In-house, part 1: Unleashing Design offers up some words of wisdom:

As the drumbeat of innovation grows louder, corporate leaders are feeling the need for stronger internal design. But before a company can even think about building an in-house design capability, it will need to address the problem that has plagued in-house designers since the days of the cave painters. This can be reduced to seven letters: R—E—S—P—E—C—T. As soon as the department is established, its value starts to depreciate. Within months the new group is inundated with low-level tasks and excluded from high-level conversations.

What’s the cure for vanishing value? To reimagine the internal design department as an independent studio. Since respect comes from a combination of performance and proactivity, mimicking a successful design studio can trigger the same level of respect usually reserved for external firms.

How? Instead of expecting work to come in automatically, the internal team can adopt a more Darwinistic model by acquiring skills that rival those of external firms. It can develop its own engagement processes, seek interesting problems to solve, and make “pitches” to internal “clients.” Like an external firm, it can prove its competence through performance metrics and design competitions. It can even institute a charge-back system to attach a dollar value to the work it does.

Here’s a slide from the article you share:

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I’m going to keep this post short and sweet.

Here’s some brilliant examples of inspirational hand-work by Chicago artist Michael Dinges. His current show— “Dead Reckoning” — features a set of laptops engraved with spectacular images, as well as a “set of brass instruments styled after traditional sea-faring navigational tools.” It’s all very amazing and another reason I wish I had better drawing skills.

Source: Collision Detection

I’m back from holiday and raring to go.

While away, I took a break from my laptop. Oh, I checked e-mail and Google Reader, but I limited my time to 10-minute sessions—and no Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. Gasp! What did I do? I worked on outdoor projects—like the pond that needed cleaning. And the stone wall with a gate and arbor that needed finishing. I love working outdoors on projects. It clears my mind and provides the instant gratification of creating, fixing and admiring.

As a designer, I need that same break for the computer. Too often, jobs in my department are a rush and need “designing” now. I jump on my trusty Mac and design-away, for better or worse. But what happens if I take 5 minutes to work it out with pen and paper first? Typically, I find a better solution. And in most cases, I find the solution quicker. I just feel like I’m engaging a different part of my brain when I have pen and pad versus mouse and monitor. I feel like I can bail on a bad idea quicker. With the computer, I feel compelled to “work it” a little more. I usually get there, but may I could have gotten there quicker and with better result.

So give it a try. On your next rush, step a way from the computer and sketch out your designs–you just might like the process and the results a little more. And who knows, maybe the solution is one that’s completely hand-drawn.

I’ve run across a couple great posts lately, involving hand-drawn designs. Here’s great one from SPD.org

For the September issue of Los Angeles, art director Joe Kimberling collaborated with illustrator and type designer Marian Bantjes to create the cover. The solution, done solely with a blue ballpoint pen, is a notebook covered with doodles inspired by a creative, yet distracted high school student. As Marian says on the contributors page “I did everything but the bar code”. Check out more of her amazing work here.

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