IntuitiveDesigns

Here are a few interesting links that I enjoyed this week:

• How to build a web start-up - Part 1 -There are so many web apps starting up lately. This is a great article from Ryan Carson at Carsonified for Vitamin, the same people who have developed many apps of their own including DropSend and Amigo.
• Consulting: a Getting Started Guide - by Skellie at Anywired- Great introduction into what it takes to be a consultant.
• Are you ready for this person? - by Kurt Deutscher on the ExpressionEngine blog - Thought provoking article about how to prepare for three types of clients we don’t normally consider.
• Usability and Interface Design Books - by Alexis Brion at Smashing Magazine - Great list of the most reputed books in these subjects.

Here are a couple of commercial vector illustrations that I did last month using my businessman character. Simplified versions of these ones plus other commercial illustrations were intended to be on sale at iStockphoto but lately I’ve been changing my mind about working with them. On the first place I don’t think their commission and way to set up prices is really fair for the artists. Also, their policies to approve the vector work are really restrictive, and it makes the submission of the art as difficult as finding the holy grail.

I’ve been trying to get approved by iStockphoto myself for the last three months, because they require the final artwork in files that may be compatible with really old versions of the applications. I know of a lot of other artists who have the same problem as me.

I’m actually looking for other choices to sell commercial illustration on the Internet rather than iStockphoto. I hope to feature my work in other galleries soon. If you have any suggestion I would appreciate it. Meanwhile, there is an extensive part of my commercial illustration for web sites at our shop.

Once upon a time there was a designer called Naomi who was very sad to notice that people were not sending greeting cards at Christmas time anymore. So she said: “I wish people would send us Christmas cards this year, just like in the old times”. She thought nobody was listening, but she was wrong because the fairy Lori Ann was there and she was committed to make Naomi’s dream come true. So Lori Ann got to work and she told all of the good fellow designer fairies to send a Christmas card to Naomi.

One Christmas evening, Naomi opened the mail box and what she found was tons of Christmas cards flying around, all of them addressed to her. She was so happy that she cried, and said to Koldo, “This must be the work of good fairy Lori Ann, I can see now why she was asking me recently about all of the fellow designer fairies that I knew…”

So this is a real story of good wishes and that good fairy dreams can come true. We think it looks really beautiful to see all of your Christmas cards together. Oh, and the background music is Koldo playing Christmas music on the harp.

Thanks to all of you, this Christmas has been very very special because of you!

We’ve been thinking about what we would like to do with this blog for the past few weeks. Up until now, it’s mainly served as a place for news and a few tidbits here and there. After talking about it awhile, we realized we’re doing something wrong. We just talk about ourselves and not only that, we just talk about ourselves every once in a great while. How’s that for exciting?

So, we are going to refocus the blog. We want to post more interesting things like helpful tips for designers and clients alike. Topics like how to find a good designer, tips about different cms’s, our experiences learning new things, and other ideas that occur to us. What would you be interested in hearing from us?