Infographics can be an incredible source of inspiration for your design projects, even if your project has nothing in common with the format or purpose of infographics. Sure, researching current trends and inspirational work within the same medium is a vital component of good design. But by drawing inspiration from external sources like this, you are better equipped to design a product that is as original as it is beautiful.
Learning After Effects. You can take a class, read about it, or just experiment with it yourself, but in the end nothing expands your skills like MAKING SOMETHING. And your best bet is to make something somebody else already made. I mean tutorials.
There is a lot to know when you are working with video. No matter your level of experience or your area of expertise the digital video landscape is so vast and changing that it’s hard to keep up with it all. Coming from an art background I haven’t had a lot of formal training in frame rates, compression, codecs and containers or any other of a hundred words that may or may not mean the same thing.
The battery life of mobile devices is improving all the time, but the current limitations are still a drag. I can’t use my iPhone without plugging it in to recharge at least once throughout the day. The iPhone has no problem with phone calls and downtime spent in my pocket, but powering the display for applications and web browsing eats up huge chunks of battery life. And I have pages and pages of applications that really need to be used.
Thankfully, help is on the way. Qualcomm, a wireless communications company based in San Diego, has developed a new screen technology that uses interferometric modulation (iMoD) to drastically decrease power requirements. Along with the implications for my iPhone battery life, what makes it so exciting is the use of biomimetics in the development of this new technology. Qualcomm managed to decrease power usage while increasing the performance of the display by copying from nature. In a nutshell, they stole the idea from butterfly wings.
