BLISTERS: Sound Sessions poster show is open for submissions!

The guys over at Print Club London have opened their doors for another year to allow budding illustrators and artist a chance to showcase their work and have a limited run screen print poster printed and sold to any one who takes a fancy to it!

[quote text_size=”small”]We are now open for submissions and want to get the word out there to ANY illustrators / aspiring artists who want to take part.[/quote]

Print Club London

Get the lo-down…

The Brief

1. Submit a poster in your own style inspired by your favourite band/song/musician/tour/gig.

2. The catch is, you cannot use the name of the band, song or musician! Use of other text is allowed, of course, but this should stand alone as an image/scene or typography.

3. Prepare artwork for a 500mm x 700mm print (B2 format).

4. Most importantly, your work must be COMPLETELY new and original for this project and never seen before! We will not accept any submissions that are displayed anywhere else, including your personal blog or portfolio.

[button link=”http://printclublondon.com/2013/blisters-the-sound-session/” size=”large” text_size=”beta” newtab=”on”]Find out more[/button]

Invitations and Other Innovations – How the World of Invitation Creation Is Changing

As in fashion and interior design, invitation styles come and go. Trends in fonts, colors, paper textures, inks, and processes change not just yearly but by the season as well. The bulk of invitations in May, the season of graduations, will of course be different than those during the holiday season of December. Seasonal changes are easy to predict, but what’s to come outside of these variations?

How is the world of invitations evolving as a whole?

Playful and Personal

If recent trends are any indication, then invitations will become even more personalized, offering greater self-expression and personal connections. Photo cards that double as keepsakes, invites featuring recipes or games, and other playful formats are all examples of more recent developments that point to a more diverse marketplace.

This type of movement is especially seen in the wedding invitation area. Couples choose to include more modern and personal touches to their invites, from handwritten notes to unique accessories and photo save the dates.

Tradition and Technology

Another big change to the world of invites and stationery is integration with technology, specifically with online tools. E-cards are popular, but if you want to make an impress nothing surpasses the tradition of a paper invitation.

With new online tools, customers no longer have to choose between software and stationery because these programs join technology like online RSVP tracking with the traditional mailed invitation. It’s truly the best of both worlds. A bride can design her invitation completely online, choosing paper quality, fonts, accessories, and wording, and have it sent to her house or straight to the guests.

She can also create the guest list online, monitor responses, remind unresponsive invitees, and share information with caterers and wedding planners via email.

The Next Step?

The future of invitations is created by using the past as a base and the present as inspiration.

Designers around the country and around the world are creating tomorrow’s invites, but they aren’t alone: customers are also shaping the development of design using online tools and their own imaginations. To be sure, it’s an exciting time in this industry, and with all the changes going on, you just have to wonder: “What’s next?”

Comment to win a HP EliteBook 8740w Mobile Workstation

You can read more about this laptop in this post where i give it a brief review.

How to Enter

“Leave a comment below stating – Why you need a new computer or Laptop (be as creative in your answer as you like!)”

Follow @designshard on Twitter and like Design Shard on Facebook, dont forget to follow the good folk over @HP too.

HP EliteBook Fresh In The Box

Terms & Conditions

  • HP sent me this laptop to keep, due to US laws i need to tell you that!
  • The competiton is open to all countries so dont worry about that, although the laptop has a US layout keyboard.
  • Please only leave one comment – Suspected multiple entries will be disqualified.

How is the winner determined?

One winner shall be picked at random using a MySQL query on the comments for this post – one random comment ID shall be selected and that will be the lucky winner! make sure you enter your email address / Twitter ID so you can be contacted for your postal address, a winner will be announced on Friday 14th October 2011.

HP EliteBook

HP EliteBook 8740w Mobile Workstation Review

HP EliteBook 8740w

First Impressions & Overview

The HP EliteBook 8740w has a very distinct grey metal finish to the outer casing which makes it look particularly classy and durable. its scratch resistant and also helps protect against general wear and tear.

The weight of the laptop is something to be desired as it is particularly heavy, but to be honest this can be overlooked due the specification which out performs most desktop computers.

The HP DreamColor LED-backlit screen is very bright and makes most graphics pop, it really is better than most desktop LCD displays which makes me very envious when I’m using my desktop computer.

The battery on this thing only lasts about 1.5 hours on full charge, must be all that top notch hardware draining the power!

Technical Specification

As you can see it has a bit of a power house when it comes to hardware.

Who is it aimed at?

This laptop is targeted towards the creative industry whether it be for people using resource heavy applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator or Cinema 4D this laptop can handle it.

I’ve been using this laptop fine with multiple Adobe suite programs open such as Illustrator, Photoshop Dreamweaver and having Firefox open with multiple tabs…the laptop still runs very smooth.

HP EliteBook Front

What Others Think

If you want to find out more about this laptop check out what some other bloggers have been saying.

  • Solid Smack many photos and lots of reading! – Read Review
  • Fuel Your Creativity a series of mini reviews – Read Review
  • Icrontic a more technical review with photos and videos – Read Review

Twitter Hash Tags for Designers and Developers

I’ve collected a few twitter accounts together that retweet certain #hashtags that you apply to your tweets, id reccomend adding one or two to the end of your tweets of the related subject.

The people who are following these accounts can then see your tweets which could mean some much more targeted traffic, here are the ones that i found.

hashdesigns

Finding news about #design and #webdesign and RT them

hashwp

hashwp #wp
Finding news about #wp and #wordpress and RT them

hashwordpress

Retweeting the people who talk about #wordpress

hashwindows

Finding news about #win and #windows and RT them

hashweb

Retweeting #html #css #htm #xml

hashsocial

Finding news about #social and RT them

hashphp

Finding news about #php and RT them

hashphotoshop

Finding news about #photoshop and RT them

hashphoto

Finding news about #photo and RT them

hashlinux

Finding news about #linux and RT them

hashjoomla

Finding news about #joomla and RT them

hashjava

Finding news about #java and RT them

hashiphone

Finding news about #iphone and RT them

hashfail

Finding news about #fail and RT them

Example of Hash Tags In Use

example

Here you can see the #wordpress tag in action this can then be re-tweeted by the hashwordpress account, but obviously you can tag any of your tweets with any thing you want making it easy to use twitter search to find relevant content.

Comments

Do you know of any twitter accounts that re-tweet your specific tweets? Please leave a link in the comments