I found a cool site called shoulddothis.com. The site allows people to make suggestions to their favorite companies (or companies they hate as well). The premise is simple, you type in a company/person and what they should or should not do. You can even discuss with other users and vote on how likely it is for that to happen. The goal is that those companies will read those suggestions and make improvements to their products or service.

So naturally, I want to hear what you have to say about Go Media. What should Go Media do (or should not do)? To let us know, simply go to Go Media’s page on shoulddothis.com and use the form at the top to add some more suggestions. We always want to hear suggestions from our readers and customers and this is the perfect way to do it.

I already suggested that we should release a new texture pack (which we are working on). So if you agree, you can click on that suggestion and mark that you feel we should do it too.

Give us some suggestions:
http://go-media.shoulddothis.com/

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As of this writing our Go Media User Showcase has 124 entries and 84 members. Doing well so far! I see quite a few that I like, but I’ll just post two this week that stand out to me.

This first example is how you can use skulls, wings, and hooladanders, but still keep your design clean and informative. I think this is nicely done. The text is also a nice touch with it’s splash of color. My only complaint is the fists at the bottom - it seems like the thumbs are out of place. But overall not bad.

Commdesigner:

The design below is a nice example of mixing and collaging various elements together. Seems a lot of people are doing it these days, but this one is done well. It seems as if things fit together are there is an overall composition to the piece. It’s not just thrown about randomly. Although I think the actual text that’s on the banner could look a little better (seems a little clunky) the overall design is put together well.

SundayCritic626:

So everyone keep posting your designs. I’ll keep showcasing!

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We get quite a few people calling every day with trouble opening or using our Vector Packs. I decided to write a tutorial specifically to help out newbies who aren’t exactly sure what they’ve just purchased. It’s amazing to know that people who aren’t designers or even own a piece of design software are buying our vector packs. I never would have expected that. This tutorial is essentially a beginner’s guide to our Vector Packs.

You will learn:
- What are vectors?
- How to open the files
- How to select and use the specific pieces you want
- Adding them to your exisiting design
- Finishing it up

Introduction: What are Vectors?

Before we start, let me explain what Vector means. (more…)

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Part One of Seven Easy Principles to Becoming a Master Designer.

Ok, “master designer” might be a bit of a stretch – but you can at least become a “proficient designer” by following 7 easy principles. This will be the shortest, most informative series of blog posts you’ve ever read on how to become a better designer. Please note: these principles CAN be broken… these are not laws, they’re just general guides that I typically follow when putting together a design.

Follow these simple design principles and you’ll be on your way to artistic excellence.

Principle One: Limit Your fonts. A big part of putting together a good design, as you’ll see, is making sure the over-all look is consistent. The best way to accomplish a consistent look to your design is limiting the number (more…)

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Hello again. These last couple of weeks I’ve been sharing some of the broad lessons I’ve learned this summer at Go Media, such as learning from criticism, and realizing the importance of presentation.

This week I’m going to get more practical and share some Adobe Illustrator tips that my coworkers have taught me.

We’re all in one big open room at the Go Media offices, so I have the freedom to steal glances at the other designer’s monitors. In my inexperience I would undoubtedly see them taking an approach I had not been exposed to, or would never think of taking. I started a running list of cool techniques I saw for future reference. I’d like to share some. We use Adobe Illustrator for almost everything here, so the tips are rooted in Illustrator. (Warning: these are revelations of a Go Media intern, so don’t be surprised if some of these techniques are less than ground-breaking).

1. Oliver showed me how to do make a radial.

1. Draw something cool (preferably long and narrow)
2. Activate rotate tool by pressing “R”
3. Move anchor point further out from the center of the object
4. Hold Alt and rotate the object by 5-15 degrees
5. Hold Ctrl+D (which repeats the last action) until radial is closed

2. How to Rotate Text Boxes:

1. Text boxes won’t rotate as expected when using the handles in Illustrator. Instead, the bounding box will simply rotate while the text remains horizontal.
2. In order to actually rotate the text, you must use the rotate too by pressing “R”, not by using the handles.

3. A Richer Gradient:

1. Make a regular gradient
2. Copy the gradient and Paste in Front
3. Change the pasted gradient to a solid color that is slightly lighter than the shade of the gradient.
4. Move the solid color to the back with the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+[
5. Change the blending mode of the gradient to multiply.

That does it for this week. If you’re a student like me, I hope you learned something new today. But don’t stop here! This is just a taste of what there is to know about Illustrator - and Illustrator is just one design application! I’ll be sharing more tips next week, but in the meantime keep educating yourself.

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As some of you know, I’m a stats junkie. I love web analytics and keeping track of who is coming and going from all of Go Media’s sites. I use Google Analytics of course like everyone else. But the problem with Google Analytics, is it’s slow. Oftentimes you have to wait 24 hours or more for your stats to show up. So I tried using ReInvigorate for a free solution to real time stats. It’s been great so far, but my problem is that the most of the real time stats are only for the current date or even less. I can’t look at all my referrers from the past month. But I do get them in real time.

Then I discovered Clicky. They like to call themselves Web Analytics 2.0 - which is a fun buzzword. They are real-time and have a super friendly web 2.0 style interface that makes me feel comfortable. Their stats feel more valuable when designed nice. Weird huh? The numbers are the same as anything else, but because they are well designed, I find myself preferring them over other web analytics apps. (more…)

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