Lorem Ipsum Hipster Zombie Brains

Designers are used to waiting for information. Blank spaces in layouts sometimes need to be filled with something, anything. Often they use Lorum Ipsum — pig Latin gibberish designed to simulate actual prose. Meet the Ipsums is a fresh take on Ipsum generation, with flavours including Zombie, Pommie, Gansta and Pirate. My favourite is Hipster:

Selvage Schlitz Brooklyn Williamsburg gastropub McSweeney's put a bird on it, forage ethnic iPhone. Cray american apparel shabby chic, cardigan before they sold out Carles disrupt thundercats bespoke DIY iPhone. 8-bit four loko Wes Anderson

So if a designer wants to put a smile on their client's face, or at least a look of complete bemusement, Meet the Ipsums might be their thing.

Things You Can Do With Paper

And cannot with digital media .... a very interesting rundown of all the tactile, sensual, innovative things that can be done with that supposedly outmoded medium: paper. Uses featured include lampshades, bar fitouts, chairs, cards, puzzles and much more.

Pretty Annual Reports Pay

In times of economic austerity, corporations are wont to produce spartan annual reports, symbolising their determination to live within their means. Recent research shows this might be a counterproductive approach. Even strictly numbers-oriented investment analysts are heavily influenced by well designed company material. The prettier the reports, the more likely analysts are to give a company a 'buy' rating. The takeaway line is that “People are not aware of the effect of aesthetics on their financial decisions.”

Taming the Word > HTML workflow

Quite a bit of web content was originally created in Word for Windows. Word is infamous for creating messy html. To cut time spent on fixing tags, try this free service. Word2cleanhtml "strips out invalid or proprietry tags, leaving clean HTML behind for use in web pages and ebooks". Now to find a similar service for cleaning word docs for use in page layout programs... 

Recent Cover Designs

Spy stories, real life drama, history, fantasy and science fiction have all been on the design menu recently. Seeing them collated, one sometimes notes the over-enthusiastic use of current font favourites. In few months, fashions will change and new font families take over. 

Creative Minds are Not Alike

How do other creative people work? "From the Desk Of" offers a variety of interesting answers to that question. Artists and designers show off workspaces that vary from highly organised to semi-chaotic. They also discuss their creative processes with some eloquence. Overall, a valuable reminder of the focus, sense of play and long-term discipline required to succeed in any creative field.

Photoshop Forges On

Ancient by digital standards, Photoshop continues to reinvent inself. To see how the latest incarnation has changed from those which preceded it, download the temporarily free beta from Adobe, and check out an introductory tour from Lynda.com.