The Brilliant creative team blog

I have been forwarded an interesting interview with Gerry McGovern hosted on the American Express Open Forum entitled ?Why websites suck?

Gerry is regarded as the worldwide authority on increasing web satisfaction by managing customer tasks since 1994. He talks about a websites ?top task? and customer satisfaction with web design being created around the consumer.

He brings to light some good tips to remember when confronted with a website GUI job, some reflections that I thought were obvious and a view on the graphical appearance of a website that I completely disagree with.

View the article here

Currently working with Adobes Creative Suite 3 I had missed all the new features of CS4 and before I knew it, the software giants were starting to release CS5!

Adobe have just released the trials for CS5 and I managed to get my hands on a trail version of Photoshop, first impressions... awesome!

The workspace has been updated once again to allow a free flowing environment even allowing you to change layer opacity over multiple layers and an on-screen color picker. I have been desperate to try the new ?Content-Aware Fill? which matches lighting, tone, and noise when content is removed from an image and fills the background as if the object never existed, although I was skeptical it didn?t disappoint and seemed to work flawlessly over the three images I tied out.

The new interface also has a ?Bridge light? palette which makes finding images and graphics a breeze without having to have Adobes Bridge program open or manually navigating to images.

The most exciting development for me is one of the new transform option called ?Puppet Warp? which allows you to select an object or part of and distort it to a curve without degrading the image, it may not seem like a big deal but performing this task manually with the original warp transform tool was a drawn out process of trial and error which usually ended in trying to find another way of getting the result along with a few strong curse words.

There is plenty more that CS5 has to offer and I personally cant wait to get it installed :)

I have used a few tablets in my time and to be honest felt quite put off by them, to me they always felt unnatural, especially being so used to gaining the effects I needed with a mouse. There are many styles and techniques that just cannot be achieved with just the use of a mouse and so went out and bought myself the Wacom Intuos 4 A5 tablet.

Within moments of playing with it I felt a great sense of relief that I had not wasted my money on a cool looking but ultimately useless piece of kit. I have always been told that anyone who works with image editing, painting, or illustration software needs a Wacom tablet. Graphic designers, illustrators, visual effects artists; if you ever brush on a paint stroke, it?s seems ridiculous to use a mouse.

The pen/tablet interface makes painting and drawing much easier and faster. It?s more comfortable on your hand and, thanks to pressure sensitivity, more expressive especially within the fine details of a piece. Because the tablet can send pressure, tilt, and bearing information to the computer, you can create calligraphic brush strokes, and other effects that work just like real tools. All this without clenching your hand into the tight little claw a mouse requires.

The Intuos 4 has a scroll wheel with a big button in the middle that?s called the TouchRing. Anyone who has ever picked up an iPod will identify with this feature straight away, it can control zoom, brush size, tilt and cycle through the layers palette, in the long run it will save you so much more time.

I am really impressed with how far drawing tablets have come since I first used one and although it will never eliminate the need for a mouse, its great to be able to pick it up and just draw!

I love the fact that I can be inspired to either start a new piece, try a different approach or a new technique just by taking the time to appreciate others work. I get excited when I see a colorful illustration or a nice piece of typography but until recently, photography has never really given me the same ?buzz?.

I stumbled across the photography of Dave Hill and at first glance his work gave me that ?How in the world did he achieve that?? Each piece has been thoroughly thought out, incredibly well composed and the details are amazing.

His website has a massive behind the scenes section which is a must if you?re like me and need to see how things are done.

In this article on the Guardian website, internet guru Clay Shirky shares his predictions about the future of online services.

He surmises that printed media such as newspapers will disappear in less than 50 years, and claims that "... no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds."

Whilst I too believe that the traditional channels for delivering certain content will eventually be replaced by cheaper, more convenient and environmentally friendly media; I do not think this portends the end of print in a wider sense.

Much like the survival and resurgence of vinyl due to demand from music enthusiasts, there will always be a market for high-quality printed material.

There?s nothing quite like opening a new magazine and being hit by the smell of freshly-printed ink on a special paper! And that?s the point: we mustn?t forget that with print, our senses are spontaneously engaged in a unique way. In any case, if print dies how else will we package all that lovely vinyl in the future ;-)?