position: absolute - Design resources and inspiration.

Those of you tired of hearing the same old arguments on why you’re too expensive and how your potential clients’ nephew and/or grandmother could do the same job for less pay will take solace in this designer’s rant. Godspeed.

(Thanks for the tip, Rob. Illustration by Ivan Raszl.)

Go check out
Visuals of the World,
which boasts
to be the longest
visual website
in the world.
It’s currently
23233.29 cm long,
which is pretty long.
And it keeps growing,
and inspiring,
because you,
the artist,
keep adding
on to it.

No problem, try the TDB Special Projects Idea Generator on for size. Hooray for randomness. This two-liner looked silly next to the thumbnail, but there’s really nothing else to say, so I’m filling this up with random text. Excuse me, I’m off to create an “exclusive shrinking apparatus”. Oh yes I am.

Nikon’s Universcale puts the universe in perspective, showing us all kinds of objects in relation to each other. Explore objects from the smallest of sizes to the largest known to man, from tiny protons all the way up to the outer limits of the universe. Universcale is an eye-opening Flash visualization and I actually wish school had been more like this. Try it out if you want to feel like a giant and a microbe all at the same time.

You can never be too old for paper toys, especially when they are of the stylish designer type. I’ve scoured the web to find you some of the best free designer paper toys out there. Simply print ’em, cut ’em out, fold ’em and glue ’em together and you’ve got yourself some extremely cool little friends.

I’ve done my best to find only original paper toys… that is, these designs are original by their designers and not recreations of known characters.

Have fun with these and feel free to share photos of your completed paper toys with us!

Get your free paper toys right after the fold!

Who’da thunk it? And not only trees: lots of other things in nature and urban areas can draw: vehicles, the postal service, a full moon, balloons, insects, and even people randomly walking about, unaware of their artistic deeds. Tim Knowles proves this with an impressive portfolio of seemingly random analog art. I must say: a tree with a pen in its… uh… hand, is one of the most peculiar sights I’ve seen. Awkwardly cool, too.

Hey everyone, it’s Friday, and to wrap up the week, here are some good laughs courtesy of FreelanceSwitch!

Top Ten Signs You May Be Charging Too Little
They offer some compelling signs that you just might be charging a weeeee bit below your value. Here’s a definite sign:

Number 7:
New clients are always asking what “the catch” is.

Top 10 Reasons you should quit your job today and become a freelancer
Of course, as faithful freelancers, they make their case on why it’s better to be a freelancer:

Number 5:
Only farmers should wake up that early

12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
And here’s a really, really, really good article that wanders between hilarious and seriously helpful: 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them. I’ve worked with numerous breeds and can say they’ve really hit the nail on the head.

Well then, have a great weekend! I for one will be meeting up with a friend and playing around with that new HD video camera and, you guessed it, After Effects.

Well, a small one, and hey, books are inspiring. And no, it’s not THAT kind of fetish, I just love reading. :) Kai from Stylespion passed this along to me and asked me to answer it, so here goes. (more…)

Hmpf. Recently, apparently, Google added a captcha feature to their search engine to assure that it wasn’t being abused by bots. It looks like this. So, over the last few weeks, Google has been telling me (from time to time) that I am a bot, and that I must enter the captcha code to enter its great vaults. And so I do. And then right after that, I do it again. And then a third time, for good measure. No Google, no matter how often you tell me, I’m still not a bot, and that psychological trick (telling someone he’s a bot until he believes it) ain’t working on me! So usually after 2-3 codes entered, I get my search results. But not today. Today, my friends, I get nothing:

As of now, I officially have no access to the wonders of Google. They won’t even let me have a captcha. To think of all of the fun I am missing out on, entering weird twisted numbers in a round-based battle of sorts. I wonder if they get harder each round. I even made it to level 6 last time. Is there a final boss? How, oh how, shall we ever find out, if I cannot even search for the answers? Oh great Google, why hast thou forsaken me?

Judging a game by its packaging is like judging a book by its cover. Kinda pointless, but let’s face it, we all do that from time to time. So, Captain Obvious will tell us that designing a good game box cover that arouses interest and makes you go “wow, I must leave my money here!” is essential for getting your product out to everyone that doesn’t read game reviews all day. Most covers are pretty clichéd, but sometimes, they are so badly designed it’s surprising they were ever let out into the wild. 1up.com has dug through the archives and come up with 15 of the worst video game covers ever in a hilarious review. I just love the “Irritating Stick” one. Simply brilliant.