That’s right. I haven’t been publishing very much lately, but this is about to change. I have been off doing stuff, getting a new job as Art Director and Graphic Designer in a design studio and a number of things. Enjoy your party until you can because I will be back soon.

In the mean time I would like to remind you of a few sites that are worth following:

Designorati
A 360 degrees view of the creative world. Need I say more?

Quark VS InDesign
By one of my favourites, Pariah S. Burke. If you are into InDesign, QuarkXPress, and the state of the design industry, this site is loaded with info, news, editorial, etc.

About Desktop Publishing
A site so full of info, tutorials, courses about DTP that you’ll loose yourself in it and will become addicted without realizing it. And then it’ll be too late. There are three forums conntected to this site, with the most beautiful and kick-butt moderator in the world. Now I wonder who that might be.

About Graphics Software
Another site with tons of resources about graphic programs, raster and vector, a Photoshop course, and lots of other things for both professionals and beginners. There are two forums conneted to this site, and also here you find the same charming and irresistable forum moderator you find in About Desktop Publishing.

NO!SPEC
Say it with me, “Speculative work is bad, I will never work on spec.” Good, now repeat this another 500 times and you’ll be all right. Alternatively, you can find out what spec work really is on NO!SPEC and how it harms the design industry and the single designer.

Ok, I’d like to chat but gotta go. So enjoy these sites and I’ll see you back here soon.

All right, yes, I am having problems with Internet Explorer, I admit it. You probably saw this already if that’s what you are using.

Let’s make a deal, I’ll work to fix the problems with Internet Explorer (which by the way is not standard compliant) and you use Firefox or Opera for the time being when you come to this site. I promise I’ll work hard to make it work on Internet Explorer for those who rather use it. Just be a little patient.

We are working for you…

EDIT: Problems in IE 6 should be fixed now. If you have IE 7 beta, my site won’t show up at all, but I am not going to do anything else until the official release of IE 7 is out, after all it might be a browser’s bug.

[Calvin Lee at A Method to the Mayem had no mercy, so now I am tagged! So here we go:]

Edit: I have actually found out I got tagged not once but TWICE! Aside from Calvin Lee, also Catherine Wentworth from Creative Latitude and Designers Who Blog tagged me. See? The Borg quote couldn’t be more appropriate!

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Senior Associate Editor and Designorati:Desktop Publishing Editor over at Designorati. I help the other editors and writers at Designorati, keep the piece amongst them and I write too, mailnly anything to do with Desktop Publishing.

2. Freelance Designer. I do mainly print design, but I am also getting into web design.

3. Director of Promotion and Marketing in England. I was responsible for the promotion, graphic design of promotional material, and marketing for a non-profit organization.

4. Personnel Procurement Officer. Yup, hiring people. Once again in England.

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. The Matrix Trilogy
2. Last Samurai
3. Troy
4. The Gladiator

And many more!

Four places I have lived:
1. Italy
2. England
3. Italy
4. How long have I got to answer?

Four TV shows I love(d):
1. Star Trek Voyager
2. Star Trek Next Generation
3. Xena: Warrior Princess
4. Smallville

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. South of Italy
2. South East England
3. North of Italy
4. And I have been to lots of other places for work reasons so they don’t qualify here.

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Lasagne
2. Cannelloni
3. Pizza
4. Lamb steak

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Designorati
2. About.com Graphics Software
3. About.com Desktop Publishing
4. My Page at StumbleUpon (gotta see the additions from others)

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Somewhere else in Italy I guess
2. Canada
3. England
4. Next to the fridge eating chocolate

Four people I am tagging:
1. Sam
2. Katherine
3. Chris
4. Pariah

Have a look at my blog. Yes, yes, I know, you are here so you are looking at it, but I am just talking about something in particular.

At the top you’ll see my banner, with an orange light bulb logo made by myself with Illustrator CS2. On your right is the sidebar, showing off her wealth of links to the other parts of the blo… Ahem… sorry, I got carried away. All right let’s get serious, for RSS’ sake.

Now, have a look at my home page—oh! Wait…

… Right. Are you back? Ok I said “now have a look at my home page”, but I didn’t mean now now. I meant now in a minute. How are you supposed to read this page and look at the home page at the same time? And don’t you tell me you can do tabbed browsing because I do too and, even with all the tabs in the world, you just can’t look at two pages at once. Now sit down and don’t hold grudge. I am trying to get to the point here.

Would you like to have your blog featured without having to pay advertising? Well, I have an idea. I really love hooking up to the rest of the world. Have a look… in a minute, at my Elsewhere page, it’s got the entries of my Designorati site and links to other sites too. The entries you see are fed by RSS feeds. Same for my home page which you will have a look at in a minute. There can be any feeds in those pages, not just mine. So what about you give me your feed and I display it here? Yes, you’ll get extra exposure and I get to link to some interesting site which I think is relevant to my own and possibly I get mentioned by you. I think it’s fair isn’t it?

And even for the readers, it’d be great to have lots of related content about what they like in one place, so they find what they want and click just on the right link for them. Your site will also be featured next to my header, on the right hand side of the blog, where you see the current feature articles. It will appear at randomn so that all sites featured get to be shown.

So here’s what I need from you:

1. A valid RSS link from your blog
2. A graphic 100 x 100 pixels, in JPG, PNG or GIF format, to display as in the feature section of my site
3. A description of your site/blog. It doesn’t matter how long it is, but I guess about 500 words would do it. You can send me a short bio of yourself instead, if you prefer.
4. Your blog has to do with design, whichever type of design, arts, blogging, software, computing, hardware and so on. Whether it will be featured it will be at my discretion.
5. You don’t have to link back to me, even though I’d appreciate it.
6. No, spam or porn please. As I said I will decide whether your blog/site will be featured so don’t even try to send me silly links.
7. To submit your blog just click on the “contact us” link and send me everything.

At the moment RSS feeds will be displayed for a week, before they get changed to the next one. Things might change in the future, I’ll let you know about it. If you want your feed to display permanently on my blog contact me and we can discuss it.

Now feel free to look at my home page…

[tags]RSS, feed, blog, blogging, blogsphere, web, weblog, weblogs[/tags]

Not just one, but 7 copies of Xara Xtreme will be given away every day from Sunday. Designorati:Illustration Editor, Sara Froehlich says:

Xara Day is coming to Designorati! If you haven’t tried Xara Xtreme, the newest version of Xara’s drawing software, there’s never been a better time, and you could win a free copy from Designorati and Xara Ltd!

Entering the competition is free. Find out on Designorati:Illustration how you can become one of the lucky people to win.

Read Sara Froehlich’s review of Xara Xtreme to find out more about the software.

[tags]Xara, graphics, illustration, software[/tags]

One of the most common mistakes in typography is the use of “n” dashes instead of “m” dashes. Sometimes two “n” dashes are used in place of one “m” dash. While this was a workaround for typewriters, it is certainly not the rule to be followed by a designer or anybody dealing typography. Samuel John Klein, Designorati:Typography Editor has an interesting article about the use of the dash. Have a look at his article, Considering the Dash.

A kick-butt site named Designorati (ok, I admit it, I am bias) is now offering free thanksgiving fonts for download.

If you want them, have a look here.