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Forget overpriced schools, long days in a crowded classroom, and pitifully poor results. These websites and apps cover myriads of science, art, and technology topics. They will teach you practically anything, from making hummus to building apps in node.js, most of them for free.
There is absolutely no excuse for you not to master a new skill, expand your knowledge, or eventually boost your career. You can learn interactively at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home. It’s hard to imagine how much easier it can possibly be. Honestly, what are you waiting for?...
Via Jeff Domansky
We have compiled a list of 10 predictions that in our opinion will turn out to be correct to a varying degree. We have excluded flat style and responsiveness because of their obviousness. The first one has got an enormous stimulus from material design, and the second one, well, it is hard to name a trend actually, nowadays it is a must-have requirement. Also, we do not include ghost buttons since they are literally everywhere. So let's get acquainted with our prognoses...
Via Jeff Domansky
Problem is, actually creating all these beautiful visuals isn't exactly every marketer's forte. Oh, another problem? Design software can cost an arm and a leg (plus all the classes you need to take to learn how to work the darn stuff).
But there's good news -- there are plenty of free and easy-to-use tools out there that can make you look like a master designer. This post will break down 21 of our favorites so you too can create visuals and images that'll make your marketing pop. Get ready to create visualizations, banners, infographics, and more like a total pro....
Via Jeff Domansky
While we appreciate it in the abstract, few of us pause to grasp the miracles of modern life, from artificial light to air conditioning, as Steven Johnson puts it in the excellent How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (public library), “how amazing it is that we drink water from a tap and never once worry about dying forty-eight hours later from cholera.” Understanding how these everyday marvels first came to be, then came to be taken for granted, not only allows us to see our familiar world with new eyes — something we are wired not to do — but also lets us appreciate the remarkable creative lineage behind even the most mundane of technologies underpinning modern life....
Via Jeff Domansky
Price still rules as an online purchase influencer, but basic brand assets should not be ignored in online product presentations.
Clear, concise, and pertinent product descriptions make online shoppers press the “Buy” button more often than do favorable reviews. In fact, only price topped persuasive product copy as a purchase influencer, according to a survey of 500 consumers conducted by Markettree for HookLogic.
Price remains king, with 84% of consumers designating it as one of the top three factors that cause them to buy. Sixty-three percent named product descriptions, and 49% listed reviews. Bringing up the rear were videos, named by only 12%. Fundamental brand assets like product names, images, and features, maintains HookLogic's survey report, are the bottom-of-the-funnel items most likely to turn browsers into buyers....
Via Jeff Domansky
Visuals are now the most important element of content marketing, but this can be terrifying if you’re “artistically challenged.” Here are three ways to create compelling visuals regardless of your artistic talent.
The good news: Even someone who made that can create effective visual marketing. Without a graphic designer. And if I can, so can you....
Via Jeff Domansky
What you do right before sleep could mean a breakthrough in the morning.
Imagine hacking into your own brain while you sleep, finding unrelated details or ideas that were never connected and mashing them up to get a solution to whatever problem has been wracking your brain. It can and has been done.
What you do before bed can play a role in how primed your brain is for this kind of creativity. Research has repeatedly found that sleep improves people's ability to come up with creative solutions to problems. Psychologists from UC San Diego found that REM sleep improves the creative process more than any other state--asleep or awake. And often the solutions to problems come to us when we are sleeping because of a phenomenon cognitive scientists call "pattern recognition."...
Via Jeff Domansky
How we collaborate has profound implications for how we live and work. The author and New York University professor explains how social media has upended traditional norms.
The disruptive power of collaboration: An interview with Clay Shirky
How we collaborate has profound implications for how we live and work. The author and New York University professor explains how social media has upended traditional norms.
Sharing changes everything. CUpending supply and demand. Creating success from failure.
From the invention of the printing press to the telephone, the radio, and the Internet, the ways people collaborate change frequently, and the effects of those changes often reverberate through generations. In this video interview, Clay Shirky, author, New York University professor, and leading thinker on the impact of social media, explains the disruptive impact of technology on how people live and work—and on the economics of what we make and consume. This interview was conducted by McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui, and an edited transcript of Shirky’s remarks follows....
Via Jeff Domansky
Tumblr is an awesome blogging platform where you can take inspiration from its great design ideas. This particular post is designed so as to provide you with the best 50 inspirational Tumblr blogs.We hope that our hard work will help you find what you have been looking for. Choose any of the following and innovate one of your own masterpieces....
Via Jeff Domansky
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Some people prefer working late into the night. Others hit their stride after lunch. If you're not sure what time of day is best for you to write, keep on reading. The infographic below from Neil Patel at Quick Sprout will dive into data on productivity and creativity so you can figure out what timing might work best for you....
Via Jeff Domansky
Some claim that the best way to learn a craft is by imitating -- studying and copying the authorities of your industry with the intention of adopting their techniques. But too often, we rely only on the current lanscape of creative to inspire us. You need a dose of history -- in a modern format, of course!
We created a "social profile" for 10 icons of the advertising industry to guide you in discovering more about his or her creative work, famous words, and life.
Be inspired and challenged by these masters of creativity.
Via Jeff Domansky
What do we expect will happen in one thousand years time? Or one million years? Or even one billion? As our amazing timeline shows, there may be trouble ahead.
Via Ana Cristina Pratas, Jeff Domansky
It’s well known that cartoonists have very fertile imaginations. Case in point: this cartoon by Joe Dator, which appears in the current issue.
Yet, as it turns out, the surreal scenario envisioned by Joe owes less to his imagination than you might think. I’ll let Joe tell you about it. Take it away, Joe.
“The gondola is based on one I saw at a stoop sale in Queens. They had some nice sweaters, too.”...
Via Jeff Domansky
Is your brand telling visual stories? Are you empowering your fans to create and share visual content for you?
Brands who create and curate visual content are seeing wider reach, more shares and traffic to their real or virtual doorstep.
We asked 19 Visual Social Media Experts to give us their Top Visual Content Secrets - here is what they shared with us (featuring a cool SlideShare)....
Via Jeff Domansky
The key thing to realise, Pinker argues, is that writing is "cognitively unnatural." For almost all human existence, nobody wrote anything; even after that, for millennia, only a tiny elite did so. And it remains an odd way to communicate. You can't see your readers' facial expressions. They can't ask for clarification. Often, you don't know who they are, or how much they know. How to make up for all this?
Pinker's answer builds on the work of two language scholars, Mark Turner and Francis-Noël Thomas, who label their approach "joint attention". Writing is a modern twist on an ancient, species-wide behaviour: drawing someone else's attention to something visible.
Via Jeff Domansky
Mike Arauz, one of the many bright strategists at Undercurrent suggests it’s time for us (digital strategists especially) to become square-shaped. He claims, “you should just know everything.” In a post on Medium , he declares that if you work at the intersection of people, business and technology — I think that would include all of us — you need “an expansive approach to cultivating your expertise.”
He offers a list that might be a bit more technical than most of us want to explore, but a look at any of the emerging technologies validates his argument.
Digital printers will soon let us make our own products (eye glass frames, light fixtures, toys), print clothing items (tactile screens that let us feel the material are coming), and prepare dinner (or at least dessert.) If this doesn’t change how we market, sell and distribute, it will certainly affect consumers’ expectations for customization....
Via Jeff Domansky
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![19 Visual Social Media Secrets from the Pros [SlideShare] | e-commerce & social media | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/v0WkZ5buVig0jJk78Mj8oTl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Are you a lifelong learner? Here are some great ideas for learning.
I recently enrolled back in college to learn a new skill for a career change. I wish that I knew about these websites. Would have save me thousands of dollars.
This one looks worth tucking away until I have one of those rainy days I'm always dreaming about!