Yes, believe it or not you will need to be good at communicating verbally as well as visually if you hope to make it as a designer. If you’ve ever wondered how designers with less ability than you have managed to surpass you professionally, this may very well be the deciding factor.

I’ve met a lot of amazing people through twitter, Designers, Artist, Social Media Guru’s and Web Masters. This week I’m going to share some of these amazing people with you in the tradition of Follow Friday! Feel Free to share your favorite twitter peeps with me as well!

Too often designers are other creatives jump right into the computer and fire up Photoshop or InDesign and complete forget pen, paper, and little brainstorming. Laying out your ideas on paper first will save you time because you can work out problems and ideas much more quickly and change them without a lot of effort. Not to mention that you will also have a guide or road map rather having to complete trust your memory.

For those not in the know a Gravatar is an online avatar or profile pic that you can tie to a specific email address. For example if you were to comment on my blog, if you had a Gravatar tied to your email address, the image you chose for you Gravatar would appear next to your comment. This is common for most blogging systems online today.

“There is not really a right or wrong to commenting on blogs, though there is something to be said for ettiquitte or as we are saying now, netiquitte! I personally try to avoid leaving simple generic or one line comments. I try to be polite, and I try to be specific in my commenting. This is the general rule of thumb most people try to follow.”

As many of you know I’m a huge fan and supporter of Kyle Lambert, a young UK Digital Artist that I know will go far very fast. Kyle’s work is always nothing short of amazing, and its the only world I can use to describe his latest iPad Artwork for Toy Story 3.

There are several skills that all graphic designers should have under their belt. However some of these exist outside learning the Adobe Programs, color theory and the principles of typography. Sometimes designers and the people who work with them struggle with either technical or administrative skills. Over the next few days I will cover some of these skills and provide you with some resources to help you. Today I will talk about FTP.

The Last Airbender was one of the most anticipated movies this year, and with amazing movie poster artwork like this and the stunning work done on the trailers its no surprise. Today I’m going to cover my thoughts on the poster artwork as well as offer you my views on the movie itself as well as the controversy behind it.

As many of you know I am a huge fan of the very talented Kyle Lambert, a young Digital Artist gaining some ground in the UK. The amazing level of detail, precision and speed in his work is beyond belief. Well he has managed to do top himself if that is possible by showing off his tremendous skills with a finger painting on the new iPad

Melody Nieves is one of my favorite people in the online design community and its was a real treat to interview her and ask her some questions, and more about her blog SexiDesign.com

In this review I cover some of the new features of Adobe InDesign CS5. InDesign is the weapon of choice in any designers arsenal when it comes to layouts, pre-press, or typography, and it doesn’t get highlighted nearly as much as it should. InDesign plays a much bigger role in the design world than most people realize.

Herald of Devotion is part of my Herald series just like Herald of Creation, the next one in the series that I will be working on is Herald of Destruction.

Many people assume that artist and designers simply get to “play” all day in Photoshop, work when we feel like it, and do what we love. While that last part is too, the rest is a list of very poor assumptions.

The feeling of creative block is one of the most frustrating things and artistic person can encounter. The key is to take little breaks that help you boost your creativity so you can move forward. In order to avoid burnout, you need to learn to avoid or work through your creative blocks.

Herald of Creation was a nice chance to use some of my favorite photo manipulation techniques in an interesting way and combine them with some vectors from Go Media.

Many people (and companies) today believe that they have a very firm grasp of Social Media Marketing. They will tell you about how many followers they have on twitter, how many friends they have on facebook, in a bid to sound impressive. Its really not.

Viral Video is a marketing tactic that has been brought to the forefront specifically through Youtube. It’s amazing to think how much this particular website has effected our lives and even our culture and language. More importantly however it has spawned several niche industries and new marketing techniques and strategies. Fairly quickly I’m going to give you a few brief tips to help you in your viral video efforts.