In my time I’ve had the opportunity to work with many creative and talented people. Whether they have been models, musicians or dancers, each of these people has been unique and inspiring. One of the greatest talents I’ve had the pleasure of working with is Sir Ben Marx (Marc Benjamin).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Creative people by nature are less rigid and more eccentric than your traditional office worker, so the corporate world can be tough for us (particularly if you are very sensitive or empathetic). So in order to help you get through the 9-5 I’ve put together a little post that I hope will keep you off the ledge or from slicing your ear off!

I’m really excited about this! It was a great honor to be featured in Photoshop Creative’s Reader’s Gallery section. Four of my favorite pieces of art were featured in this month’s issue including: Energetic and Celestial Being.

Finding a good web hosting company can be a difficult thing if you’ve never had to do it before. If your not the most tech savvy person in the world it can terrifying, and you are likely to end up getting a lot of things you don’t really need. I’m going to do my best to give the no-nonsense approach to shopping for a good web hosting company.

New York is a truly wonderful city, particularly for creatives. You can barely walk down a street in this city without encountering a barrage of colors, advertising, art, architecture, and any number of inspiration, its is literally a creative playground. I took the opportunity to take some pictures while in the area of the 35th and Broadway, as well as when I was in the Subway catching my train back to Brooklyn. These are the ones that really caught my attention.

Many people have asked me lately how I achieved some of my goals and popularity as a designer so quickly. In all honest I’m forced to admit that it has more to do with my understanding of 2 things rather than some tremendous talent I supposedly have (I still have a ways to go to be the designer I want to be), and those 2 things are: Marketing and Technology, and the fact that applied them to Brand Development.