Honest Insights In User Interface and User Experience Design

When asked to write a blog post about event planning websites, I initially took a deep breath. I can count on two fingers my life milestones which might require an event planner before I hit 30: graduation and marriage. I’m not anticipating hiring a planner for anything. This is based more on my personality than on economics. Simply put: I like small events. I respect people who throw large events, I love attending big parties, and I may eventually make my income planning these fetes. But, in my own life, I’ll choose a dinner party of 10 rather than buying out the Hyatt ballroom every time.

So, when asked to evaluate event planner websites, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I have neither the drive nor the finances to hire a planner. I’m not super up-to-date on industry developments. How could I free-write on a subject I know virtually nothing about? And then it hit me: I look at websites for event planning services all the time. And so do you.

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I did a lot of photoshop(& illustrator) tutorials back in the day(a year or 2 ago) but once I had mastered the “glassy ball” and “grunge-look” I kinda stopped doing them. I recently started doing tutorials again and I have become a big advocate for them. Here are some reasons why you should be doing multiple tutorials a week: Continue Reading

Hey, all. It’s Events Planning Intern Lauren again. I wanted to let you know about the next event coming up on the dt calendar. On July 29, we’ll be hosting our monthly workshop, and Melani Gordon of gWaveConsulting will be presenting on the topic: How to provide marketing campaign ROI/transparency in times of slowing economy & decreasing marketing budgets.

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What’s up, I’m Monique, the latest addi+ion to the digital-telepathy intern team! My short time here at DT has already been filled with some amazing insights and great experiences. When presented with the task of blogging about anything, my heart raced as I realized I had never written anything online that anyone really cared about. Of course there was an occasional MySpace blog about “words that look weird when spelled out,” or the event e-vite I diligently scripted and e-mailed to all my digital friends inviting them to my annual Ugly Sweater Holiday Bash, but I had never blogged about something worthwhile to the community. I started thinking about topics and my credibility to write on these topics, and the first thing that came to my mind was social media.

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I wanted to share this with you all. Its pretty impactful. At this years Cannes film festival, Saatchi & Saatchi (Kevin Roberts, lovemarks, etc.) Held their 18th annual young directors showcase. They dedicated the show to Paul Arden, considered by many to be the worlds top advertising guru, who died a few months ago.

Some quotes about Arden from an article about his life :

“Fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of what other people might think, fear of losing our job. All the things that look like insuperable obstacles, Paul just didn’t see them; he went right through them as if they weren’t there. So they weren’t.”

“Paul didn’t want the predictable, or the expected, the ordinary, or dull, or safe – what was the point? He wanted the risky, the unusual, the daring, which brought with it fear, insecurity and adrenalin. Wasn’t that the whole point of being alive?”

The theme of the showcase was Fearlessness, and S&S raised their glasses to the likes of Bjork, RJD2, and Fatboy Slim. Shocking videos such as Justice:Stress (watch this one!), amazing efforts of art and dedication like the works of BLU and outrageous campaigns like Verisigns Cart Whisperer.

Paul Arden was a man who did not feel that rules applied to him so he wrote a new set, and believed those rules were like a wiki, to be edited and changed and rewritten. Pushing the limits is tantamount to broadening horizons and its always inspirational to see those who really think outside the box. Fierce creativity is a challenge, but creativity by definition is giving rise to that which is different, unique, or uncommon.

The full article about the Saatchi & Saatchi showcase with tons more links is here.