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Apple to put voices in your head

I found this article about Apple’s work with the hearing impared fascinating. I had no idea we were at the point of surgically implanting hearing aids, but apparently 10% of hearing aid customers could really stand to benefit from the surgery. And I’m sure as the technology improves (along with the hardware), it’s going to be more common.

While some companies “throw together” features to sell their wares, Apple spent years developing a low-energy form of Bluetooth for just such a use-case. Bravo, Apple!

How Jony Ive Masterminded Apple’s New Headquarters

Jony Ive - Apple Park

‘‘Jony works tirelessly at the detail, evolving, improving, refining. For me, that makes him a poet.’’
—Norman Foster

The Wall Street Journal has a superb feature article on Jonathon Ive, Apple’s design genius. And of course, it’s packed with gorgeous photos of Apple’s new headquarters, including some inside pics that I’ve not seen anywhere else. You just gotta love the clean lines of the workspaces and common areas shown.

Pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit-back in your favorite chair because it’s a long article, but so worth the time.

Top 10 Photoshop tips the experts don’t want you to know!

A comedic look at some great Photoshop tips and advice.

The majority of Photoshop training available on the internet is part of a huge conspiracy to keep people from learning the REAL techniques of how to use this program. Why? So you don’t ever actually figure it out and have to keep coming back to them for more!

Whatever you do… don’t ever, ever EVER name your layers!

How to add a box around a paragraph in your InDesign document

InDesign Paragraph Rules trick

If you’ve ever wanted to place a box around a paragraph in the middle of a container of text, you know what a pain it can be.

Keith Gilbert shared a way to do this using paragraph rules. It is a multi-step procedure to set up this trick, but once you’ve created it and saved it in a paragraph style, it is effortless to use.

If you only need to do this once or twice in a brochure or pamphlet, it’s probably easier to just place a separate text container inside the existing text container where you want it. But if you plan on applying this effect fairly often in a long document of text (such as an annual report, magazine, or instruction manual), this is probably going to be a real time saver.

This tip is a few years old, but still works. I’m actually surprised Adobe didn’t add a feature that does this automatically back when they added Paragraph Shading; another effect we used to manually create using InDesign’s Paragraph Rules feature.

How to create engaging images for social media

Engaging social media images

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, was famous for spending an inordinate amount of time on headlines.

Back then, social media didn’t exist. If it did, Ogilvy would probably give equal time to creating the perfect complementary image.

The Buffer.com blog has some great tips for creating social media graphics. The article is meant for non-designers, but if you’re new to social media marketing, it’s worth the read.