General
When you get to own a color as much as Coca-Cola does, you don’t need much more around it.
The wrong color can make a great logo look like something a friend left on your bathroom floor the morning after a party.
Take a look at this brief article at FastCoDesign, then ask yourself: How much does color define a logo? Truth-be-told, you should probably spend nearly as much time thinking about your color use as you do designing the logo.
General
InspiredMag has put together a list of design trends for Keynote/PowerPoint presentations. If you routinely build presentations, it’s worth taking a look. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a Keynote presentation that doesn’t follow these (mostly) obvious rules of design.
Apple | Mac
If you’re willing to cough up $20, Publicspace.net offers a great solution in the form of A Better Finder Rename. If you need to do this kind of thing routinely, it’s worth the money.
But you can also do this for free with Apple’s Automator found in your Applications folder. Macworld’s Christopher Breen shows you how in this article.
Apple | Mac
I can’t stand when I get a PDF file that has a password that restricts printing, editing or saving, etc. Thankfully, a clever developer offers a simple way to crack those pesky PDFs online – no software installation required.
Crack My PDF can remove restrictions for copying, editing, printing & extracting, and works on PDF files up to version 9 with 40-bit RC4 ecryption, 128-bit RC4 decryption and 128-bit AES decryption.
It cannot completely remove an open password, remove DRM, or enable you to save forms locally or add comments or digital signatures.
For me, the ability to at least print those PDFs makes Crack My PDF worth bookmarking!
Apple | Mac
If you use apps that take advantage of iCloud storage, such as Text Edit, Pages, Numbers, etc., you can save your documents in iCloud so they’re available no matter where you are or what computer you happen to be using. However, Apple doesn’t allow full organization of those files as it does in the Finder. By default, all your documents are stored in a single top-level folder. Not ideal.
Thankfully, you can create a little organization by creating single-level folders, just like you can with apps on your iOS device.
Simply drag one document on top of another in the iCloud open/save dialog box to create a folder. You can then rename it to whatever you want. You can’t create folders inside of folders, but at least you can cut down on the long list of files if you have one.
Adobe Photoshop
This collection of 100 awesome Photoshop action files creates realistic mockups of your designs with the click of a button. Here are a few samples of what you can create (click to enlarge/see details).
Read more “100 Free Photoshop mockup actions”
Adobe Photoshop
Long Shadow Generator is a Photoshop extension to which creates long shadow with a single click! It’s the perfect add-on for web designers working on a site with a flat design who want to add a little dimension to the design without using typical drop shadows.
Read more “Long Shadow Generator for Adobe Photoshop”
Apple | Mac
It never fails; you’re busy, not paying attention and have a meeting across town in an hour, when you notice that your iPhone is down to 15% charge on the battery. Simply plugging it in for 15 minutes before you head out the door isn’t going to give you enough charge to get you through the day.
Here’s a little-known secret to get you the battery charge you need in half the time it would normally take.
Plug your iPhone in as you normally would, then open the Settings app and turn on Airplane mode at the top. Doing so turns off WiFi, the cellular radio, Bluetooth, pretty much everything that typically drains the battery even as it’s charging.
I’ve verified that this works, and works well. My iPhone charged in nearly half the time it would normally take.
I wish I could take credit for discovering this trick, but I found it at AlliOSNews.
Apple | Mac
If you’re using an Apple keyboard (or many third-party keyboards with a dedicated audio volume button), you can adjust the volume up and down with the push of a key. For many people, that’s enough.
For those who need a little more control, you can adjust the volume in quarter increments (rather than whole increments) simply by holding Option + Shift keys while pushing the Volume Up or Down keys. You’ll notice on the Volume bezel that appears on screen that the volume is adjusting a quarter box at a time, rather than a whole.
And for those of you who are annoyed by the quacking/beeping/burping sound with every press of the volume key, you can temporarily mute that sound by using Shift+Volume Up or Down keys. Unfortunately, you can combine the two to make silent adjustments in small increments.
Apple | Mac
If you have several different email accounts, you may find it annoying to have to choose the right email address as your “From” email from the drop-down menu (providing the default send account isn’t the one you want to use) in OS X’s Mail app. There is no cure for this problem, but you can at least put the list in the order you want it to appear in.
I’ve seen other Mac sites that offer tips to accomplish this that range from the outrageous advice that you must delete all your email accounts and re-add them in the order you want them to appear, to the less dramatic but still cumbersome idea that you must uncheck the email checkbox in the Internet accounts preference pane and re-enable email in the desired order.
Thankfully, there’s a much more convenient way to accomplish the same desired result that doesn’t require you to delete anything.
Simply drag the individual email inbox icons for your accounts in the Mail sidebar to the order you want them to appear and restart Mail. Boom, you’re done. Now your drop-down menu will list your email addresses in the order you set them in.
Apple | Mac
Looking to get started in 3D modeling and animation software on the Mac? There are a few apps out there, but most fall into one of two categories. Expensive but worth it, being the first. Cheap or free, but completely under-featured and unpolished is the more likely one you’ll come across.
Blender kicks the trend and offers a high-end package absolutely free.
Blender is a free and open source 3D animation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.
Blender is cross-platform and runs on Linux, Windows and Macintosh computers. I’m not into 3D work, and I’ve not used this software myself. But I recently read a review from a friend who has and she was raving about it. It’s free, so you lose nothing by trying it out.
If you do use Blender, be sure to check out Blend Swap for free 3D assets created by other Blender users.