Photoshop Done Right

Designers often abuse the powers of Photoshop, as we've seen. With all the airbrushed photographs on newsstands these days, it's easy to forget that Photoshop was created to design innovative and cutting-edge images.

This week, Graphic Design Blog showcased "40 Fresh and Extraordinary Photoshop Manipulations." Not only do the manipulations exhibit amazing design talent, but also show all that Photoshop is capable of. Here are few of the designs:












Which is your favorite?

Graph Jam

Graph Jam was created by the Cheezburger Network and its content is described as, "Life and pop culture graphed for your inner geek." Like the network's other famous websites like Fail Blog and The Daily What, Graph Jam definitely makes people laugh. The site turns everyday situations into cheesy 3-D pie charts.

Here are some recent favorites:




Be sure to check out Graph Jam for more laughs.

An Ode to the End of the Semester

Ah, Jessie Spano. She stood out as Saved by the Bell's token neurotic, always wanting As and trying too hard to get them. In one infamous episode (Jessie's Song), Ms. Spano took things too far and became addicted to caffeine pills.




Lucky for her, recovery arrived before the end credits, as shown in the following infographic:




The stresses of school get to all of us, but try not to stress yourselves out. Hang in there, fellow students. It will be over soon enough.

Show and Tell: Zeitgeist 2010: Year in Review

Google released a movie yesterday showcasing the top searches of 2010. The short film brings attention to the year's major events like the earthquake in Haiti and the first face transplant, wonderfully summarizing a year's worth of events in 3 minutes.

United States of Autocomplete

Very Small Array posted an infographic today of each state's primary association, according to Google's autocomplete feature. Sports, universities and newspapers proved to be the most common things people look up about a given state, however there were some interesting outliers such as "Montana Fishburne," "North Carolina furniture," and "Vermont country store."

 

It is somewhat surprising that only two states resulted in anything related to leisure or travel. "Hawaii hotels" seems like it would be a much more enjoyable Google search than "Hawaii Five-O."

Guilty Pleasure Websites

Lucky for me, no websites are restricted at my office. Or that was the case until recently. 

Thanks to some technical errors with the office's new proxy server, more and more websites are blocked. It's my job to report these blocked websites so the settings can be fixed, which is good news. However, broadcasting my favorite guilty pleasure websites in the process is rather embarrassing. I hesitated to report any of my favorite sites, thinking "I'll be alright, I'm probably better off reading less crap during the day anyway." Wrong. Despite still having The Daily Mail to tide me over, after two days of Facebook without any photos and no Jezebel, I turned myself in. The sites haven't returned yet, but at least they're on their way.

What are some of your favorite guilty pleasure websites?

Prepare to Be Dazzled

Behold the wonder of Google Reader.

Google Reader collects every post from your favorite websites and blogs and displays them in one place. You can flag items to read later, email directly from Reader, share interesting articles with your friends, and read articles your friends shared. With its wonderful Explore feature, Reader also keeps track of websites and blog it thinks you will like.




The site is an easy way to view a variety of websites and best of all, it's FUN. Check it out.

South Park is...

South Park notoriously uses parody to grab viewers' attention and the show's latest ad definitely grabbed mine. In the promo for the new season, South Park takes on the iPad commercials.

I'm usually a lover of all things Apple, but some of the company's more recent advertisements feel too cutesy. Like this one. I'd take the dancing silhouette commercials back any day over these. 

The iPad ads aren't quite as cheesy, but this spoof made me laugh anyway: