“It’s time for our 2nd annual Year-End Lessons Learned post. 2008 was a great year for Common Craft. While we published a number of videos that we’re very proud of, 2008 was all about building a foundation for the future of our business. Going into 2009, we’re feeling confident that we have a solid foundation in place - and now is our time to put more videos into the world.

Here are a few things we learned…”

“During Christmas season travel it occurred to me that the larger problems we, as an industry, have to work around right now are not all financial. More of our friends and colleagues may lose their jobs in the coming months, and it’s our shared responsibility to help them whenever possible. In this new year, it is simply not going to be enough to just meet your bottom line, but to help others who may not be in a position to be so entrepreneurial or carefree.”

“When times get tough, it can often feel like there are no good people left in the world, only people who haven’t yet turned bad. These bad people will go back on their word, welch on a deal, put themselves first. You owe it to yourself to stay on top. You owe it to yourself to ensure that no matter how bad things get, you’ll come away clean. You owe it yourself and your business not to be the guy lying bleeding in an alley with a slug in your gut.

But you’re a professional, right? Nothing bad is going to happen to you.

You’re a good guy. You do good work for good people.

Think again chump.”

“So way back in April, I first had the idea of editing together inspirational speeches. Since then, the Dow has dropped 3,000 points and one million jobs have been lost. The people of the United States are now a ragtag bunch of scruffy underdogs, down by three touchdowns at halftime, with a whole horde of orcs waiting for us right outside those locker room doors. Inspiration has become something we need. (By the way, you couldn’t tell because it started the sentence, but ‘Inspiration’ was capitalized.)

What I’m trying to say is, I may have just single-handedly saved the economy with this montage…”

“Sound effects are used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. These trick of sound are mostly achieved by combining technology, ingenuity and creativity. Sound effects are important for digital media because an appropriate sound effect can easily resemble a real occurrence for a situation.

We understand it’s kind of fussy to record and process sound effects on one’s own. Thus, we’ve crawled into Internet and search for free sound effects which are available for download. Here’s 55 websites for free sound effects download.”

“We still frequently hear the very bad advice: ‘Computer video screens show images at 72 dpi, so scan all your images for the screen at 72 dpi’. This is incredibly wrong; it simply doesn’t work that way.

Regardless what you may have heard almost everywhere, there is no purpose or reason for 72 dpi images on computer video screens or web pages. As a concept, 72 dpi is simply a false notion. It is a myth. It is NOT how video works, and it is detrimental to understanding how things really do work. It is very easy to show proof of this here.”

“This group was created to bring together all the great work done by the legendary graphic designer and typographer, Wim Crouwel.”

Just so awesome.

“In Liége, Belgium, [Santiago] Calatrava was one of seven contestants in an architectural competition to design a highspeed-train station. His rivals came in teams armed with examples of their past work; Calatrava showed up alone, with his paintbrush, and won the commission.”

“Graphic design evolved during the late nineteenth century from a sideline of the printing industry into an autonomous field with its own lore, icons and personalities. The missing link in this evolutionary process is trade magazines. Initially they established professional standards for printing, typesetting and bookbinding, yet viewed ornamental design as ephemeral. However, by the turn of the century, when businesses demanded printers provide more sophisticated layout and typography, trade magazine editors were forced to analyze and critique new advances. These magazines did not just reflexively report the current trends instead some aggressively codified key methods and mannerisms that in turn defined a profession.”

“100 Ideas for Envisioning Powerful, Engaging, and Productive User Experiences in Knowledge Work: Working through Screens is a reference for product teams creating new or iteratively improved applications for thinking work. Written for use during early, formative conversations, it provides teams with a broad range of considerations for setting the overall direction and priorities for their onscreen tools.”

“Visualization can be a very powerful tool. Even simple images have the power to be provocative, insightful, challenging, and even funny. Jessica Hagy’s book and associated blog, Indexed, are no exception. In fact, they are great examples of very simple images such as line charts and Venn diagrams used to communicate complex concepts, often with a good dose of humor and wit…. We recently had the opportunity to talk to Jessica about how she got started, how she uses visuals in her work, and where she gets her inspiration. Check out the 19 minute 52 second podcast to find out more about her work…”

“A quick reference guide of typographic terms and classification with definitions of form and usage for Latin based writing systems. Handy for the desk, the TDR contains over a thousand facts on typography.”

Looks beautifully simple.

This is an online look at Covering Photography’s exhibition at the Boston public Library, up through December 31st, 2008 in the BPL’s Rare Books and Manuscripts exhibition space. The show features original photographs that became, inspired or coincidentally predated book designs and illustrations. Just have a look — it’s pretty interesting.

“Chris Pullman is the only person who can be said to have won not one but two of the highest possible honors from AIGA. The first was the Corporate Leadership Award, which the company he shaped, Boston public broadcasting network WGBH, won in 1985. The second was the AIGA Medal, which Pullman himself won in 2002.

Chris Pullman was a young teacher at the Yale School of Art when he was recruited by Ivan Chermayeff, who had just redesigned WGBH’s logo, to take charge of the station’s in-house design department. He joined the company as Vice President for Design in 1973. This past spring, after 35 years, he announced that he was stepping down. At an emotional going-away party on October 28, he talked about his three-and-a-half decades at the station. He has kindly given us permission to publish his remarks here.”

The chance invitation to work here at WGBH placed me in an environment that was a perfect fit for my temperament, and for my aspirations as a professional and as just a plain person.

Once I came here, I recognized, gradually, why it felt so right as a place to work and associate. I’d like to take this opportunity to share ten lessons I learned in the past 35 years.

“Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them.”