A crowdsourcing company out of Australia, DesignBay, has recently acquired another big crowdsourcing  site, DesignCrowd. The new combined forces will do business as DesignCrowd, DesignBay.com is already being redirected to DesignCrowd.com. Although in the design world crowdsourcing has caused a lot of controversy, it seems to be a growing business, with crowdsourcing sites popping up all over the place it’s still hard to see how this will affect designers who are actually competing with hundreds of other people for the same income they used to rely on, it could mean that the best designers will rise to the top, while lazy designers will be weeded out, or it could mean design gets watered-down. Only time will tell.

You the Designer is a great blog dedicated to design, a couple weeks ago we posted about Amazing Vintage Posters, but You the Designer has an equally inspiring post with 38 Awesome Movie Posters that are a little more modern, be sure to check out the post and blog, good reads!

The LA Times is reporting that Adobe systems is planning to lay off 680 employees in the near future due to a decline in sales, as many are waiting for the next Creative Suite to release next year before spending any money with the company.  Last year the company also cut 600 jobs which was equal to about 8% of it’s workforce. Read the entire story at LATimes.com.

Designer Daily, one of our favorite blogs here at IheartGraphics they just posted 30 Amazing Vintage Movie posters, and it’s great to see how some of these are easy to date, but they still look great! All of them, great inspirational material for any graphic designer! Be sure to check them out.

I grew up in a neighborhood with a high concentration of Filipinos, so when I came across this article on Team Manila I was immediately interested. It seems this graphic design studio has been open since 2001 and puts a lot of their efforts into nationalism, rather than focusing on other cultures they’re embracing their own. Be sure to check out the article!

First and foremost, if you’re thinking of joining the graphic design community it should be something you’re passionate about, because the competition can be so stiff, it’s important that this is something you really want to do. Oxidizzy has a great blog post on 8 steps to get into the graphic design industry, be sure to check it out!

These days there’s not a lot of money floating around, and most businesses are hurting but there are things you can ask of your clients instead of more money.  You The Designer posted up 7, while I’ll list what I think the most important are.

Testimonials

Testimonials are great for your site, but only if they can be verified, if someone gives you and awesome testimonial but wants to remain anonymous, who’s to say you didn’t write the testimonial yourself? A link to the clients website should take care of this.

Designed By Links

When you design a website, be sure to ask the client if you can include a small link at the bottom of the page, often times even resistant clients will let you put a link up that may match the background closely, especially for a discount of some sort, or maybe you can offer to design free business cards, something simple, the link is worth it.

Logo Usage Rights

For your own website, it’s important to have a list of your clients, be sure to ask if you can use a client’s logo on your site.

Referrals

The best way to get business is by word of mouth, ask your clients to tell their friends about you, you can also offer incentives for every project you get based on one of their referrals.

While most movie marketing is done with posters/billboard, tv, radio and internet ads, there are some films that are going above and beyond the traditional world of film advertising. Where the Wild Things Are is Spike Jonze’s highly anticipated film, the posters have been teasing for a while, but the big attraction, in Los Angeles at least is the Where the Wild Things Are pop up shop located at Space 15 Twenty. The store is decorated like the forest from the movie and is selling various memorabilia.  The shop is located at 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Los Angeles, CA‎ 90028. I’ll definitely be checking it out before it closes on October 18th. View more pictures at Kitsune Nior.

One of the most famous graphic designers of this generation has got to be David Carson, as one of his assignments at the un-conventional Ray Gun Magazine had him using a Dingbat font for an interview that he considered to be boring.  He’s been known to use non-mainstream styles and his style often has a grungy edge to it.  Be sure to check out his site.

Creattica.com is a great site where the design community can look forward to submitting great designs as well as view other designs for inspiration.  Over 3,000 designs are featured on the site and you vote on designs if you like them.  Only the best work is featured in their gallery which appears to be monitored by an actual graphic artist(s).  The logos featured are all very creative while keeping the simplicity.  Be sure to check the site out!