SAN JOSE, Calif. — Adobe announced that a major update to Adobe® Creative Cloud™, the company’s flagship offering for creatives, is now available. Unveiled at Adobe MAX, The Creativity Conference, in early May and packed with new features, this Creative Cloud release reimagines the creative process through a stunning set of “CC” desktop applications and sophisticated cross-device collaboration and publishing capabilities. Creative files can be stored and shared, via Creative Cloud, on Mac OS, Windows, iOS and Android; and Behance, the world’s leading online creative community, is now integrated with Creative Cloud, so customers can showcase work, get feedback on projects and gain global exposure.

“We’ve added a ton of new innovation to all our CC desktop apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. These apps include new features that increase productivity, streamline the effort to build mobile content and showcase some stunning new imaging and video science. And in addition to the traditional areas of innovation these apps are now connected to the powerful publishing and community features integral to the Creative Cloud experience,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media, Adobe. “And with even more great updates coming to Creative Cloud throughout the year, we can’t wait to see the incredible work our customers are going to deliver.”

With Creative Cloud, publishing finished work has never been easier, with enhanced services that build and power websites, mobile apps, tablet publications, online portfolios, and content for virtually any medium and device.

Adobe Creative Cloud Powers Frictionless Creative Workflows
This milestone update to Creative Cloud simplifies the entire creative process. Core features include:

• Creative Cloud Experience on the Desktop. With the new Creative Cloud desktop app, your entire creative world is synced and organized across your desktop, website, and mobile device. You can stay connected to work on Behance; track feedback; and install and manage apps and updates. More features will be added soon to manage your files and desktop fonts within this same experience.

• Integration With The World’s Leading Creative Community. With Behance now integrated with Creative Cloud, members are able to publish their own portfolios, follow other creatives, publish work-in-progress from within a growing number of CC apps and solicit feedback from the worldwide creative community. Over 1.4 million creatives globally are part of the Behance network.

• Store, Share and Collaborate. All files and assets can be shared between the desktop, cloud and mobile devices. A designer can take a photo on their iPad, use Photoshop® Touch to refine the photo while on the go, then access that file, via the cloud, and use Photoshop CC on their Mac or Windows PC to further enhance the image. Designers can send files to view, download or comment. Individual members receive 20GB of storage.

• Seamless Publishing. Creative Cloud members have access to the services necessary to publish highly personalized portfolio websites using Behance ProSite, high-impact digital publications for iPad using Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) Single Edition, and PhoneGap™ Build to create and publish mobile apps for any device. Adobe Typekit features an unmatched library of old-classic to new-favorite fonts for use on websites and, coming soon in an update to Creative Cloud, creatives will also be able to quickly find the perfect fonts in the growing Adobe Typekit library, sync them to their computer, and have them immediately available for use in any desktop application. Full Creative Cloud members will soon have access to over 700 fonts, installed with a single click.

New Family of CC Desktop Applications Available Exclusively to Creative Cloud Members
This update to Creative Cloud includes the next generation of 15 Adobe desktop applications — including Adobe Photoshop CC, InDesign® CC, Illustrator® CC, Dreamweaver® CC, Premiere® Pro CC and more. Adobe Creative Cloud includes more than 30 tools and services that enable professional-grade content creation and delivery across print, web, mobile apps, video and photography.

Hundreds of new features are included in these latest versions of Adobe’s industry-defining desktop tools.  Innovations include:

• Photoshop CC ships with new sharpening technologies and designer workflow enhancements. Camera Shake Reduction deblurs images that would have otherwise been lost due tocamera movement. All-newSmart Sharpen makes texture and detail pop, and Adobe Camera Raw 8 adds even more powerful photographic controls to straighten and perfect images. Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC are the first Adobe desktop applications to include theability to post files directly to Behance, showcasing work immediately andintegrating peer feedback into the creative process.
• For designers, the Touch Type tool in Illustrator CC offers a new level of creativity with type. Move, scale, and rotate text characters knowing that it remains editable. This feature works with a mouse, stylus or multi-touch device. Illustrator also enables painting with a brush made from a photo. Art, Pattern, and Scatter brushes can contain raster images, so designers can create complex organic designs quickly, with simple brush strokes. And IllustratorCC features integration with Behance, so work can be shared directly to Behance to get feedback and showcase projects. A new, modern architecture for InDesign CC turbocharges performance, and in-browser editing in Adobe Muse™ CC — a tool for designers to create and publish HTML websites without writing code — allows clients to make edits to a published website, which can then be reviewed, approved, and updated by the designer.
• For video customers Adobe Premiere Pro CCincludes dramatic new editing features, customizations and improvements to help editors workefficiently. Premiere Pro CC integrates powerful color workflows, with the addition of the Lumetri™ Deep Color Engine to easily apply rich color grading looks.A high-impact version of Adobe After Effects® CC brings motion graphics and visual effects artists more creative possibilities and allows them to work more easily in 3D with the new Live 3D Pipeline with Maxon Cinema4D integration. There are also all-new versions of Adobe SpeedGrade CC, Audition® CC, Prelude™ CC and Adobe Story CC Plus
  .
• Web designers and developers can look forward to significant advances in Adobe’s family of Edge tools and services.  The latest Edge Animate CC lets web designers create animated and interactive content with amazing ease and precision, using native HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Dreamweaver users can look forward to the most up-to-date CSS and properties via the intuitive visual editing tool, CSS Designer. And Adobe Flash® Pro CC features a modern, modular 64-bit architecture rebuilt from the ground up to be fast and reliable.

Adobe Create Now
To mark this introduction, Adobe has also launched Create Now: a Celebration of Creativity. Over the course of the program’s first month Adobe will host a variety of collaborative art projects, commemorate the birthday of a design icon and provide a forum for creatives to use Adobe tools to express themselves in fun, engaging and unexpected ways. More information is available at: http://adobe.ly/createnow.

Membership Plans and Availability
This major update to Creative Cloud is available now. Current Creative Cloud members receive all of this innovation as part of their existing membership, at no extra cost. Special promotional pricing is available to existing customers who own CS3 or later. Individual, education, team, government and enterprise membership plans are available. For pricing details, visit: https://creative.adobe.com/plans.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

The Art Directors Club is one of the most concentrated groups of creative talent in the world, and is a gathering place for leaders in visual communication. ADC Members share the vision of our founder, Louis Pedlar, who brought his colleagues in advertising together in 1920 to dignify their profession and judge advertising art by the same stringent standards as fine art. For over ninety years ADC members have taken up Pedlar’s challenge by funding programs to Connect, Provoke and Elevate creative professionals around the world. Each year ADC brings together the best minds in the creative industries to celebrate the winners of our Annual Awards and Young Guns competitions, help a new generation of creative leaders rise up through the National Student Portfolio Reviews and Saturday Career Workshops, and celebrate the achievements of Hall of Fame inductees and GrandMasters recipients.

ADC’S MISSION: CONNECT | PROVOKE | ELEVATE

PROGRAMS
Throughout the year ADC produces a wide range of programs on advertising, design, and interactive media for professionals, students, and others with a serious interest in visual communications. These programs support the ADC mission to inspire and celebrate creative excellence. To receive program announcements sign up for the ADC newsletter.

AWARDS
Judged by an international panel of the world’s most respected creative professionals, the ADC Annual Awards competition honors the best work from around the world in interactive media, broadcast and print advertising, graphic design, publication design, packaging, photography and illustration.

Winners are presented with the ADC’s coveted Gold and Silver Cubes at a gala ceremony each spring. In addition, the ADC Hybrid Award is awarded to the year’s most innovative, ground-breaking work and the ADC Design Sphere honors a sustained program of design by a design firm for a single client that sets the standard for excellence in design communications.

All of the winners are featured in the award-winning Art Directors Annual, the oldest and most respected compendium of outstanding work in the industry, whose pages have been graced by the work of such legendary figures as Saul Bass, Roy Grace, Helmut Krone and Bill Bernbach. Presenting more than 500 full-color images, the Annual is an indispensable reference tool and source of creative inspiration—or visual fuel—for creatives, clients and students alike. On the heels of the awards ceremony, ADC sends the Black, ADC Hybrid, ADC Design Sphere, Gold, Silver and Bronze work on a worldwide tour—from New York to Sao Paolo, Wiesbaden to Beijing, and scores of venues in between—in ADC’s International Annual Awards Exhibition.

ADC Young Guns is a global, cross-disciplinary portfolio competition that identifies today’s vanguard of young creative professionals. Over the years, our roster has grown to include seven classes of exceptional talent. Past winners jury the work and choose fifty young creatives to join their ranks each year.

The ADC Vision Award recipient will honor a company or individual whose work embodies ADC’s mission by connecting in new and exciting ways, provoking the industry, addressing important issues and presenting breakthrough ideas.

Since 1971, the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame has recognized and honored those innovators who have made significant contributions to art direction and visual communications, and whose lifetime achievements represent the highest standards of creative excellence. An exhibition of the year’s distinguished laureates and a series of speaker events accompany the opening dinner each year.

ADC GrandMasters are educators whose careers in creative education have impacted and mentored generations of students and whose legacy is a far-reaching network of industry leaders and professionals in Advertising and Design.

MEMBERSHIP
Membership at the Art Directors Club is an opportunity to participate in a community of the most talented creatives in the world. ADC works to forge strong relationships between extraordinary individuals and companies through a variety of programs, events and initiatives. Through ADC, members have a connection to a greater visual communications community that regularly inspires and challenges them. To learn more about the opportunities and benefits of membership, please see the member pages.

EXHIBITIONS
The Art Directors Club is a self-funded non-profit working on behalf of its members. The events and programs are the result of the collective energy of nearly 1500 creative professionals worldwide, led by our President and Board of Directors. For over ninety years the ADC has enjoyed bringing together the most interesting creatives in Advertising, Design, Interactive Media and Communications – we invite you to join us as we continue on our mission to Connect, Provoke and Elevate.

EDUCATION
The ADC encourages students to explore the field of visual communications with year-round educational events, including workshops for high school students, scholarships, portfolio reviews, and the student competition. We work with the best design, advertising and new media programs at accredited colleges across the country.

Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled a completely redesigned iOS 7 operating system for the iPhone and iPad at his company’s annual software developer conference on Monday, including a long-rumored iTunes Radio music service. The iOS 7 refresh, unveiled at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, includes a slew of major design changes, as well as multitasking support for all apps.

“It is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone,” Cook said to a standing ovation from a crowd of Apple fans and developers.

iOS 7: The new iOS 7 is more colorful than the previous iteration, and the typeface was optimized for easier reading. A new swipe-left gesture lets users toggle seamlessly between programs, a double-tap of the home button displays cards of all the apps currently running, and a slick Control Center lets users adjust settings or play music.

The Safari browser received a big update, with a tab-swipe design that resembles iTunes’ Cover Flow. The iOS 7 camera provides more photo options, such as panoramic setup or special filters. Now, photos can be organized into “moments” and “collections” organized by time and location. And a new feature called AirDrop provides one-tap access to share items with other iOS 7 users, including photos with friends.

The sleek iOS 7 is the brainchild of Apple design whiz Jony Ive, who recorded one of his trademark white-background videos to highlight iOS 7.

“We are defining an important new direction, and in many ways, a new beginning,” Ive said in the video.

iTunes Radio: The other big announcement was Apple’s long-rumored streaming music service. ITunes Radio is built into iTunes on iOS devices, Macs, PCs and Apple TV, and it tailors song suggestions based on user preferences. The service is free with ads, while subscribers to the $25-a-year iTunes Match program won’t see ads.

Apple didn’t say much else about its service, but a giant like Apple could shake up a field already choked with competitors like Spotify, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Twitter, Mog and many more. Investors in the most obvious iTunes Radio rival, Pandora (P), didn’t appear to be concerned, though: Pandora shares were up nearly 3% after Apple’s event.

Macintosh: Earlier in the keynote, Apple revealed an update to the Mac operating system. Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, showcased the new Mac OS X 10.9, dubbed “Mavericks.” The moniker, inspired by a popular California surf spot, is a departure from Apple’s previous cat-themed OS X releases.

The Mavericks update includes a tabbed “Finder” window, tags, improved multiple-display support, a new Maps app and a more social Safari browser. A new iCloud “keychain” service stores passwords, credit cards and Wi-Fi network login information across all Apple devices.

Apple also unveiled a new MacBook Air line, which comes loaded with Intel’s (INTC, Fortune 500) just-released “Haswell” processors and nearly double the battery life of their predecessors.

Marketing chief Phil Schiller also previewed the long-awaited new Mac Pro, taking a shot at Wall Street analysts who have criticized Apple lately.

“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass,” Schiller declared during the Mac Pro preview, drawing laughs from the audience.

Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) was one of the worst performers in the S&P 500 (SPX) in the first quarter of the year. While shares have recovered a bit lately, they’re still off 18% year-to-date.

Apple shares fell 1% after the keynote event concluded after trading up 1% during the address.

By CNN

The new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be located in the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Designed by internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry, the 450,000-square-foot museum will house its own major modern and contemporary art collection and present special exhibitions that will include works from the Guggenheim Foundation’s extensive collection. The museum, the largest Guggenheim in the world, will have global art, exhibitions, and education programs with particular focus on Middle Eastern contemporary art. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi joins other leading international cultural institutions in the unprecedented creation of a vibrant cultural destination for visitors from around the world.

New York

When Solomon R. Guggenheim gave Frank Lloyd Wright the commission for a museum in New York, it led to one of the 20th-century’s greatest works of architecture, a building that has become as famous as the art collection it was designed to display. The critic Paul Goldberger has written that before Wright’s Guggenheim, “there really were only two common models for museum design—the beaux-arts palace and the International Style pavilion—and Wright managed, in one fell swoop, to explode them both.” Wright’s building, continues Goldberger, “made it socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim.”

“Highly expressive” and “intensely personal” perfectly describe Frank Gehry’s design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which opened in 1997 and quickly became one of the most famous buildings in the world. With its swirling forms and its facade of titanium, glass, and limestone, Gehry’s Guggenheim dances gracefully between architecture and sculpture. Taken together, the Wright and Gehry museums have come to represent the unique character of the Guggenheim in the popular mind. This has led some observers to speak of a Guggenheim “brand” that is inextricably linked to architecture, not just art.

The Guggenheim Foundation’s relationship to architecture and promotion of architectural investigations of new museum forms stem from its unique history. In 1969, Peggy Guggenheim decided to bequeath her art collection and palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice to the foundation established by her uncle thirty-two years earlier; she died a decade later, and the Guggenheim was immediately transformed from a New York-only institution into a binational entity that would only continue to grow.

Shortly after Bilbao opened, the Guggenheim partnered with Deutsche Bank to create a museum primarily for the display of new commissions by contemporary artists, as well as for smaller special exhibitions. Deutsche Bank had space on the ground floor of its new Berlin headquarters, a 1920 office building in the center of the city. Richard Gluckman brought his simple, clean aesthetic to bear on the galleries, which have served as a tabula rasa for artists such as James Rosenquist, Gerhard Richter, Bill Viola, and William Kentridge, inspiring them to produce some of their best work.
In 2001, Rem Koolhaas created one of the most beautiful small galleries in the world in an unlikely location: the Venetian Hotel, Resort, and Casino in Las Vegas, where the Guggenheim, as part of its alliance with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, launched a museum that would display art from the permanent collections of both institutions. Koolhaas deftly created a series of four perfectly proportioned galleries, made of Cor-Ten steel, its rich brown surface alluding both to the velvet walls of the Winter Palace and to the sculptures of Richard Serra, a contemporary artist closely associated with the Guggenheim. On May 11, 2008 the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas closed after a seven-year partnership.

The Sun-Times was wrong and right when it fired its entire photo department.

Wrong: Images are more important than ever. Look at this page: Medium practically forces us to include a photo with every post. On Google+ posts sans images get little love. This week at my J-school, a dean emphasized that every item we publish should come illustrated.

Right: There are more photographers now than ever — all of us taking pictures with our phones and cameras and sharing them for everyone, including newspaper editors, to see. News doesn’t wait for an official staff photographer to show up. A single event doesn’t need to be captured by a hundred lenses. And besides, times are tough; something always has to go, right?

But the paper did it wrong. I would have changed the definition of a photo department and a photographer — and I have little doubt that most photographers there would go along with this notion…

Read More…

by Laura Shin at Poynter

While handwringing over financial support for journalism is nothing new, it’s been especially fraught recently. From the Nate Thayer/Atlantic dustup to the possibility that the Tribune papers may be sold to the Koch brothers, everyone in media seems worried about funding the Fourth Estate.

One hopeful sign for such worriers: Crowdfunding has become a way to support journalism projects from one-off articles to the wholesale launch of new publications.

Back in 2008, crowdfunding platform Spot.us launched to support reporting, and has helped publish stories on partner sites ranging from The New York Times to Cleveland Free Press. Since Kickstarter’s launch in April 2009, 816 journalism projects have sought funding on the site, with 36 percent of them succeeding.

It’s not just individual articles that have gotten support. Matter, Tomorrow, The Big Roundtable and Homicide Watch have all launched publications or paid for programs by appealing to the Internet.

But while raising money via crowdfunding can be a big part of a launch plan, it isn’t a sure bet. If you’re looking to try crowdfunding, keep these tips in mind.

1. Choose a topic that works.

Crowdfunding campaigns demand time and publicity. That makes them a poor fit for breaking news, or investigative pieces that require some stealth.

And since you’ll need many people to support your cause, projects with a larger geographic scope are more likely to attract funds.

“You could say one percent of the people that would be interested in a story will fund it,” Spot.us founder David Cohn told Poynter. “If the topic is about Stockton, Calif., let’s say the population is — I’m making this up — 300,000. You’d have to get in front of a lot of eyeballs, and they’d have to be Stockton eyeballs. If you do California, it’s easier to get in front of the same number of California eyeballs as Stockton eyeballs.”

Cohn also said stories about a topic with wide appeal do well: “The number of people interested in environmental issues is even greater than the population of California.”

2. Consider the audiences.

Aside from Kickstarter and Indiegogo, there are journalism-specific crowdfunding sites such as Spot.us, Emphas.is for photojournalists and Vourno.com for video journalism. Cohn advised considering which audience you want to reach: While Kickstarter has a big audience, it focuses on creative projects of all stripes, including music, film and fashion. Audiences reached via the journalism-specific sites may be smaller but a better fit for your project.

But that’s not a hard and fast rule. Andrea Seabrook, a former NPR reporter who crowdfunded DecodeDC, a blog and podcast covering news from Washington, D.C., said by phone that she chose Kickstarter for its credibility:

“My natural audience as a public radio reporter were a bit older and not familiar with Kickstarter, but even when they were like, ‘Wait, what’s that?’ their kids knew it, and it was something they could search for and recognize was credible right from the beginning. … You’ll always be associated with that [crowdfunding] organization, even if you never do a thing with them again — so you need to think about that in terms of your own brand and the credibility of your work.”

3. Read the fine print.

Investigate how each site handles money raised. Kickstarter is “all or nothing” — if you don’t reach your goal, you won’t receive any money. Indiegogo, on the other hand, allows you to accept however much you raise, or opt for all or nothing.

Kickstarter says the all-or-nothing method prevents project creators from having to deliver projects which don’t attract enough funding. The company also believes that its deadlines for crowdfunding projects encourage backers to rally and push a project past its goal line. But you should weigh these potential benefits against the ability to take whatever money you raise, even if you fall short of your goal.

4. Factor fees and other costs into your budget.

On top of the budget for your journalism project, you need to take into account fees. For instance, Kickstarter collects a 5 percent fee from a successfully funded project’s total, while Indiegogo collects 4 percent on projects that meet their goal and 9% on projects that fall short but choose to take whatever funding they receive. Payment processing fees take another 3 percent to 5 percent out of the money you collected.

“And then, if you’re a for-profit like I am, you have to consider taxes that you’ll pay on that income, and the amount of money that the rewards cost, and the postage.” Seabrook said. “Postage is really expensive for sending out rewards.”

5. Establish your credibility.

Anyone funding a project wants to be confident that their money will be put to good use and a project will actually come to fruition. Toward that end, backers will want to know where you’ve been published, just like an editor who’s weighing whether to give you an assignment.

“Don’t just have an idea — make a prototype of it,” Seabrook said. “We had three episodes up by the end of the campaign, and that helps a lot — it gives a sense of the integrity and the worthiness of their money.”

Similarly, Cohn said stories on Spot.us that already had a publisher on board got funded more quickly and often exceeded their goals. “It was a stamp of approval,” he said, “and there was maybe a little bit of excitement for the donors that would get to see the story published in the newspaper or magazine.”

6. Make a professional video.

Getting on camera may seem daunting, but both Cohn and Kickstarter find projects that include a video appeal are more likely to be funded. “Be yourself and put yourself out there,” Cohn said. “Keep it real in that respect. Also, know who you’re talking to. Kickstarter has a fun, creative community, and Emphas.is is more about serious journalism, so you want to talk to that community.”

Seabrook learned from something she didn’t do right: “My video is pretty terrible production-wise. … I showed it to a few friends in the industry before, and they counseled me not to put up my campaign. They said you shouldn’t put up something that is less quality than your own work.”

Because of the poor quality of her video, Kickstarter didn’t feature her project — a better video, Seabrook speculated, could have led to a featured spot on the site and brought in more funding.

“If you get featured it’s a huge bump, because they send it to everybody’s inboxes,” she said.

7.  Create rewards that narrow the distance between you and your audience.

People don’t want to hand over money and have no contact with a project until it hits newsstands months later. If they’re excited about a project, they want to stay involved during its creation, whether that means getting a peek behind the scenes or actually helping to bring the project to life in some tangible way.

Photojournalists and writers can create rewards from what’s left on the cutting-room floor — photos that don’t get used or scenes that get cut from a longform piece. Or consider offering backers a postcard from a reporting destination, exclusive access to a blog that details the weeks or months of work, dinner and drinks after a big reporting trip, or an acknowledgement in a forthcoming book.

You could also go the traditional swag route: Seabrook created DecodeDC T-shirts, mugs and tote bags, and ordered extras for the show.

8.  That said, make sure the rewards don’t take over your life.

Your main goal is to finish your journalism project, not to spend a significant amount of time fulfilling rewards. “My biggest error was promising personal postcards to a huge group of people — 800 postcards,” Seabrook said, adding that supporters are still asking her where their postcards are.

9. Have rewards at a variety of price points.

According to Kickstarter, some people don’t have the money to substantively support a project, but appreciate the chance to chip in something and spread the word. The site recommends including a reward level of $25 — the most common pledge.

10. Choose a campaign long enough to build momentum but short enough to feel urgent.

Kickstarter says 30-day campaigns are strong time frames for projects, while campaigns longer than 60 days tend to languish.The site no longer allows campaigns longer than 60 days.

11. Devise an outreach strategy.

Before your campaign goes live, talk it up with journalists and bloggers who might write about it. Reach out to “social influencers” who can reach interested Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Tumblr communities so they can help you get the word out. And get friends and family to agree to back the project the moment it goes live. Securing a significant chunk of your funding early will give other backers confidence to sign on.

12. When you launch, get the word out any and every way you can.

“The amount of energy you can put into spreading the word will have a bigger impact than anything else,” Cohn said. He cited the statistic that non-profit news organizations only get donations from readers and listeners after having contact with them seven times.

“You have to be prepared to reach out a few times,” he said.

And be prepared to ask people one by one for support — it’s easy to ignore a mass email. Cohn said that reaching out to individuals sounds really hard but actually isn’t: write up your core pitch, then tailor the beginning and end for each person.

Seabrook said it’s important to give a campaign everything you have.

“If you don’t make it the first time, it’s a lot harder to go back” and ask for money again, she warned. She recommended contacting everyone you know, as well as organizations with which you have an affiliation, such as your alumni organization, and asking them to help get the word out on social media.

“Get people who have a lot of pull and clout on Facebook and Twitter and contact them personally and say, ‘I need a retweet or a repost,’ “ she suggested. “I said, ‘Please, I’d rather you repost and retweet than give me money.”

But, she cautioned, be creative, not annoying: “Be interesting, be funny, don’t say the same thing all the time — show people your wit and your value, especially as a journalist. Put up links people will want to see, and roll out bits and pieces of your project as you go along.”

13. Funding is just the beginning.

Offer your backers regular updates that offer insight into the creative process, or even access to the project itself. For instance, Seabrook has hosted Google hangouts and created a section of DecodeDC featuring interviews that haven’t aired yet and extras from previous episodes. That section is exclusive for high-level subscribers.

Most importantly, don’t underestimate the amount of work your campaign will take.

“It is a full-time job the entire time the campaign is running,” Seabrook said. “Imagine how much work it’s going to be and then double or triple it.”

Read More…
]]> http://inewsdesign.com/2013/06/05/poynter-13-ways-to-get-your-journalism-project-crowdfunded/feed/ 0 Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 7.36.41 AM inewsdesign Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 7.36.41 AM http://inewsdesign.com/2013/05/31/create-only-once-for-all-android-devices-on-mag/ http://inewsdesign.com/2013/05/31/create-only-once-for-all-android-devices-on-mag/#comments Fri, 31 May 2013 06:05:57 +0000 Zoran Opalic http://inewsdesign.com/?p=15110 Continue reading »]]>

Mobile Publishing Pioneer Drives Next Wave To Create Android Apps. 4.2 Also Includes Several New iOS, Monetization and Production Tool Workflow Features

Mag+ continues its push to be the most innovative and flexible platform for digital publishing and mobile app development. To address the Android device proliferation, with its myriad of screen sizes, Mag+ today introduced scalable Android issues, which means designers can create android apps by creating one design for all Android tablets or phones, with minimum loss in quality. Mag+ is also rolling out several new features that will speed time to market and increase creative freedom.

Budget, time and audience fragmentation can make it impractical to create Android apps specifically for every new Android device released. To help its clients manage resources while pushing quickly into this rapidly growing space, Mag+ has ensured that one 1280×800-pixel design will scale up or down in high quality for any Android device, including Kindle Fire tablets. Similarly, a single phone-optimized design can cover all Android phones.

“Mag+ listens to its customers and always responds to this rapidly changing industry with features that reduce their headaches while increasing mobile success,” said Mike Haney, co-founder and chief creative officer of Mag+. “The new features in Mag+ streamline development and the scalable Android issues allow our clients to reach more users while cutting away approximately 80 percent of the design time.”

New iOS Feature Highlights: Overlay layer, AdMarvel SDK integration, Swipe Slideshows in InDesign

Overlay Layer Option:  Further expanding the possibilities of digital design, the new overlay layer is a permanent layer of content that sits over the top of the issue. This makes it easy to create a custom navigation bar, permanent help button or even a cool mask over the pages. A great example can be seen in the street fashion brand WeSC on their new Mag+ app.

Swipe Slideshows in InDesign: You can now create swipe slideshows natively within the InDesign plug-in, with options for looping, auto play, indicators and transition effects, instead of building these in HTML.

AdMarvel: To help Mag+ customers better monetize their apps, Mag+ now features integration with AdMarvel and AdMob. These networks enable publishers and operators to place dynamic advertising in their issues.

Production Tool Streamlined:

On the quest to constantly make digital design faster, easier and less tedious, Mag+ has also improved its issue-creation tool with new features for quickly creating multiple issue files for different devices, as well as providing new views on the issue.

To learn more about how Mag+ is helping you create Android apps with a design once model, and to explore several other iOS features and options such as subscription and scrubber disabling, and to get more details on the new production tool views, please visit our blog.

About Mag+:

Mag+ is a complete digital publishing ecosystem comprised of a plug-in for InDesign CS4-CS6, a powerful web-based backend, and white-labeled reader apps for iOS, Android and Kindle devices. Mag+ pioneered touchscreen publishing on the first iPad and remains the fastest, simplest publishing platform for creating content optimized for mobile devices, without the need for programming skills. For those creating custom mobile apps, the Mag+ App SDK allows developers to build on top of our core components, saving hundreds of man-hours of coding.

From publishers to catalogue marketers, design agencies and app developers, Mag+ is ideal for anyone wanting to bring beautiful, immersive content to the millions using the new generation of digital devices. Clients in a range of industries have now built more than 1000 innovative apps, including Toyota, New York Magazine, WeSC, Hemispheres (United Airlines), Shape and The Nation. Mag+ also offers consultancy and creative services via Mag+ Studios.

Cernobbio. BMW and Pininfarina are two of the most tradition-swathed names in the motoring world. Each is a byword for cutting-edge technology, style, dynamics and aesthetics. With the BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé, the two time-honoured companies are unveiling the outcome of their first collaboration at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2013. The BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé is a one-off and represents the exclusive interpretation of a luxurious BMW Coupé as seen through the eyes of Pininfarina. Working in close consultation, the two design teams have created a new automotive persona brimming with character and ready to join the high-end luxury class – typically BMW while sporting the distinctive signature of Pininfarina.

                
Growth of large tablets may be slower in 2013       Profile of mobile media users in 2013      Profile of smartphone users in 2013

                          
Profile of smartphone news consumers in 2013       Profile of large media tablet users in 2013       Profile of large tablet news consumers

In the three years since Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPad, at least one-third of U.S. adults has acquired media tablets, according to the results of our 2013 survey. The original large-format media tablets remain the most popular, but the new smartphones with larger displays and less-expensive mini tablets now entering the market may slow their growth in 2013.

Mobile media users had a rapidly expanding array of devices to choose from in 2012. Google launched its Nexus series of media tablets with a large and mini model. Microsoft introduced two versions of its large Surface tablet running its slick new Windows 8 operating systems — a more iPad-like RT model and a full-function Surface Pro that essentially is a more advanced tablet PC.

Not to be outdone, Amazon and Barnes & Noble introduced low-cost large-format tablets to complement their mini tablets. And Apple finally acquiesced and launched a mini iPad.

Samsung continued its efforts to out-innovate Apple in 2012 with new devices that blur the distinctions between mini tablets and smartphones, often referred to as “phablets.”

While the growth of smartphone users as percentages of respondents between 2012 and 2013 was flat, the use of smartphones for news appears to be on the rise within all age groups.

The Apple iPhone and Android-powered smartphones continue to dominate the market. The percentage of Blackberry users declined from nearly 13 percent in 2012 to 5 percent in our 2013 survey.

In our 2013 survey, we included more specific questions about the use of smartphones and media tablets for accessing and consuming news content.

Slightly more than half of smartphone news consumers said they preferred using web browsers over downloadable mobile apps for accessing news content, but that distinction is being blurred by the increasing use of HTML5-based Web apps by news organizations.

Smartphone news consumers who downloaded mobile news apps showed a preference for those provided by newspapers.

The use of large media tablets has grown in all age groups since the beginning of 2012. Women out numbered men overall (51 percent to 49 percent). Higher percentages of women were found among respondents who were 55 or older and younger than 25.

The Apple iPad continued to dominate the market in 2012. However, the lower-priced large-format Kindle Fire HD introduced by Amazon late in 2012 appears to be catching on quickly and may present a significant challenge to Apple in 2013. The Google Nexus 10 and large-format Microsoft Surface RT were used by only two respondents each.

Large tablet users were somewhat more inclined to prefer downloadable mobile apps over web browsers for news (46 percent to 41 percent).

Half of the large tablet news consumers downloaded one or more tablet newspaper apps, but the most popular apps were provided by television news organizations and niche news entities, such as the Weather Channel.

The number of large tablet news consumers who said they had subscriptions to digital content provided by newspapers (paid separately or bundled with print) was too low to draw any meaningful conclusions.

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by Richard Branson

Since I was a young boy, I’ve been captivated by everything we find living and growing on our planet. We know that without healthy natural ecosystems and biodiversity there would be no life, and of course no business. We rely on our natural assets, balanced carbon cycles, and diverse plant and animal species, but each of the major global ecosystems is in decline.

At the same time, the degradation of our natural resources lies at the root of many of our most pressing challenges. It also exacerbates others, such as poverty, disease, and climate change. The steps we take over the next ten or twenty years will fundamentally determine whether the natural ecosystems on which we have built our wealth for a hundred centuries will be able to persist beyond the end of this one.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, we have built wealth and wellbeing by making trade-offs between profit and growth on one hand, and natural resources on the other. In order to minimise the damaging impact of business on biodiversity, we must recognise the value of the natural assets on our balance sheets.

There is some very exciting work being undertaken in this area. For example, at PUMA, Jochen Zeitz pioneered the Environmental Profit & Loss Account, which measures the value of the natural resources that businesses have traditionally treated as essentially free services. PUMA was the first international company to put a monetary value on the impact of its entire supply chain on the environment.

Another exciting area is the growth of biomimicry – a movement that is changing the way we do business by learning from Mother Nature. A growing number of exciting science-business partnerships are pioneering biologically-inspired technology and designs that are based on the experience of life (and refined by 3.8 billion years of rigorous testing!).

The Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe is an incredible example: the building was based on the design of termite mounds, and uses a naturally-inspired ventilation system to maintain constant temperatures. This has allowed the building to use only 10 per cent of the energy another similarly-sized building would use, save millions on air conditioning, plus enjoy fresh air! Another company, Sharklet Technologies, has developed a special surface material that harnesses the wisdom of Galapagos sharks. The surface mimics the sharks’ skin, which naturally fights bacteria and micro-organisms, and is now being used for a number of industries, from safe surfaces for hospitals to hull coatings that improve shipping efficiency.
Mother Nature is the original entrepreneurial force in the world – and learning from her will help us better value our natural assets and make business work for people and planet.

Read more about this in Richard’s book Screw Business as Usual, available from Virgin Books.