Creative Designers

What do you think of when you hear the word designers? Most people think of something along the lines of designer clothing, which is the name, signature or pattern of a particular designer incorporated into their clothing line. A couple of other descriptions or examples would be a web designer and production designer.

Did you know that the first video game was created in 1958? It was called "Tennis for Two" and was played on an oscilloscope. With the advancements made in graphics and technology, one of the most popular field choices for designers is the genre of a video games. With even more improvements and creations being made every day it is sure to remain a very popular choice in that field.

When you were younger, it is a good bet that when you and your friends played video games you all talked about becoming a game designer and creating some cool games. Although there are some great perks to this profession, like making your own hours, wearing whatever you want and creating new designs, there is also a great deal of hard work, involving long hours and no guarantee that your designs will be implemented.

However, most designers feel that it is a small price to pay for having their "dream job" and being able to brag to their friends.

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Graphic Designer Puts It All Together

When working in graphic design, the designer must be able to work under extreme pressure and time constraints; as well as within strict budgets on a per project basis. They must be able to gather feedback from many different sources and then produce a very distinctive design.

A graphic designer must be able to listen to comments, must have a flair for color, an understanding of the corporate world and a good eye for aesthetic design. Many over-worked designers claim that it is not one job they perform, but closer to 20.

Some artists are not cut out to be a graphic designer, as there is a lot of uncertainty and lean years as well. During those times, many choose to become in-house design consultants or magazine layout editors to help them through the less prosperous years.

If you feel that you are perfectly suited for hard work and possibly some lean years, then a hot career choice for a graphic designer is in the technology and advertising genre.

Web designers and graphic artists will be able to use their creativity and technical skills in a variety of ways to create new designs. Another major perk of the industry is getting to use the most cutting edge technology and software programs available.

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Website Design Elements For Better Websites

Whether you work in graphic design, digital design or website design, the basic principals of designing are the same. You cannot just slap together some HTML tags on a page and call it a website.

You need to learn how to design it in a pleasant way and once you understand how the elements all work together, you will have everything you need to become a great designer.

Shape is a major element in design, and normally you see square or rectangular used on a web page, but you can create many different contours to avoid monotony. A unique website design can be created using lines and line work as well.

Lines are used to help delineate spaces around elements, are used as dividing lines between text and as decoration. They also tend to increase the readability of a design.

All of your design work starts with a blank page no matter what type of design you prefer or use. When you look at the page, do you just start placing elements and putting them around the page randomly or do you work like most good designers and actually think about the placement of the tables, graphics, text and nav bar in your website design?

The actual placement of the elements is a huge part of creating the perfect web page.

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Design Services Help Grow Your Business

There are many different types of custom designs and a design services company will often be able to meet various needs of their clients.

Most of them specialize in at least one field, while others, such as custom homebuilders have a working knowledge of many different fields. As a general rule, most designers have in some way studied their trade. It may be by college, a technical institute or even via online programs.

Most businesses start out on a small scale and gradually increase over the years. However, getting your name out there in order to be recognized by consumers is a priority.

Since not every business owner has the creativity or the time to create graphic designs, contacting a design services company to do it for you just makes sense. It can be well worth the effort to generate more sales.

Even if you are unable to run your own business, you can still get in on the creative process for some other company. If you are interested at all in graphics and design, then you may want to check out some of the design services companies.

This would enable you to share your insight and creativity by helping a company decide which type of advertising and business marketing would be appropriate for them.

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Graphic Design Sells The Story

Many of the most common every day items utilize some type of graphic design, which is combing ideas, words and images to convey information. Graphic designs are similar to other forms of designs, as they can refer to both the designing process and the resulting products.

Billboards, websites, greeting cards, magazine layouts and product packaging are only a few of the ways in which graphic designs are used to get a consumer's attention.

The graphic software programs that are available today make it easier to create the shapes that have been at the root of graphic design since the days of the pictograph. Building the elements on a page, creating layouts and patterns are all done by creating and then changing the shapes within the software. This is important, as making good choices in the selection of shapes is key to how the product is perceived.

One of the most fascinating and flexible elements of graphic design is color. In web graphic design it has been used to represent active links on a website and is capable of evoking the emotion that a designer wants you to feel.

If you are designing a website or other computer project, then you would use the RGB color standard, whereas printed material utilizes the CYMK model.

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Where To Find Blu Ray Reviews Online

Everyone is jumping in on the Blu Ray craze, including Netflix and Blockbuster! Soon you won't be able to purchase or rent a new DVD that'll work on your old player anywhere! While it may seem irritating to consumers, the evolution of high-definition video was inevitable.

Eventually the downloading and on-demand video markets may explode, but this is the next logical plateau, offering better audio-video quality. Before building your Blu Ray movies collection, you may want to find a reliable site for Blu Ray reviews to ensure that you get the most for your money.

One good site for Blu Ray reviews is DVDTown.com. The site looks more professional than many of the other ones out there, with its sleek black background and artistic design. The first page gives in-depth plot synopsis, while the second page delivers the goods in terms of video, audio and extras.

This site requires a little more reading than other sites, like HighDefDigest.com, but it's a good way to size up your shopping. Blu Ray movies will be readily available anywhere, from Netflix and Blockbuster to Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Amazon.com shoppers will find frequent Blu Ray sales and discounts as well.

To find Blu Ray reviews of the players, rather than just the Blu Ray discs, you can check BluRay.com/Players for the latest offerings. Pioneer is rumored to be coming out with a fresh new line of Blu Ray players this summer.

For people who are suffering with a collection of "useless" HD DVDs, LG and Samsung have made HD DVD/Blu Ray player combos that can read both formats! Amazon.com has been a huge supporter of Blu Ray media technology as well, often offering sales, reviews and deals. The Panasonic DMP-BD30K is an excellent choice, as is the Sony BDP-S300.

If you'd like to spend less, then there are several "up scaling" players for much lower prices, although the quality isn't pristine.

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Looking For Blu Ray HD Discs

Blu Ray HD has revolutionized the way we experience movies at home. Without going into all the technicalities like pixel scanning, color saturation and audio channels, let's just say the difference is noticeable.

Finally, a format has arrived that can handle the massive amount of information required to burn a film in high-definition! Blu Ray discs are the perfect complement to your high-def TV set. But what if you're a late-comer to all this new technology? What if you don't want to spend a fortune, but would still like a modest DVD collection? There is a ray of hope for you.

If you really just want "the cheapest of the cheap" Blu Ray HD player, then you can buy the Samsung BD P1400 for less than $300 from Amazon. This Bluray HD DVD player will give you all the quality of high-definition on a stand-alone Bluray player and it will be able to up convert your existing DVD collection as well.

However, it should be noted that once you buy this machine, you will be unable to upgrade it as new interactive features come out. Tech geeks say that the best way to buy Blu Ray technology is to pay the $399 for a PlayStation3.

The PS3 comes with a WiFi/ethernet connection so you can upgrade your firmware as new technology comes out, thereby never making your player obsolete. You'll also get "more bang for your buck" because the PS3 is made for video gaming too.

Still need to buy that HD-TV and surround sound system to go with your Blu Ray HD player? This technology has been out for years already and prices have come down a lot. The Panasonic Viera series 50" flat-panel plasma screen is just $2,000, or you can buy the 42" for as little as $1,300.

If size isn't as important to you as clarity, then Circuit City has a Samsung 30" Widescreen CRT for $899 or Panasonic Widescreen CRT for $599. Best Buy has a high definition Magnovox 30" 1080-pixel-resolution for just $499 as well. In recent news, Sony announced that it will begin manufacturing a new HD-TV set with a built-in Bluray player but they haven't announced a timetable for its release yet.

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Choosing A Blu Ray Disc Player

In the format war, the Blu Ray disc by Sony has triumphed over Toshiba's HD DVDs. However, there are still many choices to make. Do you want the Blu Ray disc player version 1.0, version 2.0, a Sony PlayStation3 with Blu Ray compatibility, or just a DVD up-converter?

These days, buying your next movie player will be similar to purchasing a computer. You will have to decide what features are worth paying for and consider the idea that upgrades may be necessary in the future.

There are still a few defiant buyers who refuse to pander to developers and cash-in on the latest technology. They ask, "Why fix something that isn't broken?" For these people, there is still a small niche market for DVD up-converters that can transform traditional DVD recorders into Blu Ray disc capable drives.

For instance, the Denon1730 converter can give you that 1080 resolution for less than $200. However, some argue that this patchwork cannot possibly deliver the quality of upgrading your system altogether. "Even the best upscaling DVD players are no match for genuine HD source material," argues TechRadar.com reader Matt Hastings.

"Why stick with DVD's dated video system, based on very lossy MPEG-2 compression, and rely on an upscaler's guesswork at what bits of the image are missing? Get the whole thing for real on Blu ray discs. For those movies you still own on DVD, Blu Ray players upscale too, so you get the best of both worlds."

To offset the cost of upgrading, Blu Ray disc retailers are cutting prices to entice buyers. Sony announced that the new disc players will be priced between $400 and $500, but Best Buy is offering two free Ray discs with the purchase of a new Panasonic 1080p player and Amazon is offering 50% off select titles.

There are over 500 titles currently available in Blu Ray release, with many more Blu Ray titles on the way.

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DVD Duplication To Make Better Backups

The Understanding & Solutions research firm for Home Media Magazine has announced they will invest an additional $250 million, installing 80 new production lines, to meet consumer demand for the new Blu Ray disc movies and PS3 games.

In addition to AACS encryption, mastering, DVD authoring, replication and packaging costs, a single line of 50 GB Blu Ray discs can cost as much as $2.7 million to produce. For a small independent DVD duplication center, the financial hurdle can be challenging. However, when faced with do or die, many hope to keep their businesses alive.

You may be wondering, "Well, what if I wanted less than 25,000 or more than 25,000? "If you need, say, 5,000 (50 GB) Blu Ray discs, then you're looking at a cost of approximately $12,250. For a 10,000 disc unit run, you're looking at $13,000 for your Blu Ray player and $14,500 if you want an interactive disc for your computer.

While DVD duplication for Blu Rays seems more expensive than the now-extinct HD DVD, the numbers are deceiving. You get more giga-bytes with a Blu Ray disc, so you're actually getting more for your money.

Sure, you can purchase the new Pioneer BD-R 101A Blu Ray-DVD duplication burner for $999 from Tiger Direct. One would assume that you'll pay a little bit more to get started, but in the end you'll be saving a ton, compared to the $40 Blu Ray disc price listed at stores. However, at this point, everything costs!

To purchase a blank BD-R disc to burn onto, you're looking at an additional $25 per single-layer disc and $48 per (50 GB) double-layer disc! The days of paying 10 cents per giga-byte have been replaced by its 70-cent/giga-byte successor. Perhaps those Amazon Blu Ray sales aren't so bad after all!

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The Fall of HD DVD

Toshiba and Microsoft aren't the only big losers with the fall of HD DVD. An estimated 1.3 million customers are now stuck with these useless machines.

To make it up to buyers, retail giants like Wal-mart, Circuit City, Best Buy and Amazon are offering to offset some of the cost. Additionally, manufacturers like Samsung and Sony are looking to win buyers' affection with machines that cater to both Blu Ray disc and HD DVD owners.

Similarly, Wal-Mart shoppers will receive full refunds on returns of HD DVD machines, provided that customers still have their receipts. Anyone who purchased an HD DVD player on or after November 1st can return their player by April 30th to receive their money back and dispose of the old machine. Customers who were unfortunate enough to lose their receipts may want to turn to Best Buy's trade-in center for a reprieve.

Combo Blu Ray disc/HD DVD players may be the hot-ticket item for the next few years, as manufacturers and industry leaders scramble to regain some of the diminished consumer confidence.

Both Samsung and LG have developed Blu Ray/HD DVD combo players that can read both formats. A consumer's best bet, then, would be to return the old player for credit towards this new player, unless he or she hasn't purchased many HD DVDs, in which case, simply buying a new Blu Ray disc player wouldn't be such a bad idea.

There is yet another option on the horizon: Sony is looking at a TV/Blu Ray DVD player hybrid, although the release date is not yet scheduled.

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Blu Ray vs HD DVD War Has Run And Won

"When DVD first launched it was anything but the perfect product," said Andy Parsons, Pioneer executive and chairman of the Blu Ray Disc Association. "There were many doubters that said there was little chance of overtaking VHS."

Now, he said, the same thing is happening with Blu Ray, the natural evolution in audio-video technology. The Blu Ray vs HD DVD format war finally ended when the entertainment giants changed sides and Toshiba announced that it would no longer be manufacturing the HD DVD player. Some buyers are left wondering: Is it really worth it?

Unfortunately, the other major difference between the Blu Ray vs HD DVD players is price. You could purchase the XBox360 HD DVDs upgrade accessory for $130 and a stand-alone player for as low as $150. Sure, you could buy those super fancy combo players for nearly $1,000, but the average offering was as affordable as a regular DVD player.

However, the victorious Blu Ray players are currently retailing at over $499, with $399 PlayStation3s being the cheapest way to get the BR technology. There is one other relatively inexpensive option for buyers: you can get the Denon DVD-1730 up-converting DVD player that is compatible with Blu Ray discs for less than $300.

Some advocates see the Blu Ray disc player as training wheels for the technologically illiterate. "We can use HD discs to train consumers to move into digital, but it's a transition," explains Dan Silverberg, vice president of high-definition media development at Warner Bros.

"Downloaded content will come, but the consumer will get quicker tutorials into video-on-demand, etc. by owning a Blu-ray player or HD DVD." While the Blu Ray vs HD DVD war is officially over, the Blu Ray vs. downloading war may have just begun.

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Blu Ray HD DVD Has Better Features

We knew it was coming. Technology would be consolidating. We just didn't know which device would become the all-in-one of choice i.e. the computer, the cell phone, the iPod, the palm pilot?

Turns out, it may come in the form of the Blu Ray HD DVD video game console hooked up to your phone through Blue Tooth technology! This summer will definitely be the "Summer of Blu Ray media," as some of the new 2.0 Blu Ray players begin showing up in stores.

NetBlender's BD Touch technology makes it possible for Blu Ray HD DVD 2.0 player owners to transfer digital copies of movies to their iPhones. Users can also catalog their Blu Ray disc collection, manage a rental que, display additional trivia, offer movie suggestions, view fan-created content, or use their phone as a controller to play interactive Blu Ray games!

The BD Touch apps are expected to be unveiled after this coming June. You may find that owning a Blu Ray HD DVD player simplifies your life and offers a variety of helpful features. As well, the "movie suggestions" feature will save you hours of senseless meandering up and down the aisles at Blockbuster!

If you're the environmentalist type, then here's one more reason why Blu Ray HD DVD discs are revolutionizing the world: green packaging! The Digital Entertainment Group awarded the Blu Ray discs with the prestigious "Best Green Packaging" award this year for using 100% recycled paper and plastic.

"We are delighted that the home entertainment community is embracing eco-friendly solutions that will help lessen the effects on climate change," explains DEG Executive Director Amy Jo Smith.

"We give particular recognition to Disney's Larry Wilk who is a crusader for embracing environmental friendly practices in the industry."

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Blu Ray Disc Has More Interactive Features

It is hard to imagine that home movie viewing could get any better once the DVD replaced VHS tapes, but now Sony's Blu Ray disc player has revolutionized how we experience audio, visual and interactive features encoded onto our new DVD movies.

With the Blu Ray disc technology, you can finally enjoy all the benefits of the movie theater at home, provided that you have an HD-TV, Dolby Digital Surround Sound and a comfy seat. The picture is clearer, the sound comes in 7.0, as opposed the regular 5.0, and there are more interactive features, than with a HD-DVD.

Perhaps you've just purchased your first Blu Ray player and want some quintessential Blu Ray DVDs to jumpstart your collection and showcase all that BR has to offer. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Peal" is a great high-definition BR disc to start off your collection. The Blu-Ray features include games and activities, a movie showcase, a backstage special, a "making of" feature and outtakes reel.

Sea movies in general should only be viewed in top-quality color and 7.0 surround sound. (Given that tidbit, you may want to add "Master and Commander" to your list too). You'll love the high def detail and impressive audio in the sci-fi classic "The Fifth Element." For action-packed brag-worthy Blu Ray disc titles, check out the "Spiderman" trilogy, "X-Men" and "Troy" to show off your new machine to guests.

"Building on the exceptional picture and sound quality of previous players, Sony's next-generation Blu Ray disc models bring exciting interactive features to life and offer consumers a ground-breaking experience," said Chris Fawcett, vice president of marketing for Sony Electronics.

"These new Blu Ray disc player devices bring home the movie experience beyond the cinema and into a whole new realm of entertainment." To find the new Bluray disc players, you can check the Sony Online store, Best Buy, Circuit City, or one of the other authorized retailers listed at Blu-Ray.com.

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Blu Ray To Play New Movies

Are you wondering if you should succumb to the Blu Ray technology, or just stick with your old DVD player? The answer depends on how big a movie buff you are, really. If you're the kind of person who watches movies every week or every couple weeks and loves that home theater, high-definition, surround-sound experience, then a Blu Ray disc player is in your near future.

However, if you were reluctant to dispose of your old VCR, you prefer going out to the movies, or you consider yourself to be extremely frugal, then you might choose to enjoy a friend's Blu Ray movies instead.

When 5.0 Surround Sound first came out, it revolutionized how we heard movies and music. Blu Ray features 7.0 Surround Sound for more bumps, shouts and vibrations than ever before. Likewise, the picture quality is said to be six times better than a regular HD-DVD. The good news is that old CDs and DVDs will still work on the Blu Ray players, although all new movie releases will only work on the new Blu Ray players.

You may be wondering how the Blu Ray phenomenon is going to ripple out through the rest of the technological world. Dell has started making Blu Ray disc drives on their PCs and laptops for under $1,000, Blu Ray CD burners are available at Best Buy for $200 (internal) - $500 (external), and Sony is even planning BR high-definition LCD televisions.

Don't see BR technology as a nuisance, but rather see it as the next step of evolution, and a way of making entertainment more efficient and valuable to the consumer.

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