Mindfly Website Design Studio

I am a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts. Huge. Anything to make my workflow more efficient. Actually, it's not even that, if I'm totally honest. It's more like I'm too lazy to pick up my hand to grab the mouse and try to recall under which menu > submenu the command I am looking for lies, which just happens to make for a more efficient workflow. Nice how laziness pans out for once.

So here some I find myself using often (I should note that these are PC shortcuts, since that's what we use here at Mindfly. For Mac users Ctrl = Cmd and Alt = Opt):

1. Duplicating Layers There are several ways to duplicat layers. I generally use all of them depending on what I'm doing.

1. Hold down and drag the layer up (or down) in the layers palette
2. Drag the layer to the the New Layer button on the bottom of the layers palette
3. Press the +
4. With the layer selected in the layers palette, press +
5. Right-click on a layer and select Duplicate Layer from the menu

2. Free Transform + . Once you're in the Free Transform mode you can Right-click and access some other options such as skew, warp, perspective, flip etc.

3. Inversing a selection + + . I find this particularly helpful when I'm cutting out objects from their background.

4. Changing brush sizes With the brush too selected you can use + to decrease by 10px or + to increase by 10px. Adding to that combination will increase or decrease the brush softness.

5. + will allow you to flip through all your open Photoshop documents with ease.

My options for the last wee bit of the day were 1) new task or 2) write a blog for the Mindfly website. Naturally I picked option one, because honestly, writing on a company website just intimidates me. But here I am. Writing on the blog. Trying to make sure I use proper grammar, punctuation and spelling: three things I've gotten extremely lazy about in the last few years. And seeing how the last post was about 'its' versus 'it's' I thought I should make an extra special effort.

While being subjected to this this special torture (I mean great honor) I thought I'd take this time to introduce myself as the newest member of the Mindfly team.

Hello. My name is Erica.

It sometime seems surreal when I think about where I've ended up in my life. If you would have asked me five or so years ago where I thought I'd be now, I would never in a million years say designing websites in my hometown of Bellingham, WA. Five years ago I was a year out of college with a degree in international studies recently back from living in Turkey and traveling Europe. Shortly after that it was Scotland for a masters in economic development never wanting to living in Bellingham again (however cool this town is). Clearly not on track for graphics or even a location change. And while I love economics and my favorite magazine is The Economist, web design is by far the best 'thing' I've ever fallen into, making the move back to the Northwest a better decision that I originally thought (though we are coming off of an amazing summer. I might change my mind again come January).

My trip in to web design really began because of an amazing web designer I had the privilege of working with a few years back. Just by working along side of her I saw that it was more than computers. It was art and creativity as well. So after Scotland and the unrelated masters degree I began my study of all things graphics related. While I did take some classes at the local community college, I owe a lot of my education to the many many design blogs I subscribe to and follow. For those I've found especially useful, I thought I'd give a wee shout out and pass along access to a wealth of knowledge for other aspiring web or graphic designers.

• Smashing Magazine | The only site I let clutter my twitter feed. Yes, they're that good.
• Noupe | Who were actually just invested in by Smashing Magazine. That just goes to show how fantastic they are.
• Six Revisions | Useful information for web designers and developers
• Web Designer Wall | A plethera of design ideas web trends and tutorials
• Web Designer Depot | A bit of everything really
• 1stwebdesigner | Another lovely blog of tips, tricks, and resources

I have now been with Mindfly for about a month and I am super excited about what I'm doing and who I'm doing it with (hazing including ). So far it's been a great experience and I have high hopes that it will continue to be (is that considered brown nosing?)

Pre-publishing check list:

• Grammar: check
• Proper capitalization: check
• Punctuation: check
• Spellcheck: check
• Witty banter: check