Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Articles

  • How to learn to Design & Develop for iOS Devices like iPhone & iPad

    Here are two free ways to learn to design & develop for iOS devices like iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch.

    Apple Developer Videos

    I know you definitely know Apple’s Website but there is one website dedicated to developers only called developer.apple.com

    As you may know Apple has ‘World Wide Developer Conference’ i.e. WWDC every year dedicated only to Developers on Apple Platform. Lucky thing is that Apple releases it’s WWDC keynote & learning session videos on web through their own developer site which is mentioned above.

    To access those videos you have to have ‘Apple ID’.

    That means you have to register on ‘Apple Developer Website’.

    Videos are available on web to view or You can download it to your iTunes application.

    developervideos

    Here is iPhone Development videos on iTunes

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  • Wondering How to give design Interview? Here are few Design Interview Notes that will help you to prepare for the same

    Here are few words about Design Job Interview preparation from my own experiences.

    Here are my two earlier blog post that will allow you to prepare Resume & Portfolio

    1. How to write your Design Resume?
    2. Creating & Choosing Your First Design Portfolio Format & updating it over the years

    Details of Preparation

    • Prepare yourself for interview a day before on interview date
    • Cycle through in your mind what are your capabilities, your professional goal in life etc.
    • Go through your portfolio to see it is in perfect order for presentation
    • Read your resume to see there is no spelling mistakes or something missing from it etc.
    • Preparation can also start with having own domain & personal dedicated blog & portfolio website that showcase your work handsomely.

    Preparing specific job related Resume
    It’s not bad idea to have separate resume for different domains of Design dedicated to each i.e. If you work in this three domain called Web Design, Animation Film Design & Graphic Design then you can prepare three different resumes dedicated to each three domains.

    Preparing specific job related Portfolio
    If you have three types of resumes dedicated three different domains that can also go with three differently designed ‘Portfolio’ dedicated to three separate domain of design. e.g If you are going for post of Web Designer then surely you can show Web Design Portfolio & Web Design Resume to recruiter to tell him you have mastered the web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, ActionScript & even design tools like Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop etc.

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  • How College Drop Outs changed the Design itself

    Just Today (i.e. 25th August 2011) after coming home I read the News through RSS feeds of respective companies…

    The big News was, “Steve Jobs Resigns from Apple’s CEO Position”

    First though come to my mind was, There will be no more Apple Keynote Events Starring Steve Jobs no more breath taking announcements or new product launch… he dominated style called Marketing like Steve Jobs, A Stetment like – ‘It Just Works!’, ‘And there is one more thing’

    So I sat down & made one study about Charisma of these people from silicon Valley called Steve Jobs 7 Bill Gates. So, here is small study,

    A college dropout like Steve jobs has contributed to design industry…

    Steve Jobs – Apple CEO & Founder
    After founding Apple in 1976, A company dedicated to create Personal Computer revolution with Apple 1, Apple 2 & Lisa & then reinventing personal computer with Macintosh at 1984 with Graphical User Interface was milestone for Personal Computing Revolution from which Designing on Computer started & took center stage.

    Here is image of Steve Jobs with First Macintosh

    stevewithmac84

    After Returning to Apple on 1997 after gap of 17 years, apple’s product line with great Industrial design has evolved immensely with first iMac, iBooks, & Power Books. Today Apple Dominates Personal Computing era with their MacBook Pro, iMac & Mac Pro.

    Today’s iMac Design is so immensely revolutionary that competitors can’t resist or even think beyond design of iMac’s Design

    Here is iMac’s Design:

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  • Testing Your Website on iPad & iPhone via Macintosh OSX Desktop or Laptop based iOS Simulator

    OK, You have developed website locally or it is deployed on online server, What Ever the case may be…

    But you want the taste your website on iPhone or iPad… & Unfortunately you don’t have access to physically available iPhone or iPad…!!!

    If this is the case that you are on Mac OSX 10.7 Lion & you are ready with Mac App Store at least free ID.

    Here is the way to run your website on your iMac, MacBook Pro or Air, Mac Pro through iOS Simulator…

    iOS Simulator:

    ios

    Here are the Steps to do that:

    1. Visit XCode page on Mac App Store Here
    2. Download
    3. Run ‘Install XCode’ (It’s in Application Folder)
    4. Install XCode
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  • Web Design & Development on Macintosh through OpenSource or Free Apps

    Here are the list tool sets you will need if you want to design & develop website on mac with opensource or free apps. As you may know Mac is it self based on opensource Unix platform.

    So here is the list of Web Design & Development OpenSource Apps available on Mac,

    CMS (Content Management System) or Blogging Platform

    WordPress

    wordpress

    WordPress is opensource CMS software for Blogging, Even This website is created with WordPress. WordPress has massive support with large amount of plugins to easily integrating Google Analytics, Google Adsens, Feedburner to even having Image slideshow & Image Lightbox

    Web Server

    MAMP

    MAMP
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  • Final Solution If MAMP Apache Server won’t start or doesn’t start at all

    Before switching to Mac OSX Lion 10.7 & MAMP 2.0.2, I was using Mac OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with MAMP 1.9.5

    After Upgrading to Mac OSX Lion 10.7 and MAMP 2.0.1 or 2.0.2, suddenly everything went wrong. The Apache Server doesn’t start.

    For almost the last month, I have been unable to update my website theme offline…

    But when I check the folder called ‘log’ inside MAMP’s folder under applications (/Applications/MAMP/logs)

    I opened the ‘apache_error.log’ Apache Log file, and there was a reason on my iMac why MAMP’s Apache server was not running.

    Error: [Date] [alert] (EAI 8)nodename nor servname provided, or not known: mod_unique_id: unable to find IPv4 address of “000-000-000-000.static.broadbandcompanyname”

    So, the Error was related to ‘IPv4’

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  • Marathi Play – ‘Jaswandi’

    Last saturday I saw a marathi Play called ‘Jaswandi’

    Watching the play I got sense that this play is about expressing human love & sexuality as against to uncivilized domesticated animals like cats & dogs…

    I felt Talking cats are like narrator or ‘Sutradhar’ of the play Jaswandi.

    Sarika Nawathe is in the roll of Jaswandi. She has done good justice to the character of her play. I totally liked the play but I felt the ending of the play is quite disturbing… & you walk out of theater with the questions & unease in your mind about main characters of play…

    But everybody should watch this play…!!! & It’s worth watching…!!!

  • Animation Film Making Notes

    Here is the collection of ‘Animation Film Making Notes’, Notes are collected from Wikipedia, Wikibooks & SIGGRAPH. I found it helpful so sharing it with you all…

    SIGGRAPH Notes on Animation Film Making by John Lasseter & Ollie Johnston

    Tricks to Animating Characters with a Computer
    Reference: These notes come from Course 1 at SIGGRAPH 94, “Animation Tricks”.
    This are the Notes by Disney & Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, he is the first animator to work on 3D computer animation, “The Aventures of André and Wally B.,” He is Exucutive Producer & Director of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Cars 2.

    Animation Notes from Ollie Johnston
    Reference: These notes come from Course 1 at SIGGRAPH 94, “Animation Tricks”.
    Ollie Johnston is Animator from Disney, He is one of famous Disney’s Nine Old Men. He Co-Authored with Frank Thomas the Book ‘Disney Animation –  Illusion of Life’. He has documented 12 principles of Animation in the same book.

    Wikipedia Notes on Animation Film Making

    Animation Techniques
    This documents differant Animation Techniques under one page It has great documentation by WiKi

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  • Design Tools Comparison

    Today I decided to compare different design tools or computer applications available in market to just to differentiate them with each other

    Before even talking about Computer Design Applications you can guess what big companies are involved in to developing them, examples are Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, Microsoft

    Sometimes as Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Animator is really hard to understand what tools to choose before even starting a design process but you have to keep in mind that tool are just tools not an design solution that will dictate your design process but it will just help you to do your job done.

    Comparison of Design Tools can be made on following basis:

    1. Price
    2. Ease of Use
    3. Popularity
    4. Type (Raster or Vector or Voxel)
    5. Apps’ Availability over particular Computer Operating Systems
    6. Compatibility with other file format & tools
    7. Features

    Price
    Price of paid apps like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator are around $ 1,000. Paid apps may cost too much to your pocket if you are starting a fresh as a freelancer. But there are other opensource apps may just cost nothing to you pocket & save lot of investment in digital assets like apps

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  • How to write your Design Resume?

    Sometimes I feel every designer should appoint somebody with good writing skills or copywriter to write right & perfect ‘Resume’ matching to his business profile.

    In today’s internet age There are professional networking sites like Linkedin, Job sites like Naukri.com & Monster.com or Even Multinational Companies like Apple, Adobe & Even Facebook & Twitter has their own Job listings available on their site where you can register & upload your resume.

    So chances of Grabbing Job Online are high as far as networking & internet goes…

    I would suggest go for Microsoft Word Document Format for creating your first digital Resume… i.e. ‘Your-Name-Resume.doc’

    You Have to keep following points in mind while writing your Design Resume:

    1. Keep SEO (Search Engine Optimization) intact so that people can search your resume with right keywords
    2. Use Titles
    3. Use Priorities Structure for better Resume
    4. Use Font like Verdana & better Typography with line spacing & character spacing & not using lower point size fonts & use san serif fonts
    5. Don’t Use Images or Watermarks
    6. Don’t Use tables
    7. Spread your Resume only to single page
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