Art & Design

Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, usually involving imaginative or technical skill. Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams and sewing patterns). Design has different connotations in different fields. In some cases the direct construction of an object (as in pottery, engineering, management, cowboy coding and graphic design) is also considered to be design.

Everyday designer’s question to pay Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) Tax or pay for individual third party design apps

Mandar Apte Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Art & Design, Personal Experience, User Experience Design Leave a comment

Today I used Adobe XD for whole day. Felt it’s really competitive to Sketch app on Mac.

I really avoided using Adobe XD all this years because of Adobe Subscription TAX which normally cost me INR 5,000/- here in India. But loved Sketch App’s payment model which is almost INR 5,000/ for year then you can renew subscription or use it without update as long as you want.

But loved Adobe XD compatibility and integration with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, it is real smooth and well done. Adobe XD’s prototype tool is smooth.

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Best Design Advice that I ever received

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Graphic Design, Personal Experience, Typography, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

Best advice I ever received about designing logos and symbols is use humanistic elements / curves / lines in your design and totally avoid mechanical drawings. As mechanical drawings can be taken care by computer itself.

This advice was given to me by Shirbhavikar sir and Pawar sir when I was doing BFA Applied Arts at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art.

It seems I don’t follow this advice totally in my drawings / designs and illustrations. Even after 4 years of my graduation when I met Mahendra Patel sir at his SID office he told me the same.

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In-depth Review of Matrimony Website by Suyog Ranade Vivaha aka Shree Suyog Vivaha Mandal

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Reviews, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

Here I have written complete in-depth review and analysis of Suyog Ranade Vivaha or Shree Suyog Vivaha Mandal Matrimony website that I used for 6 to 7 months that was mainly on WhatsApp groups because of bad user experience on website format. I reported the following issues to them but they were not ready or in the right frame of mind to accept it.

So I just unregistered myself from their portal and get out of their WhatsApp groups.

Following are the points that I noticed about their matrimony service:

Point 01: No or Failed Business Model. Matrimony section mainly runs on WhatsApp Groups of 250 people. The group is unmanaged sometimes people post their profiles multiple times some peoples even post a political or comic forwards. Because of all members in open WhatsApp group, there is no contact number security or number privacy. Sometimes admins or business owners posts repeated WhatsApp Messages to asking every user to register and pay a fee to use WhatsApp group or website. Admins even warn users they will remove everyone who never pays matrimony section fee which showcases the main point that there is no thought behind Successful Business Model or Revenue Generation.

Point 02: No Privacy or Security: Because of the open group with visibility of contact numbers to everyone users are prone to scammers and fake profiles or spam calls

Point 03: Suyog Ranade Vivaha had a loss of complete user profile data and even registered accounts data three times while upgrading their website and also transferring the website to their new domain. They had to ask every user individually to reregister for their website again and again. A failed system.

Point 04: Website owners had to change Web Domain as similar web domain was used by its competitor with small name difference. It shows no thought about branding or company structure. Because of this duplicate domain by competitors, Suyog Ranade Vivavha’s Matrimony users were registering wrongly to competitors website thinking competitor that they are original company. This sows loss of identity and company branding. And a loss of revenue.

Point 05: Even you can see in screenshots website structure is broken and faulty with buggy coding and development.

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Choosing between Cloud Storage And Having Multiple Computers i.e. one at home, second at the office and another for being on the move / Tablet or Mobile.

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Hardware, Reviews, Tutorials, User Experience Design Leave a comment

So for the last two-three days, I started preparing for User Experience (UX) Professional Certification from a reputed institute.

 
So I have books from them for the course that I attended, then I have notes collected through websites like nngroup.com & usability.gov that I want to chunk information in short notes & collect them for future reference.

 
So the problem is every material that I collected is in physical paper form, or in digital format on my desktop computer but when I am on the move travelling from office to home or to some other place those notes are always unavailable to me.

 
So what is the solution to this problem?

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How to set up a CloudFlare Flexible SSL Certificate within 5 minutes for your WordPress website’s all subdomains & main domain.

Mandar Apte Apps, Cloudflare, Reviews, Tutorials, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

Prerequisite: Please make sure have active CloudFlare account and you have added your WordPress Website to CloudFlare. Also, make sure you are using CloudFlare nameservers for your domain.

 
Step 01: Sign in to your CloudFlare account

 

 
Step 02: Make sure flexible SSL certificate is enabled under the “Crypto” tab for your selected website

 

 

 
Step 03: While you are already signed in to your CloudFlare account go to > My Profile > Scroll down to API Keys and locate Global API Key & copy the same key for further use inside your website.

 

 

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My new venture into selling Stock Photography on 500px.com

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Art of Mandar Apte, India, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Photography Leave a comment

From the start of being student of BFA (Bachelor of Fine Art) – Applied Art & even before that when I started with automatic film camera I was trying to be good photographer or may be I was.

 
Last year of my graduation I bought Canon A520 Point & Shoot camera & using that camera I shot almost 6,500 i.e. Six Thousand Photos over span of 10 Years. Plus photos taken from Mobile Phone Camera that may count more than another 2,000 i.e. Two thousand Photographs.

 
In Year August 2016 I bought iPhone. Using my latest iPhone I just shot another 2,200 Photos plus Slo-mo, Time-lapse & Videos in just 9 Months.

 
So with this collection more than 10,000 Photos I have decided to post it on Flickr & more importantly on 500px.com profile of mine so that I can sell them as stock photography & fetch some price for my work.

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Colour Behaviour Study of Japan / True Black on Real Life Physical Paper & on Computer Displays or Screens

Mandar Apte Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Apple, Apple iOS, Apple macOS, Art & Design, Graphic Design, Hardware, Print Design, Reviews Leave a comment

I am hereby documenting few of my thoughts about black colour behaviour on Physical Paper & on Computer Display or on Screen.

 
I was from BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) – Applied Art background so we had subjects like Illustration, Calligraphy, Typography, Print Media Design, Logo & Symbol Design, Branding & Identity Design.

 
We use to design our assignments using Japan Black ink which is vary dark in contrast & which creates high contrast reach feeling of black colour tone on white paper.

 
So when we print our designs done in Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw we use to fill the design with (CMYK) Cyan: 100%, Magenta: 100%, Yellow: 100%, K(Black): 100% than using only K: 100%. This CMYK values use to create high contrast Japan Black ink fill on White Paper.

 

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Using Google Public DNS for IPv4 & IPv6 to speed up internet browsing, A resource for Web Designers, Developers & Internet Surfers in General

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Freebies, Google, Open Source, Tutorials, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

As Wikipedia explains,

 

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. Most prominently, it translates easily memorised domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for the purpose of locating computer services and devices worldwide. By providing a worldwide, distributed keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet.

 
Google’s Public DNS will speedup your computer internet connections performance with faster speed for domain name lookup.

 
google-public-dns

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Irregularities of AdSense Advertisements Delivery, Why smaller 300×250 unit ads are delivered in 336×280 ad unit. Here is why?

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Google, Google AdSense, User Experience Design, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

For a while I was observing unusual behaviour of my 336 by 280 Ad units where smaller sized ads were get delivered in the size of 300 by 250 units.

 
I even report this issue to Google AdSense Support Team but received no reply & currently they were not accepting any new support request but any how I got the solution that I wanted.

 
I got the solution to the problem why smaller unit ads were get delivered in bigger size ad units & there by ruining my ‘Website Design Layouts’

 
Here is what Google Says about that:

 
(Source: Adsense Resource Tab)

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How to put comments in .php, .html, .css files to declare, remind explanation of code to third party developers, designers or even users which may even includes you, This technique can also be utilise while writing or debugging code by selectively disabling or enabling lines of source code

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Open Source, Tutorials, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

There are different ways of putting comments per type of file on world wide web.

 
Comments helps developer of code to explain third party developers, designers, users or even to himself in space of time why he used that line of code & what function it performs in that web application.

 
So it is real handy to have that knowledge of how to put comments in your files in PHP, CSS & HTML.

 
Here is example how you will put comments in ‘HTML’ & ‘PHP’ pages (outside of the PHP code) & it will look like this:

 

<!-- put comments here to explain it more -->

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