WELCOME TO NYC’S HOTTEST UNDERGROUND PARTIES If you missed last night’s party, here’s your VIP pass to New York City’s deliciously sexy club scene. It’s a voyeuristic spin with today’s downtown demimonde, where hipsters, rockers, celebrities, and drag queens meet and misbehave with unabashed enthusiasm. Bared flesh, intertwined tongues, and de rigueur attitudes are all captured by Bonques’s lens in photographs that are fresh, fun, and hot. If this is your scene you may find yourself here; if not, welcome to the best party in town.

Ever since Photoshop version 2.5, The Photoshop Wow! Book has enlightened and inspired graphic designers, illustrators, and photographers around the globe. This newest edition delivers the familiar award-winning mix of explanations and step-by-step tutorials for creating both commercial and fine-art images, with a DVD-ROM full of tutorial files and other goodies. Tips and beautiful galleries distinguish this book as the most inspiring Photoshop resource around. Designed for easy reference, The Photoshop CS3/CS4 Wow! Book includes short features in which professional photographers and designers let you in on their creative secrets for quick solutions. You'll learn the most innovative techniques for creating and enhancing images, graphics, and type. * Use these techniques with Photoshop CS3 and CS4; most fundamental techniques also work with Photoshop CS5 * Use the new and improved features in Photoshop CS3 and CS4, including Smart Filters, the Quick Selection tool, the new Black & White and Vibrance adjustments, the Refine Edge command, the Clone Source panel, the Adjustments and Masks panels, and video, animation, 3D, and Analysis features in Photoshop Extended, as well as improvements to Bridge and Camera Raw * Build your skill with familiar Photoshop features such as blend modes, Adjustment layers, channels, filters, Actions, and Layer Styles * Focus attention on the subject of a photo, retouch a portrait, tint an image, or convert a color image to black-and-white * Bring out your inner artist with Photoshop's sophisticated brushes and vector-drawing tools * Create dazzling special effects for type and graphics* Keep your creations organized with layers, groups, Smart Objects, and layer comps

The iconic British style magazine i-D once again brings you a guide to the world's most important designers. From the biggest players in the international fashion industry including Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, and Marc Jacobs, to emerging names such as Kim Jones and Tess Giberson, to streetwear and sportswear brands A Bathing Ape, Nike, Diesel and Silas, Fashion Now II is a comprehensive survey of today's best designers. Expanded from the previous edition, Fashion Now II is illustrated with the very best fashion photography and styling, extracted from shoots in the archives of the magazine that celebrates its 25th birthday this year. Also included are an introduction by i-D founder and editor-in-chief Terry Jones, and in-depth essays on the issues that are shaping fashion today: the fashion show system, the precarious position of the celebrity designer, and the rise of menswear. Fashion Now II is an encyclopedia of fashion personalities, a portfolio of amazing imagery, but most of all, a snapshot of the fast-changing contemporary fashion world, as seen through the lens of one of the best-loved magazines published today.

The gap between who designers and developers imagine their users are, and who those users really are can be the biggest problem with product development. Observing the User Experience will help you bridge that gap to understand what your users want and need from your product, and whether they'll be able to use what you've created. Filled with real-world experience and a wealth of practical information, this book presents a complete toolbox of techniques to help designers and developers see through the eyes of their users. It provides in-depth coverage of 13 user experience research techniques that will provide a basis for developing better products, whether they're Web, software or mobile based. In addition, it's written with an understanding of how software is developed in the real world, taking tight budgets, short schedules, and existing processes into account. ·Explains how to create usable products that are still original, creative, and unique ·A valuable resource for designers, developers, project managersanyone in a position where their work comes in direct contact with the end user. ·Provides a real-world perspective on research and provides advice about how user research can be done cheaply, quickly and how results can be presented persuasively ·Gives readers the tools and confidence to perform user research on their own designs and tune their software user experience to the unique needs of their product and its users

How do you know whether a hot technology will succeed or fail? Or where the next big idea will come from? The best answers come not from the popular myths we tell about innovation, but instead from time-tested truths that explain how we've made it this far. This book shows the way. In The Myths of Innovation, bestselling author Scott Berkun takes a careful look at innovation history, including the software and Internet Age, to reveal how ideas truly become successful innovations-truths that people can apply to today's challenges. Using dozens of examples from the history of technology, business, and the arts, you'll learn how to convert the knowledge you have into ideas that can change the world. Why all innovation is a collaborative process How innovation depends on persuasion Why problems are more important than solutions How the good innovation is the enemy of the great Why the biggest challenge is knowing when it's good enough "For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong." -- Scott Berkun, from the text. "Insightful, inspiring, evocative, and just plain fun to read it's totally great." -- John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox, andDirector, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARe; current Chief of Confusion "Small, simple, powerful: an innovative book about innovation." -- Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University; author of Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things "The naked truth about innovation is ugly, funny, and eye-opening, but it sure isn't what most of us have come to believe. With this book, Berkun sets us free to try to change the world unencumbered with misconceptions about how innovation happens." -- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start "Brimming with insights and historical examples, Berkun's book not only debunks widely held myths about innovation but also points the ways toward making your new ideas stick. Even in today's ultra-busy commercial world, reading this book will be time well spent." -- Tom Kelley, GM, IDEO; author of The Ten Faces of Innovation "This book cuts through the hype, analyzes what is essential, and more importantly, what is not. You will leave with a thorough understanding of what really drives innovation." -- Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com "I loved this book. It's an easy-to-read playbook for anyone wanting to lead and manage positive change in their business." -- Frank McDermott, Marketing Manager, EMI Music Scott Berkun knows innovation. A member of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999, he is a full-time author at www.scottberkun.com and wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management (O'Reilly). He also teaches creative thinking at the University of Washington.