TED.com is one of the Tuts+ Premium team’s favorite sources of learning and inspiration. In this post, I want to share 20 TED talks I recommend to all Tuts+ Premium students who are focused on learning creative skills.

1. Erik Johannson’s Impossible Photography

Erik Johansson creates realistic photos of impossible scenes — capturing ideas, not moments. In this witty how-to, the Photoshop wizard describes the principles he uses to make these fantastical scenarios come to life, while keeping them visually plausible.

2. Lisa Harouni’s A Primer on 3D Printing

2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things — including intricate objects once impossible to create.

3. Thomas Suarez, A 12 Year-old App Developer

Most 12-year-olds love playing videogames — Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them. After developing iPhone apps like “Bustin Jeiber,” a whack-a-mole game, he is now using his skills to help other kids become developers.

4. James Cameron’s Before Avatar: A Curious Boy

James Cameron’s big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic — from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving — and how it ultimately drove the success of his blockbuster hits “Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “Titanic” and “Avatar.”

5. Evan Williams’ On Listening to Twitter Users

In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone). Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

6. Chip Kidd’s Designing Books is No Laughing Matter. OK, Yes It Is.

Chip Kidd doesn’t judge books by their cover, he creates covers that embody the book — and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In one of the funniest talks from TED2012, he shows the art and deep thought of his cover designs.

7. Jer Thorp’s Make Data More Human

Jer Thorp creates beautiful data visualizations to put abstract data into a human context. At TEDxVancouver, he shares his moving projects, from graphing an entire year’s news cycle, to mapping the way people share articles across the internet.

8. Kelli Anderson’s Design to Challenge Reality

Kelli Anderson shatters our expectations about reality by injecting humor and surprise into everyday objects. At TEDxPhoenix she shares her disruptive and clever designs.

9. Stefan Sagmeister’s 7 Rules for Making More Happiness

Using simple, delightful illustrations, designer Stefan Sagmeister shares his latest thinking on happiness — both the conscious and unconscious kind. His seven rules for life and design happiness can (with some customizations) apply to everyone seeking more joy.

10. Rogier van der Heide’s Why Light Needs Darkness

Lighting architect Rogier van der Heide offers a beautiful new way to look at the world — by paying attention to light (and to darkness). Examples from classic buildings illustrate a deeply thought-out vision of the play of light around us.

11. Seth Godin’s This is Broken

Why are so many things broken? In a hilarious talk from the 2006 Gel conference, Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the 7 reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.

12. David McCandless’ The Beauty of Data Visualization

David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may just change the way we see the world.

13. Rory Sutherland’s Sweat the Small Stuff

It may seem that big problems require big solutions, but ad man Rory Sutherland says many flashy, expensive fixes are just obscuring better, simpler answers. To illustrate, he uses behavioral economics and hilarious examples.

14. Milton Glaser’s On Using Design to Make Ideas New

From the TED archives: The legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser dives deep into a new painting inspired by Piero della Francesca. From here, he muses on what makes a convincing poster, by breaking down an idea and making it new.

15. David Carson’s On Design + Discovery

Great design is a never-ending journey of discovery — for which it helps to pack a healthy sense of humor. Sociologist and surfer-turned-designer David Carson walks through a gorgeous (and often quite funny) slide deck of his work and found images.

16. Jay Walker’s Library of Human Imagination

Jay Walker, curator of the Library of Human Imagination, conducts a surprising show-and-tell session highlighting a few of the intriguing artifacts that backdropped the 2008 TED stage.

17. Eva Zeisel’s On The Playful Search for Beauty

The ceramics designer Eva Zeisel looks back on a 75-year career. What keeps her work as fresh today (her latest line debuted in 2008) as in 1926? Her sense of play and beauty, and her drive for adventure. Listen for stories from a rich, colorful life.

18. Tim Brown On Creativity and Play

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play — with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn’t).

19. Paola Antonelli Treats Design as Art

Paola Antonelli, design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, wants to spread her appreciation of design — in all shapes and forms — around the world.

20. Philippe Starck Thinks Deep on Design

Designer Philippe Starck — with no pretty slides to show — spends 18 minutes reaching for the very roots of the question “Why design?” Listen carefully for one perfect mantra for all of us, genius or not.

The Job

The role is quite simple: we need talented folks, who have the hearts of teachers, to help create courses for the site on a number of subjects, including web development, design, and business. You might be familiar with 30 Days to Learn jQuery, or Fundamentals of UX Design; well that’s exactly the sort of courses that we need.

While we have dozens upon dozens of courses in the pipeline, here’s a quick sample of ones that we’re hoping to fulfill soon (maybe from you)!

• Traditional Illustration
• Design Theory
• Ruby Fundamentals
• Programming in Rails
• Print Design
• Interactive Design
• iOS Essentials
• Mastering Dojo
• Enterprise PHP
• Techniques for Slicing Photoshop Designs
• Node.js: Front to Back
• Python Essentials

If none of those pique your interest, no worries; we have dozens of alternatives that we can discuss as well – that is, if you’re the right person for the job!

Are You The Right Person?

Well that depends; the right person(s) for the job should fit all of the following criteria:

• Passion for teaching, and helping others understand difficult concepts.
• Desire to change the landscape of education.
• The ability to speak clearly and record screencasts (We can teach you how to screencast, if necessary).
• Desire to continuously better yourself. Education should never end…especially for instructors.
• A wealth of real-world knowledge and experience that you wish to pass on. If you only have a couple years of education, you’re likely not the right person for the job.

At first, you’d be working part-time, producing one course a month – or roughly 2-5 hours worth of content. We pay very well, and would love to talk more if you believe you’re the person we need! To apply, please email Jeffrey at jeffrey[at]envato.com and include the following information:

• A 1-2 sentence description of yourself. Keep this short and to the point.
• What’s your area(s) of expertise? What are your credentials.
• Do you have any blogging or screencasting experience?
• Any additional applicable links (such as to your GitHub account).

We’re hiring multiple people, so if you know your stuff, email me now to chat!

Image by mysza831.

If you’ve been following the Envato Notes blog, you’ll know that right now the entire Tuts+ Premium team is together in Malaysia for our semi-annual company meet-up and work conference. We’ve had a lot of fun seeing the sights of Kuala Lumpur and eating all that delicious Malayasian food, but the majority of our time is spent working together.

For most of the year, Tash, Jeffrey, Naysan and I all work at opposite ends of the globe, with Tash and Naysan in Envato’s Melbourne HQ and Jeffrey and me located in America. We coordinate with weekly, sometimes daily, conference calls, emails, and Basecamp, but it’s really valuable to connect face to face occasionally. For an international group like Tuts+ Premium, it’s important to make the most of the time we have at these meet ups to make our service more awesome!

Remote teams like ours used to be really rare, but it’s becoming more and more common in the working world. So I wanted to share with you guys a few ways you can make the most of meetings when you’re part of a remote team or just a freelancer meeting with clients. In particular, I’ve noticed a few things that are more effective in our face time than in remote discussions.

Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Brainstorm

We do quite a bit of brainstorming and idea generation in our meetings; that’s probably what we spend a majority of our meetings doing. Skype and e-mail calls can work well for it. However, ideas that seem crazy and a touch embarassing over the phone may turn into a genius moment when bounced around over coffee. It’s helpful to be able to see the reaction on your colleagues face and gauge whether they’re following your thought or not. Now’s the time to mass generate those crazy plans that you’ll go on to conquer the world with when you return home.

Don’t Shy Away from Problems

You’ve been working with these guys for weeks/months/years and now you’re face to face. Intimidating, right? You want them to like you so you avoid addressing problems or critique each other’s ideas, when in fact, this is the perfect time for it. In fact, in person conversations are great for addressing those niggling and sensitive issues that might require a more nuanced communication style than you can achieve over Skype. Using context, back and forth banter, and simple body language can help transform a sensitive issue into a productive discussion.

Talk to Strangers!

No, I don’t mean the strangers with candy type. I mean those smart people who are on your team whom you may not interact with daily. I’m really lucky that Tuts+ Premium is part of Envato, a company full of really nifty, talented people. Unfortunately, I only get to regularly work with my own small team and only know some of our other developers or editors by reputation. Work conferences like this are the best time to expand your circle of contacts and get to know people. This does two things: it makes it easier to approach that person in the future for a project or favor, and it makes them more likely to approach you with a question or opportunity. Both very good things. The more talented people you know, the better your own work will be.

So what are the Tuts+ Premium team doing?

So what are we planning in Malaysia? I can’t spoil the surprise! But I can say we’re having a lot of really energetic talks about the future of Tuts+ Premium and ambitions for offering our members the best education experience possible. We’re also talking a lot about what a strong, talented community we have and ways we can make it better. Have ideas you want us to discuss? Want to see more of our conference here in KL? Comment and let us know!

Photography by Jarel Remick.

Specifically what “it” is doesn’t really matter; the only thing that does is that an epiphany just occurred – and nobody knows it but you. And my goodness is it an amazing feeling! It’s late to the point of being early, you’re exhausted, but, despite all of that, it’s still, without question, an amazing moment.

Every developer reading this knows exactly what I’m referring to. If you don’t, then you’re not pushing yourself enough. Don’t for a second allow yourself to become stagnant in your education.

When?

In the early hours of the morning, after hours of studying, toying, and reading about a particular technique or concept.

How?

Despite the fact that you’ve been going in circles for hours, it, miraculously, “clicks.” There’s no rhyme or reason for this sudden sense of awakening; it just… happens.

What Exactly Happens?

As the title of this article certainly spoiled, this “clicking” effect generally gives way to a special “Ohhh” or “Aha” moment – many times spoken out loud. From then on, that concept is part of you; you can’t unlearn it. If you do, then you never truly grokked it in the first place.

Examples

I’ll tell you some of mine, if you tell me yours in the comments below.

• divs: It’s been a long time, but I still remember the moment when I realized what an HTML div actually was. Sure, now, it’s beyond trivial; but, back then, when I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, I could not for the life of me figure out what the need for them was. It didn’t style anything! It didn’t make my page display differently! What did I need it for?
• Closures: JavaScript developers are well aware of the moment when they suddenly grasped the concept of closures, and why they’re so great. Once it “clicks,” you’ve got it for life. There will never be a moment when I relapse and forget what a closure is. And that’s specifically why it’s referred to as an “aha” moment!
• Backbone.js: Sure, it carries the MVC label, but grokking a JavaScript MVC framework can be a lengthy exercise – particularly when all of them implement the MVC(ish) pattern in unique ways – to the point that we refer to them as MV*. My understanding of a server-side view required a good bit of retooling in order for me to transition that understanding to Backbone’s concept of a view.
• Testing: Ahh, the world of testing – such a debated topic. As I see it, the idea of testing your code seems crazy, until, one day (after a bit of experimentation), it makes perfect sense. Why am I repeating all of these tedious tasks? Why must I be afraid of refactoring this bit of code, out of fear of breaking it? Wait a minute: I’m a developer; why am I performing all of these tests manually? That’s what the computer/code is for!

  It clicked when I heard a developer friend of mine say, “Every time you throw an alert or log something to the console, you should, instead, be writing a test.“

Only For Programmers?

Now I don’t mean to exclude all of the non-developers in the world.

The “aha” moment certainly exists in all walks of life…but just a little bit more for developers!

Don’t be upset; this dang stuff is hard! If we’re going to dedicate our lives to constant (and I mean constant) education, then at least give us these few spare, wonderful moments! I’ve been doing this for a long while now, and I still feel as if I haven’t even scraped the surface.

Ohh okay, you win; we all have “aha” moments in equal quantities. Hopefully, that feeling never goes away.

Closing Thoughts

You can’t predict them; you can’t force them. If you could, then they would cease to be special. The “aha” moment is exclusively reserved for those few sporadic times each year, when it all…suddenly…clicks.

What were some of your “aha” moments?

Image By: Caveman

Whether you’re a freelancer being interviewed for a short-term gig, or someone looking for a steady job, making sure your interview goes as smoothly as possible can strongly influence whether you end up being a successful applicant.

I’ve been conducting online interviews for certain positions in Envato over the last couple of months. I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a look at a few of the fundamental things we should all keep in mind when being interviewed for a position online.

All of the recent interviews I’ve been conducting have been over Skype – some with video, and some with voice only – so some of these points relate directly to being interviewed over Skype or the phone, and some of them are just plain good old interviewee etiquette no matter what the nature of the interview is.

1. Get Your Time Zones Right

Being punctual for a job interview seems like an obvious one, but with job candidates being based in different parts of the world, getting the time zones right can be tricky. Make sure you check the time differences based on where the person interviewing you is. Don’t assume that because a company is based in New York for instance, that the person doing the interview is going to be based in New York. Envato is a good example of this, as even though our main office is based in Melbourne, Australia, many of our staff members and contractors are based in different parts of the world.

If the person conducting the interview was unclear about the times, or you’re not completely sure, make sure you clarify it early on, and be sure to check the time difference again within 12 hours of the interview, as things like daylights savings kicking in can shift times around.

The World Clock Meeting Planner is a very useful tool for planning meetings across timezones.

2. Do Your Homework

When a company is going to be interviewing you, the least you can do is a little bit of homework to find out what the company does and what they’re all about. It’s actually surprising to me how little some interviewees have known about the company, and it’s a little disheartening to have to explain the basics to them. Besides reading the job description and understanding the position you’re interviewing for, you should definitely try and find out more about the company and how your position fits. Not knowing much about the project or the company hiring you will definitely be a turn-off for the interviewer, so do as much homework as you can before the interview.

3. Secure Your Environment

Whether you’re going to be using video or just audio, make sure your voice is nice and clear by using headphones and a separate microphone if necessary.

It’s also just as important to make sure you’re in a quiet location which is free from loud or annoying background noises or disturbances. I had an audio interview over Skype with someone who must have been in an Internet café, because all I could hear in the background were others typing, and I swear I heard someone being asked if they had ordered a decaf. It wasn’t cool.

If you’re going to have a video interview, besides making sure you’re not in an Internet café, think about what the person conducting the interview is going to be looking at on the wall or in the background behind you. If you’re at home, are you in a private room, or are family members going to be walking past the screen in their underwear? (Seriously, it’s happened). If you are in a quiet private room, is there a certain distasteful poster on the wall behind you, which you may want to take down? There may even be a pot plant in the background which is positioned so that it looks like it’s growing out of your head. Funny? Yes. Professional? No. It’s worth checking things like this, so have a look around and make sure your background is interview ‘safe’.

4. Be Honest

I think everyone appreciates an honest person, so don’t pretend to know things you don’t know when answering questions. Just be honest about it. It’s better to be straight up about it from the beginning, than having the interviewer listen to you waffle on about something you obviously don’t know about. Besides saving everyone some time as well, most people will admire you for your honesty, and there’s no harm in asking if you’re unsure about something either.

5. Customize Your CV

Customizing your resume or CV to suit the position or project description you’re being interviewed for is always a good idea. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to cut a whole bunch of things out of your CV, but highlighting the most relevant experience and bringing it to the forefront of your CV will definitely work in your favor. An interviewer can often tell if this has been done, and besides saving them the time of having to wade through your resume to find what’s relevant to them, they’ll also appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time to do this, as it’s another way of demonstrating that you’re serious about getting the job.

(Photo Courtesy: Roger Shultz via Flickr)

Back in November, we asked our Webdesigntuts+ readers and web designers all around the globe to participate in the 2011 Web Design Survey. The response was pretty amazing. Over 5,000 web designers responded and the majority completed the entire survey, sharing honest insights on how they work, how they design, and their feelings on issues in the industry. I spent the next three months pouring through the data, noting trends and patterns, and writing about what I found. The result was Web Design Confidential, a book published by Rockable Press and available to all our Tuts+ Premium members for free! Grab it in the library if you haven’t already.

In the mean time, I wanted to share just a couple of the surprises I discovered about our web design community. And there were plenty of surprises! Ever want to know more about how your fellow web designer works or what it takes to be successful? Read on!

It’s Not All About Designing Websites

We all get into this business to do what we love–make effective and well designed websites. That’s what anyone who gets into web design imagines themselves doing. Sure, there might be a little paperwork, but web design–that’s what we get paid to do, right? However, the majority of respondents reported a split in their duties:

The top response fell in the 26 to 50% range. That means half or less of the respondents’ time was spent working on actual web design duties. It’s not as drastic as it sounds–the second most popular response was 50 to 75%, and in many cases, much of the other duties that weren’t explicitly web design were still directly related to it (client meetings, research, etc). The responses also included freelancers and consultants who are frequently required to spend a lot more time on business management than the average employee. However, it’s an important reminder that a successful career in web design depends on more than just your skills with Photoshop and CSS.

Your Education Affects Your Happiness

It’s common in the modern web design community to disparage the traditional college education experience as out-dated and irrelevant, especially among freelancers and other ambitious professionals. The common argument is that you can learn much more about our industry by getting out there, practicing your skills and doing real web design than by spending four years in a classroom. The initial survey seems to back up that result:

Well over half of the web designers who responded found their formal education only somewhat or not at all relevant! That’s a pretty harsh statement against college education. However, things get interesting if you compare this result against another question: Are you happy with your career in web design? We used this question as the success indicator because, across the board, if you responded as happy you were much more likely to report positively on the rest of the survey. Look at what happens when we filter our results based on happiness:

The orange segments are responses by web designers who reported themselves to be happy and successful in the web design field. Designers who did not report happiness are in blue. Notice the inverted responses here. By far, successful web designers (the “happy” people) were more likely to have found their education highly relevant to their field. Designers unhappy with their work were more likely to view their education as unrelated.

There are two ways you can read this trend: either successful designers are just more optimistic people and therefore more likely to appreciate their education, or finding ways to appreciate and relate your education to your work is one small factor to your happiness. In light of all the data we collected about success in web design, I’m prone to the latter interpretation. Several times in the survey, it seemed that if you had a curious, agile mind and were open to new ideas and able to apply your previous experience (college or otherwise) to your current projects, you were more likely to be happy with your web design business.

Image by juhansonin.

The trouble is, the quality of placeholder images you use can deeply affect how good the finished product looks when showing it off to clients, or trying to sell the design on a site like ThemeForest. In this post, I want to share with you a clever trick I’ve found for locating beautiful and free placeholder images to use in your designs.

The Only Link You’ll Ever Need…

Is this.

This link searches Flickr for images that are Creative Commons licensed for commercial use. The images can be used freely in commercial work, as long as there is some attribution for the photographer on the page (such as a link to their profile). The images are also sorted by Flickr’s ‘Interesting’ algorithm, which tends to return high quality images as judged by the community.

Note that searching on this page will only search within Creative Commons images licensed for commercial use. You can experiment with different search terms to find different images. Here are a few interesting searches to get you started:

• Bokeh
• Architecture
• Graffiti
• Lights

To get more information on a photo’s specific Creative Commons license, look for the ‘License’ heading in the sidebar, and click on the license to view some easy to understand explanations of the terms.

Most photos come in a variety of sizes, including resolutions high enough for most web uses. Click the photo to view it full size.

Some Examples

Photo by Krystian_O.

Photo by Astragony.

Photo by Aih.

Photo by jonathankosread.

Photo by pilottage.

Photo by jule_berlin.

Photo by cristal_cosmico.

Photo by jonathankosread.

Photo by hermes.

Photo by 85mm.ch.

Photo by bongosphotographie.

Photo from x-ray_delta_one.

Other Uses

If you have your own blog or website, a beautiful image can spice up almost any kind of content and provide a way to visually hook people into your article and get them reading.

Where do you get placeholder images for your web designs?

But I spent a lot of time learning the wrong lessons.

I learned good, valuable things: what design is, how to narrow in on a single idea and build upon it, how to think about audience and users, how Shakespeare grappled with the same cultural issues in his time that Snoop Dogg does today. The relationship between meduim and message and mode. All valuable stuff. But there were a few lessons I learned shortly after graduating that would have made a world of difference in my education and post-graduation career. If I had five minutes with any graduating class (or anyone learning new skills), this is what I wish I could teach:

Very few jobs pay you to “read Shakespeare.”

You can, of course, fill in “read Shakespeare” with whatever theoretical or passive pastime was the focus of your education: debate design theory, discuss theoretical frameworks, draw still life, study ancient texts, etc. I’m picking on Shakespeare because it was a stereotype of the typical literature major I met during my college years. Fresh out of your education, you need to be able to market yourself as more than “a Shakespeare-reading expert.” You’re going to have to have a skill to produce something, create value, something that’s valuable to someone else.

If that’s your dream, don’t give up! There are jobs out there that will in fact pay you to do so–Shakespearian scholars and actors are taught by someone–but those are frequently only accessible after putting in years of work in the industry. You need to make yourself valuable to the rest of the world first.

But some jobs will pay you to build upon Shakespeare.

Because that’s the bottom line–creating value, having something to contribute. Whether you decide to work for yourself or work within a larger organization, you have to start thinking about your education and your skills in terms that add value for other people. That doesn’t mean your major was worthless at all! It just means you need to be able to think about your major and develop your skills in a way that is valuable to more than just your professors now.

I’m going to use the English department analogy again: in college, you got really good at reading Shakespeare and writing literary essays about Shakespeare. That’s great! But you can’t think of it in terms of being a literature major anymore. You’re no longer defined by your field of study; you’re defined by what you can DO. The important part isn’t that you majored in X, it’s the skills you honed during all that study.

Let’s use an example: being a literature major doesn’t mean you “read Shakespeare” really good. It means you’re excellent at taking complex ideas and breaking them down into identifiable parts. It means you’re a seasoned pro at developing a complicated argument in a way that’s logical and easy to understand. It means you understand how to write to an audience. It means you’re incredibly valuable at understanding complex details and communicating the important things in clear language. That’s incredibly valuable! That can make you a very skilled copy writer, project manager, communication director, or qualified for a million other careers. Identify the skills that are the foundation of your studies. Know what you know, and know what you can do. Those are all very valuable skills and will be much more useful to many career opportunities. (No offense to Shakespeare.)

Communication is more than important–it’s the deciding factor.

Now you have the skills and know the value you provide, the world is your oyster, right? Not if you can’t communicate that to other people. You can be a brilliant artist, programmer, writer, but unless you can communicate what you can do and convince someone else that they need your work, you’re going to be a starving artis/programmer/writer.

Learning how to communicate effectively is all about understanding who you’re talking to. Any freelancer can probably tell you that the number one most profitable skill to have is the ability to identify a client’s problems and figure out how you can solve them. No matter what field you’re working in, you’ll have clients–your boss, your company, your buyers. You need to consider what they’re looking for: what problem do they need to solve? What’s important to them? How can you solve it with your skills? Emphasize that when applying for new opportunities. Identify the needs of your client or company and you’ll be ahead of most new graduates. Always look for problems to solve and communicate that.

If you want to be good, you never really graduate.

You’re probably at Tuts+ Premium because you’ve recognized this one already; it’s imperative to always keep learning. That’s why you’re here, right? Congratulations! You’re a step ahead of the pack.

Once you graduate, get your certificate, or master your technique, it’s tempting to think that the hard part is over. But nearly every industry is in a constant state of evolution and growth–it’s now your job to teach yourself, without professors prodding you along, to stay current with your field. This is doubly true if you are in a field that even vaguely relates to the web! It can be intimidating to track the rapid changes happening in fields like web design and development from year to year.

The good news is that there’s many resources and communities available to help you learn and stay current. But passively reading blog posts won’t keep you on top of the field. The second part of keep learning is to keep experimenting.

Above all, if you learn something new, share it with others. That’s how this whole industry works. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be the grizzled oldie, trying to share what you wish someone had taught you.

Photo credit: AdamLogan on Flickr, cdevers on Flickr, katiew on Flickr. 

Perhaps that’s why so many screencasts around the web are, to be frank: bad. It may seem simple, but a huge number of factors determine the overall quality of a video, and it’s a simple truth that most folks (incorrectly) “hit record and go.” I’d like to share with you some common screencasting pitfalls that I’ve personally experienced over the last half-decade.

1 – Audio Quality is Paramount

Yes, I get it; your Mac has a built-in microphone that “should work just fine.” Wrong! Assuming a thirty minute video tutorial, do you truly want the viewer/listener to endure your practically inaudible, noise-infused, TV-in-the-background voice? Audio quality is paramount; don’t for a second think that it isn’t.

In the early days, I, too, thought that, as long as my voice was understandable, then the actual quality level didn’t matter. It’s not like I was recording a video for CNN. How wrong I was, though. It’s one thing if you’re merely creating a single video for a friend or co-worker, however, it’s quite another if you plan to make a habit out of teaching others through screencasts. Invest $100 and get yourself a nice USB condenser mic.

The Audio-Technica AT2020 is an excellent and cost-effective choice for screencasters. If you’d like to push things up a notch, I personally use a Rode NTG2 along with an Icicle.

2 – You Get What You Pay For

Why pay money for screencasting software, when so many alternatives are free? Heck, even the Mac has a native screencasting tool, in the latest version of QuickTime. Why pay $100 (or more) for software, like Screenflow or Camtasia Studio, when free tools can get the job done? Well, the answer to that question depends on your needs. Again, for simple screencasts, sure; QuickTime is great. On the other hand, if you value the quality of your videos, then you need to put your money where your mouth is. You’re going to need enough flexibility to import various assets, make complicated edits, add background tracks, adjust audio levels, and so much more. For $100, this is a no-brainer; stop what you’re doing, and buy quality software.

I personally use Screenflow for the Mac. While I do have a few gripes (mostly related to bugs) with the software, it’s still the best available for Mac. Windows users should use Camtasia Studio.

3 – Act Like You Care

This one may seem petty, but it’s unfortunately something that I frequently encounter, when reviewing screencasts. This may come as a shocker, but when recording a long video, it’s vital that the viewer feels as if you have some level of excitement or passion for the subject matter. In translation: no monotone voices allowed. Don’t speak as if you irritably just got out of bed.

A personal pet peeve of mine is when screencasters use long “Ummms” and “Ahhs” to fill the silence when thinking about what to say next. A better solution is to remain silent, gather your thoughts, and then continue. You can always edit out the pauses when you’re finished.

4 – Fancy Pants

It’s easy to spot the Photoshop newbies: every block of text is layered with countless bevels, shadows, and outlines. It’s just too easy to click those checkboxes! Well, the same is true for screencasting. Most tools offer a variety of transition effects, which, for those unfamiliar, allow us to smoothly transition from one clip to another. The truth is, though: keep it simple and resist the urge to use the 3D swipe effects as much as possible! I promise: a simple, “Fade to Black/White” transition is always best.

Also, for the love of whoever you worship, please don’t record a tiny subset of your screen, and then make every viewer dizzy as you rapidly transition the video to the coordinates of your mouse.

5 – Borrrring

Think of your screencast as one that competes with the television, Facebook, Twitter, and family for the viewer’s attention. If you make too many mistakes or talk endlessly about things unrelated to the subject of the screencast, you are quickly going to bore the viewer – and lose the attention war to Facebook. Now that’s not to say that you should progress through the video at a lightning pace, but certainly cut out the clutter!

Here’s a list of things that should be edited out of your videos:

• Umms, Ahhs: The occasional “umm” is okay, but, personally, I try to edit them out as much as possible.
• Pauses: It’s understandable; sometimes you need time to gather your thoughts. That’s great, but edit those pauses out. Don’t make the viewer wait.
• Unimportant Tasks: For common tasks, such as browsing to your Applications folder and opening a web browser, cut that out. We all know how to do it. Instead, say, “Next, we’ll view this file in Chrome,” and then, immediately cut (when editing) to that point in the screencast.
• Errors: Keep some errors in. For coding screencasts, as an example, it’s helpful for the viewer to watch your debugging process. However, be careful; too many mistakes are irritating. Keep the errors to a minimum.

As a rule of thumb, take a “get in, get out” approach to your screencasts. Without being Speedy Gonzales, do your best to convey as much information as possible in a short time span.

6 – Really? 1920×1200?

While it might seem like a smart idea to record at full resolution, this is a bad idea for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the higher the resolution, the more detail that has to be captured. The more detail that has to be captured, the larger the file size (significantly larger). Secondly, when the viewer is not watching in full screen, it will be virtually impossible to perceive what you’re doing. Instead, stick with HD, but at a lower level, such as 1280×720.

For every video, I change the resolution of my monitor to 1280×720. On the Mac, you can accomplish this, via System Preferences -> Displays. Then, I record the entire screen – making for a much more enjoyable viewing experience.

7 – Clean Up Your Room!

Sorry to bring back memories of your mom, but this tip is important for screencasters. Cut out the clutter; the viewer doesn’t need to see all of the messy files on your desktop, or your “Skull on Fire” desktop wallpaper. They don’t need to see all of your folders. They don’t need to worry about the twenty apps that you currently have open. Start from scratch for your screencasts. Some folks even create guest accounts for their OS.

Don’t make me read the file names on your desktop – particularly when they have no relevance to the subject matter of the screencast. Hide all of it.

8 – Be a Big Boy/Girl

I’m assuming that you hope to develop some level of viewership from your screencasts, right? If so, then it’s important that you put on your big boy/girl britches, and give the screencast the respect it deserves. When people watch your video, they’re essentially handing you a percentage of their day; don’t waste it.

I promise that I’ve watched technical screencasts, created by people who admitted in the video that there were intoxicated. I’ve seen videos, where the person steps out of the room for a couple minutes, and doesn’t edit out the silence. I’ve even seen videos where the speaker completely got “it” wrong – whatever “it” might be. The “thing” they were attempting to describe or explain – well they, themselves, didn’t understand it well enough to teach.

If you expect to command a viewer’s attention for a small period of their day, treat that time with respect. Give them your best.

9 – Exporting

I don’t blame you; exporting a screencast is a confusing job. How are we supposed to know what frame rate, resolution, and data-rate to export our videos at? We’re simply trying to teach something!

Honestly, achieving the optimal export settings for your particular screencast requires the “rinse and repeat” method, to some extent. The specifics of your video will largely dictate the appropriate settings. That said, for my videos (which are largely code-based), I stick with the following settings:

• Frame Rate: 15
• Quality: Between Medium and High
• Data Rate: Automatic
• Encoding: Multi-pass
• Compression Type: H.264
• Resolution: The same as what I record with: 1280×720 (This is important!)
• Audio: 44.1 khz
• Audio Rendering: Normal

Don’t blindly adopt my settings; it’s possible that your video will need some tweaking. The goal is to achieve the best quality video, at the smallest file size.

10 – It’s Not About You

The most important piece of advice I can offer: it’s not about you. The point of your screencasts is not to illustrate how smart you are, or how much jargon you can wrangle into a single sentence. Your screencast’s only agenda is to teach the largest number of people possible. How can you best convey your thoughts and techniques in a manner that is understood by the largest number of people?

Remember: you’re teaching, not showing.

Closing Thoughts

As a future screencaster, your first job is to buy the necessary equipment (mic and software), and then play with them for hours. Record meaningless screencasts that will never be viewed by another human being. Play with the audio levels, learn how to best convey your thoughts, and, then, when you feel ready, click record!

Photo by Robby Mueller.

As most of you know by now, Rockable Press is Envato’s publishing arm, and we produce ‘how-to’ books for the online industry which mainly relate to freelancing, web design and development.

I joined Envato at Rockable’s birth a few years ago, and my mandate was to steadily grow Rockable into its own little publishing company within Envato. I feel like it’s been my own little fledgling baby. Steadily chipping away, we’ve managed to average almost a new book every month, but the reality is that book publishing can be a very slow and time-consuming process.

I thought it would be cool to share with you a brief overview of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ at Rockable, and describe some of the steps involved in getting an eBook published.

Choosing a Topic

Although choosing a topic is not necessarily the hardest part of the process, it’s still something which needs to be carefully considered. There are literally so many topics to choose from that there’s the natural temptation to want get books done on every topic available. The reality is, however, that even if you’re not the one writing the book, managing books still takes time, and time is limited.

You’re also limited by financial budgets, so you want to make sure that you’re working on a book which will not only help others, but will also pay the bills.

It’s important to keep an eye on industry trends, and decide whether certain topics are simply just that, “a trend”, which will phase out before you’ve even had time to release the book, or if it’s a trend that’s going to stick around for a while. You need to stay on track by making sure you choose topics which are going to be both relevant to your audience, and (hopefully) here to stay.

You also have to keep in mind that you may only have enough funds for a certain amount of books. You want to make sure those books count.

Choosing a topic is still always a gamble, and it can be hard to predict how well a book does. Sometimes certain titles you think are going to be big sellers end up having low sales, while certain titles you think may not do as well will end up far exceeding expectations!

Choosing An Author

We find Rockable authors through a variety of means. Sometimes they contact us, other times we approach them.

Sure, being a published author is pretty sweet. After all, who doesn’t like the sound of being able to say that they’re an author? But believe me, writing a book is seriously hard work.

A good place to start when trying to find an author is to see if someone’s already proven themselves by completing a whole book (self-published or not). If they have, then chances are they’re reliable and can do it again. This a good way to gauge whether a potential author has the experience, expertise and stamina to write a book.

There are also a lot of talented writers who have proven themselves by writing excellent tutorials on certain subjects, so this is another great way to scout for potential authors.

Another way to recruit good authors is to contact those who have already made a name for themselves in some way, shape or form in their industry. But you have to be careful here: just because someone’s good at what they do doesn’t mean they’re good at teaching others how to do it. Going after industry ‘superstars’ can also be challenging because many of them don’t actually have the time to commit to writing a book.

The Editing Process

Editing the submitted manuscript is usually the most time consuming part of Rockable’s role in producing an eBook. Depending on the quality of the final draft, there can be a lot of back and forth with the author.

Dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s” is all well and good, but what if the author is coming across very dry, or is so familiar with a topic that they’re writing in a way that assumes too much knowledge in the reader? Most books are written over the space of 3 months to even a year, and certain chapters or even just sections of the book are often influenced by the writer’s mood. A good copy edit of the manuscript helps ensure that the writing style is consistent throughout the book. Again, this can take time.

Once the book has been proofed and copy-edited, it’s important to have the book go through a technical review and edit as well. If the book is a book about JavaScript, for example, the code needs to be carefully reviewed by someone who is an expert in the language.

Layout and Design

Once the book is ready to go, we use Adobe InDesign for the layout process and we have two styled templates we use for our books. After the book is formatted in layout, we often have to iron out kinks, like links not working any more, and other tweaks.

We also need to get the book redesigned for the .ePub (iBooks) version, the .mobi (Kindle) version, and prepare a print version where possible.

Cover Art and Landing Page

Let’s face it, people do judge a book by its cover, and having a visually appealing cover and landing page is key. Most Rockable book covers are branded with the silhouette of a person jumping or doing something which is related to the book’s topic. For better or worse, we haven’t necessarily stuck to the silhouette style of cover branding, and continue to experimented with different types of cover styles as well. It’s something that I always wonder about, as there are arguments to be made for both approaches.

The Book Launch

Once the book is ready to go, it’s always good to try to get it out the door quickly, especially as things can change rapidly in the online industry. You don’t want your book to be out of date by the time it’s released!

We tweet about it, post it on Facebook, and send emails about the book to the Rockin’ List. If you don’t have a mailing list – get one. Rockable has a strong following of over 15,000 subscribers on our Rockin’ list. Every time we launch a book, we make sure we let our members know. We try not to bombard our subscribers with irrelevant emails, and stick to only letting them know about upcoming releases or important news. I think our members appreciate it.

Final Words

If you’ve got a book in you and you feel like it’ll be a good fit for Rockable, let me know. If you’ve got a book in you and you’d rather self-publish the book, then I hope some of the learning here can help you achieve your goal.

Thanks,

Naysan