Web Designer Wall is giving away 10,000 business cards sponsored by UPrinting. Uprinting has been in the industry for over 25 years. Check them out if you need printing services. Enter a comment in this post before June 18, 2010 for your chance to win 1,000 business card printing (full color both sides on quality card stock). This giveaway is limited to US residents only and you must be 18+ year old to enter.

Update: the winners are #316, 393, 356, 282, 37, 88, 120, 326, 189, and 111.

Graphic Designers: Grow your Business with Word of Mouth Marketing. Referrals have always been a great way for graphic designers to gain new customers. Now, B2B review websites are bringing these peer referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations online, creating new opportunities for firms and freelancers to easily promote their services.

On Thursday May 27^th, web developers from all over Canada will be coming together to talk about the ever evolving web, discover new platforms, take part in a codefest & network with some of the best web developers in the country! With Keynote speaker Joel Perras, core developer of CakePHP and sessions including: SEO for dynamic websites, Building in HTML5, CoApp, Cross Platformed Solutions for Social Media & Cloudy with a Chance of Interoperability – this conference is one that should be of interest to all of you looking to build the ultimate web experience for your clients. Check out the website for more information here. Registration ends May 20^th.

The Applied Arts Design & Advertising Awards Call For Entry is currently open. It will be judged by an panel of highly regarded industry professionals, in a rigorous process developed over our two decades of awards experience. All entries must be received by May 7, 2010. Eligible for entry are all forms of commissioned, published, unpublished and personal work created between May 2009 and May 2010. The competition is open to entrants from any country. For more information, a complete list of categories and to access our online entry form, please visit AppliedArtsMag.

The FITC Toronto 2009 officially ended yesterday. Congrats to the award winners. My overall experience was pretty good. I've attended FITC in the past four years and they are getting better and better. This year, I've learned a lot of new things about Flash, particularly the multitouch Flash content and mobile Flash. In this post, I'm going to share my thoughts on some of the presentations that I've attended.

Being a specific form of art, typography has always been coherent with the general progress of art and cultural growth of humanity. This is why the history of western typography reflects the development of art in Europe to a considerable degree. The epoch of Roman Empire, Renaissance, Baroque, and the art of Industrialization period – we can track the traces of each stage of art development in the design of particular typefaces, born during a respective period of time. In fact, the whole history of western typography has always been about the development of new trends, and the revival of ancient techniques of writing and lettering designs.

Website design, development and copywriting can be done faster, more accurately and creatively with the help of Lean manufacturing techniques, which help companies around the globe accomplish industry-leading results. Lean is a production practice that helps identify resource use that’s not directly tied to creating value for customers, so it can be eliminated. In essence, Lean preserves value with less work. Some common objectives Lean aims to achieve: