A list of 30 Best Photoshop Abstract Effect Tutorials of All Time. These are selected from our Photoshop users and readers.

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The link below will take you to a beautiful collection of floral typography. There are also some outstanding tutorials that will help you to master the technique or at least get some understanding of how this technique can be used.

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Many of you may know that behind my well respected socialite, philanthropist and multinational-conglomerate-owner facade that I am an avid video game player and games industry advocate. Back in the 90’s I opened a retail location called ‘Temple of Pong’ where I proselytized gaming and worked to enlighten people as to the benefits of play across all age groups. Think of it as a Church of Elvis for kids born in the 70’s and 80’s.

While I am ten years removed from the machinations of ’shtick-retail operations’ but I still carry with me the burning fire of games evangelism.

Now that I’ve established my video game experience and qualifications, let mr present to you a first look at Fumito Ueda and Team ICO’s upcoming title.

For many of you BG Lounge readers, I know that video games are a little left of your radar. The question posed in the title of this post has been around for more than a decade and generally flares up around the time of the big video game convention known as E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). Since we all are involved with designs, art, technology and the business of pretty pictures I thought I’d give everyone a barometer as to where games have evolved outside of the Halo/Gears of War/Wii consumer games market.

To me, it is nothing more than stunning and I have difficulty looking at this video without becoming teary eyed. I mean, this is what quantified an adventure game just a few short years ago:

Adventure – Atari 2600 (1978)

Final Fantasy – Nintendo (NES 1989)

Tomb Raider – Saturn (1996)

Ico – PlayStation 2 (PS2 2001)

Shadow of the Collossus – PlayStation 2 (PS2 2005)

The last two titles, “Ico” and “Shadow of the Collosus,” are from the same company that is behind the game “Trico” you have just seen in the video above. Fumito Ueda and Team ICO are brilliant artists and storytellers. It is my opinion that their work should be shown to all students of design alongside those of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and other contemporary 20th century artists.

Even the The Journal of Education, Community and Values agrees.

I had a saying when I ran my Temple of Pong operation that, “Enlightenment is just 13.8 volts away.” That promise is still true today. If any of our clients/artists/vendors are looking to understand games a little more deeply or if you wish to be shown more examples of some stellar game artistry and design, please do not hesitate to call or email me.

When I was sitting at my desk as a middle manager, my boss came by with a printout of this speech.

In my opinion that this speech should be prescribed alongside medications and therapists as a cure for depression.

If you know someone who can use this, here is the link to the .PDF file that I was given almost five years ago.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish. I wish that for all of you.”

Our resident Traffic Manager and Twitter-er, Tori sent us this fantastic article from Advertising Age this morning called, “How to Manage Client Relationships in Perilous Times.”

No! No! No! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

The article deals with thinning profit margins and their direct correlation to patience. When people fear for their jobs, they can quickly forget the true value of the relationships they have with those that serve them. While we haven’t been entirely in this position of conflict and confrontation, I do agree that many of our marketing managers and producers are unsure about getting things done in these times (see my post from April entitled ‘Winnowing Gold”).

Let me assure you all that Bauer Graphics is here working in the same capacity as always; to help you make things happen. Continue to put your trust us and we’ll continue to deliver!

Have a great weekend everyone and remember, no matter how stressed out you get, you should always feel pretty, oh so pretty…

There is an abundance of free brushes online, but the vastness of the interwebs makes it hard to find exactly what you’re looking for. This article attempts to bring together all the best places for Photoshop brushes, all in one nifty spot.

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Designers love all of those photoshop tutorials that can help them to learn more and more everyday and give them direction to design more beautiful and attractive creative works. Here are 50+ Truly Useful Photoshop Tutorials For Amazing Photo Effects

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These sites are very focused, professional and clean. You will also notice that there’s usually a video displayed in an iPhone casing that shows how these applications are used. In this post we bring you 40 excellent websites designed to showcase iPhone and iPod touch applications.

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“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

— Plato

In 1976 was the same age my daughter is now (to all you algebra majors out there, this means “NEAL = OLD”). While this commercial would scare the my kids to death, it is no scarier than them seeing 800 promos on PBS for the looming global pandemic in between shows like Word Girl and Martha Speaks.

So, I had them take a test to see if they had the swine flu. It is a very easy test and just takes a few seconds. All you have to do is click the button to see if you have it. This test right now is 99.9999% accurate as of this post and is touted as the most realistic Swine Flu test on the web today.