My essentials resources for Creativity, Design & Diversity
Here are some of the apps, audiobooks, classes, conferences, websites, people, and more that helped me along in my creative life.
Creativity Apps
These are the apps I love to use to stay organized and to store all the ideas I get every day.
Everyday Tools for
accessible Brand design
There is a great tool you can use for your designer every day life. Do you want to create workshop with your team, I just find best practice to create accessible and color blind friendly brand
Contrast ration checker
The contrast ratio between text and background should be at least 4.5 to 1. This tool will check for you the contrast ration, you just have to enter a foreground and background color in RGB hexadecimal format.
RAWGraphs
The missing link between spreadsheets and data visualization. RAW Graphs is an open source data visualization framework built with the goal of making the visual representation of complex data easy for everyone.
Creative Toolbox
A resource kit you can use to apply creative collaboration and unleash potential in your team or organization.
Color Blind Friendly Palettes
Material.io
Material is a design system – backed by open-source code – that helps teams build high-quality digital experiences.
Tonl diverse stock photos
Find culturally diverse stock photos that represent the true world we live in. Creating an inclusive culture takes both commitment and action. A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions for everyone.
Books & Audiobooks:
Well, being dyslexic I « read » only audiobooks. I will share with you some I have listened to recently plus some videos in case you don’t want to process them or you want to have an idea of the information you can get from them. Here’s a list of books, audiobooks and talks that have helped me in my career and that you can watch online.
CREATIVITY & LEADERSHIP
"First why and then trust". I think that asking Why? is the first step to everything in life. Be curious don't be scared to ask why! - By Simon Sinek
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It's up to us to make genuine marketing.
Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, and timeless package. This Is Marketing shows you how to do work you're proud of, whether you're a tech start-up founder, a small-business owner, or part of a large corporation. By Seth Godin
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From three design partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for going from problem to prototype.
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Book | Audiobook | Masterclass
Guide for leaders across industries that want to push creativity towards a tangible outcome. By Scott Belsky, Co-Founder of Behance
Stop doing busywork. Start doing your best work. The world has changed and the way we work has to change, too. With wisdom from 20 leading creative minds, Manage Your Day-to-Day will give you a toolkit for tackling the new challenges of a 24/7, always-on workplace. By Jocelyn Glei
Change by Design explains design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs, not only with what is technically feasible but with what is viable to the bottom line.
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Art direction explained,
at last!
Offers an introduction to what art direction is and what art directors do. This book covers the role of art director in numerous environments, including magazines and newspapers, advertising, corporate identity, museums and publishing. It also provides perspectives on typography, illustration and photography.
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DIVERSITY & DESIGN
The book I would have loved to write! I'm so excited and thankful that it exists! Senongo Akpem shares a clear and accessible methodology for designing across cultures.
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Design for
Cognitive Bias
Understand the logic powering human bias and learn to start designing more consciously.
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Multicultural Intelligence:
Eight Make-or-Break Rules for Marketing to Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Orientation
With decades of experience in multicultural marketing, author David Morse reviews the history of marketing to black, Hispanic, Asian, and LGBT (mostly lesbian and gay) consumers. He explains how including appropriate cultural cues in advertising can build brand loyalty that will pay huge dividends. He also cautions that missing the mark with advertising that excludes or is culturally offensive can be a costly mistake.
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Extra Bold is the inclusive, practical, and informative (design) career guide for everyone!
Part textbook and part comic book, zine, manifesto, survival guide, and self-help manual, Extra Bold is filled with stories and ideas that don't show up in other career books or design overviews.
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I finished Kat Holmes's audiobook "Mismatch How Inclusion Shapes Design". The "Love story" Chapter got my attention the most "...Love is a common trait in the creation of Inclusive solutions. Some stories centered around a person who is personally affected by a mismatched design..." I totally related.
And it's very inspiring for me to learn that the book "was written to be an audiobook", using Dragon, a speech-to-text translation software program.
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After the first lecture, I realized the influence of the African culture in my education. Especially the notion of the family. We were raised with a collectivist mindset even if we were influenced every day by 2 individualist cultures American and French.
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Explore the mythologies of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Learn what makes these stories so important, distinctive, and able to withstand the test of time. Discover how, despite geographical implausibilities, many myths from across the oceans share themes, morals, and archetypes.
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Online classes
Here are some great online classes I have used to improve my efficiency and my proficiency with application tools. Or to learn new digital techniques. I’ve even learned to play the ukulele. We are lucky to live in a period where we can learn anything at home. I just need time and motivation. Be curious !
Domestika
Domestika is for me the #1 learning platform for creative people. You will find very talented artists from all over the world sharing their personal techniques, a platform for the largest community of creative professionals. On Domestika they can share their projects, contribute to and learn from forums, connect with other artists and find employment.
The great courses
We can use technology to make small changes to text format and maximize the reader’s ability to comprehend quickly and accurately.
Quillustration in VR
Goro Fujita is an Art Director and Illustrator, he creates illustartions painted and animated in VR using Quill. He share hes knowledge and make the learning process as easy and fun as possible.
Share Skills
Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more.
Rethink Facilitation
A master course for professionals, educators, and leaders designed to transform boring meetings into seamlessly transformative experiences.
Conferences
Be curious! We don't know what we don't know! I'm always looking for new things to learn to push my creative edge.
Design + Diversity
The Design + Diversity Conference is a three-day event. The conference inspires celebrates and promotes not only diversity in design, but the diversity of design.
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DC Design Week
If you live around Washiton DC check the next DC Design Week! The 2020 one was all about celebrating the creative voices in the DMV.
Build bridges—to each other, to the unparalleled, to the next chapter in design!
People/Companies/Podcast to Follow
These are the apps that I use every day and cannot live without or create without. I use pretty much every tool out there depending on the project so don’t have real strong favorites there.
PODCAST
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The Crazy One is created out of the real experiences and insights that host and award-winning design leader Stephen Gates who gives you actionable insights to be more creative, become a better leader, create more innovative work, build better relationships with your clients, grow a stronger career and more.
The Cognitive Bias podcast explores the world of things we do that don't make any rational sense, one bias at a time.
Real creative leadership
intent is to help build a new wave of creative leaders who don’t just get the value of creative ideas, but who have the business sense, leadership, and practical knowledge to give creativity enough power in business. We hope you’ll be part of our journey.
Unscripted
Every Tuesday Shivakant Pandey and I are hosting a podcast, talk show on Twitch where we talk after work about things we care about with a guest.
ORGANISATIONS
Through creative educational workshops, consulting, facilitation, and tools, we help all professionals hone their creativity to solve problems in the face of change and complexity.
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Women Talk Design
Women Talk Design elevates women and gender non-binary speakers, empowers event organizers with resources to engage more diverse speakers, and offers training and support for new speakers.
IDEO
IDEO.org is a nonprofit design studio.We design products and services alongside organizations that are committed to creating a more just and inclusive world.
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CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE, or CQ, is a globally recognized way of assessing and improving effectiveness in culturally diverse situations. It’s rooted in rigorous, academic research conducted across more than 100 countries.
Mismatch Design
Mismatch.design is a community dedicated to advancing inclusive design.
Although inclusive design is a rising topic of interest in business, many leaders don’t know where to begin. Mismatch.design is about growing a global community of inclusive design practitioners. They believe inclusion is more than a nice idea. It’s an economic imperative and a repeatable practice.
Solutions for dyslexics
My dyslexia strategy is basically using technology: voice messages, copy-pasting readymade emails, audiobooks, and Text-to-Speech for reading. I also have post-it around my deck with my favorite difficult words to spell-like "research" or "people". But what I've found most effective recently is to speak out and ask for support. When you take time to communicate your struggles you will find more support than judgment.
Certified dyslexic logo
from now on I will sign my emails with the logo that Justine Vilgrain created. This logo will help to stop the apprehension and will show the reader why the email may look different than another email.
Bionic Reading Extension
Did you know that your brain reads faster than your eye? Bionic Reading revises texts so that the most concise parts of words are highlighted. This guides the eye over the text and the brain remembers previously
Jasper
A real-life changing tool for us, dyslexics! Artificial intelligence makes it fast & easy to create content but also to correct and structure our words.
Have your Mac speak text
If you have trouble reading text on your screen, you can have your Mac speak the text whenever you press a key or set of keys.
Virtual Readability Lab
Take the 5minute tests and find what forks best for you. The Virtual Readability Lab want to study what can make reading . more efficient.
I was so surprised to learn that Mel B was dyslexic and listening to her book empower me.
This book helped me to understand better my dyslexia, and how my brain works.
Grammarly
Ensure Everything You Write Comes Across The Way You Intend. Present Your Best Self Every Time You Type. Make Your Writing Clear and Engaging. Plagiarism Detection. Eliminate grammar errors. Easily improve any text.
Voice dictation on MAC
Macs have voice dictation built-in, allowing you to talk instead of type. To use voice dictation in an application on your Mac, first select a text field in an application. Next, press the Fn (Function) key twice or click the Edit menu and select Start Dictation. Speak to your Mac and the words you speak will start appearing in the text field.
Liquide Mode for PDF
Liquid Mode enhances your PDF layout and adds features on-the-fly to help you easily read documents on your phone and tablet It’s AI technology evolves and improves the Liquid Mode experience as it learns over time.
Readability Matter
We can use technology to make small changes to text format and maximize the reader’s ability to comprehend quickly and accurately.
Choose strength not shame:
Ben Foss
This year I've realized in my personal and professional life, and as demonstrated in this video, that embarrassing ourselves and being vulnerable about it is actually true courage and a way to build strong relationships.
“dyslexia-friendly” fonts
Use sans serif fonts, such as Arial and Comic Sans, as letters can appear less crowded. Alternatives include Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, Trebuchet, Calibri, Open Sans.