Issuu - Publishing Site

I mentioned this site in my post on publishing and creativity. Just testing it out for myself now, by uploading a brochure - student work from Hallmark.

The site operates like a bookshelf. You can search or browse the library of uploaded content (that users make public), and can then bookmark the content - anything from presentations, to catalogs, to newsletters. This adds it to your 'shelf,' where you can organize things into folders (like most email programs), or share, or download.

The makers of Issuu pretty much hold your hand through the whole process with little videos, which is nice. Plus, the website interface is simple and easy to use anyway. One of the coolest things, though, is that you can implement their slick document presentation on your own site. Haven't come across any sites using this feature yet, but I'm testing it out offline.

Open publication - Free publishing - More ben and bills

Publishing

Just finished watching Chase Jarvis' talk : Consequences of Creativity. He spoke to ADCD (Art Director's Club of Denver) and ASMP, a photographer's organization.

One point that stuck me, and anyone who reads anything these days, is that creative people can now also be the ones who publish / share their work. It doesn't have to be "validated" by an ad agency or magazine editor, you create stuff and throw it on the web and instantly people can watch your latest cat-themed-youtube video.

The cool thing about this, is that there's and abundance of stuff to find, created by people with no other motive than just to create. For instance my friend Eric Millard - a great musician - just put up some of his songs on facebook and myspace. The 'goal': simply to meet people with similar interests. With social network and publishing sources like TubeMogul and Issuu, the 'why' of publishing is more of a 'why not' - it's so easy.

I started thinking of all this while I was searching my bookmarks and came Motionographer, and this strange video by Terry Timely: Synesthesia. For some reason, it seems less outlandish after returning from Beijing last night. (And yes, there are cats).