In her Venus project, Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano asks the question “What would have happened if the aesthetic standard of our society had belonged to the collective unconscious of the great artists of the past?”, digitally altering great classic works of art to better fit today’s waif-like standards.

I will be completely honest; some of the subjects of the paintings do look better after their waists have been tucked in and their breasts made fuller, like Richard Westall’s The Power of Venus. However, others — like Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus — just look plain wrong.

What are your thoughts on Ms. Giordano’s work?

Via Flavorwire.

A fanatical Hunger Games fan by the name of V. Arrow has thoughtfully and carefully put together a map of Panem’s 13 districts, taking into account all historical accounts from the books, and merging what has been revealed about each district with the typography and natural resources of North America.

Click on over to aimmyarrowshigh’s LiveJournal, where she details the reasonings and processes that went into developing this magnificent map.

She also has a small FAQ section which answers, “Why don’t you leave big blank spaces of empty land between the Districts? What about the Wilderness?” and “Y U NO HAVE MORE OF CANADA AND MEXICO?”

Via Nerd Approved.

A few years ago, J casually said to me, “You know, you should really make your blog more mobile device friendly.”

“But that might ruin the design! And you know how hard I worked on it. Besides, less than 1% of my visitors are using a mobile device when they browse on over.”

Did I mention that J is a software engineer and tester? That he not only once worked for the big G, he is always up-to-date (and most of the times, ahead of the curve) on the latest web trends and companies — e.g., signed up for Yelp and Twitter long before anyone else I knew even heard of them, correctly predicting that they would “blow up” — and is the go-to guy in our social circle for any web/tech-related questions?

So of course, being his wife, I completely ignored his advice.

Flash forward to now. “Responsive” is currently the hottest word in web design. Web Design Ledger predicts:

Eventually, we’ll all stop talking about responsive web design – not because it will go away, but because it will become what’s expected.

And wouldn’t you know it? Currently, about 20% of my blog’s visitors hail from a mobile device.

So what does J do when I tell him that I’m thinking about a more responsive design for my blog?

“Responsive web design? Isn’t that an old concept?”  

I hate it when he’s right.

How responsive web design should work — see how the content shifts
depending on what type of device you are using to view the website?
(image source)

So, in order to keep this blog current and more user-friendly to those who visit using tablets or mobile phones —

And because I’m already hankering for a change after just seven months with this current design —

I have decided that a site redesign is in order.

I want to get this done as quickly as possible (i.e., within the next month) before J’s parents go back to Hong Kong and I will have no help with the two kids.

And here is where YOU, the readers, can help!

There are currently two logistics to this redesign I have not yet quite figured out.

The first: I am seriously thinking of displaying partial posts for the front page of the blog. The reason for this is because my posts tend to be long, and/or feature large or multiple images which significantly slow down the loading speed of the site. Having partial posts on the front page will not only ensure faster loading time, but will also allow users to more easily scroll down and see additional content.

However, I personally hate it when the sites I visit do this because I would much rather see everything on one page.

What do you think? Do you prefer partial posts on the
front page, or full posts as I have now? Please vote below!

(Please keep in mind that my RSS feeds will not be affected by this change. Subscribers will still be able to see full posts when reading from Google Reader or other RSS feed aggregators.)

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The second issue involves the logo. Although I have extensive experience with helping others with their logos and branding, designing a logo is not my strong suit. And I strongly believe that a good logo is important to any brand.

I also believe that a good logo can help me with the redesign of this site by providing a certain “look and feel” and pointing me in the right direction.

So I have decided to make the investment by hiring someone to design a new logo for Geek in Heels.

I have already posted an ad on oDesk, but I was wondering..

Are you, or someone you know, interested in
designing a logo for Geek in Heels? 

Since I am short on cash, I can only pay the designer $100 USD. However, I can also offer on top of that a full year’s 160×100 or 160×200 (your choice) sidebar banner ad for FREE. You can look at my site stats on my sponsorships page.

My only requirements are that the applicants should have examples of logos they have designed in the past, and that the final logo should be provided to me in EPS format.

If you are interested, please leave a comment to this post, or shoot me a message via my contact form.

As always, thanks for reading, and I can’t wait to unveil to my readers my new logo and site redesign!

I have always known that color has the power to influence your mood — for example, did you know that when a certain prison painted its walls pink, acts of agression and physical violence decreased significantly? — and was pleasantly surprised by some of the facts presented in this infographic by PaintersOfLouisville.com.

Case in point: you should not paint a baby’s room yellow, because it makes babies more prone to crying. (I can’t help but think of all the nurseries I’ve seen painted yellow.)

Or, you should stay away from red before, and during exams because it is “associated with the danger of failure in achievement contexts and can evoke avoidance motivation.”

Find out more in the infographic below! (Click to view large.)

Via Bit Rebels.

At my very first full-time job, I had a huge whiteboard hanging in my cubicle. I used this whiteboard to mostly write reminders for myself and coworkers, but sometimes we would leave messages for each other (à la whiteboards on the doors of college dormrooms), and once in a while they would become spaces for creative doodles and inside jokes.

I believe that my finest work on this whiteboard derived from the time someone stole my stapler — too bad it wasn’t a red Swingline stapler! — and I drew a cartoon of Milton from the movie Office Space asking, “Do you have my stapler?”

I thought that cartoon was pretty dope, and received many compliments on it. (Sadly, I never took a picture.) I continued to draw little funnies on my whiteboard for coworkers to enjoy, and have always been proud of myself for these pieces of whiteboard art…

Until now.

Because Bill Taylor, a data manager from North Carolina, has officially taken the crown for office whiteboard art — art so elaborate and impressive that it makes all other whiteboard doodles look like chicken scratch in comparison.

Bill spends about 2-5 minutes each day sketching with his personal supply of dry erase markers, and takes an average of about six weeks to finish each piece. Once he is finished, he says, “I’ll leave it up for a couple of days before I erase it. People ask me all the time if it’s painful to erase them when they are done. Honestly, no, because I’m always excited about starting on the next one.”

Be sure to check out more of Bill’s masterpieces at his blog, Cubicleism. I personally love the blog’s tagline, “Searching for the mythical gray dry-erase marker…”

Via My Modern Met.