Damn You Art School (DYAS) is a fun and really useful new online resource to help creative professionals improve productivity and creativity
Whether you’re an architect, a communication or fashion designer, an artist, an illustrator or a photographer, DYAS is for everything they never taught you in art school. “And other cool stuff.” Launched just two and a half weeks ago, DYAS has already had a great response from the creative community, receiving a whopping 35,000 views in such a short period.
Whether you’re an architect, a communication or fashion designer, an artist, an illustrator or a photographer, DYAS is for everything they never taught you in art school. “And other cool stuff.”
Launched just two and a half weeks ago, DYAS has already had a great response from the creative community, receiving a whopping 35,000 views in such a short period.
Created by online portfolio platform, 4ormat, the initiative was set up as a way to give back to the creative community. “As fellow artists and designers we realised there was a lack of knowledge creatives face with respect to business enhancing resources, so we thought we'd do something about it,” 4ormat’s marketing manager, Sofija Obradovic says.
Damn You Art School has grouped a whole host of creative tools into six different toolboxes
A selection of 378 free and paid-for apps, tools and resources are grouped into handy ‘toolboxes’ across the six disciplines, helping you with everything from sending invoices to sharing sketches on the move to selling your work in an online store.
Whatever your creative profession, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in the industry forever, DYAS will help you streamline your work and introduce you to a whole host of useful tools you never knew about.
Ok, some may be on your radar, like Dropbox and Kuler. But had you heard of Pictaculous – a great tool that generates a colour palette from any image you upload – or Blinksale – an invoicing tool that allows you to customise your invoice templates, bill clients in another currency and schedule recurring invoices to send automatically? Didn’t think so!
Get the Creative Bloq Newsletter
Daily design news, reviews, how-tos and more, as picked by the editors.
The communication design toolkit
It has a really easy-to-use interface and handily pools a variety of useful tools – which can be used on your computer, phone or tablet – in one place.
Although a number of the resources repeat themselves across the different toolkits, these are standard tools that could be used by all six disciplines, and each toolbox includes resources that are unique to their trade.
For fashion designers, for example, there’s Chictopia – an online destination for trendsetters to share, socialise and be inspired. And for photographers there’s Sunseeker – an app that informs you of the solar direction at any time of day, helping you plan your shoot with perfect lighting. Pretty cool, ey?
The photography toolkit
Working in the creative field themselves, the guys on the 4ormat team are constantly looking for new tools. “There are so many wonderful resources out there, we've just scratched the surface. We're always eager for suggestions and are bookmarking resources as we go along,” says Obradovic.
A selection of apps, tools and resources available on DYAS
Check out their website www.damnyouartschool.com and keep an eye on their Twitter feed for more conversations about useful tools they discover along the way.
