With that in mind, here are five indie games with designs that I find inspiring.

Aquaria

Systems: Windows/Mac
Price: $19.99/$30.00 

Website: http://www.bit-blot.com/aquaria/

Aquaria is the story of Naija, a mermaid who has lost her memory and must explore the depths of the oceans to uncover what she has forgotten.

While the story is interesting and moves the game forward, the real strength of Aquaria lies in its environments and puzzles. The various seas are beautifully illustrated. Some parts teem with green and life, while others lie in darkness. The puzzles are well-crafted and make good use of Naija’s song-related abilities.

As is appropriate for a game where much of the play is based on the notion of song, the music is very well-produced, and adds to the texture of the environments.

Aquaria Trailer HD from BitBlot on Vimeo.

Mightier

Systems: Windows
Price: Freeware

Website: http://www.ratloop.com/?games/mightier 

Mightier has the most original gameplay mechanic I’ve seen. Puzzle solving doesn’t just take place on-screen. It also takes place in the real world, as you craft a solution with pen and paper, then import it to the game with your webcam or scanner.

Mightier from Ratloop on Vimeo.

Crayon Physics

Systems: Windows (Mac & Linux ports are planned)
Price: $19.99

Website: http://www.crayonphysics.com/ 

Physics based puzzle games are quite common, but Crayon Physics adds in a bit of childlike wonder. Did you ever wish your crayon drawings could come to life? They can. Draw a wheel, and it will roll. Draw a giant hammer, and it will hit things. The goal of each level is to reach the star in the most creative way possible.

Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

World of Goo

Systems: Windows/Mac/Linux/Nintendo Wii
Price: $20

Website: http://worldofgoo.com/ 

World of Goo is another fun physics game. But the twist this time is that all of your creations have to be built out of living (and semi-intelligent) balls of goo. Span an abyss by building a goo bridge, reach a pipe by creating a goo tower. There’s plenty of sticky fun to go around.

World of Goo Trailer 2 Director’s Cut
by 2dboy

Braid

Systems: Windows/X-box 360
Price: $14.99

Website: http://braid-game.com/ 

Of all these games, I’ve found Braid to have the most depth in nuance. On the surface, it is just another Mario clone. But it adds a twist. You have the ability to rewind time, so you can never die. This shifts the emphasis of the game from reflexes to reflection. Things that would be completely impossible in an ordinary platform game become trivial, while intriguing time-based puzzles take their place. 

The game is illustrated in a rich, painterly style, and the classical music provides a great cue for your rewinding abilities. (The music rewinds along with your past actions.) 

But to really understand the game, you should watch the demo, and quite possibly the Jonathon Blow’s presentation as well.

Braid trailer from David Hellman on Vimeo.

Your suggestions

Are there any games (Indie or otherwise) that inspire you with there design?

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1. Learn to see things differently

One of Calvin’s most powerful traits is his childlike ability to see things differently than the grown-ups around him. Where they see mundane reality, Calvin sees the fantastic, the monstrous, and occasionally, the downright weird.

Like Calvin, designers must also learn to see things differently. Where others see text, designers see a typographical baseline. Where others see a photo, designers see the golden ratio. In everything, we should learn to see the underlying beauty that holds it all together.

2. Take time to educate yourself

While anyone can learn to see things differently, designers can’t just depend on their vision to get by. They also need to be able to explain that vision to others. And for that you need the proper background and vocabulary.

That doesn’t necessarily mean going to an art school and majoring in design. There are some fabulous resources available to those who are willing to take a little time to teach themselves.

3. Originality isn’t everything

In the world of art and design, originality is highly prized, but sometimes the emphasis is a bit too strong. The point of design isn’t to be original, but to speak a message effectively.

If a highly original design does it, so much the better. But sometimes the traditional is all you need.

4. Pay attention to the details

One crucial part of learning to see differently is the importance of details. A great designer has the ability to recognize when changing things “just so” will take a design from good to brilliant.

5. Keep exploring

In the end, a designer always needs to keep exploring, to learn new things, to learn new ways of seeing, or to relearn old ways. Exploring is what keeps things feeling new, regardless of how many times you’ve layed out a page or designed a logo. What are you waiting for? Go explore something!

All images excerpted from It’s a Magical World by Bill Watterson.

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“And you: friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless! Do you want me to send you back to where you were? Unemployed in Greenland!”

Never forget where you started. As you build your blog and increase contacts through social media and other blogs, take care not to lose sight of the person who started all this: you. It doesn’t matter how long it took you to build your blog for it all to be swept away in a moment of poor judgement or anger. Hold on to your roots and let them guide you.

“Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the  line.”

Pick your battles carefully. Insight and incite are two of the most-confused words in blogging. You will be tempted to write a quick, emotional post that says exactly what you think of a topic at the time. Don’t follow through on the temptation. Doing so could be very damaging for your blog, especially if it turns out you were wrong in your initial assumptions or you lose a potential advertiser because your writing seems childish.

“Never get involved in a land war in Asia”

Pick a niche and stick with it. Techcrunch, Mashable, HuffPost, and many others have already happened. Take Vizzini’s advice and avoid trying to take massive amounts of territory (readers) with your one-horse army (blog). 

“Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons!”

Every success story is told by somebody looking backward, not ahead. Keep this in mind as you read popular bloggers talking about how they “made it big.” Sometimes the best thing you can do is ignore all the “experts” and set out on a path you feel to be right in terms of your passion and goals. Others might laugh at you for your presumption. Ignore them.  In the midst of all the hooplah about Twitter, web 2.0, and the newest and greatest technology, it’s easy to forget that great blogs don’t grow from frenetic repositioning.

As Inigo Montoya said so well, “let me sum up“. If you have a specific purpose for your blog, a sense of where you came from and an idea of where you’d like to end up, you won’t need the gurus to be a success. Sure, you could discount Vizzini’s advice on blogging because he died from drinking wine with iocane powder in it…but Wesley wasn’t entirely fair in poisoning both glasses of wine. Or was he? 

If there’s a favorite quote that you’d like to share or a lesson you learned from your earliest days of blogging that you’d like to pass on to new bloggers, please share in a comment. I look forward to our conversation!

screen shots via: www.thebigpicturedvd.com, www.mos.totalfilm.com

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How does he corner such an obviously eclectic creative force to focus on building specific projects? In his own words:

“Big Country is one of those things that sort of just arrived, done, in my mind. What I do when that happens is I call myself. I call my machine at home and I sing the melody. I shouldn’t be singing in the first place but its the only thing I can do. The melody is going to be gone. In another minute it’ll be gone. That’s the nature of composition. There’s an inspiration factor, and then there’s craft. So how do you take that inspired moment and how do you make it into something that’s complete and makes sense all the way through?“ 

Find a way to put your creative idea into a form that allows you to revisit the idea at a later date.

For Bela, calling his answering machine and singing to himself allows him to capture his moments of inspiration for later use.

I keep a new post open in Wordpress whenever I’m reading so that when I do run into an idea I can put it into writing and include a link to the inspiration and give it credit. Josh prefers to write on paper. I’m happy to type. 

What about you? Do you have a special way of cornering your flashes of inspiration so they can later be reworked into something complete and beautiful?

Also, if you’d like to share a link to a musician or song  you find inspirational, please share that in a comment as well!

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Tanya: 

“I want to have fun and geek out on my blog. It’s all about gadgets, geeky things, charities and running. But mostly geeky things. It’s a blast to research and write, and I think it’s completely cathartic to have something to do other than manage the 20 websites under my charge at work, and the 5-yr old under my charge at home. It’s the only thing I really control, and it gets some decent traffic for a site that I don’t advertise (averaging 200+ visits/mo right now).”

Sukumar: 

“I have been trying really hard to make my blog a better, but am stuck in the dark ages. My blog is in a mess probably cause i don’t know much about blogging. i intend to make my blog more creative, and maybe attract more traffic this year.”

Bella Casa: 

“My blog is off to a great start in its first 6 months or so of blogging, but I would love to take it even further. I would love to have more giveaways, more spotlights on great home designers (on a budget, of course) and Etsians, too. (I love Etsy!)”

Becci: 

“In 2009 I’d like to take my blogging (silly blather & random though it is) more seriously. I have all sorts of stuff to say I just don’t say it often. I’ve been told many times I should write a book or something. I love to write & it’s always been my dream to do it for fun (if not profit).”

Two Rock Volunteer Fire Department: 

“Our volunteer fire department needs a blogging engine to power up our message to our community and beyond. The public in general, does not know what we do. Our static website has good information about our department, but we need a better way to push our stories out to the public. We have some good stories that need to be told with hard working volunteers behind these stories. A better way of publishing fresh content so the public is more aware of the things we do, would be a great uplift for our department.”

Alisha Whiteway: 

“I’m creating a video blog (Like Gary Vanerchuck’s blog as an example) The are three main purposes of my blog, 1. To inspire people to believe in themselves and to encourage them to make a difference 2. To help grow local businesses 3. To ultimately Tell Their Stories. People NEED to hear stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I want to introduce you to those people because I have the content, the characters and the camera/editing work down pat, together we will make a difference in 2009! I actually believe I’ll win this contest. ha ha!”

Laurel B: 

“In my blog, Local Yarns, I would like to chronicle my efforts learning to spin and to spin from local fibers. I’m defining Local to mean the Puget Sound area from Vancouver, B.C. to Olympia, Washington, including the Kitsap and Key Peninsulas, San Juan Islands, Canadian islands, Seattle area east to the Cascades. I also want to grow flax and learn to process it into linen and grow indigo for dying. Okay, I want to be able to spin well enough to sell my products.”

Henie: 

“In 2 thousand 9

I want to be fine
Drink lots of wine
And never whine! :)

I also would like to meet all you fine young people who are social media geniuses and copy writers extraordinaire…though I’m old enough to be your mom, I know that I can learn alot and in turn share with others, and so on and so on.

I want to live my passion and use my blogsite as a platform to inspire and encourage all bloggers.”

Mike Brown: 

“I hope to:

• Generate more comments. People that I talk with personally seem to like the content, but something’s missing in generating more interaction and idea sharing.
• Generate more traffic. I started the blog to force myself to write content for a book, yet I’d like to be able to share ideas more broadly to help people in their careers. It’s tough to find the time to comment on other websites to help drive traffic to the blog.
• Provide more variety in content – more video, pictures, etc. The blog is about innovation and creativity, so the content and the blog’s look and feel need to all be consistent with those themes.”

Pam Robertson: 

“I am trying to get people excited about Living Inspired and realizing that life does not have to be a drain on their energy all the time (some times it will be; that’s realistic). A bailout would mean that I had a credible looking, content rich, reader oriented site.” 
  

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1. Coffee Break: Your Best Piece of Advice
   This article from FreelanceSwitch is a simple question: What’s your best piece of freelancing advice? The number and quality of answers is impressive. 
2. 6 Keys to Getting Paid for Being You: An Anti-Career Guide
   We all know that we can get paid for just being cogs in a machine. But what does it take to get paid for being yourself?
3. Beating the Famine Blues
   Freelancers and other independent professionals often have trouble with a cycle of “feast and famine.” Kristen Fischer shows how to keep going through the famine.
4. Calculating Hours - the Client Factors
   Pricing projects can be difficult at the best of times, but what about when a client is particularly hard to deal with?
5. Advice from Coudal on how to transition from client work to products
   How can we break the connection between our time and our incomes? This article compiles advice from a small business that has managed to do just that. 
6. The secret to making money online
   David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of Ruby on Rails and a founder of 37signals) completely trashes the “get bought out by Google” mentality and explains how you can start making money online right away. This is my favorite business presentation of all time.
7. Let’s Play a Game — What’s Your Home Business?
   Freelancers and business owners tend to assume that other people understand what it is they do. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case. Naomi suggests a few questions to help you make it clear.
8. Freelancer’s Guide to Sales: Followthrough
   Shane outlines his approach to sales, which includes a healthy dose of followthrough. A great introduction to selling well.
9. The Violent Truth Of Opportunity
   Think that there isn’t enough opportunity out there for your business? Think again. There are always opportunities. The question is if you will seize them.
10. Why bother having a resume?
    Seth Godin contemplates the resume. His conclusion? Be remarkable and forget the resume.
11. Start a Business, Not a Startup
    Jason from 37Signals explains why tech businesses should be businesses, not startups. 
12. 14 Defenses Against The Anti-Entrepreneurial
    Most freelancers have run into friends or family who seem bent on tearing down their entrepreneurial spirit. But how to respond? Skellie outlines 14 defenses to keep you sane.
13. Being Lightweight: Working with Clients
    Common Craft (the guys behind the In Plain English videos) talk about what they do to keep their business lightweight, particularly when working with clients.
14. IttyBizzy Let’s Get Dizzy - Insanity in Home Business
    In this guest post, Nick Cernis argues that being just a little crazy could be your greatest asset.
15. Three Sure-Fire Ways To Receive A Killer Referral From Your Clients
    For freelancers a good referral is pure gold. Dave Navarro outlines how to get referrals that work.
16. Word of Mouth Marketing: Thank your referrers
    Want great word of mouth? Then maybe you should be thanking the people who give it to you.
17. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing with a startup
    David at 37signals tackles the idea that starting a great business means you have to be willing to put in ridiculous hours and run it on caffeine and ramen noodles. 
18. I just can’t help but to…
    Scott (the guy with the nametag) suggests that the key to success is figuring out what it is that you just can’t help doing, then working things out from there.
19. The Demand Will Come…
    When you’re just starting out, it’s often hard to resist lowering your price or standards to land a gig, but Ross says it isn’t worth it; the demand will come.
20. Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches
    The illustrious A List Apart takes a break from posting about web design to discuss what it takes to start up a business.
21. Do You Have Entrepreneurial ADD?
    Do you have a hard time sticking with one project at a time? Are you constantly coming up with awesome new business ideas? Congratulations. You may have entrepreneurial ADD.
22. Should You Turn Off Your Telephone?
    Are you at the mercy of clients, family, friends, and whoever else decides to call? Perhaps it is time to turn off the phone.
23. A Practical Guide to Earning Six Figures: Changing Your Mind
    Part 1 of a series from Skellie on what it takes to earn six figures. This post is all about taking a look at the numbers and working backwards to determine what you need.
24. A Practical Guide to Earning Six Figures: Reboot Your Career
    Part 2 of the series. This post covers how to reshape your career to meet the standards you determined in part 1.
25. A Practical Guide to Earning Six Figures: Re-inventing What You Have
    Part 3 of the series. This post covers how to move beyond the pay for time and pay for project models to where you can earn money based on demand rather than your available resources.

Have other great freelancing resources? Post them in the comments!

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The last time you were in a restaurant that had crayons available, did you use them?

I admit to using crayons, markers, pencils, soft rocks, anything to give my fidgeting fingers something creative to do. I’m the first to grab the “forest green” and start planting forests around a basket of rolls. 

Restaurants are smart to offer inexpensive things like crayons to keep kids busy. The server who unexpectedly brought extra packs of crayons to my group’s table was absolutely brilliant. Napkins were soon covered with colorful animals, funny faces, and Bernie Maddoff in effigy.

We laughed about how silly it was that there we were, a bunch of adults, arguing over who got to use the red crayon next. Is there a reason why restaurants hold back on red crayons? Do people eat them? We couldn’t decide. We did agree on one thing: having a childlike delight in creativity and beauty does not mean you are immature.

If you are serious about your work, the results of your effort will speak for themselves. There’s no need to be uptight if your work is solid. Draw stick figures on your coffee cup, make paper airplanes, walk backwards, speak in a different accent for an hour. Being silly every so often will break up the mental walls that turn creative people into stodgy sticks. Loosen up! 

Your colleagues will thank you for it and your work will be more creative because of it. 

Did you eat the red crayons? It’s okay if you did. Bernie looked funny with blue lips. 

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1. Hide the Windows taskbar

Though the Windows taskbar is great when you need it, most of the time it is just a distraction. Ideally, you shouldn’t see the taskbar unless you need it. To set this up:

1. Right click on the taskbar
2. Click Properties
3. Place a check beside “auto-hide the taskbar”
4. Click OK.

Now your taskbar will be hidden unless you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen, or hit the Start button on your keyboard.

2. Install Enso

Humanized Enso is a task launching and shortcut program. But unlike other launchers, you don’t have to memorize obscure key combinations. Just hold down the caps-lock key and type “open program.” That’s it; your program is open.

This means that you never have to go searching through the start menu when you just need to open notepad for a second. It also means you don’t have to open up the distraction-filled taskbar to switch programs.

3. Install Chrome

Google Chrome is the minimalist web browser. By default it only displays the navigation bar and open tabs, though you can also turn on a bookmarks bar.  By keeping things simple, Chrome reduces the visual and mental clutter of using the web to a minimum.

4. Create a standalone browser for each web application you use

Chrome also allows you to create standalone web browsers for your web applications. These standalone browsers don’t even include the distractions of tabs or navigation. Are you checking Basecamp frequently, or always writing new posts for your blog? Create a browser just for them.

1. Go to your web application’s main work screen in Chrome
2. Click the page icon at the upper right
3. Select “Create application shortcuts…”
4. Set the shortcut to appear in the Start menu
5. Click OK.

By adding the shortcut to the Start menu, you can access your web applications with a couple of keystrokes. Just type “open wordpress” and voila! Of course, I also recommend having your credentials saved and remembered so you don’t have to login each time.

5. Run your programs in full-screen

Now, when you run your programs in full screen there should be nothing onscreen to distract you from the task at hand. Happy focusing!

Photo credit: Downtown Pictures

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• Are you still using a .wordpress.com, .blogspot.com, or .typepad.com extension?
• Would you like help creating engaging content for your blog?
• Would you like to have more comments on your blog?
• Do you have questions about using social media to promote your blog?
• Would you like a new theme and custom header?    
  

  You'll Remember Our Bailout!

If so, you need to apply for a bailout!

Here’s what the winner of our contest will get:

1. Installation of a free* wordpress theme of your choice.
2. Transfer of content from your old blog to the new one.
3. Design of a custom header for your new blog.
4. The Blogging Coach package (30 days for fulfillment).
5. Community-building and social media plan for your blog.

What is all that worth? Well, how much would you be willing to pay? That’s how much it’s worth to you. If you’d like to hire us to bail out your blog, we’ll charge you about $700. Or you can enter and win it for free!

How do you enter?

Leave a comment on this post before Midnight, January 25th and tell us why you deserve a bailout. We won’t be as strict as the feds, we just want to know that you really want to make your blog grow.

Tell us:

1. What you want to do with your blog in 2009.
2. How its possible that a bailout might change your life.
3. What your favorite kind of cookie is.

We’re serious. If you are the brokest person in the world with the greatest idea ever but you leave out your favorite kind of cookie…you don’t qualify.

We’ll announce 10 Finalists on February 1st, 2009 and open voting for a winner. Yes, that’s right, you’ll have one week to badger all of your friends to vote for you. On February 8th, we’ll announce the winner.

Be creative, be personal, live your passion! Don’t forget the part about the cookies!

*Select an existing theme that you’d like to use. A custom-coded theme is not a part of this contest. Some existing free themes.

Update: Voting will be extended until Feb. 10th!

Photo credit: James Willamor

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