Donovan Sears starts his backup before we start talking. Methodical, fastidious, usually pretty cagey, Donovan is relaxed and in good humor this afternoon. His neighbor, Luke, keeps peeping over to see what's going on. We ignore him. Donovan sets aside his jelly jar of Dr. Pepper and braces himself for the 5 question interview.

Donovan: Just 5 questions right?
CM: Right. OK, what's your favorite website?
Donovan: Oh God...(sighs)...I'll have to go with John Nack's blog.

CM: John Nack?
Donovan: He's from Adobe. He writes about Photoshop and inDesign.

CM: OK. Why?
Donovan: Oh, there's lots of cool stuff on there. He's real off the wall sometimes and it all relates to our field. It's nice to look at. (He pulls up the site) See? It's orange (Laughs and points to his orange sweater).

CM: Right. OK, Bottom or on the side? Where do you prefer your dock?
Donovan: Bottom. Definitely the bottom. I'm a bottom feeder. I used to have it on the side when I had an iMac, but now that I've got the big screen... I grew out of that phase.

CM: Did you know you could have the dock on the top? Ashley had never heard of it.
Donovan: No, I never heard of that. Is that some kind of utility?

CM: No, it's a hack.
Donovan: Oh.

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My wife refers to it as a "yard sale in waiting". Others may think of it as cubicle chic. I simply call it "home" for roughly 52% of my weekly awake time, my desk. An homage to all that is kitsch and molded PVC, my "collection" has grown and traveled with me during my professional career. I've always been strangely attracted to kitsch culture and have had a soft spot for B-list celebrities, so I guess this kind of grew out of it. It seems to help lighten the stress of the day and keep me grounded  knowing that a 19.5" Duff Beer holding Godzilla is always watching over me as I work on my latest design project . And seriously, who can't be inspired by an autographed 8x10 black and white glossy of Dennis Burkley.

A good portion of my collection has come from some of the finest and tackiest gift shops across the globe. Check out this great source! USB rocket launcher. Say no more.

That is, 5 websites that promise to keep you in the know and know-how.

John Nack on Adobe (Blog)
There's more than just Adobe stuff here, folks. As a senior Product Manager at Adobe, John knows whats going on in the industry. His blog features links to interesting articles on design, photography, technology and of course Adobe related news. Its updated daily and worth a look just as often.

Logo Pond
Looking for inspiration? Curious about the latest trends in logo design? Come on in, the water's fine.

InDesign Secrets
"The Independent Resource for All Things InDesign" The tagline says it all. Can't figure out why its such a pain in the ass to print from CS3? Have another intricate question that you can't search under the Help menu? Go here.

The Graphic Mac (Blog)
This blogs combines to communities that go hand-in-hand. Find out about the latest plug=ins for your Adobe apps and how to tweak your iPhone, all in one place. A great daily read.

You Suck at Photoshop
Bored with the same ol' tutorial format? Here is a series of Photoshop tutorials that offer an interesting twist...entertainment! Nothing here for advanced Photoshop users to actually learn, but nonetheless, you will be entertained. And hey, your not exactly goofing off since its educational, right?

Recently, I completed a project in Flash that required all of the graphic elements to be rendered as vector shapes. I decided to use ActionScript only to draw every interface element. Why? Well, as our French friends say, "For the challenge!" There are practical reasons too involving control over look and feel of the page and other esoteric issues, but that is for another post.

What's important is that I developed a burning desire to add Apple gel-type buttons to my interface (I like the way they look, so sue me), and I searched online for ways to create these buttons using vector tools. I found many links like this and this and this, but none addressed creating the buttons using the Flash Drawing API. So I studied each tutorial, absorbed the process, then automated it. And I will show you how I did it.

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Don't know if you caught it in the news this morning, but yesterday the Kentucky Derby Festival unveiled their official poster for "Thunder Over Louisville - 2008". It's big news to us because it's the 3rd consecutive year that CurrentMarketing has had the privilege of designing it. Fellow creative and resident "poster-boy" Donovan Sears did a great job capturing the excitement of the uber-spectacular airshow and fireworks extravaganza in a convenient poster-sized snapshot. If the thought of a Stealth B-2 bomber flying at you doesn't get you all warm and tingly, then maybe the fact that the poster glows in the dark will.

On a fairly unrelated note, for those of you that may be training for the miniMarathon you can get a great training schedule here.

I've used it the past couple of years and I always felt ready come race day. And since I'm on a running tangent, another great site is MapMyRun.com.

You can accurately plot your course without leaving the house (thanks to the ever-growing wonders of Google maps). It shows you course elevation, it can even calculate your pace and give you an idea of calories burnt - if you're into that kind of thing.