Cool Online Tool: European Word Translator

Here's a cool online tool that lets you enter individual words into a search box and then see a mapping of the translations shown on the corresponding countries around Europe.

Fun AND informative!

You can give it a try by clicking over to the European Word Translator website.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Cool Tool: KEEPa Magnetic Clip

My brother-in-law recently told me about KEEPa -- a cool multi-function magnetic clip/strap device.

A durable polyurethane strap has two super-strong magnets encased at each end, surrounded by small ridges to reduce sliding or skidding.

KEEPa is the perfect kind of multi-purpose tool -- the more you use it, the more new ways you come up with ways to put it to use.

Find out more about KEEPa on their website or see people putting it to use on the KEEPa Instagram page.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Making Things Move with 507movements.com

In a fantastic "back to the future" moment, the fine folks at the 507movements.com website have created a wonderful resource for any maker, designer, or builder that makes things that move.

Basically, they've created a Web version of the classic technical reference Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements by Henry T. Brown. (The original printed edition came out in 1868!)

As the title of both the original book and the website suggests, here are five hundred and seven drawings of mechanical movements -- from two simple gears meshing to a labyrinthine collection of intricate pulley arrangements.

The beauty of the website is that they are now animating each of the 507 drawings so you can see the mechanisms in action!

Definitely worth a look (and worth bookmarking for future reference!) so click on over to the 507movements.com website to see the entire collection!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Cool Museum/Exhibit/Design Tool -- Old Maps Online

Old maps are super handy for explaining the concepts and stories embedded in history-related exhibits.

Unfortunately, it's often difficult to find just the right map to illustrate an idea or provide context.

Enter the website Old Maps Online, which is effectively a search engine for historical maps.

Just pick a location or browse the available maps on the OMO website to get started.

Old Maps Online indexes over 400.000 maps, thanks to the archives and libraries that are willing to provide their content online.

Go unleash your inner cartographer by clicking over to the Old Maps Online website!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Cool Design Tool: WhatTheFont

Have you ever seen an interesting font on a product package or in an advertisement and wondered, "What is that font?"

If so, the free Web-based app called WhatTheFont is for you!

WhatTheFont searches a collection of over 133,000 font styles and finds the best match for the fonts in your photo. The company behind WhatTheFont will also sell you fonts from your searches if you want to use them for your current graphics projects.

WhatTheFont even works when there’s more than one font in an image because the app lets you draw a crop box around specific areas of type. (Like the turtle food container shown below ... )

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Cool Museum Exhibit Design Tool: Spoonflower Custom Fabrics

Spoonflower is a cool website that lets you turn your ideas into real fabric creations!

Spoonflower gives people the power to print their own designs (like the one above) on fabric, wallpaper, or gift wrap. The idea is that you upload a digital image (or use the Spoonflower imaging tools) to the website and then Spoonflower prints the design on a range of materials (of your choice) that they ship directly to you.

You can see some real-life examples and read commentary on using different materials and techniques via the Spoonflower blog. 

All in all, Spoonflower's services provide another interesting resource to add to your design toolbox! 

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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2 Cool Tools: Cleanup.pictures and ClipDrop

Even if you are not a graphic designer, you probably need to occasionally "tweak" images for your work -- tasks like simply removing backgrounds or removing individual objects from photos.

To that end, allow me to recommend two tools, Cleanup.pictures and ClipDrop.

Cleanup.pictures is an intuitive online tool that lets you remove objects, people, text, or defects from images.

ClipDrop actually uses AR (Augmented Reality) to allow you to accurately remove the backgrounds from photos you take, or existing photos on your device.  ClipDrop then lets you drop the clean image directly onto your desktop -- which is super cool!

I hope you enjoy exploring these tools.  Which "cool tools" do you use to help your workflow?  Let us know in the "Comments" section below!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Cool Tool: Arts + Social Impact Explorer

The arts make more things possible, from better education to greater health outcomes, to a more civically-engaged citizenry—but people don’t always see those connections. 

Enter the group Americans for the Arts, and their cool tool called the Arts + Social Impact Explorer (pictured at the top of this post.)

Either on the Web, or through mobile devices, users can spin through a colorful ring of areas (like Health & Wellness, Housing, and Civic Dialogue) to find out how the arts impact and intersect with our lives. There are even ways to get additional fact sheets to dig deeper into each Art/Life connection.

From the Americans for the Arts website:

This highly interactive, visual tool is meant to drive conversation, and is accompanied by customized Fact Sheets that are downloadable and printable for sharing with board members, public and private sector policymakers, and more. It also is mobile-friendly and allows for easy conversations with decision makers to help expand the dialogue about the arts and their value to communities. Functioning as the surface of a deep “lake” of knowledge, all impact points and research within the Explorer comes with citations and links so that people can visit the websites of all the example projects, click directly to the research referenced, and engage directly with the other partners doing this work around the country.

The Arts + Social Impact Explorer is a great tool to start a conversation with funders or policy makers about the deep ways that arts organizations connect to the fabric of civil society.  It will also be a boon to grant writers everywhere!

If you'd like to find out more about the development and use of the Arts + Social Impact Explorer tool you can view this quick YouTube introduction.

But really the best way to experience all the features of the Arts + Social Impact Explorer is to take it for a spin yourself by clicking over to the Americans for the Arts website.



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