While freedom is a wonderful thing, sometimes the constraints of a medium or the circumstances in which work is created can serve as the springboard to something remarkable. Just think of Michaelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel, one of the most demanding of media. While he had no choice but to work quickly on a large scale before the pigment-impregnated plaster dried, a contemporary French artist has chosen to paint tiny portraits within the space of a few minutes... on Paris subway tickets.

So you've been ogling the 3D capabilities of Photoshop CS3 Extended but there's no sign of an upgrade? In fact, you may be watching the 3D train leave the station with that helpless feeling of once again falling behind. You know you could extend the scope of the graphics and documents you're currently creating by adding 3D content. But how? The good news is that the cross-platform DAZ Studio provides a simple, free way to begin incorporating 3D into your Photoshop workflow.

The release of Adobe's new Media Player has made quite a splash this week but those in the creative community using the firm's design tools have received an extra treat, in the form of the simultaneously-launched Adobe TV site.

While not yet announced, the FontStruct site, created by noted font vendor FontShop, is already attracting attention from those eager to try out its font-creation capabilities, as well as download fonts from the galleries.

Marion Bataille is a French illustrator who has provided the imagery both for her own books and those of others, including a volume of Surrealist poetry geared to younger readers. The clip above shows her latest book, ABC3D, in action, with video being the perfect medium to demonstrate the kinetic apects of her inventive pop-up alphabet.

If you need to display digital content in such a way that it just can't be overlooked, the traditional approach is to move to bigger and bigger displays. But once you've covered every wall with screens, things start to get a little banal. What's needed is the ability to let content escape the confines of the screen and inhabit the three-dimensional space of the viewer. A novel approach to this is provided by the PufferSphere, from Scottish firm Pufferfish.

After nearly a million page views of my colleague Ivan Raszi's original Cool Business Card Designs article on the Creative Bitz blog, Ivan has submitted a second installment aptly named Cool Business Cards Part 2.

Most publishers of art and design books don't extend their relationship with their authors beyond distributing the books and sending the occasional royalty check. But one German publisher is showing that more is possible to bring creative projects to the attention of a wider audience via inhouse-created video.

A fixation on light and electricity has moved British Artist, Richard Box, to create some mesmerizing installation art pieces which he has had documented by various photographers on his Website.

The focus on Box's Site right now is is a series which illustrates an installation whereby Box erected more than a thousand fluorescent tubes by planting them in the ground beneath a large electrical pylon. The photographs show the the lights illuminated only by the magnetic field being generated by the pylon and overhead electricity cables.

Let's face it, the applications in Adobe's Creative Suite are not always employed for work that most of us would care to define as "creative." But Adobe couldn't really call it the Ugly Banners For My Company Suite or the Painfully Dull Marketing Flyer Suite, now could it? No, if you use Adobe's Suite, the pixie dust of creativity will simply alight magically on your work and if not... well, I guess you just weren't that creative in the first place.

What is the Bubblegum Sequencer?

"The Bubblegum Sequencer is a physical step sequencer that lets you create drumloops by arranging colored balls on a tangible surface. It generates MIDI events and can be used as an input device to control audio hardware and software. Finally, people can't claim anymore that electronic music isn't handmade."

Okay the name is annoying—we're long past the point where any new product or technology should have a lower-case letter i slapped in front of it—but once you get past that, iPaper provides an interesting approach to displaying documents on the web. Whether it's PDF, Word, PowerPoint or other formats, this is yet another example of Adobe Flash contining its relentless march unabated, swallowing all media types in its path.

While here in the West we think of some chefs as artists, access to the rarefied dishes they create remains restricted to the happy few. But why shouldn't more of what's on our plate be consciously designed? As is often the case, the Japanese are way ahead of us aesthetically, having created centuries ago the practice of eating cold dishes from compartmentalized boxes, known as bento.

Has the domination of Photoshop completely killed vector illustration? While Illustrator remains a graphics application that's difficult to love, the use of vector-based imagery has been making something of a comeback. Fueling this are a number of boutique content creators, amongst them Kapitza.

Italian Graphic Designer Simone Legno has made more than a mark for himself in the Pop Art world recently with his Japaneseque, Tokidoki brand.