and sent

one of the discussion points for my new site is the "contact" page. do i include an email form? or just offer up my contact info and hope?

since i had a little break today (even though i have way too much to do i still managed to find myself in a holding pattern for each of my projects) i found and followed this tutorial on creating email forms in flash. of course, i wasn't interested in creating one that looked exactly like the one in the tutorial, so i managed to figure out how to create the look i wanted by sifting through a couple of other websites and forums.

the result? it worked! amazing! i still don't understand why it only works on "test movie" and not "publish preview," but i'm not going to search for that answer right now. i'm happy enough with my new knowledge of input fields.

65 illustrator tutorials

Emma Alvarez has put together a nice collection of tutorials for adobe illustrator (65 to be exact). thanks emma!

Links, Week 5

This week in links was actually quite a bit more difficult than usual. I found myself not wanting to critique any of the sites i was coming across—there wasn't anything new, no interesting navigation, nothing catching my eye. maybe i'm just getting too picky, but it was really pretty glum! hopefully next week i'll find more inspiration.

Aruliden
interesting: the thumbnail size and layout on the home page is pretty much exactly what I was thinking I’d like to do. The size is large enough to celebrate the work, but not so large that it gives it all away on the first date.
The information offered up on the home page is minimal, just as I am hoping to do. To me this says “hi. This is my name. I have some impressive work to look at. No need to get caught up in anything else right now”

Looking through the work is simple. The nav bar remains persistent and the project breakdown is clear. I think it’s missins next and previous buttons for even smoother navigation through the projects, but all in all it’s clean and easy.


Midwest Is Best
I don’t like how the “brand new” nav bar is all different colors. Is there any rhyme or reason? It actually kind of confuses me. Note to self: don’t do this.

Sometimes I’m a fan of hand-drawn type, as long as it makes sense. Since I don’t know mike maybe it’s very befitting and I just don’t know it, but not knowing him? Eh. It’s not doing it for me.

His next and last arrows are kind of funny—they don’t seem to integrate with the look/feel of the site very well.

One thing to discuss: we haven’t talked about the option of having a downloadable pdf of my work. What are your thoughts on this lotus?


Laundry!
here’s an instance of holding back almost entirely on the homepage. No work, just color, personality and a big ole graphic. The graphic thing is something I was toying with earlier, but at this point I’m still thinking I’d like to have thumbs of my work.

The rollovers on the nav bar are certainly adding to the personality of the site, and I think it’s in keeping with what they’ve set up for themselves. While it’s not the style I’ll be putting out there for myself, it’s a good takeaway thought: don’t just design the layout, think about infusing “you” into user interaction as well.


War Design
we’ve discussed new work on the homepage quite a bit, and what I’ve ultimately decided I’d like to shoot for is thumbnails that refresh…on refresh. Here’s a new spin on the concept: featuring one at a time, cycling through featured work on its own. Always something new to look at without even having to interact with the site.


Sheridan
Honestly? They spent a lot of time in flash, and I’m not convince it was worth it. The swirling hangy things that act as the navigation make me a little ill since they move around so much (and quickly). I’m glad they have the option of “easy navigation” at the top of the page, ending the swirling madness.

Transitions are smooth, from page to page and for sliding elements, but I’m not sure about all the bounciness.

They certainly like movement based on cursor position. I like that for certain things, but it’s not always necessary. Like in the client list? Why? What is it adding? Personally I just think it wastes time.

I don’t like how there’s no linear movement around the site. once you go in one direction you need to back out of it in order to move on. Annoying!

go bananas

i haven't used this yet, but GorillaSpot looks like a simple way to edit video online. they have a sleek and simple UI and (after having watched the demo vidd) seems like it works exactly like iMovie.

i'd like to buy a vowel

Flickr has definitely become my main tool for sharing photos with friends and family. now that its popularity has skyrocketed, it can be fun to find out new ways to sift through the content. with
Spell With Flickr you can type in any word or sentence and it will pull random images of letters from the depths of Flickr to create it. you can then click on any letter to get a new one.

Taken: James Turrell

On Friday I had the pleasure of going to the MoMa with my coworker Patrice. They were having a members-only party for the opening of Friedlander’s work, and I was the “+1” for the night. Oddly enough, I’m not going to talk about anything I saw there, but it did get me thinking. One of the exhibits included an artist named Olafur Eliasson that works with light and reflection; and, while the experience was most definitely appreciated, in my opinion it paled in comparison to another artist’s work.

The first year I went to Pilchuck to spin fire for a few weeks, I went on a short field trip into Seattle. In addition to a few tours of some local hot shops, we went to the Seattle Art Museum. There I got to experience some of James Turrell’s work. Now I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes fly through museums too fast. But. Not this time.

People. The man doesn’t create art, he puts quotation marks around time and space. Here’s what he has to say about his work:

“First, I am dealing with no object. Perception is the object. Secondly, I am dealing with no image, because I want to avoid associative, symbolic thought. Thirdly, I am dealing with no focus or particular place to look. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking.”
—James Turrell

Instead of trying to explain what this means, I’m just going to share my own experience, all story-time-like:

I walked into the room and saw a projected rectangle of light on one of the walls. Certainly, it’s beautiful, but whatevs. It’s just another Modern artist trying to prove he doesn’t need to use oil paint. OK, maybe it is beautiful. I’ll give it a moment.






















So I sat down across the room from the light and looked at it for a while. It was sort of dark in the room and my eyes needed to adjust to the balance of tones. Then I noticed the shoes sitting on the floor next to the projection. Wtf? Who took off their shoes? Or is that some sort of symbolic artistic turd?

Then, THEN! I saw what was truly happening. There were PEOPLE moving around inside that stupid projection of light. Real ones! WHAT WAS GOING ON HERE? ARGH!

So I went right up to the thing and looked real close. I was having one of those depth perception issues: is there a wall there? Embarrassed as I was, I decided to go for it: I slowly reached out my arm to touch the light (making sure there were no red coats around to yell at me)….and…NOTHING! no wall! It was a freaking ROOM filled with pure, colored light.




















And at that very moment someone stepped out of what I thought had been the wall and sat down next to me to put her shoes back on. Freaking art. Totally had me. And now, it totally had me.

It turns out good ‘ole James had been toying with me (and everyone else) all along. I fell right into his trap. The man had manipulated the light and space in the room to amplify my own perception of it. I’m not looking at anything, but what I thought I saw isn’t really there. That velvety blue square of radiant color hovering on the wall is actually a portal into a deep depression in the space. He’s managed to lull me into a state of self-reflexivity. The damned quote made sense all of a sudden: I was seeing myself seeing.

What else could I do but step into the light?

What had first appeared to be a floating, luminous plane without surface or depth, I was now stepping through. I was standing in a room contemplating the space that I was still convinced didn’t really exist. I was prelingual.



















Now that I’ve gone all art-geek on you, I have to pull myself out of the reverie. I haven’t relayed this story to pull it around to advertising. I don’t want to make it into some metaphor for lulling your target audience into a false sense of comfort and product-love. It has nothing to do with that. I just loved the artwork.

show and tell

i've been researching a lot of sites lately as inspiration for my own, and come across this script so very many times. it's the one that overlays images on top of the screen within the browser, so you don't have to open another window. it's simple and clean, and certainly worth considering. in my lunch (quarter) hour today i found the actual script: Lightbox 2.

Now, if only i knew what all that technical jargon meant. hm. must get on that.

wear your thoughts on your sleeve

The not-so-modest guys at VC Wear are offering capitalist wannabees inside jokes on tees. lucky us. unsurprisingly the shirts cost $100 each, or you can drop $100,000 and invest in the company along with each purchase. You passed on Google, hopefully I won't regret passing on you.

When the ads are fresher than today's headlines

Now this is pretty damn cool. For the launch of the new Norwegian news/entertainment/info portal SOL, Mediafront created a campaign that uses contextual, hand-written banners called "SOL comments." Using a Flash media server and a pen tablet, a team of 3 copywriters took shifts around the clock monitering news sites and responding to the editorial content. Over a thousand ads have been created so far. If only advertising was always so relevant.

Pepsi Takes It All Off

Pepsi has jumped on the health bandwagon and is introducing a new "natural" cola to their line: Pepsi Raw. It's not "healthy," mind you, "it's a premium drink for people who like natural products." (Times)

So what are the ingredients?
[...] apple extract, plain caramel colouring, coffee leaf, tartaric acid from grapes, gum arabic from acacia trees, cane sugar and sparkling water. It is paler in colour and less fizzy than other cola brands.

Apparently there's no caffeine or phosphoric acid.

ok, i'm slightly intrigued. and the bottle design is pretty — reminds me of a shelfish exoskeleton. alas, it's only been released in the U.K. so i won't be tasting its naturally sweet nectar. (only looking at the naked chicks in the ads. i guess if the "natural" part doesn't do it, they figure sex will always sell.)