Get rid of that beta!
Did you purchase an Adobe Creative Suite 3 app? Yeah? Well, did you install the public beta of Photoshop CS3 Adobe offered a few months ago? You did? Alright then. Before installing CS3, Adobe recommends you not only run the uninstaller that came with the beta, but also run this CS3Clean Script to clean out other stuff I assume the...Continue
April 11, 2007Shabby Chic
In my continued pursuit of finding office space in Atlanta, my friend Kenny stumbled across a real estate listing for a house in my part of Atlanta. Not just any house, but one I immediately recognized, for it was the cover story of Dwell Magazine about a year ago. Now, normally I wouldn't have looked at residential housing for office...Continue
December 15, 2006Photoshop CS3 beta out
A public beta of Photoshop CS3 for Windows and OS X is now available for download. If you use Photoshop on an Intel Mac, you owe it to yourself to install this immediately. The best part? After launching the app at least once, subsequent launches take about two and a half seconds on my MacBook Pro. In a word, it's...Continue
September 09, 2006Starck on Starck
You are arguably the most famous product designer in the world and have created many memorable objects. What are your personal favorites? "The next ones. I don't like anything that I've done. That's why I continue to do it. I'm talentless, cynical, lazy and venal. Every object I've designed tells me how weak and lazy I am." - Philippe Starck...Continue
September 07, 2005Backyard Update
A while back I promised to post some pictures of the architectural project that's going on in my backyard, so here's a couple of sneak peeks into what's been done thus far: Photo 1 | Photo 2. Both images link to the personal blog of William Carpenter, who's the architect (and genius) behind the design. The "Pavilion" will eventually include...Continue
August 08, 2005There's a new Champ in town
Another year, another major golf tournament. This morning the 2005 PGA Championship was relaunched with an updated look, which builds upon the template design and art direction of 2004 site, but (as we designers like to say) with a little more volume. The biggest change is the color -- a stronger palette of contrasting colors was chosen, with heavy emphasis...Continue
January 14, 2005New Member of the TSI Team
I've been meaning to mention this publicly, but until today it kept slipping my mind. Timothy Gray, the web developer / designer behind the much-linked-to Portland Studios, recently joined the Turner Sports Interactive team. We'll be working together on a number of upcoming PGA event sites, with all kinds of new Flash / CSS / XHTML in the cooker. As...Continue
January 12, 2005Where Has the Time Gone
Yes, it's the same old song and dance -- too busy with work and non-work projects to update the site, followed by the obligatory apology and a handful of reasons as to why. This is that post. SlideShow — First, I've been receiving emails asking about how SlideShow (the Flash component I've been working on) is coming along. The good...Continue
September 22, 2004Nest Magazine calls it quits
Nest, one of my all-time favorite magazines, is no longer. The news was publicized on various blogs and industry web sites a few weeks ago, but today I found out the old fashioned way -- an editorial note at the beginning of the latest issue. There's something incredibly sad when a publication you had grown to admire, enjoyed reading, and...Continue
July 08, 2004CNN's New Look
In case you haven't noticed, CNN has updated their on-screen graphics. All their typography is at least a couple of point sizes smaller, including the infamous crawl at the very bottom. They've reduced the size of their logo, toned down the blood-red color bars, and reduced the identity of their program names to a sliver which sits in the lower...Continue
November 24, 2003Jacko's Web Site
Today Michael Jackson and company launched a new official press room to contain "authorized" news and announcements concerning his recent legal trouble. At first glance, the site may appear rushed and stale. But I believe there's something more at work. From the soft, medium-contrast Helvetica header -- one of very few graphical elements on the page -- to the raw...Continue
November 13, 2003Adobe CS Iconography
Yesterday I received, installed, and immediately began tinkering around with Adobe Illustrator CS, part of the new "CS" line of Adobe products. At the application level, Illustrator CS is definitely an improvement over the slow, clunky, buggy Illustrator 10. Like the Panther upgrade to OS X, Illustrator CS feels very polished, refined, and mature. It took a while for me...Continue
October 07, 2003Bad Ballots
On this day of California recall craziness, Slate has posted a fantastic article written by Jessie Scanlon on what is truly wrong with our voting system. The trouble, according to Scanlon, lies not with outdated technology (including the notorious punch card), but with bad graphic design. ...bad ballot design is a nationwide problem that needs to be remedied. The problem...Continue
August 26, 2003My Very Own Dolly
Chances are if you've designed enough material for the web, you will run across another web site that feels oddly familiar. Sometimes the similarity is nothing more than a total fluke -- an accidental alignment of two unrelated minds developing similar ideas. Other times it is a blatant rip-off. And then of course there are the small things, like color,...Continue
July 23, 2003The Kultcha of Electric Moyo
For the past few weeks, all the MARTA train stations throughout Atlanta have displayed a series of ads for the Nissan Altima. The ads were your average, urban, twenty-something style of promotion with jumbo Helvetica copy set in uppercase on top of unstyled, grungy-looking yuppies. You know, that uptown - yet downtown - style of chic often deployed by companies...Continue
June 13, 2003Online Paint Resources
In light of our recent house painting experiences I've been looking around online to see what information (if any) the various paint manufacturers offer. Behr.com has a crisp, easy to navigate Color Workbook (Flash) where you can find complimentary colors for your dominant wall color, and preview the results in a real room. The site also has a cool inspiration...Continue
April 26, 2003Weekend Ephemera
Every few weeks I head down to my neighborhood Borders to catch up on some of the latest design-related magazines and books. This morning I came across a few interesting titles some like-minded readers may find of interest. First up is The Designer and the Grid, which helps fill a huge, important void in the instruction of grids in graphic...Continue
February 07, 2003QuickBooks and Suitcase - Watch Out
If you happen to run Extensis Suitcase to manage your fonts, and recently installed Intuit's QuickBooks for Mac OS X, you'll run into one hell of a problem. I recently installed QuickBooks (bundled with my new PowerBook) and immediately thereafter Suitcase would no longer launch. Turns out QuickBooks installs a proprietary typeface in your User/Library/Fonts folder that doesn't jibe at...Continue
December 21, 2002Envisioning Downtown
NYTimes.com has launched a Flash 6 presentation titled Envisioning Downtown featuring the 7 recent designs for rebuilding the World Trade Center site. All designs feature multiple renderings and photos, but some take the extra step and feature streaming audio of the architects discussing their work alongside virtual reality tours of the structures. My first inclination, or favorite, was by United...Continue
November 22, 2002When I Grow Up
When I Grow Up I Want to Work in Advertising. I could cry it's so true....Continue
November 11, 2002Tori Amos Songwriting Map
There is a magic that happens in graphic design when a visual concept is thoughtfully created by combining an appropriate, emotive aesthetic with the rigidity of information architecture. Data doesn't have to be confined to grids, tables, rows, and soulless typography. In the right hands, it can be presented in a way that ascends the content to a higher, sensorial...Continue
September 22, 2002The FrontPage Blues
In between my fits of anger, denial, and anxiety the past couple of weeks, I found myself in one of those "pass-the-buck" scenarios you often see in design circles. The characters change names, but the story is always the same - a business hires a designer, the designer flakes out (or in the case of this story, lands in jail...Continue
August 27, 2002File Naming / Organization Methods?
Got any tips or methodology for naming your files and folders? I'm fishing for ideas (especially from graphic designers / web developers in quick turnaround environments) to tackle the age-old problem of asset organization. If your workflow is anything like mine - mockup in Illustrator, export to Photoshop, crop, trim, save for web, import into Flash, export swf file, etc.,...Continue
August 13, 2002Futurefarmers Release Harvest
The SF design outfit Futurefarmers has released their new book / CDROM Harvest featuring 7 years of work with notes, documents of online work, gallery shows and experiments. Lovely....Continue
July 07, 2002Emigre Auction
Want to catch up on years of Emigre print propaganda? Somebody on eBay is selling over 50 pieces of Emigre publicity, none with mailing labels, and all with the "odor of an old person's house." Yum....Continue
June 30, 2002The Many Faces of Ocean’s Eleven
When the painfully crowded heist flick Ocean's Eleven opened last December, I had little to no interest in it. The thought of watching Clooney, Pitt, Damon, and (God help me) Julia Roberts butting heads and competing for screen time was simply too nauseating to handle. But then I saw the movie's promotional poster, and my curiosity immediately piqued. How in...Continue
June 29, 2002Pantone Brown
For the past couple of weeks I've been developing a new identity for my business. Not a radical departure from the web site, but a simplified, professional identity that will be used in everything from business cards to envelopes, letterhead, media stickers, and anything else I can stamp with my hot little branding iron. Since most of the work I...Continue
June 18, 2002Lovely Spider Lights
I am very tempted to buy about 6 of these Aracnolamps and let them run wild across the main wall in my office. Replacing that black tipped lightbulb may be a problem though....Continue
June 11, 2002Sobering Thought
This morning I was flipping through one of my "Best Of" design books, one of those annual collections of identity collateral from design studios and their clientele -- business cards, promotional mailers, letterhead, that kind of stuff. Most of these studios, and their clients, spent an awful lot of money on paper stock, fancy die cuts and lithography -- hence...Continue
June 08, 2002Reinventing The Wheel
Lifted from the latest issue of Wired Magazine, Jessica Helfand has what appears to be a great new book coming out in July titled Reinventing the Wheel - a collection of antique chart wheels used for tracking nutrition, planispheres, Golf tips, calendars, etc. The roots of rich, interactive content....Continue
May 03, 2002Biggie in a Mini
At six-foot, four-inches in height, I come prepackaged with limitations. Retailers always run out of my pant size, dress shirts are typically too short, and certain motorized vehicles are simply out of the question. Or at least I thought the latter was true. This past week, I got behind the wheel of a Mini. I've been looking forward to the...Continue
April 29, 2002The Holiday Inn Sign
It probably goes without mentioning, but since that first family summer road trip to Florida in the 70s, riding in the back of my mom's wood panel Chevy station wagon, I have loved motel signs - the tacky, economically driven folk art of the American roadside. Sure, there are many other accomplished examples of motel signage, but none have ever...Continue
April 17, 2002I Have Seen the Light
I've made up my mind. I'm not buying a new television until I can afford a Philips 42" Plasma TV. I own the same 17", mono Toshiba TV I bought all the way back in 1986. It's been through 3 states, 3 dorm rooms, and 5 apartments. God only knows how many "miles" of projection it has on the meter....Continue
April 09, 2002The New Wall Street Journal
Today the Wall Street Journal, that bastian of American commerce, has reinvented itself with a massive redesign. If you haven't seen a copy up close, check out a virtual tour of the paper and see for yourself....Continue
March 22, 2002Airstream Lust
For about as long as I can remember, I've had a love affair with Airstreams - the "silver bullet" of the American black top. Obviously not everyone in my demographic shares my enthusiasm, for in an effort to hook younger buyers, Airstream has unveiled the International CCD - a classic Airstream body with an interior straight out of IKEA. Stainless...Continue
March 10, 2002Reinventing the Wheel
The past week I've been working on an updated index page for my portfolio site for web surfers who don't have, or don't care about the Flash side-of-life, and have been experimenting with different design ideas including a DHTML scrolling news box. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've surely seen DHTML news boxes around the "web underground"...Continue
March 02, 2002Bitmaps are Big Business
Every web designer knows them on a first name basis -- Silkscreen, Mini, Standard -- the crisp, bitmap typefaces that have exploded in popularity all over the web. What was once a curious, pseudo underground pixel style popularized by sites like k10k and others has gone big business, and shows little to no signs of slowing down. Purposely lacking the...Continue
February 12, 2002Tired Giant
The web portal Design is Kinky is now accepting orders for "Permanent" - a home grown book of graphic design, illustration, graffiti, photography, and a bunch of open source toys on a shiny CD-ROM. Quite nice. I know what I'm about to write isn't...God forbid, a "hip" thing to say, but when looking at the book's contributor list, I can't...Continue
Ugh - Burning Hybrid CDs
The past few days I've been digging in to the crazy world of burning cross-platform CDs, in other words multimedia discs that auto play, have custom icons, only 'show' the proper files the end user needs to see, etc. After figuring out all the little quirks, all the workarounds, all the dare-say 'hacks' you have to do in order to...Continue
February 05, 2002Get Shopping At FontShop
Font Shop International has relaunched their web site with a much larger e-commerce site, where you can order and download fonts not only from Font Shop International (one of my personal fave foundries) but many others including Elsner & Flake, Garage Fonts, Linotype, Monotype, the always funky Type-O-Tones and more. And while you're there, be sure to check out their...Continue
January 23, 2002Introducing, QuarkXPress 5
Quark today announced the immediate availability of an update to their ubiquitous print publishing software package QuarkXPress 5.0. Speaking as someone who started in, and then moved beyond print for the nutty world of web design and multimedia, QuarkXPress is a bittersweet experience. A couple of years ago I became bored, and annoyed, with the world of service bureaus, printing...Continue
January 17, 2002Twenty Faces
Dean Allen over at Textism has re-launched his Twenty Faces page -- a very nice, simple collection of popular book faces like Jenson, Bembo, Fournier, Miller and others along with historical highlights and that classic Allen wit. There are plenty of references to display faces online and in print, but Allen's contribution champions the unsung, often overlooked heroes of good...Continue
January 14, 2002Digital Photo Aspect Ratios
I'm still waiting for my Canon PowerShot S110 to get here (everyone is out of them − backordered through the roof), but until then I've been collecting info on digital photography tips and tricks. One is this handy aspect ratio guide provided by Ofoto for having prints made of your digital pictures. Use the following general guidelines when sizing images...Continue
January 08, 2002Stockart.com
I received a really creepy email from Stockart tonight, and I'm not at all sure what to make of it. In case you don't know who they are, Stockart is an online stock illustration service that actually has some really fine work. It's easy finding stock photography, but quality illustrations that aren't goofy woodcuts or Microsoft clip-art are hard to...Continue
December 14, 2001Poor Art Nouveau
The Art Nouveau period of architecture, typography, illustration and graphic design has always held a certain fascination for me, mainly because just about every designer and architect I know won't touch it with a ten foot poll. Those thick wavy brushstrokes, those curves, those dripping letters...it's enough to make any Corbusier / Bauhaus loving designer cringe and spit. Perhaps it...Continue
November 20, 2001Blessing in disguise
Today I feel like I have a new pair of eyes. My trusty old Apple CRT suddenly died yesterday, and I wasted almost a whole work day trying to figure out what was wrong. The screen would flip on, then off, then on again, and...yes, back off. This little diversion happened all day long. The monitor was well out of...Continue
November 01, 2001Da Vinci
At the risk of overreaching the intention of this post, it must be stated up front that good design, whether it's architecture, typography, or consumer products, always stands the test of time. Over in Oslo, Norway yesterday, that theory was put to the test (literally) as white cloths were dramatically lifted to reveal a brand new footbridge designed not by...Continue
October 14, 2001Bookshelf Killer
Get ready, 'cause here comes another Koolhaas urbanism manifesto ready to break the legs on your coffee table. 800 pages in length, the Harvard Guide to Shopping is the long awaited tome from the Harvard Graduate School of Design's "Project on the City" seminar studying the various philosophies behind consumerism and urban life. If you're one of those overly analytical...Continue
October 09, 2001Office Identity Makeover - What Were They Thinking?
Companies redesign their logos for many reasons -- they're either old, out-of-style, or an overly ambitious marketing director was recently hired. Whatever the reason, I always take notice whenever a company tinkers with their image. With the imminent release of Office v. X for Mac, Microsoft's marketing team has decided to totally overhaul Office's image, from the box down to...Continue
October 08, 2001Wish I Had Your Job
As a graphic designer, I have heard many snide, off-hand remarks from non-designers who feel that my profession is a joke. Condescending little jabs like "Must be fun," "Wish I could play with computers all day," etc. Yes, design work can at times be "fun," but for anyone who truly cares and takes great pride in the work they produce,...Continue
September 08, 2001To hell with JavaScript sniffers
To borrow the now legendary phrase from Zeldman's rant about old browsers, I've had enough of old / poorly written JavaScript "sniffers." These are the beasts that web developers stick in the index of a site, and depending on what platform / browser you're using, you are redirected to a page more suited to your setup. Sounds great, right? In...Continue
