Escape from Freedom.
It’s been a long and harrowing journey back to captivity, but I made it back to the civility of the plantation. Hooray.
On the other hoof, I’m glad to be done with the many things that have been keeping me off of the useful task of documentation for which I’ve often used this space. I’m relieved to have let go of Tandem’s page and welcome the urgency that comes with a nagging urge that things must always be done and updated.
This is a screenshot of the Tandem Co-op site taken September 10.
I had a very simple problem putting the FancyZoom into the page that was fixed by removing a leading slash in the directory header. My favorite part of using imported javascript libraries is how fancy they make things look, an idea well realized by these titling conventions, including script.aculo.us, which still elicits an endearing chuckle from the uninitiated.
In the meantime, I’m practicing the discipline and restraint of the Thunderdome to-do list, meaning that only the most important, or at least fanciest task rises to the top of the pile. There’s a kind of beautiful brand-new-day philosophy to cutting yourself free of anything you didn’t see as worth doing; it helps to determine what you really wanted to do in the first place, and helps end the kind of procrastination that leads to elaborate blog posts that subconsciously fuel the self-sabotage of ambitious projects.
I’m celebrating this new philosophy with a strong cup of coffee and a huge ‘SOLVED’ rubber stamp, despite my inability to really put down anything at the end of the day.
Done!
To my great relief the DVD menu I had been working on took no time at all to redesign to Crystal’s satisfaction, making it the first Encore project I’ve handled that has gone on a physical DVD.
After seeing the project so far, Crystal reminded me of something important I had forgotten while busily adding buttons straight from print to Flash: “When you’re making a demo reel you really want a 20 second clip of all your best work spliced together.” Right now, the whole thing runs about four minutes, putting it generally out of the running. There are still a couple of rough edges I’m waiting until I have the demo reel to polish, but I have no qualms showing the DVD as is: Crystal’s Animation Portfolio.
Crystal's DVD portfolio in Flash.
I’ve done enough design for Crystal that I should probably write up a couple pages as a site specific style guide to use with a more official domain. I’m still in love with the look of justified Futura with Apricot.
Also, I’ve been talking with Akira at Tandem and trying to figure out a TLD that everyone can agree on. The usual rules apply: No hyphens or non-alpha characters, no non-.com TLDs, and nothing ‘too long,’ an arbitrary rule that makes the most sense but has no real qualifiers. Really, I would settle for anything that’s less than 9, but all of this stringent rule-following probably kills on their ability to be the most laid back guys I know. I’ve been very gung-ho about all of it, but these guys are really just enjoying having a place to chill and host an occasional gallery show. Their first show was all performance art, making them my new best friends, whether they want to be or not.
Am I done yet?
So, I realized that I still hadn’t created the DVD menus for the portfolio project that’s been going on for what seems like, ever. They’re on my constantly growing list of things to do that gets hacked off at the top three each day and started anew. Luckily, one of my recent top three was finished to 90% of my satisfaction, meaning that I get to grab lunch, breathe deeply, and look at it from various places in the room until I realize what it is that’s still bothering me. (All this noise for a wordpress theme redesign, who knew?) As it stands, the print material matches the site now, which is very satisfying to me. Check it out: AkiraArts.com
So, DVD menu is on the docket. I looked over a few nice tutorials, figured out how to hack a static one out in about an hour, but would much rather things move, and be interesting. Here’s to getting back to work and being rewarded with dinner, and more Python reading.
The sweet relief of being done.
I’m finally satisfied with Crystal’s portfolio design, but all it took was the buffer of a single day’s work. The final print work for Tandem turned out nicely, but I’m still sort of attached to some of the ditched designs, so I decided to upload them.
I like the way the final designs turned out, but this feels like the perfect application of Vitrina.
I finally got around to assembling a page for flash animation, and realized it’s the first place I had assembled any examples of my work into something resembling a portfolio.
As long as I’m posting huge graphics on the top page, here’s the full jewel box for Crystal’s portfolio.
It feels so good to be done.
I found the Super Jewel Box cases used by Jewelboxing at the 20% off sale from Sleeve City (scroll for Super Jewel Box King, they can probably be found anywhere) for $1.25 before discount, so I should probably stock up. These cases are great, and they really polish up well; I can see why they picked them for Jewelboxing. I still love that site’s concept, and they’ve done an excellent job of taking a common item and presenting it as a value brand with examples and peer contributors, along with professional context, but at the end of the day it still smells like Starbucks to me– which is not to say that Coudal Partners don’t produce anything but truly beautiful web layouts, just that I can’t ask someone else to shell out for these in good conscience when an identical physical product is available at a lower price.
Teamwork, putting things together, and caffeine.
I finally assembled the parts of the print portfolio I was working on, and my page order might need some revision.
This is the full jacket view of Crystal's print portfolio.
Really though, this is work that was waiting for a few seconds to be stitched together. I have a hard time putting things down when I’m doing them for anyone I know, so I might still go back and retouch the cover, and more obviously now that I see it set up, put the liner on the back cover in more subtle form so I can use the huge photo from “F Your Birthday” across the inside, and maybe across the DVD.
I was pulled randomly from one thing to another all day, and went directly from a surprise breakfast to the Tandem Co-op/Gallery space to do a couple designs for more print work. Akira was nice enough to put me up while doing the designs, and I had a chance to watch while some awesome documentary magic was being worked in After Effects, so I stuck around until seven, basically pulled straight from bed and fueled by coffee.
The night before, I stayed up all night working on print matter for Tandem with Akira and was most satisfied with something produced after a 2 am pizza run, right before posting the series and heading home. The unused design featured Vitrina, and seemed to fit the look perfectly, but was voted off the island by daybreak. The bike seems to be a good working theme, and the shape has grown on me. Hopefully this isn’t just self-satisfaction taking root– I still haven’t abandoned my original idea involving some slightly-cheesy 80’s air-brush action.
Heading down this dangerous path of designing for self-satisfaction, there’s a gigantic black and white website calling out to me. In the meantime, I’ve been spotting a few very nice single-task websites. I get the feeling that the days of the workhorse multitool-style small site might be numbered, but this could be a more general complaint about setting things on your site too many clicks away. My favorite thing about these single purpose sites is that everything is evident, and interaction is only a single click deep for most uses. I’ll keep this in mind while playing with scriptaculous.
Head cheese, and other beautiful byproducts.
Today I had a chance to take a look at some beautiful production shots of a set Crystal composed for “F Your Birthday.” I’m not quite sure if it’s just the colors and the levels, but I feel like she’s somehow convinced her DSLR that it’s 1979, and should develop pictures accordingly.
I think Crystal has said it about as often as I have– she should be making more stop-motion sets. Seeing all these neurotically glued and hand-selected based on SKU dye lots and stocks puffballs makes me think she’s repressing a childhood memory of factory bead work, or some other job suitable only for the nimble hands of children.
Looking at these shots again makes me want to use them for the back of her portfolio, with no explanation. A full and immaculate product can never speak for output as well as the finished piece can when the product is art, so I would love to incorporate these.
I took another look at the jewelboxing cases for portfolio work, and while I get the impression that, more often than not, they’re shucked like clams, I still do appreciate a finished piece. I haven’t seen Blender used for product portfolio mockups, but I would like to try it for a second, before anything is printed. Right now, I just need the go-ahead and then I’ll start cranking a few of these out once designs are finalized.
Forever ever? Yes, forever ever.
After a short hiatus, I picked up where I left off: with print support materials to flesh out Crystal’s branding and identity for a hard-copy portfolio.
These are the two I was most satisfied with, and given the type and palatte swap I feel I may owe everything an overhaul.
This has been a return to classic form, and I’m very satisfied with the combination of two classic typefaces, veering from my near-obsession with Gill Sans. Here, Futura and a Canada Type reinterpretation of a classic show that hand scripts and ultra modern sans serifs can play nice together.
This reminds me that I have found a typeface that straddles a fence between two hand type classics and looks a little like what Louisville Slugger’s logo would be if designed in Taiwan, circa 1955: Vitrina. I’m sure the designers might disagree, but I’m sitting with a stack of stamps from Hong Kong and a green tea wrapper that hasn’t changed in 50 years on my desk, and it’s spot on.
I’ve been missing my digital list-making, and have just been stuffing all my to-dos into my Field Notes, in cramped hand writing. Back to the task:
- Finish print identity work for Crystal. She’s mentioned an interest in Art Nouveau that I should check against some other patterns. History has deep stocks worth looting.
- Expand my personal site to include late portfolio work. I need a full revision, but it’s so much easier to work for other people than on my own material.
- I have a pulp-painting themed neighborhoods guide to Chicago that is so big it can only eventually be finished. I feel like I need to work on this before Chicago slips away from me. I love handmade maps, but they’re always instantly dated– if there’s no way to establish a continuous updating pattern for them, or even to give others the means to do so, they’re just interesting relics.
- I’ve built a few mockups for a drag and drop shopping application of scriptaculous, and should think about building them into interesting solutions.
- As long as I’m creating too-long lists (the threat of stagnation looms) I might as well keep track of my digital-clock themed personal site. It’s a two-hour detour from construction to inception, so here I file all my hills, hurdles, speedbumps, and milestones.
I have a few people I should get in touch with, and I sent out a few resumes today. With any luck, I should be employed by the time half of these are finished and the other half will get fully stewed in my brainpan until I wake up some night in a cold sweat and finish them in a single go.
I kind of like it that way.
“Well begun is half done.”
Things turned out pretty nicely for my final flash project, which was not very flashy.
After reading the MIT Press book on grid systems I’ve seen a couple things that could stand correction, but overall, it was a success. This persistent revisionism is what breaks my heart, but now that I have more resources for more projects, I feel like the probability that I might actually get some chops with flash and flex have increased.
After getting up early and then getting up late today, I figure I should continue with my list making.
- Refine original page for grid systems. It is now located at famous-sales. If I were completely foreign it would be a fantastic page already. It’s still the ultimate bodega name.
- Layout elements for the portfolio site for an animator friend. I think her beautiful work is an excellent opportunity to see what I can do with flash video and quality footage.
- Finish revising subtitles for my team project in process. I’m two-thirds of the way through, and I’ve finally moved into a steady work-flow.
- See what Zippangu Treasures has to say about my order. Hopefully the birthday present I ordered is on its way.
- See what I can do with script.aculo.us. I keep looking at it, but I haven’t used Javascript for anything interesting since I was a kid.
Hopefully that will suffice for today. Technology has a way of eating up all of a day, but I would really like to be reading a little more. I find myself on trains and long walks spending way longer than I ever had before on single pages, rereading whole passages that turn out to be irrelevant. It has been excellent exercise, but I’ll never be as impressive as that guy who juggles while he runs through my neighborhood.
What’s that grinding sound?
I finished my script on Tuesday night and sorted out my pictures.
Today I already started screwing around with new OS installations before I even made it to the gym, meaning that Flash must be pretty intimidating to me. I should probably upgrade my other OS so I can work with all the available tools, instead of what agrees with what I have installed. I should get more design at least half-finished today because it’s one of just a couple of things on my list of things to do.
What’s on this list so far? Just bare necessities.
- Flash UI design. A paper one to start with would be a fine idea. My thumbnail sketches don’t cut it anymore.
- Back to Blender, if the time should make itself available.
- 5 Pages of writing. I was going to say ‘decent writing’ but qualitative judgments put me off. I hope that doesn’t say something about my other work.
- (I should be polishing my resume and checking some prospects.)
- One of these prospects should be something that takes me out of the country. This should be a subsequent point, but I’m not entirely sure how to move through bullet after heading after bullet.
So I’m camped out next to my copy of Story, waiting for a reason to get up and start doing things. Well, no time like the present. I should cross town and help someone put up hooks or paint or something, but it would sort of deflate my whole day.
What goes “clip-clop clip-clop bang?”
I walked a lot, drank a lot of coffee and tea, and managed to get a third of my daily calories in by breakfast. I worked on my script for three hours, filling in actions while pretending to not exist on a Saturday night at a coffee shop I rarely visit.
During the day I visited a Chinese restaurant on Michigan Ave. that always astounds me by its strange and brisk trade during a very small span of time, it’s 70’s decor, and its completely superfluous second level. The restaurant is mall-style Chinese food, but they also prepare specialty cakes with little decorations as detailed as those you might’ve played with as a kid in obscure farm/barn/construction kits. They are also meticulously clean, and make good bubble tea. I have a hard time imagining what they really do. While in line, the woman behind the counter picked up a karaoke style microphone and spoke into it in Chinese for a minute, then put it back down. While I’m pretty sure that she was ordering a food refill, it’s still unnerving to see someone commit a near incomprehensible act in a foreign language, like some kind of strange incantation that only summons orange chicken.
Other than this, I saw the Tiffany dome over the Chicago Cultural Center, and it’s amazing. Someone was being married under it this evening.
Either way, progress was made. I hope to spend time finishing my script tomorrow, and editing and formatting it on Monday. I’ve seen some rough transitions in there lately.