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.