This is a simple portfolio website I did for Yamit Dardashtian, a graphic designer from NY. She makes lovely illustrations for a variety of mediums, usually book covers. She wanted something extremely simple and small, yet able to show her entire portfolio. I used a wonderful lightbox script called Fancybox and the results are fantastic.
You can view Yamit’s portfolio here.
FFFFOUND! is a site for bookmarking images you find on the web. Images you like, find interesting, inspire you, cool photographs, whatever it may be. Now, what makes it different? It’s streamlined. There’s nothing else the site does…it shows you the image and links back to where you ‘found’ it (always handy to give props to the original), and also shows you similar images you might like to look at. You can literally spend hours just clicking images, then clicking a similar, then a similar, then a similar… It’s invitation-based, signups have been halted a long time ago. I have scoured the web and come up with nothing. I would very much like an invitation please.
On another note, here is another tee that I really like. I must be on a typography kick, although I’ve always been a huge fan. Also, I am enjoying this photography of wrinkled t-shirts (see previous post). It makes for better selling than previous t-shirt stores where you see somebody wearing the tee, or it’s a vector image of a shirt with the graphic slapped on.
Edit: Sorry folks, I never got that FFFFOUND invitation, so stop inquiring! There are a bunch of other clone sites up that do the same thing. My favorite is Dropular.net, although I believe these type of sites have lost their hype.
What’s going on in my life at this time? Tons!
The Sixty One is a digg-like music website, with a small twist: It plays like an adventure game. You level up and rack up points by bumping (digging) tracks, as well as everything else you can do on the site. It keeps you interacted while you learn some great new music. It’s a pretty nice concept, and actually one I thought of awhile ago (I was going to call it Atomic Radio…guess they beat me to it). Also when you are playing a song, it doesn’t shut off if you navigate elsewhere on the site, which is pretty awesome.
I had heard about the site almost a year ago when it was too new to the scene, and quickly discovered that I found the site unusable. My main problem with the site is the interface and usability. It’s horrendous. Navigating the site and design just hurts my eyes, and nothing grabs my attention properly, and I find it hard to find what I want to click on. The colors are bad, the typography too heavy…and overall its just plain poor design. Granted, the whole site is only run by 2 guys, so I can’t blame them too heavily if they aren’t designers. But the design itself ruined what should have been a fun, engaging experience.
A few of my friends have discovered the site and it’s gaining in popularity, so I decided to check it out again. Since that first time I discovered the site, they had made 0 changes. Probably a lot of backend technical advances, but not design. So, because I needed some practice, I redesigned The Sixty One. I kept true to the colors and general layout, but added enough interface features to completely differentiate between my design and theirs. The new navigation is probably the most useful aspect here, as theirs just didn’t make any sense. Mine slides open sub-navigation instead of splitting it into two lines. Makes a big difference. Oh, and I came up with an idea for a logo, as they currently don’t have one.
I will possibly contact theSixtyOne and see what they say. I like to do a lot of mockup and redesigns for practice, so if you like my style, contact me.
GreenPeace is a global campaigning organization that exists to “change attitudes and behavior, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace.” Respectable. One of the things they do is rate Electronics companies on their green-ness with the materials they use to build their electronics. They’ve recently come out with their latest version for September 2008.
Here’s how the companies stack up:
The article I original read on this topic was focused on Apple not being as green as they market themselves to be. Out of 10, they come in at 4. In fact, the only company over 6 is Nokia! Apple is being (only slightly beat) by other leading computer manufacturers such as Dell & HP.
However, what really strikes me are the bottom two: Microsoft and Nintendo. Now, I’m an Apple guy, but I’m not an Apple fanboy…I think Windows is great for certain things (such as Web Development)…but I think they’ve been in the spotlight for a much longer time than Apple. And it’s easy to see how such a big company could lose sight of “going green,” but how come I rarely hear anybody ragging on Microsoft about it? Apple gets a ton of crap all the time. And Nintendo?! I had no idea. I am a huge fan - own a Wii and Super Nintendo is greatest system of all time - and I never saw any articles on how horrendous their ‘green’ policy is.
I’m not entirely sure how the ranking system works, but GreenPeace is large enough to be a trust-worthy site. I like that this Flash module lets you see older Versions. Go to Version 6, which I find is the most interesting. It’s the first time Nintendo is featured. It’s almost a year ago, Dec 2007, and we have 10 companies in the 7 area, and Nintendo doesn’t even get a 1. Apple was even at 6 at the time. How did it get so bad in a year?
Some action needs to be taken, or regulation put on this. As pointed out by GreenPeace:
The rate at which these mountains of obsolete electronic products are growing will reach crisis proportions unless electronics corporations that profit from making and selling these devices face up to their responsibilities.
It’s reminding me of all those videos found last week where major financial advisors warned of the Stock Armageddon a year ago or whatever, and no one paid attention until now. I know my house is full of old cell phone in drawers and cords to nowhere. It is completely feasible to make durable, clean, and recyclable products. I expect more from companies like Apple, and especially Nintendo.
Buy or Don’t Buy is an internet blog run by a few friends of mine. It’s an opinion-based blog, with a strong focus on society, trends, gossip, and the media. Basically they talk about what they love and what they hate, but it makes for fun discussions.
They’ve recently had their official “launch” this past weekend, and to celebrate I redesigned the whole site. The navigation and usability is much easier now with added categories bar and many other features. It’s a Wordpress blog (as well as this blog) and the more I work on it the more comfortable I am with Wordpress. They are so easy to customize!
If you have need for a blog, I love doing them, so get in touch if you do.
Liam Finn performing Second Chance on Letterman
I haven’t listened to this song in awhile, but I also never saw his performance on Letterman (way back in February!) I think he and his female counterpart do a terrific job of adapting this song for live play without need of a whole band.
PHP is an extremely popular scripting language used mostly in Web Development because it can be embedded within HTML. It is mostly database driven and works extensively with MySQL. If you follow the link, however, you will notice that the website and community look like they still live in the 90’s.
Well in this day and age scripting languages are becoming more advanced, and so have their marketing. My prime example is Ruby on Rails. Fairly new, but more importantly it looks fresh and new. Another example is Python which has at least a more modern logo.
This new identity pitch keeps the same feel as the old with just the letters php, and removing the beveled oval in place of beveled text. Also an updated, fresher color scheme.
This is my attempt at (finally) bringing the PHP identity into the 21st century. I will be contacting the PHP Group about it.
I’m constantly surprised at the number of people who claim to be Pearl Jam fans, but have never heard of this song. Do the Evolution was probably the first song from them I heard. If not, it’s the first song that made me go “holy shit who is this?” And not only have they not heard of the song, but that means they never got to witness the mind-blowing video. This is the only Pearl Jam song I know with this hard rock style, and they do it so well I wish they made more.
Pearl Jam collaborated with Todd McFarlane, the original creator of Spawn, for the video. Quote Vedder:
As artists we are challenged to expand the meaning of our work and by utilizing this visual medium and collaborating with a visionary like Todd, we were able to further explore some of the themes we dipicted in the song “Do the Evolution.” Basically, we’ve tried to make a good stoner video.
I think this song is even more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1998 (on MTV nonetheless, this video wouldn’t fly on there today). It talks about the stock market crashing, has people jumping from buildings, and has the president being manipulated by the devil. I suppose I should put a Warning: some scary imagery. Also Interestingly enough, a line in the song goes “2010…watch it go to fire.” Maybe they’ll be right?
Wow. I had a pretty eventful weekend. It started with my friend’s fiancé’s 26th birthday party. This group of friends love their theme parties and this time it was “Rock N Roll Fantasy Camp.” I bought an afro to be Jimi Hendrix, but didn’t feel like finishing the costume, and I looked exactly like Andrew Stockdale of late Wolfmother with the wig, so I went as him. Nobody knew who I was but no matter…I still kicked ass. Fun night, a pic or two will be on Flickr soon.
Saturday I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Arts’ BAM Takeover Festival. The event went really late with tons of films and music performances and djs, but considering the length of each activity we only got in 3 things….but they were definitely the best things at Takeover. We started with Leeroy Greene and Sho’nuff in The Last Dragon (who’s the master!), danced along to The Budos Band (Tower of Power funk), and ended the night with a showing of The Warriors. Win, win, win.
And Sunday night I went to the JapaNoodle Fever Tour 2008, featuring the best in Japanese punk rock. Unfortunately this ran a lot later than I had thought it would on a Sunday and I had to miss the last act, Peelander-Z, but we did get to see TsuShiMaMiRe, Zazen Boys, and Quaff.
TsuShiMaMiRe were these 3 insane chicks that rocked out. Bass player was crazy, but also freaked on the frets. They also did the Powerpuff Girls theme song for Japan. Zazen Boys were like Hella meeting Ben Harper with awful lyrics, but I appreciated their musical talents and speed. Quaff pretty much tore up the scene and brought back 80’s hair metal. Crazy solos, covers, dresses, hair, flutes…They killed it. I would see 2 hours of just them. Its unfortunate that I need to rely on Japan to satiate my punk rock tastes when it pretty much originated here or Britain, but, we do what we must.
Well, that makes up for last week’s laying around all weekend…
