I assume that since I haven’t posted in such a long time that nobody really reads this blog any more, but this video sums up my thoughts on formal education so well that I just had to post it. I like this girl.

Abduzeedo had me making excited grunting noises with this magnificent post. Like, wow. If you didn’t click that link, the photo below should convince you to.

What I had planned to blog about completely pales in comparison to that awesome photo, so I’ll save it for later.

Also, the “send” button on my contact form is there once again, after taking it down because of the incredible amounts of spam it made for me. Find it here

One post that helped me a lot when I was starting with more advanced retouching techniques was How to contour your face. by CeeMe. Its a makeup tutorial, not retouching, but its really not hard to translate.

I see a lot of beginning retouchers making the mistake of using liquify or some other method that actually moves pixels around to try to make people thinner or better when in many cases a little shadow here or there would do the trick. Thats not to say liquify isn’t totally kickass, I use it often, but a lot of beginners would do good to back off a little and try some DnB.

The gulf photo plus 2010 shoot-out from gulf photo plus on Vimeo.

Ive been waiting for this to get uploaded for ages. Its three of my favorite photographers, I’ve followed each of their blogs for a while now, in a shoot out. Then theres a little Joe McNally added on the side. Seriously, whats not to like? David Hobby gets the vote from me.

The extreme amount of work I mentioned in the last post is nearly done, and I can return to my normal duties. Its nice to be able to slow down for a bit. Im going to sit back, relax, and hopefully write something interesting for you tomorrow.

One of the more inspiring projects I’m working on right now is DigiCMS. Its a content management system being built by Digitized Solutions as the ultimate CMS solution for their clients. Rather then waste time deciding whether to use ExpressionEngine or WordPress or Joomla or whatever, they decided to make their own from the ground up. Everything they need, and nothing they don’t, and they got me to design the front end. Its been an interesting experience for me as I have to put more focus on usability and less on aesthetics then I do with most jobs, and its been pretty enlightening.

This is the face I make when I design something I am inspired about:

Ive been making it a lot lately.

In any case, I am really looking forward to seeing this project finished, as it looks like it would fit the needs of my clients and me quite nicely as well. I’ll ping you people when theres something more substantial that I can show you.

To any poor soul who keeps checking back here in the hopes of finally finding part two of White Background / Studio photography with one flash up, I am sorry. Ive been bombarded with work recently, I hope to have it up soon.

This article on smashing magazine was the most interesting and informative thing that Ive read in a long long time. It should be required reading for any designer who wants to become a successful freelancer. Thats all I really have to say, just read it if you haven’t already.

Common Questions About Design Professionalism

I found this part especially interesting, its some major food for thought:

Imagine for a moment that you’re a physician trying to determine the best course of treatment for your patient. In that situation, you would not ask the patient what he thinks should be prescribed. Instead you would inquire about his symptoms, history, environment, physical needs (e.g. is he a pro athlete, or does he simply need to be able to get around normally?). The answers to these questions will define the constraints and indicate the appropriate course of action. Your patient’s opinion on what prescription would be appropriate is likely irrelevant; he came to you because he lacks the ability to help himself.

I’ve a huge folder of things I’ve found on the web that have inspired me in some way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be awesome, just has to spark my imagination in some way. Heres a few of the recent ones:

I’ve always had this grand vision to try to do a video like this, just on a smaller scale, for the websites in my portfolio. Sadly the amount of time it takes to create something like that is more then it takes to make the website itself so I don’t see that happening any time soon. Still, whenever I see a video like this it brings back the urges. Also, has anybody noticed that churches these days seem to have an incredible amount of awesome websites in comparison to websites on other topics?

Oookay… elephants…

The Starcraft2 website is amazing, the design, perfect use of flash, the layers + transparency in the footer, then of course the detection to see if your browser supports it. The website even works in IE 6 for Gods sake. I marvel. You cant see any of this awesomeness in the little image above, so go to the Starcraft2 Website at Starcraft2.com. Be sure to scroll all the way down for the intense footer.

Its just… nice. Not super spectacular, theres just something about the look of it that makes me feel warm and fuzzy… or… something.

The grand finale:

Yeasayer “ONE” By: Radical Friend from ODDBLOOD on Vimeo.

The music is wonky, the singer even more so, and I’m not even sure if I would call it “inspirational,” but its like a trip on acid and totally worth your time.

More to come.

Lets face it, if you havent seen Lightbox used in a website, then you’ve been living under a (big) rock.

It took a big jump in popularity about a year ago, and since then has has been used in thousands of websites. Alternatives which essentially do the same thing, just a little differently, like Fancybox and ThickBox have been released as well, which have also been used all over the place.

It is, of course, immensely popular for a reason. I wont get into all the specifics, but basically its an extremely easy easy way to display content (Lightbox can only handle images, to display HTML or video you’re going to have to go with Fancybox or another of the relatives) without taking the user to a new page, and it looks good while it does it.

Fancybox:

I tend to think its a bit overused these days, as lightbox and its derivatives are so easily recognizable its hard to implement it in a way where it doesn’t scream at you “IM LIGHTBOX”. Ive never really been one to not use something just because other people do though, so you might notice it (Fancybox) used to display images in my portfolio.

Now I’m going to get back to writing more stuff about off-camera flash for you to read tomorrow.

Ive been going through clientsfromhell.tumblr.com recently and am amazed at how often I come across things that ive heard from clients.

Client: “We’d like to illustrate the power of our new product in the PowerPoint presentation. So we’d like to have a man in a business suit flying through the air with a cape, but we want the cape to be a screenshot of our website”

Me: “…”

That one reminds me of one of my first design jobs with my sister. We had a great laugh at that one.

I stumbled on this link as well which had me staring at my monitor in a cross between terror and amusement.