Sk-etchbook

It's always the little things. In the world of web design the things which you would expect to be simple and obvious seem to cause the most pulling out of hair and raised stress levels.

Like a simple request to provide Letterheads in Microsoft Word format.

Luckily however I've already battled this foe.

Here's a great tutorial on how to do this...

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I absolutely love Wired's November cover. The baby's expression is priceless, the posture is perfect and the lighting treatment gives it the perfect unnatural intensity bringing about subtle feelings of uncomfortable fear. The bold single word is also a terrific choice which takes ultimate control over the viewers train of thought.

One image that really says a thousand words.

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I've just been writing a bio and this entertained me so I thought I would share.

What kind of world were you born into. What events, music, trends or fashions have played a part in shaping the person you are?

I was born in 1982, I've just been having a look at what was in the charts that year and they were some reet choons indeed! Funny thing is most of them are still reasonably well known and the majority of the number 1's spent 3-7 weeks at the top. I seriously doubt as much of the chart music out at the moment will be remembered twenty seven years down the road.

www.number-ones.co.uk

www.chartmagic.co.uk

According to these web sites my unholy arrival was accompanied by a bit of reggae from Musical Youth with their 'Pass the Dutchie' number closely followed by Culture Club's 'Do You Really Want to Hurt Me'.

Check out these videos...

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Bit pissed off.

I've spent a whole day sorting out issues caused by dodgy fonts. Free fonts may be easy on the pocket but you have to pay for them in other ways.
There are a ton of fonts on my system now which prevent scrolling in the Adobe Suite and cause me no end of bother.

A bit more on the matter:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/fontoverload_2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_management_software

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/better_font_management/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/05/25-font-management-tools-reviewed/

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Today's problem is how to write an effective Bio? How do you condense a lifetime of experience and achievements into a few sentences. Whats more how do you write something which captivates the reader, summerises your (professional) persona and gets the message (that you are fantastic and they need you) across. Whats more how personal can you make it, surely the style and tone should also reflect your personality but as it is written for a purpose these aspects should not overshadow the desired outcome.

Hmmmm... Here's some reading (of varying usefulness, but a start).

How to Write a Bio

Brand-yourself.com

About.com

Ehow

Sitepoint

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I've been doing some logo design training for the past week or so...

Now I can admittadly be a bit of a space cadet at times, living in my own little magic garden shed on top of an imaginary hill made of porridge oats.

But..

One of the logos referred to a few times is FedEx (quite a famous and well know logo). I'm currently on a chapter about the use of negative space and FedEx is again been used as and example.

I'm ashamed to say I'd never even noticed the uniquely inventive aspect of this logo before. And I've even worked in companies using FedEx, handling their branded document envelopes weekly even daily.

Now have I just been really dim here or has anyone else missed it too?

Ready?

OK, who can see the arrow? Or more importantly did you know it was there before it was pointed out?

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Here is a really nice article covering 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design.

Topics Include:

How do users think?

Don’t make users think
Don’t squander users’ patience
Manage to focus users’ attention
Strive for feature exposure
Make use of effective writing
Strive for simplicity
Don’t be afraid of the white space
Communicate effectively with a “visible language”
Conventions are our friends
Test early, test often

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Here are some random notes I found from my old Media Studies GNVQ course. Old but still very true, it's a shame technology isn't the same. As soon as I seem to learn anything language or software wise it seems to be outdated!

Module - DTP

Considerations when planning a design project:

MARKET
BUDGET
MATERIALS
TYPE/FONT
SIZE
DEADLINE

Module - Media in Context

Find four examples of the functions of the mass media:
1. Entertain
2. Inform
3. Socialise - how to behave/who to be
4. Propaganda

Case study used: The Full Monty

Entertain - uses humor to tell a story.

Inform - Depicts working class life and how redundancy effected them.

Socialise - Nathan does not like has dad stripping. Gerald lies to his wife, says he has a job as he is under pressure to be well off and respected.

Propaganda - people are not accepted openly in uncommon roles ie. women welding and men hoovering. Weight and sex-appeal worries.

Living up to a stereotype causes issues when they are experiencing difficulty meeting these expectations. Illustrates how relationships function better when people are free to be themselves.

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I've been looing at different types of promotional items lately. This company has some interasting products taht wont blow the bank.

Paper Products Design

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Typography is an area which can be pretty boring, it can be extremely time consuming and can be very irritating when it just doesn't look quite right.

Previously I've snarled at typography and backed away from it. I do now however seem to be changing my mind about it, I would even say I'm starting to find it quite interesting. From looking at a ton of minimalism works previously I have really begun to appreciate the effect and impact a single letter or number can have. Whole words can also be visually striking, a well designed sentence may be profound.

Paragraphs I'm still on the fence about and as for chapters, well they're just ridiculous.


A Lesson in Typography



V for Vendetta in Kinetic Typography




Typolution



Typography Lectures

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Here are a few really good lectures given relating to good graphic design, what is effective, what really communicates and how the ideas arise.

David Carson
David Carson on design + discovery

Extremely well presented lecture. David engages the audience with humor and familiarity which makes for easy watching. There is an excellent choice of chosen visual material which personifies the thrust of the presentation. David is a successful print & typography designer and stresses the part part inspiration plays in design he also states that he has no formal design training, his background is sociology.




Paula Scher
Serious Play

Paula presents in a more introverted manner yet she still comes across open, natural and friendly. She covers her rise to fame over the years reflecting on some of her most successful works, sharing her opinion on what makes a successful designer and also comments how admired or "serious" works become "solemn" and loose their appeal. She also stresses that good design comes about through play and how inexperience can be better than experience.

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BBC - Genius of Photography
Andre Kertesz – Meudon
Photography shows a world that lies beneath appearances.
A camera obscurer.
Roman, Pennin – woman traces her dying lover on the wall.
Silver salts, react to light.
1802 – experiments, couldn’t fix shadows.
1839 – method invented by Talbot (paper, reproducible).
1839 – method invented Louie Daguerre (Daguerretypes, better quality, not reproducible).
Photographs – a looking glass view of the world.
Process of framing says “look at this”.
Undiscriminates between important/unimportant.
Doesn’t have a hierarchy of psychological interests.
Stanford/Moorbridge – Horse photos capture the motion.
Intrusion in time.
Commercial use.
Carpet Z photographs (8 small images)
Japanese women – Simona
Gaspar Felix – Nadar
Charles Boudlaire – Nadar
Captured photographs changed fine art (people & objects would be cropped).
Stereoscopic photographs.
Kodak.
Brownie camera.
Vernacular photography.
Killed – William Burke
Jacque Lartigue
Pictorialism

Diane Arbus
Camera is a licence
People want the attention.

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Firstly this is one of the rough options for a business card. I already had psd & ai templates for the dimensions from my previous attempts. Am thinking stark and minimal is better at the moment but not certain, need to settle on a main design concept first. Don't want to print them until I've sorted the domain and don't really want to use Vistaprint again. The colors were crap last time and also want a better quality finish as the card gives off as much impression as the content.

Anyway I was banging on about defining myself. As a company I need to work out two main issues initially. Core values and Mission statement. I have a rough idea of these in theory however refining these and whittling them down to communicate as effectively as possible requires quite a bit of research. Once these are appropriately settled upon the design progression shall become more natural.

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Right I need to pull my finger out and get back on with the paperwork and research for establishing myself. Well I haven't exactly been slacking recently but have been more focused on learning Actionscript, philosophy, psychology and some theories relating to design/advertising/perception and other areas. Predominantly I'm focusing on these areas because I'm basing my Critical Studies essay around the subjects of human perception/misperception but I also find some of the subjects incredibly interesting and beneficial on a personal (and professional in terms of strategy) development level. I've also picked up a good few tricks on the design front, have started on some PHP, and tried to start on learning more about Joomala and Wordpress but not got far yet.

Anyway back to the point. As I may have previously mentioned I'm trying to amalgamate everything into superbriefs. Here we have the Major Project, merged with Enterprise and Innovation. It's also kinda merged with PPD2 (a poor excuse for a brief if ever I saw one), which I'm not convinced is not just a good way of getting the students to build a database for the college to use for shameless self promotion. Slave labor or what!



So far I have downloaded Wordpress to document the set up but I'm not sure where to put it! The Primitive Ink domain is not going to be used for web design any more so no point putting it there. I'm not yet ready to register my final domain and it wouldn't look very professional either having a blog about setting the company up attached to the main website. It can probably be attached to my Shaunio domain as this is going to host personal and experimental shit whenever I get round to sorting through it all.



Leading nicely on to my next subjects, the hosting of domains and my domain name. I have been researching reseller hosting for a while. The choice out there is phenomenal and the variations in facilities, allowances and prices is huge. I started referencing reputable magazines, reading forums and also using Whois requests to see who hosts some sites designed by companies of interest. At the present time I'm still swayed towards Media Temple as they are extremely reputable, offer excellent functionality and are very competitively priced. The cons however are they are based in the US. In this day and age this has an unnoticeable effect on the download speeds and is more cost effective then UK hosting however it can negatively impact on search listings. The SEO war is paramount to any company marketing itself online and localization is detected using both the domain and the IP of the host. Not so big an issue if you want a .co.uk but a .com would be trouble.

So I'm still undecided. I have however decided to use an alternate domain name for myself as I want to get "web design" into the URL. The downside is this is making the URL quite long so I'm looking to use an abbreviated version for printed documents and email addresses. I'm just struggling to find a short and relevant abbreviation that hasn't been bought by one of them awful bulk buying companies! Needless to say there isn't much point printing off any new business cards until this issue is sorted.

Onward then to planning and documentation. I need primarily to finish my Business Plan and write a Brief or myself. Sounds easy. No, it isn't.

To produce something of use the Business Plan needs to incorporate financial predictions of annual turnover and a breakdown of expenses etc. The documentation from Business Link used in conjunction with docs from E&I along with several online resources are useful in doing this in as far as calculating outgoing expenses goes. The same sources are somewhat useful in predicting also how much you need to earn. The problem for me and where the real leg work is involved then comes from working out everything I actually do when working on a project. Finding how much time is spent at each step of the project then working out what extras a client may ask for and how to charge for these accordingly. This is however only one approach. You also need to check out the competitions pricing, see what similar end-results are priced at then see if your prices are competitive. Then you are left with a rough idea of what you can charge. What you need to survive on up to what you think you can get away with based on skill, experience, your portfolio etc. Then it's decide on which pricing strategy to go for and how to synchronize this with how you plan to market yourself. By this point I had most definitely lost interest. This is an example of what was needs to be covered when costing for an average project. For each of these I worked out an average hourly rate for myself then estimated how long needs to be allowed based on past experience. I have no idea how anyone could do this if they don't have existing experience?

Marketing & Promotion
Pitching
Inception
Consultation & Concept
Market research (outsourced)
Semantic Content Creation
Graphics Design Site (3 options)
Logo creation (3 options)
Photography & Product shots
Stock Photography
Studio/Location Photography (outsourced)?
Video Content Production (outsourced)
Copy Writing
Coding
Programming
Graphics Design Flyers (3 options)
Graphics Design Business cards (3 options)
Search Engine Optimisation
Testing
Image Galleries (how many images?)
Product Galleries
Updateable galleries
Updateable shop
Updateable text content
Updateable image content
Databases
Forms
Message Boards
Blogs
Further Consultations
Updates

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Now it the time for sorting through my mess of paperwork and all the random bits to do with the last brief. So I can show I have done what I have done n all...

Email first:

This was an online tutorial done on explosion effects.
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/index.cfm?featureID=1769

Online viral communication research
http://www.10yetis.co.uk/newsletters/viral-word-of-mouth-campaigns.html

Viral Marketing - getting your audience to do your marketing for you

viral marketing UK internet users can no longer live without their email and Word Of Mouthen are more reliant than men

word of mouth The most email reliant group is 25-34 yr olds

Word of Mouth - Viral Marketing Over 1/3rd of all UK mobile phone users could not live without text messaging

word of mouth marketing Of UK internet users, 90% have opened an attachment to their email and less than 3% do not receive attachments

viral marketing specialists The majority of UK internet users have visited a website by clicking on a link within an email sent to them by a friend or work colleague.

Viral advertising By far and away the biggest reason for people passing on a message to a friend or colleague is to make them laugh.

I consider the next stat to be vital for helping to decide what goes into your campaign...

Viral marketing campaigns The top three reasons why someone would view an attachment or click on a link in an email they've received is because it's (1) a product recommendation, (2) a chance to win a competition or (3) something funny. Plus, superstitious chain mails interest hardly anyone.

Sending additional data with fileReference
when u use this code, you can send any kind of data with in the POST

private var fileUpLoader:FileReference;
private var myUrlRequest:URLRequest;

private function startUpload():void {
var uploadToUrl:String = "http://yourdomain.com/upload/upload_handler.php";

myUrlRequest = new URLRequest();
myUrlRequest.url = uploadToUrl;
myUrlRequest.data = new URLVariables();
myUrlRequest.data.user_id = 1;

fileUpLoader = new FileReference();
fileUpLoader.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, selectHandler);
fileUpLoader.browse();
}

private function selectHandler (evt:Event):void {
fileUpLoader.upload(myUrlRequest);
}

// PHP File

$fileData = $_FILES["Filedata"];
$fileName = $fileData["name"];
$tmp_name = $fileData["tmp_name"];

file_put_contents('debug1.txt, move_uploaded_file($tmp_name, $fileName));
file_put_contents('debug2.txt', $_POST['user_id']);

// now you have 3 new files
1. the file you uploaded
2. debug1.txt containing true (if all went well);
2. debut2.txt containing 1, the user_id you specified in the AS


Resizing an image with PHP
When you publish swf in there is a size of swf like below

WIDTH=250 HEIGHT=250

you can use the size field dynamicly, if you are using the php like below

WIDTH= HEIGHT=

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This was the artwork shown for the final crit. I am satisfied where it's at however I did struggle to achieve an exact representation of what I imagined. The blurred movement of shooting objects in perspective was the most notable of these, they all looked wrong and as if they were moving sideways rather than forward. Some of the shape studies I did in Photoshop were interesting however the aesthetic is easy to get wrong and I didn't want to end up with something looking like early attempt at photo realistic computer game graphics. My greatest advancements, in terms of knowledge, were in illustrator. From a couple of tutorials I collected some good techniques to create faux-lighting and shadow effects, current reading has also given me a more in depth understanding of how we perceive shape, colour and form in daily life. This knowledge was applied to the designs and considered along the way predominantly colour continuity, relativity and intensity. It's also worth a mention that my readings in Perception Psychology covers an interesting subject on 2D images. We learn so relate symbolic images as part of our growth and development as a child, although modern art and design utilizes a depth of techniques to realistically reproduce 3D space it is still only a representation. If you were to show a drawing created in modern day England to someone from a culture using very different symbolic representation then they would not at first have any idea of what the picture was. The best thing I can liken this to would be for one of us to look at a wall of hieroglyphics, however even here we have an advantage as we no longer live in self contained cultures so our minds are more pliable and exposed to more forms of art so we are able to pick out what some of the hieroglyphs would represent.

Anyway back to the artwork. The styles colours etc. were all discussed previously so here I'll just cover what I don't like and think needs improvement. Overall I'm liking the look of the vectors, they achieve the feeling of business, joy and movement I was looking for. I want to improve on the seamlessness of the piece as a whole, I wanted to have a night/day/sceney/abstract design in each corner which all draw on each other and blend to create a whole. The artwork still does not mesh as I hoped and looks a little too "psychedelic vomit" at the moment. I intend to render lighting effects on the lover layers and use blending modes to create a slight variance in the hues and slightly tweek some of the upper layers to get the colours to sync more analogously. The back ground also need the line breaking up around the feathered edge. This I shall try to achieve with some brushes and distortion. Finally I may also experiment stacking the graphics giving them some movement and depth and may also replace the sun layer with a swf so the rays can rotate.

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We presented the final (well semi-final) piece yesterday for our viral campaign. As it is a campaign we would have been better off having some presentation boards but unfortunately we didn't get round to pulling these together. I started a generic background but we need to sift though our planning and early docs, tidy them up a bit. Just thinking about the flow now I would say the boards should go something like:

Client Brief, our assessment of and extraction of key requirements.

A written proposal detailing our response to the brief.

Justify our choice of the "funny video" medium, research into humor and elaborate on possible video options we came up with.

Distribution net diagram.

Design proposal (email & site), reasoning behind choice of style.

Walk through of site functionality.

Label mock up.

Summarize and mention benefits and any supporting stats.

Suggest future development possibilities.

As far as the project goes as a whole I'm satisfied but it could have been better in my part if the graphic layers and CSS alignment were finalized. Would have been super, smashing, great if I actually finished the functionality side of things but deconstructing the project now I realize I have added a good few hours to my flight time spent in illustrator learning vector art and faux-3D. I was going to say I didn't think I'd learnt much new in Photoshop but I have spent a while messing around so I'm sure I'll have picked up a few new parlor tricks. Functionality I did get a little stumped, I can see easily how to get the separate required elements to work but synchronizing them to work as a whole confused me as it requires rewriting the PHP processing script which is still a new language to me. Gonna keep trying tho, after all where's the fun if you don't make life hard for yourself!

Now the video part I have to admit I was a tad disappointed by. The flash animation was far too simple and some of the improvements we had previously discussed had not been implemented. We had a longer conversation after the presentation and I helped Luke resolve some of the technical and practical issues he was experiencing. The main critiques in terms of the animation are it lacks personality and character. The lack of eye or any other movement had a paralyzing, flattening effect on the fruit. This makes them just bits of fruit and the observer is unlikely to develop any emotional rapport with a bit of fruit. Hope fully Luke is going to add some eye movement or at least eyebrows and we also discussed the possibility of caricaturization ie. Groucho glasses. The're also needs to be some laughter at the end, no laughter is a dead end / humor killer, I know it's a tacky joke but it's more compelling to laugh when you're not doing it alone. Think the only other essential fix was the shadow needs softening beneath the fruit.

Now as for the 3D branding part what I have seen looks good however Crenton's been chasing doctors round for the past few weeks and been having issues getting her head round Real Flow so we have only seen stills so far. The still look pretty good from what I can tell, as usual however near the end of the project we came up with having the juice been poured over the fruit characters after the joke. This would have been much better, more consistent and funny in a random Noel's House Party-esque manner. Still too late to change all this now!

The only issue I can see is the lack of consistency between the two different animation styles. It will take some cleaver editing to get them not to look like two unrelated clips hacked together but if the negative space and simple shading remains consistent it should work. The call to action included in the video shall be something as follows, this wasn't included in the pres but it's short, sweet and to the point:

Win a taste of celebrity by
telling us what makes you Feel Good!

Go to www.feelgooddrinks.co.uk >>

Forward to a friend >>

Finally the feedback from the room was limited. The main point was we we're too vague about how the campaign was structured, I agree with this it wasn't clearly presented. The issues with the animation were covered and I think the only question I received was how the vector art was created. It's a shame really presenting work for online delivery to a room predominantly focusing on moving image. I've been building up my coding/developer knowledge, sometimes I think certain aspects of which are interesting however I have to hold back on techno babble as it often met by a sea of blank faces. Feels kinda like I got confused and turned up at a Porn convention dressed in my finest Star Trek costume!

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I saw a bit of this program the other night. It was an updated version of the program aired in 2000. The feelings of nostalgia towards some of these commercials are amazing and it really illustrates what an effective way this is of instilling values to a product or service. Tempting you to associate an inanimate object with situations or visual experiences which somehow make you want to willingly befriend the product and even have a emotional response to it.

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Seems I've managed to pull the leaning resources together for three briefs here which is exceptionally beneficial to me since my reading speed is officially crap. I have been making my way though a book titled the Psychology of Perception since before Xmas and also listening to the Prof. Patrick Grim Philosopy of Mind lectures.

Conveniently then I intend to do my critical studies essay on Human thought, belief and perception. This will briefly outline the development of the human sensory system from birth, cover some of the psychological and philosophical implications and discuss the factors influencing the development of identity, personality and preference. Once the groundwork has been laid the remainder of the essay shall cover issues related to perception and knowledge. Included in this section will be subjects such as culture, media, advertising, branding and manipulation. I have a broad selection of angles to approach these subjects from and a good amount of authorities to reference. Here are but a few of the afore mentioned:

Bertrand Russel – Theory of Discriptions
Wittgenstein - private language
Subjective / Objective
Colour Blindness
Homunculus
Sorites Paradox

Epistimology – Study of Knowledge & Belief
Agnotology – study of ignorance (more science related)
Agnoiology – Study of unknown

James Ferrier
Alasdair MacIntyre

Psychological Processes
Denial
Cognitive dissonance
Self-deception
Self fulfilling prophecy
Propaganda
Artificial_controversy
Denialism
Black_propaganda
Logical_fallacy
Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
Obscurantism
Politicization_of_science
Historical_revisionism_(negationism)
Media_circus
Missing_white_woman_syndrome
Trial_by_media
Sensationalism
Media_bias
Shock_value
Pseudoscience
Deviancy_amplification_spiral
Popular_culture
FARK:_How_Mass_Media_Tries_to_Pass_off_Crap_as_News
Media_manipulation
Advertising
Branded_content
Communication_design
Conquesting
Coolhunting
Reality_marketing
Integrated_Marketing_Communications
Pseudo-event
Shockvertising

Gibsons Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_law

Distrust or hostility towards intellectuals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism


The other two briefs I refer to are the Professional Practice and Photography. This is however coincidental (if ya believe in coincidences?) the aesthetic requirements of the Feel Good brand call for use of colour and shape to represent their fun and playful outlook. These were some of the first aspects covered in the Psychology of Perception book which gives a blow by blow account of how we learn to use our sense of vision and decipher objects via learning to understand shapes and colours. This relates perfectly to the photography because the principles of shape, colour/contrast texture, light and shade are the most fundamental concepts of photography.

So why is this useful? Well, I've been doing tutorials for Illustrator and Photoshop going into how to mimic three dimensional objects. The more awareness you gain then in knowing what to mimic also allows you understand what can be manipulated in a photograph to enhance, subdue or shift focus around your imagery.

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