Moved to Tumblr

Now posting here: http://makehello.tumblr.com/

Unicorn Depression

After weeks, sometimes months, of planning, designing, developing, and finally launching a website, I am often hit with a sort of postpartum depression. I used to think that this depression was born in the debugging process...particularly the debugging of CSS weirdness in certain browsers...or one in particular. I.E., wut? You make this pride-bearing design and then you have to 'make it work' in development...as if any styling issue questions the design's integrity.

But then, this most recent project didn't have a single styling issue, in part, because we had the 960 Grid System to depend on. So the debugging process on this project couldn't be blamed for the void I felt where the project had been.

Print projects are fraught with totally different but equally frustrating 'debugging' issues. But at the end of print projects I am not left with any of the same sort of deflation. Websites are such non-existent animals...unicorns. You know what one looks like, what it does, what it's good for, but you'll never see one step out from behind a tree. You'll never really be able to hand one to a friend or keep one on the shelf to pull out ten years later and still dig...at least not yet.

I still love a thing with texture...something that casts a shadow (one not measured in pixels). So after so much work, it's still a bit emotionally weird for me to have produced a unicorn. It might be useful and perhaps even beautiful, but in the end, momentary lights on a screen.

Stupid internet.

Dedicated.

Remember when things were so antiquated as to have dedicated buttons and screens that only displayed information.

Interview with Jason Fried.

Mixergy interviews Jason Fried, 37Signals founder and author of the books Getting Real and the 2010 release, Rework.

Dig.

Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart!

The Pitfalls of Doing Something

For the last several years, my work has been about helping people support their businesses or personal endeavors. And by support I mean a website. A supporting website. That supports. Supports what? The inside of a web browser? Keeping the scroll bar from falling over?

Let's be honest.

A website alone never saved anyone's business or made a dream come true. Many websites have made my dream of being an independent come true, but after a year of boasting across tables that I've been living on my skills and knowhow for the last x number of years, I begin to feel empty.

Let's be honest.

The only times that my skills really ever helped a client were the times when the client had a damn good idea of what they wanted and what a website's place was in their overall plan. I merely offered my limited expertise and delivered when and what I said I would.

I am by default restless. And my desire for some semblance of real accomplishment has breached my fear of actually doing something. The idea of a longterm project chasing a documentary about a subject that seems much too large and serious for this silly boy...this idea is driving me.

I am looking at words like war, freedom, genocide, and anesthetic-free surgery. I am going to sit across from a man who saw and did these things. And I am going to ask him about it. How do I face that after years of just bullying pixels and gentrifying html elements?

I don't know, but that's how it goes.

The Terrors and Truths of Approaching 40.

Some of us are lucky enough to have had elders who didn't suck.

Most of us weren't so lucky though. When we consider what awaits us based on who proceeded us, the alternative to getting old becomes attractive. We devalue our lives and slip into a measured suicide. We eat too much, sleep too little, starve our intellects and shutter our awareness.

I don't know if I am one of the lucky ones, but as I approach 40, I feel like my life keeps getting better...harder, but better. What used to be the harsh lights of failure are now the even lighting of clarity. I was never going to make it as a singer/songwriter. A friend's (Blaine Long) forthcoming album makes that so utterly clear to me. But now, that clarity is comforting. Comforting because I chose to leave musicianship behind when I began to see the truth of it. And now, years later, I am validated in my choice and can enjoy my friend's music without always thinking, "Man, I wish I'd thought of that."

But really, what I am digging so much about nearing forty, aside from the killer gray points in my hair, is my increasing willingness to take on larger and larger projects. I am currently working on a documentary that could take years of hard work and one to many hundred thousand dollars to do. And somehow, I am OK with that span of time and those numbers.

And so, I am hoping to not suck as I age.

iPhone App Development.

Recently, I have finally found the time to dive into the world of app development for the iPhone platform. So far it is proving to be an environment as fine-tuned as it is inspiring, i.e. the haiku of program and design.

The screen space is a fun limitation. It demands design, but because the screen size is always going to be 320x480 (or 480x320), you never have to worry about resizing...or browser neutrality for that reason.

And in terms of resources, the manual memory management is an added coding task but actually always makes it explicit when something is retained or released. A good thing to monitor leaks.

And with all the free APIs out there, particularly around mapping, I'm stoked up to make some more apps!

Wootzorz.

Gestalt Theory.

The relation of things.

Orochon and No Art

Fellow designer, Erik Larabie, and I meet up in LA and avoid art.
Orochon Ramen

It's true that I often lean back from programming or designing and float off momentarily into thoughts of pure art, off into a place where I imagine what it must be like to have a studio and lots of time and someone else's money and just have to produce something that is just honest. Yeah...it's a nice place.

So when I get a chance to come into LA on the (slightly urban feeling) train and dig some art and other cool-tshirt-wearing people, I dig. And I usually get to try a new restaurant and come back with the dug-art-in-LA badge.

But today, Erik and I kept stalling the visit to The Geffen or to Upper Playground or whatever. In the end, we just walked around discussing the balance of believing in science but living day to day with data-less realities and experiences. We ended up on the roof of The Walt Disney Concert Hall tripping out on all the gnarly back structures and steep drops that are hidden behind the structure's graceful outer.

And that's when I felt the coolness of being part of all the gnarliness that goes behind making websites and motion graphics work well, of bringing DESIGN to navigation and to messaging. And it's now that I dig our reluctance to concentrate on someone's art. We spend our days in concentration over the right solutions and picking the 'rightest' solution...and in most cases, having to repeatedly justify our efforts. Sometimes it's just good to slurp noodles and have folk intellectual converstions with a fellow designer.

Thanks for calling me up, Erik. I had a good day.

The New Satellite Office

Sometimes it's good to get out and laptop it at a local coffee house even if you're just researching new CSS techniques.

makeHELLO Site in mH-309 Mode

Art projectiles still in beta.
Art explosions to come.

No Vacations

Bike + Good Coffee House = No need for vacation.

Yet to be named coffee house inside Shake It Up Dance Studio
[edit: now named Kerry's Coffee House]
16 E. State Street
Downtown Redlands, CA

makeHELLO's New Site!

[ dig it ]

makeHELLO Business Cards are In

Sweet!

Illustration : "Instinct"

Using Illustration Friday as inspiration for weekly illustrations.
This week's concept is "instinct".

Here's my explanation for the illustration I chose to use:
What I find compelling about instinct is the question of where instinct ends and choice begins and what the fall of that line means about who we are as humans. As genetic research continues, more questions arise...more controversies mount.

Where does sex end and romance begin. Is the appreciation of beauty in our genes? The urge to protect fragility? Kindness? How much is choice and if so, how are our choices limited by our instincts? Is the mind something or just what the brain does? Is there really a difference between instinct and culture? Is culture a highly flexible product of instinct?

We are still not sure who we are but the subject of instinct seems to me to speak more about how we are who we are.

Fairy Fair Use: The Final Word

Colber Repor February 12 Episode 2:35 to 9:12

New Sketches

All the work on the illustrations for the new site have gotten my pencil's graphite flowing.

Fairey Fair Use or "APpropriation APprobation"

A funny thing happened on the way to this Fair Use Exhibit A. For one, the ASSociated Press, who "know that most artists cannot afford to hire lawyers, and that even the ones who can will probably prefer to settle out of court than get dragged through three years of litigation...[b]ecause juries are unpredictable, copyright law is confusing and defending a copyright lawsuit is extremely expensive[,]"* have lately been attempting to strongarm Shepard Fairey for money he did not even make from the grassroots Obama campaign poster image he derived from a photograph he 'found on the web.' Rather than obey the giant newscorp, our good Shepard has countersued under protection from Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project. According to Jonathon Melber (*quoted above, from his Huffington Post) the salient issue here is transformation, as in primarily conceptual, not necessarily formal (see Street Artist Fairey Gives Obama a Line of Cred.) and also depends, to a lesser extent "on what, exactly, the original work is, how much of it you're using... and whether your new work hurts the commercial market for the original. (Note that the issue has nothing to do with whether anyone thinks your use is "fair.")" A second funny thing: turns out limited edition signed prints of Mannie Ramirez's original photograph are now selling for $1,200. Plus, he wants nothing to do with AP's complaint, and is in turn disputing AP's claim to full copyright ownership! So he has clearly NOT been hurt. (Though I've seen no indication Shepard Fairey offered up Mannie's name before others researched it out, which would be my one ethical criticism..."Keep Track! all ye who click and save, exercise due diligence! It's only fair." ;) For an exhaustive accounting of what Shepard DOES do appropriately and fairly see SuperTouch's irrefutable defense. The core point here is that Shepard repurposed, and thereby transformed, a news photograph meant to convey an event in a specific place into an emblematic illustration meant to convey more abstract notions of dynamic strength, leadership, and 'with it-ness.' There is little doubt he transformed it 'enough.

A third 'funny' thing that happened, this time on the way to DJ an Opening event for his first major solo exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston just three days before his lawsuit was announced, on February 7th. "The artist was arrested at about 9:15p.m. as he was about to enter a sold-out dance event at the ICA on Northern Avenue, known as "Experiment Night." The event is geared toward a younger crowd, with techno-style music, and more than 750 people were waiting for Fairey, some of whom had bought tickets on Craigslist for as much as $500. Fairey was supposed to appear as a guest disc jockey for the kickoff of his exhibit, "Supply and Demand," which will run through Aug. 16. He was scheduled to go on stage at about 10:30 p.m., and an hour later organizers told the crowd that he was arrested." (from The Boston Globe) The warrant was issued January 24th, and Shepard had been in and around the museum and Boston, in plain sight, for two weeks…How do you spell 'backlash'? The arrest was clearly timed to inflict maximum damage, but ironically, has only added to Fairey's fame and credibility, just when it was starting to look as if he'd been co-opted by Big Media. ("Or has he?")

It's easy to be cynical about all this, even perhaps on BOTH sides of this spectacle. And it's not as if the Associated Press doesn't do some good work out there, or isn't struggling to survive in a brutal down market. But I think the lesson here, because there HAS to be a lesson here, is to grasp the essence of Fair Use Doctrine as it applies to your own work.

The Strange History of Lorem Ipsum

Who can resist a lesson in Latin? I heard the blurbs for this while driving around a coupla times, and was curious enough to go back and find the piece. Thought it might deepen the experience of deploying this ancient burble...for all of us text block fillers. And perhaps have a ready reference for those disoriented by their first time encounter with 'dummy text.' Also, it's just good form to know what the weapons you're wielding are made of. (Hint: it has a lot to do with pain.)

podcast on The World

Project Resurrection

Rick and I have resurrected an animation project from last year. I'll be uploading random animation sketches and tests and then eventually the whole short. We're pretty stoked to get this project going again.

It's based on a childhood memory and centers on distance between a father and a son in an immigrant family. We're hoping we can bring across some of the subtleties Rick and I feel when we discuss and consider this memory.

I am hoping to show off the completed film in a month or so.




{ Sketches on Flickr }