Work in Progress - 2009 Calendar

It's been a while since I've posted any new work, so here's a little teaser of something I'm working on for this year's Craftland show. It's a calendar of loose cards that fit into a jewel case stand. I think I'm coming up on about halfway done, so I'd better get a move on. Here's the current state of November. Hopefully you can tell it's supposed to be like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.

I still really have no art (or many concepts) for March, June, August, & September, so let me know if you've got any suggestions.

Cool Stuff, take 2

Okay, so maybe a better idea is to just post cool things as I find them, rather than trying to gather a bunch a week at a time, and then most likely neglect to actually post them. So scratch that weekly column idea, and here a couple of cool things I've found recently:

Little People - A tiny street art project by Slinkachu

I've seen somewhat similar shots before of miniatures, but they're usually contained within their own, somewhat more constructed environment, where these often use the surrounding environment more or less as is. Very nice.

The Eyeballing Game


This is a good time. I just got a score of 3.88.

New (hopefully weekly) column - the coolest things I saw/read/heard/did this week

Well the title says it all. I do intend to post this every week, but we'll see. I'm going to try to keep this at least relatively design related, but will not hesitate if something is just too cool to ignore. I think I also probably won't rank the items, so in no particular order, here are the coolest for this (now last) week:

1. The tallest Lego Tower

Just plain cool.

2. That Lovely Glow Effect tutorial on dooce.com
I consider myself to be pretty darn proficient at Photoshop, but I feel like there's always something new to learn. Sometimes it's something brand new, sometimes it's just a much more efficient way to do something I already knew how to do, and sometimes it's just a technique it never really occurred to me to try. Falling under that last category is this trick playing with a duplicate layer, gaussian blur, and transparency. Heather Armstrong describes a really simple technique to get photos to look "fuzzy or warm and mashed potato-y". I gave the technique a quick try myself with a photo of Willa from our apple picking trip last weekend. I'll definitely use this technique again in the future. Here's a before and after:

beforeafter

3. I became a Print Design Affiliate on shineboxprint.com
It remains to be seen whether or not this will actually turn out to be one of the coolest things I did this week, but it can't hurt. I could get a project or two from it, and I think they've got some really cool looking products. I first read about shinebox on uncrate. It's listed as 'The Buyer's Guide for Men,' but I would definitely encourage women to check it out too. There's some cool stuff on there.

4. The E Ink Esquire Magazine cover
I had seen a video of this a few weeks back and was totally intrigued. I hadn't really looked into how it worked, but this week I saw a video of it all taken apart, which is pretty cool to see. I still want to see it in person. It is cool without a doubt, but it does seem pretty wasteful/unnecessary. What's going to happen to all that stuff? I can't really imagine this sort of thing becoming commonplace in these green-conscious times.