(h/t beautifultype.net)

(h/t wes molebash)

(RSS readers, click here if you don’t see the video)

(source: lynda.com)

Fascinating. One, because it’s all custom…and such a manual process. Can you imagine doing 1500 pages of pencil sketches for a single logo?

Amazing.

Here’s his site.

Here’s an interview from 2008.

Here are some other typographers he mentions:

• Frank E. Blokland, Dutch Type Library
• Hoefler & Frere-Jones
• Jill Bell
• Marian Bantjes

Here’s my favorite quote:

I’m still learning how to do draw. There are no secrets to what I do. All that what I do is hard work and observation. Really. And doing things over and over until you’re satisfied with them — ’til it’s right.

So, do we care about this kind of craftsmanship anymore?

(h/t logobird)

This quote from Ira Glass encourages me.

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me…is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

’nuff said.

(h/t just creative design)

(click here if you can’t see the video)

This is definitely a tension I feel in my work.

I thrive in environments that values imagination.

My primary role is developer, but I’m far from a robot.

How about you?

(h/t adamhann.com)

Here it is.

My first painting.

Commissioned by my lovely wife.

Here’s the ColourLovers.com palette we created in preparation.

I decided to design a knock-off knock-off.

Ta-da!

Never Stop Kissing It.

Here’s a sweet Google Chrome Cadillac Escalade:

(h/t drawn.ca)

After four months and over 115 hours, the First Baptist Church of Jackson, MN website is now live.

It was definitely challenging for me personally.  I got to do a lot of things that I love to do.  Specifically:

1. The design work — I love it.  I obsess over it.  I can’t stop thinking about logos and other design elements.  I have nearly 70 design & media related RSS feeds that I read in Google Reader.  I’m certainly not the most talented designer, but I know a few good ones who don’t mind me bouncing ideas off of them.
2. Helping out — There’s something about helping out that really drives me.
3. Learning some new things — Techniques and tools for doing websites change so fast, that I have to force myself to not redo every website I’ve ever done every couple of months.  It’s really hard to stay on top of it all, but trying new tools and techniques is always helpful — even if I don’t end up using them.

Some of the cool stuff about this new site:

1. Google Apps for your Domain — I helped them get Google Apps set up for their church.  Doing so provided an iCal feed that can be parsed and displayed on the site in PHP.  Google Apps is an absolutely amazing set of free tools for any kind of organization.  I use it at work, home and church.
2. Feedburner-based podcast — Feedburner allows tracking of iTunes subscriptions and offers many features to pump up visibility of a podcast.
3. Yahoo Grids page framework — It made the table-less page layout and font sizing a snap.  I’m also going to be using this on a project at work.  Saved a lot of headaches for sure.
4. SlideShowPro is one sweet flash slideshow and video component.  It’s worth the money, believe me.
5. Customized Suckerfish drop-down menu.  I needed a good cross-browser compatible CSS and JavaScript drop-down menu and Suckerfish fit the bill.  Turned out real nice, I think.

Here’s the steps with pictures to illustrate his technique:

1. Open a cool photo in Fireworks (Yes, Ray Allen is cool, if you didn’t already know).

2. Add this effect: Adjust Color -> Levels

3. Set the max value in Output Level to 4

4. Add another effect: Add this effect: Adjust Color -> Levels. This time set the max Input Level to 4

6. Voila! Here’s what you get. You can tweak the levels on both sides to get the amount of posterization you want.

urbanfonts.com and dafont.com