Friday, December 16, 2011
Get a hobby.
A few weekends ago I found myself getting ready for another work-week and started thinking about how I had spent those two, precious “off days”. While most of the time was spent with my family, there was a large chunk that had been devoted to work, either by thought or by action. I’ve often said, half-joking, that my hobby is doing the same thing that I do for a living. The thing is, that’s the truth. I love what I do, the creative process, the technology angle, helping better my clients. But although I love it, I’ve come to the realization that I need a new way to spend my down time. I need a real hobby.
Searching for something offline.
It didn’t take me long to run through a list of things that I’d like to do. It took even less time to start crossing most of those items off the list. Finally an option came to the top that would fit the bill. R/C cars. I’ve always been fascinated by radio-controlled cars and have longed for one since my days in elementary school. Sure I’ve had an assortment of R/C cars in the past, none of them could be customized or tuned (easily). This hobby would also allow me to scratch my itch for racing that I’d been left with since I stopped kart racing back in 2000.
A chance to recharge, in more ways than one.
While I haven’t begun my foray into the R/C world (yet), I’ve started researching and reviewing, and hanging out at hobby shops. It’s fun and a welcomed escape from my other hobby. Here’s to hoping it provides some creative benefits too. What can I say, I’m a creature of habit.
Posted on 12/16/11 at 11:03 PM by Tim - Categories:
Design
Inspiration
Personal
Tags: R/C Cars, Radio-Controlled, Hobby
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Audio Inspiration
A little visual and mechanical inspiration, with audio at the heart of it all.
Posted on 12/14/11 at 11:21 AM by Tim - Categories:
Tags:
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Playing with Penultimate
No matter how many iPad sketching and note-taking apps I may download, I always find myself coming back to Penultimate. I fell in love with this app about a year ago and it has replaced my once-trusty paper sketchbook. A few updates ago, the folks at Cocoa Box gave Penultimate the ability to have custom papers imported into it and I’ve finally gotten around to kicking the tires on that feature. I know, I’m a little late to the party, but I have some interesting contributions that I’ll be taking the wraps off of soon.
Posted on 12/13/11 at 10:52 PM by Tim - Categories:
Design
Workflow
Tags: iPad, iOS, Penultimate
Friday, December 09, 2011
The joy of personal projects.
As the end of the year quickly approaches, it’s easy to feel run down and uninspired when it comes to design work and projects. Doing work for clients is great, don’t get me wrong. It pays the bills and it puts food on the table. But nonstop client projects might put creativity into a rut. When looking at the new year and gearing up for new clients and new opportunities, don’t forget to look at yourself and your ideas for potential projects.
I’m excited to be working on great client work but I’ve found myself just as thrilled to be starting some personal projects that I’ve been mulling over for the past year (or so). These are a little outside of my normal work and will be as challenging as anything I’ve ever worked on in the past, but I can’t wait to get them started and see what happens with them. I’ll reveal more information closer to the individual launches, but until then remember to make time for yourself!
Posted on 12/09/11 at 02:03 PM by Tim - Categories:
Design
Tags:
Friday, November 25, 2011
Building an online project board with ExpressionEngine: Part 2 - The Interface
With any project, the design of the interface can make or break the usefulness of the final product. During the process of laying out the project board, I was in a state of constant flux, adding elements, removing elements, adjusting their size and visual weight to find the right combination that worked.
Starting with Panic.
The seed for this project was planted, as mentioned before, when I read about the Panic Status Board. This thing is amazing, and I’m still in awe of how beautiful, and more-importantly, how functional it is. It was the benchmark. I went to my drawing board with many ideas, possibly too many, flowing onto the paper. Before long, I had a mess on my hands. I didn’t like any of the ideas that I was coming up with. I didn’t want to do a complete hack-job and rip off the Panic design. I did (often) check back to their project board post and studied their images feverishly, comparing them to my sketches and wondering why solutions didn’t have the same impact. It didn’t take me long to understand the reason.
I wasn’t focusing on what I needed, instead I was cramming the items that Panic had employed into my board, where they didn’t belong. My needs for this board were simple, a quick view of my projects that were in progress and on the horizon. Simple as that. Back to the drawing board.
With a much clearer vision in place, I laid out the items that I needed and tossed the “wish-list” items onto the back burner. The result was a clean solution that would give me the information I needed at a glance. Just as planned.
The more things change.
After diving into the Photoshop layout and markup stage, I discovered more adjustments were needed so the look (once again) underwent another round (or two) of changes. The flexibility of ExpressionEngine let me quickly make changes on the fly, review them and go on without wasting too much time. Now that things were taking shape, it was time to fine-tune and refine.
Posted on 11/25/11 at 10:31 PM by Tim - Categories:
Design
Tools
Tutorials
User Interface
Workflow
Tags: Expression Engine, Project Board
