If I Were A Rich (Wo)Man

By Mrs. Knightly  |  March 10th, 2010  |  Etc.  |  No Comments »

I have exquisite taste. Take me to a store and I will immediately gravitate to the most expensive item/product/line they carry. Now granted, exquisite is subjective, but this is my blog entry, so for the sake of getting along, I shall pretend that we all agree Mrs. Knightly has -=The.Most.Exquisite.Taste.Ever=-

On my current wishlist are the following items in no particular order:

Carnival Lamps from Lum Lighting

At $2,250.00 it’s no wonder I fell in love with their Gaudy Goodness!

I paid $37,500 for my first home back in 1989. It had 4 more bedrooms and 2 more baths than this $49,500 1955 Chevrolet BelAir Convertible. I don’t care. I still want it.

1937 Bechstein model B Grand Piano

While I currently do not know how to actually “play” the piano, I am quite certain that were I able to plunk down $49,000 for one, I could also afford a personal Piano Teacher. Additional points if they were married to a Yoga Instructor.

Wait! This can’t just be about My Exquisite Taste! I need to somehow tie this in and give it a Design & Marketing Spin. The fact is, each of these is all about Design and Marketing. Everything that gets manufactured has appealed to someone at some point.

Being in this industry has made me look at the world in a whole new way. Grocery shopping takes longer because I get so involved in the packaging designs and I think longer and harder about brands and why one can of tomatoes looks better than another, even though they probably came from the same processing plant. It’s the visual presentation, while the can shape is pretty much the same, the fonts, colors, photo’s and verbiage are what compels us to buy even more than the price in some cases.

I am a fan of San Marzano Tomatoes. They’re pricey, so I don’t buy them for everyday cooking, but once in a while, when I am at Pasta Works on Hawthorne, I heed their siren call and splurge on a couple of cans to up the culinary ante on my Pasta Surprise.  Wouldn’t you?

One of these things is not like the others...

Compared to the Hunts can on the right, the Italian tomatoes “feel” different to me. More authentic, wholesome and flavorful. Interesting that a drawing of a tomato can evoke that sentiment more strongly than an actual photograph. It just does. In the same way that a 1955 Bel Aire feels more authentic to me than a 2010 Cadillac.

Perhaps “nostalgia” is the word I’m really looking for here. Tried and true, like Helvetica. Sturdy and strong like a Bel Aire. Fancy lamps made from real metal and wood and a piano that was made by hand 73 years ago and is still around to grace someone’s living room (even if it’s not mine!).

Nostalgically Yours,

Mrs. Knightly

2010 Web Design Trend: Increased White Space

By TweedleR  |  March 9th, 2010  |  Design Love  |  No Comments »

Today’s websites are getting cleaner, more streamlined and focused on an increased use of white space. White space refers to the negative space between and around the elements in a design (graphics, type, columns, etc.). Those who are inexperienced with the use of white space may view it as an empty area, and thus a waste of valuable screen real estate. This blank space, however, is extremely beneficial to a design and the usability of a site. White space will make a layout much easier on the eyes. It reduces the amount of text a viewer will see at one time, increasing legibility and helping a visitor quickly find what they are looking for. It can also improve the structure of a site by creating a visual separation of elements, allowing content to stand out from the background. Not only is it functional, increasing space can also give a web site a more professional, uncluttered, and fresh appearance, providing a strong platform on which to present your message. Check out the examples below for excellent uses of white space:

Apple

Jason Reynolds

Indie Labs

Buffalo

Astheria

Left

Super Slow Motion Dogs

By Greg  |  March 5th, 2010  |  Lab Report  |  No Comments »

I thought my dog, Hoss, moved in slow motion until I saw this video titled “The Catch”. It is a commercial for Pedigree dog food by TBWA Toronto, shot at 1000 frames per second that has gone viral. The video was inspired by the French community of digital artists, Pleix, who made a video called Birds in 2006. Birds also features dogs in super slow motion but includes laser lights and 80’s-style synthesizer music. Both are sights to behold.



Make art while designing

By Tweedle C  |  March 4th, 2010  |  Design Love  |  No Comments »

We’ve been playing with the mouse tracking application IOGraph to see what our mouses create while we work away as usual. The application tracks your mouse path, making a visual representation of every move you make. The images are cool looking and even more fun when you look at them while thinking about how the movements were effected by what programs you were working in, what type of project you were working on, where your palettes were placed, whether you tend to use key commands or prefer to use the menu etc. This image on Flicker shows the IOGraph image over the top of the desktop to illustrate this point.

Here are images taken after an hour and a half from each of the designers.

Here is Robin working on an eCommerce site in Photoshop:

And Greg researching on the internet:

And me working back and forth between Illustrator and InDesign:

3D Apple Tribute

By Lisa  |  March 2nd, 2010  |  Etc., Marketizing  |  No Comments »

Many of us at Zoom (correction: MOST) have been Apple fans for quite some time. The video tribute below was created by Transparent House and the animation was done using 3D’s Max and V-Ray Render. Shockingly enough, the entire process took no more than 10 days to complete. Without tooting our own horn too much, the tribute brings to mind our own Zoom Creates Reel, which is quite possibly why I find it so darn attractive.

On a side note, the presentation of the products is beautiful and shows the genius progression of a company started in a garage that has grown into an empire.

Anatomy of Apple Design from Transparent House on Vimeo.

Creating a Chumby Configuration Widget

By Kris  |  February 26th, 2010  |  Code Logic  |  No Comments »

In my last post, we quickly went over Writing your first Chumby widget. This time, we’ll expand on that by adding a configuration widget.

A configuration widget is another Flash file that sets up parameters for your Chumby widget, so those settings are available when the widget loads into your Chumby. For example, perhapse you have an analog clock widget. You could create a configuration widget that allows someone to choose a color for the face of the clock, or whether or not to display the second hand. The user could choose a color and save their preferences in the Chumby database. Then, when their Chumby loads your clock widget, it would look for and download any settings for that widget.

Here’s what we’ll need:

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2010 Web Design Trend: Speaking Navigation

By TweedleR  |  February 25th, 2010  |  Design Love  |  No Comments »

For some, one word navigational links simply aren’t clear enough. Designers are now trying to explain, in a short snippet, what the visitor should expect to see upon clicking on a link. This additional short phrase has been coined as “speaking navigation,” as opposed to “silent” navigation which follows the traditional style of using keywords to represent a group of information. The end goal in this method is to create a more effective communication style with site visitors. If content can be clarified, navigation will be simplified for the user and could potentially generate increased traffic through the site. Check out the examples below of speaking navigation:

Sifter

Sifter

Lift Interactive

Lift Interactive

AgentPoint

AgentPoint

Lennon Bus

Lennon Bus

You Version

You Version

Dishizzle

Dishizzle

goodbytes

goodbytes

A Very Nerdy Birthday

By Kurtis Holsapple  |  February 24th, 2010  |  Code Logic  |  No Comments »

It was just a few days ago when Justin, our lead developer had a birthday. Us nerds in the dev department (aka… me) know just how to celebrate.

Write a python script that has ascii animation of a birthday dance!

Here’s a zip file with the python scripts in it. To run it on your computer, make sure that you have python installed, and extract the files into their own directory. If double clicking on justin.py doesn’t do anything (or it opens in notepad) then you can run it easily with the console window. Just browse to the same directory and type “python justin.py” and it should start to work. I can answer any issues in the comments.

If you are looking for some more nerdy fun, check out the ASCIImator (http://asciimator.net/). Here you can build your own ASCII animation, watch other people’s animations, or visit the ASCII zoo! My favorite is karaboz’s “walking old stickman.” What’s yours?

If It Were Only This Easy…

By Greg  |  February 23rd, 2010  |  Etc.  |  1 Comment »

I have always been a fan of stop-motion animation. I think back to Gumby and Rudolph and more recently, South Park and Robot Chicken. I have had aspirations of making my own some day involving Hot Wheels cars and Legos or capturing just how fast the bamboo in my backyard grows per day but have never gotten around to it.

Today, I ran across this video made for competition AdobeYouGC which I believe is an Italian contest and is for User Generated Content created with Adobe products. It really inspired me. It is the simulation of a tutorial which shows how to make butter cookies with the “new” Adobe Photoshop Cook Extended. If it was this easy to make food, I would probably make dinner every night. Enjoy.

Adobe Photoshop Cook from Lait Noir on Vimeo.

Building your first Twitter application with PHP

By Kurtis Holsapple  |  February 22nd, 2010  |  Code Logic  |  No Comments »

I’ve written before about how great it is to work with a service that has a great API. Twitter was one of the tools that I talked about in that post and today I’m going to show you the basics of working with their API.

PHP is a great language for web applications, and it’s available with just about any web host. If you aren’t familiar with how PHP works, this tutorial will probably be a poor place to start. Today we are going to talk about how to work with the Twitter API and PHP, and you’ll need to know a few things about how PHP works to keep up. For a good refresher course on PHP, click here.

Click through and let’s get started!
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