-=Urbanite Jungle=-

By Mrs. Knightly  |  May 31st, 2011  |  Etc., Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

It’s time (probably way past time) for Mrs. Knightly to update you (all 6 of her faithful readers) on her Urban(ite) Farm. Did you know that when searching craigslist.org for free piles of concrete chunks, you get more results if you also type in “Urbanite”. Fancy.

All winter long, I had this idea for the front yard, and it kept growing and growing until late February when I just couldn’t stand it anymore. The first stop was Lowes for a big roll of water permeable weed blocker $39.00, 5 cedar trellis’ $50.00. Then on to craigslist for two tons of concrete, rock and bricks – Free, what appeared to be 7 square yards of wood chips from a local tree company – Free, culminating in the purchase of $204.00 of four-way soil from Mt. Scott Fuel. For un-gardners, that is 5 square yards of dirt. The dirt part of the program is where it comes in handy to have a strapping young son because what he did in two and a half hours would have taken me at least a week and would have been accompanied by copious amounts of tears interspersed with words not fit for polite company.

Here’s what I did.

Now, if they could just turn Spring on a littler harder so my seeds will sprout!

From The Garden,
Mrs. Knightly


InDesign Dimensions Include Stroke Weight?

By Greg  |  May 26th, 2011  |  Design Love  |  No Comments »

One thing that has driven me crazy about InDesign is that by default, unlike Illustrator, the dimensions of an object include the stroke weight. So if you draw a box that is 1″ x 1″ that has a 1 pt. stroke applied to it, then remove the stroke, you no longer have a 1″ x 1″ box. You have a 0.9861″ x 0.9861″ box. Conversely, if you draw a 1″ x 1″ box and then add a 1 pt. stroke, it becomes a 1.0139″ x 1.0139″ box. This has plagued me ever since I started using InDesign and has wreaked havoc when trying to align things.

I wanted it to work like Illustrator. In Illustrator, If you draw a box and add a stroke, it does not include the stroke weight as a part of the dimensions. One way I would get around this in InDesign was to align the stroke to the inside of my shapes. This worked all right until I butted two shapes up against each other. If those two shapes had a 1 pt. stroke then where they touched it created a 2 pt. stroke, again, raising my blood pressure to new heights.

So finally, after years of insanity, I decided to see if I could find a way to fix this and I found it! I don’t know why I didn’t search for it sooner. It is very easy fix but somewhat hidden. You would think it would be in InDesign’s Preferences but it’s not. (Believe me, I looked there many times!) The setting is located in the fly-out menu of the Transform palette! Duh.

If it is not already showing, you can find the Transform palette under the Window menu then Object & Layout.

Then in the Transform palette, in the fly-out menu, uncheck Dimensions Include Stroke Weight.

Much better.

(You can also find this setting in the fly-out menu of the long, skinny Control palette at the top of the screen when you are using the Selection Tool (black arrow)).


How developers order lunch

By Kurtis Holsapple  |  May 26th, 2011  |  Code Logic  |  No Comments »

Today the Dev team at Zoom Creates is having a meeting were we are getting Chinese food brought in.

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<?php
function lunchOrder($rice = "Fried Rice", $entre = "General Tso") {
    return $entre." with ".$rice;
}
 
$developers = array("Justin" ,"Kris", "Kurtis", "Nick");
 
$order = array();
 
for ($i = 0; $i < count($developers); $i++) {
    $order[$i] = $developers[$i]." would like to order ";
 
    if ($developers[$i] == "Kurtis" or $developers[$i] == "Justin") {
        $order[$i] .= lunchOrder("Steamed Rice");
    } else {
        $order[$i] .= lunchOrder();
    }
}
 
foreach ($order as $whatEachDeveloperWantsToEat) {
    print $whatEachDeveloperWantsToEat."<br />\n";
}
 
?>


Find All Open Paths in Adobe Illustrator

By Greg  |  May 23rd, 2011  |  Design Love  |  4 Comments »

A few weeks ago, I was working on an illustration and I noticed that the Divide function in my Pathfinder palette was not working the way it was supposed to. After a little troubleshooting, I found out that it was because one of the shapes I was trying to divide was not a closed path. I looked to see if Illustrator provided an easy way to find and select unclosed paths to no avail. It seemed to me that you should be able to find it under the Select menu where you can select stray points, all text objects, same fill or stroke color, or same blending mode etc. It seems like selecting all unclosed paths would be a pretty common query. Nope.
I did a Google search to see if anyone else had this problem or knew something that I didn’t. I ran across a free plug-in that adds Open Paths as well as 17 additional object types under Illustrator’s Select menu. It is awesome. Now I can easily select Guides, Open Paths, Closed Paths, Filled Paths, Unstroked Paths, etc. instead of spending valuable time and sanity hunting these rascals down.

The screen-caps above show Illustrator's Select Menu without (left) and with (right) the SelectMenuCS3 Plug-in.

You can find this and many other useful Illustrator plug-ins here. Thank you Rick Johnson! Download the file and then drag the plug-in into Illustrator’s “Plug-ins” folder. (On the website, it says it only works with CS3 and CS4 but it works for me in CS5).

The above plug-in only finds open paths. It is up to you to close them. I found a script that will find and close all open paths in Illustrator. I found this one on vectips.com. It actually contains 2 scripts; one that closes all Open Paths and one closes all selected Open Paths. To use the scripts, in Illustrator, under the File menu go to Scripts then Other Scripts… and navigate to the downloaded script and click Choose.

A dialogue box will open and let you know how many open paths it found and ask you if you want to close them all.

If you want your scripts to show up automatically without having to navigate to find them, store all your scripts in Illustrator’s Scripts folder. You can find Illustrator’s Scripts folder here: Applications/Adobe Illustrator CS5/Presets/en_US/Scripts.

Sweeeeeeet.


Get up and Goe

By TweedleR  |  May 17th, 2011  |  Design Love  |  1 Comment »

Just introduced in 2007, Pantone Goe System has finally made it’s way into our grasp! Today we received a large box with coated and uncoated swatchbooks, as well as a set of coated GoSticks (sticky backed color chips). The Pantone system, if you are unfamiliar, allows for a precise and reliable way to print color during the offset printing process by the use of specified inks. It felt like Christmas morning, opening the box and discovering the magic inside. The Pantone Goe system offers more than 2,000 NEW colors in addition to the original Pantone Matching System. In the past, the old pallet could feel very limiting; I couldn’t quite get just that right shade of orangy-red, soft green, or 50′s sea-foam blue. It’s great to have such a new and large selection of colors to play around with. I’m definitely excited to see a HUGE array of green and blue hues (my favorite!). Better yet, they are now arranged in an intuitive, chromatic order, simplifying the process of selecting the perfect shade without having to jump through the color palette. The new chip books also have nice sticky backs, so we’ll easily be able to play and experiment with colors, and then attach and share with fellow Zoomers and clients. I just can’t wait to start experimenting!

My current top picks from the Goe System:


2011 Web Trend: Creative Navigation

By TweedleR  |  April 25th, 2011  |  Design Love  |  No Comments »

Again and again I’ve run across experimental and creative ways to navigate a page. I’ve uncovered side-scrollers, one-page vertical scrollers, parallax scrolling, animation, story-telling, and even horizontal scrolling within horizontal scrolling (and the list goes on). These new types of navigation systems can give web sites an exciting and engaging way to captivate users, forcing them to interact differently with content, experiment, or be taken on a journey through your web site. But be careful, because something new and different can often confuse or scare users away.

More traditional styles of navigation are comfortable and expected to users, enabling them to easily guide themselves through your content. By steering your users in a non-traditional style, you can risk losing your audience. For this reason, it’s vital that your navigation remains effective. A non-traditional navigation needs to be smart, thoughtful, and content appropriate. An e-commerce site probably wouldn’t benefit from a single page scroller, because of it’s high-volume of information. But a smaller scaled portfolio or promotional site could potentially benefit from a more dynamic style of navigation. If you are in a specific design, illustration or web field, giving your users a new way to get around can be a great way to show off personal style, technique and skill.

Want to experience it for yourself? Check out these examples of creative navigation below:

Nike Better World
This site uses parallax scrolling to create a dynamic site with depth. Just scroll to explore and animate.

Jax Vineyards
This site uses a mixture of vertical and horizontal scrolling, for a clean, minimal look and feel. Constant top navigation is smart and let’s users interact easily with the site and side. Scrolling arrows are large and easy to maneuver.

Ben The Body Guard
This web site takes you on a journey, once you figure out about its vertical scrolling feature. Follow Ben along the dark streets to figure out all you need to know.

Youzee
This vertical scroller takes you step by step. Just click the button on the home screen to get started. Use the icon driven nav at the top or scroll on through each page.

crushlovely
With a constant navigation on the left, it’s easy to get around this vertical scrolling site. Each “page” is broken up vertically with a different color theme.

Polecat
This is a vertical stroller that allows you to jump between pages with a simple top navigation.


April fools? Yep, they got us.

By Kurtis Holsapple  |  April 6th, 2011  |  Zoom Creates News  |  No Comments »

We recently found out that a Hacker known as Badi hit our site on April fools day.

If you happened to visit our news page between the first and the 6th, you may have been surprised to see something like this:
We got hacked

Seems that lots of other people were the target of this hackers idea of a fun prank, as you can see by a Google search for “badi hacked”.

Oh well, we found the security flaw, fixed it, and removed the malicious code. Please be assured that this attack was directed at a specific page on our zoomcreates.com web site, and we have verified it didn’t affect any of our clients, partners, or other sites that we host.


2011 Web Trend: The End of the Fold

By TweedleR  |  February 25th, 2011  |  Code Logic, Design Love  |  No Comments »

With new developments in screen sizes and devices, the fold has become practically outdated. In web design, the “fold” is known as the imaginary line on a screen that designates what content is visible to a viewer without scrolling. If you’re curious, the term, “fold” originated from the traditional newspaper, where the most important content and images were printed above the paper fold. This rule helped gain maximum attention from the reader and made sure essential information was always visible. The same goes for web design, you want to make sure a viewer has visual access to the key info on your site within the first five seconds of reaching the page.

For years, web designers could mostly rely on the fact that a visitor would have a screen resolution between 1024×768 or 1280×700, and web sites could be created accordingly. There have been debates on where the traditional fold fell on these screen resoutions, but in general, the rule has been, don’t put any essential information below 600 pixels. Today, this is not always the case. Viewers now have access to a variety of screens, from iPhones, to giant TV’s, and it’s getting more and more difficult to establish the ‘fold’ line on a specific device. You can’t possibly design for all outcomes, and so the “fold” is starting to become irrelevant. To add to the mayhem, users today also aren’t afraid of scrolling either, and devices like the iPhone, make this intuitive and essential to view important information. With this new openness to scroll, these invisible boundaries seem somewhat unnecessary.

Even though we are moving into an entire new use of space, it doesn’t mean we should totally ignore the idea of the fold. The most important messages should remain near the top. We still need to respect the importance of the initial visual hit a viewer gets when they reach a site. It’s a powerful tool and and can help to capture the attention of the audience and perhaps even keep them scrolling on down the page.


-=Zoom Creates Gets Tagged=-

By Mrs. Knightly  |  February 22nd, 2011  |  Zoom Creates News  |  2 Comments »

It’s true!

Well. It’s mostly true. Actually, it happened to Michael Jones Photo Studio next door, but we do share a doorway. Michael thinks it was an art student on a rampage, his wife, Cindy wants it gone — even after I suggested outlining it in silver and sprinkling it with glitter. Their ginormous and attractive poodle, CoCo thus far has not come forward with an opinion.

We hope the “Artist” will drop by for a beer at Zoom West sometime so we can discuss restitution and further Color Studies.



Pondering Future Krylon Projects,

Mrs. Knightly


Hey Craig!

By TweedleR  |  February 11th, 2011  |  Design Love  |  1 Comment »

I love Craigslist. I found my job there, I found my house there, and even a sweet west elm headboard there. I love perusing the posts and seeing if I can find some sweet items or great deals. I go through phases where I go on there every day, and generally have a list of items that I cycle through searching. If you search a lot of specific items like I do (card catalog, faux bamboo chair, etc…), going and searching everyday can be time consuming, but maybe not anymore!

Today I discovered Hey Craig! an online application that helps you in your daily search. All you have to do is enter the item you are hunting for, your email, and Craigslist location. Hey Craig will then keep watch on Craigslist and email you when those items are posted. Voila, you have avoided the daily search! The catch that I noticed, is like any search on Craigslist, if a post contains those specific search words, you’ll probably end up getting items that aren’t exactly what you are looking for. This could potentially lead to many emails if you aren’t terribly specific! I’ve signed up to test it out and hopefully it will find the card catalog of my dreams. If you’re a craigslister like me, check out Hey Craig here!


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