Fun at Game night

Colleen and I belong to a boardgame club and we posed for a picture that looks like a game called Kill Docter Lucky. I'm starting to think about designing a game myself—could be fun. What do you think?

New Logo/graphic

Just been working on a new logo for my friends group.

His site is: www.boardgames.meetup.com/349/

Deceptive Wages and Quixtar

Any of you that know me know that I am thoroughly against a subsidiary company of Amway/Altecor called Quixtar. I could write all day about what is wrong with this company but I will just shorten it to the basics.

Quixtar is an online store which supposedly uses its only promotion/marketing in the form of word of mouth or personal relationships. Not the open market. When approached by one of their Independent Business Owners (IBOs) they are trying to get you to become one of them. At first people would introduce their link to Quixtar, but now they've graduated to using strange business group names that have international flair. The IBOs "market" has been saturated with the name Quixtar which in turn has created a bad name for Quixtar.

What does this have to do with design? Everything.

Quixtar IBO's have to operate under a "low radar" with their "groups" so first off they pay for low rate materials even though they are associated with a multi-billion dollar company. So bad/cheap design is prevalent. Moreover staying out of the open marketplace prevents hi end design projects to convey the value of the product. And above all that the product design can be really nothing because the consumer (the IBOs) is "forced" to by what they offer. So no product innovation (why would you?)

So the next time you are approached in a store (reliable marketplace) by a person being too friendly who invites to tell you about their "company/group" yell out SOLICITOR! and see what happens.

"The wicked man earns deceptive wages, but he who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward."
Proverbs 11:18 (NIV)

Free stock photos

Hey I totally for got to post my favorite FREE stock photo site:

http://www.sxc.hu/

Check it out. Most pictures are license-free a few you have to get permission from the author, but its no big deal. So post, share, use to you hearts content!

Too Much Design?

I wonder how much freelance is too much? I mean, I love design and all the creative freedom freelance design. But do I do too much sometimes? Lately it has been working out with working on three projects with loose deadlines. But will it come to the point where I will be breaking deadlines because I am overloaded? Then will my clients leave because of my project tardiness?

Sometimes I lay awake thinking I could do more if the days where longer—then it dawns on me that that type of thinking can lead to workaholism. So I stay in this place of balance. Hopefully.

Quote of the week

“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.”

—Thomas Jefferson

Riddle

I am a puzzle solver with arms/hands in an armless community. Yet the armless will not accept that I can solve the puzzles—they are nearsighted and I can see very well. Who am I?

Think about it and then check the post…

More Posters (Correction)

Chris who posted on this was right. I totally forgot to transfer these pictures to RGB format. The Posters above are how they originally looked for the client. the pictures below are an affect of having the posters in CMYK. I might have to do a post about channels and formatting (for myself). Good job Chris!




Here are two posters I recently put together for a Band. Strange thing though, when I up loaded them to blogger the jpeg's changed color. Originally the top one had a dark green color background and the red was dark blue and the second one had a blue background. Just wondering if anyone else has had color shifting like that when using jpegs. Discuss and reply.

Employee Posters

Does your company hold a special events for it's employees? If so, it is a great opportunity to show off some of your creativity without the confines of the boss restricting you. Let free those creative juices flow by doing a little work after work and show how creative you can be if you were given a little designer leeway. The posters above are some examples of funny posters I have done for different employees farewell and wedding showers. For example the center poster was for our former writer who was moving to Kentucky and she was a redhead. If you brainstorm you can find some characteristics of your fellow employees that you can illustrate in a witty way. Have fun!

Idea Recycling?

So you have a good idea for a client on a freelance project. They shoot that idea down for whatever reason. The question is can it be recycled… should it be? I mean a good idea is a good idea, right? We'll I guess I am asking all you designers out there if this is kosher. I know that rarely good design comes out this way [recycling]. But in this case of the top design migrating the idea to the design below it. Does it work. The first design was for a documentary video on a organization in Botswana, Africa. The bottom design is for a fundraising effort for Ethiopia. Ironically the hands embracing a map seems to work for both. Let me know you thoughts/concerns.

America by design

So I'm reading this book called Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh and it is spot on when giving info about how bad the Iraq war is going and also how bad it has been since 9/11. I know you may be thinking "what does this have to do with design?" Well the book talks about how people who think they know what is best in a certain arena (in this case intelligence on terrorism via Donald Rumsfeld) they come into power and second guess experts and agencies who have been in the field doing the work for decades (FBI/CIA). Lets just say things get messed up beyond measure and we have the powers that be pointing fingers and claiming deniability. What I'm talking about here is SELFISH PRIDE—a effect of human frailty. Its a very ugly thing when we have control over something we know little about and we spin our agenda on what we think it should be, but sadly is not. I am not immune to this. But I do recognize I do this and that is, at the very least, what we all should do.

Personal Example: I got out of college thinking I had a good idea of what web design is—basically all flash, which is what my instructors taught me. These are the same instructors who worked nearly they're whole life in print design not web. So I get my first job and get into an argument with our web guy who shows me the world of HTML & CSS and how google driving traffic to your site is so much more important. |BLINK!| the light goes off in my head and I see a whole new perspective and I have a new respect for web programmers. The reason for this? —I listened (skeptically at first) and gained a new perspective from someone who has been doing this for longer and really knows more than me. We still debate how a web site should look overall, but that's okay, we just find a compromise because there is respect for one another.

We ALL need to ask questions and listen and trust that those who do the work really know what they are doing. And when things fail we need to listen, explore, investigate where they REALLY went wrong and work together to rectify the situation.

I was getting depressed think about all this and how things need to change when I actually heard our national play on my itunes radio. It got me to thinking about how we really all are in this together—no matter how hard-headed any of us get (including politicians) , when it looks like this country is failing, we are all in this together—we always need to remember that. As our forefathers said: "God bless America, our home, sweet home."

The iphone is coming!

I know this blog is supposed to be about design sharing, so that being said I want share with those living under the Bill Gates PC rocks out there that you need to get with the program. The right program. This little phone runs OSX (that means multipule windows), Has a touch screen (that zooms in), on-screen keyboard, and full-on rich internet (not that dinky cell phone version). WiFi (of course), when you turn the phone it changes from posrtrait to landscape, and so many other faboo features. Comes out June. CHECK IT OUT: http://www.apple.com/iphone/

So tell Gates his time is nearing an end!

As stated before:

The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

—PAUL RAND

Real Meaning of Christmas

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…
Isaiah 9:2

Merry Christmas

Falalalala la la la La! Yes its that time again. I love this time of year. Just got done eating turkey and moving on to Mom's cornish hens! There is some frustrating things about this time of year. One thing is the way companies try to be Politically Correct. I must seem pretty daring with my "Merry Christmas" title. Historically America unabashedly celebrated Jesus Christ's birth. I mean I think equal attention should be given to other religious holidays but when you see a commercial with a boyfriend giving his girlfriend a gift and says "Happy Holidays" I mean really, doesn't he even know her religious affiliation? She should hit him in the arm and say "Hey! I'm Buddhist ya jerk!

Anyways I made this holly by taking a black and white photo and turning it into a relatively high lpi (60-80 lpi) bitmap which gives it that air-brushed look. Brought it into Illustrator for the red berries. The overall effect is retro look. You could make a card like below:

(holidays typo on purpose—gives redneck quality)

Sorry

I want to apologize. I have been slacking off, or as I would like to say "really busy with freelance—really!" Of course that is no excuse for the lack of activity on this blog—I think I need an intern. The intern could get me coffee and update my blog. I guess you could say this entry is an ad for employment:

Intern Wanted:
Loyal intern needed. No pay. Lots of respect given. Needs to be a hard worker, not a quitter and independently wealthy (looking for permanence of position). 80 wpm, knowledge of blogging and adobe software helpful. Please post resumé to this…um…this post. Job line, Fee.

Of course I'm kidding. Stay tuned though.

Design Quote

The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

—PAUL RAND

Design Quote

The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. He new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

—PAUL RAND

Need to add content

Content, content and more content. This is a little promise to add more to this Blue Bike Blog soon. I have a lot of ideas—no time. Stay tuned.

Urgency

We are all part of a better design solution, urgency makes that solution harder to see.

Prominence

In design if everything is "prominent" nothing will be.