ZacParker.com
Design. Music. Art. Portland.
Archive for design
March 27, 2007 at 10:26 am · Filed under art, design, development, music, video
Adobe has finally announced the release of their updated and re-branded version of their Creative Suite line of products. Now go buy that new MacBook Pro you’ve been putting off, because the whole suite runs natively on Intel-based Macs, unlike it’s predecessors. This from Adobe’s website:
The Adobe® Creative® Suite 3 family offers you choice — in the combination of creative tools you master, the design disciplines you explore, and the richness and scope of content you create. This revolutionary new release includes six editions, each combining tightly integrated, industry-leading components that enable you to handle virtually any creative task.
Together these six editions of Creative Suite 3 address virtually every creative discipline and empower you to work more efficiently with your creative team; collaborate more closely with developers to produce engaging experiences; and serve your clients, your business, and your creative vision more easily and effectively than ever before.
Read the rest of this entry »
March 25, 2007 at 12:53 pm · Filed under design
If you are a reader here in Portland, you may already be aware that I am on the hunt for a job. Anyone else may have already assumed that for whatever reason, or may have had absolutely no idea, nor cared in the slightest bit about my state of employment. No matter what the case, I am indeed looking for a job. I am willing to purchase an iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED for the person who refers me to the job I get hired to. I have created a new page detailing exactly how that works, here.
For simplicity, the content of that page is as follows:
Taking a page from Tijs Vrolix, I am looking for a job, and am willing to compensate the person who finds me that perfect job. How does this work? You forward me job postings, and if I get hired, I will send you an iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED upon the receipt of my third paycheck. Why the (Product) Red? Because Apple contributes $10 from the sale of each (PRODUCT) RED nano to the Global Fund, to help fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. How can you trust me to follow through on my promise? I guess it’s just that. I trust you to send me only the most fitting job openings, and in return, you trust me to keep my promise of sending you your nano.
What kind of work am I interested in? I am looking for an entry level position with a company whose main focus is media of some sort. Ultimately, I am looking for a position as a junior designer. I have previous college coursework and plenty of experience. I am simply looking for that foot in the door to get me started and build up my portfolio. While pay is certainly important - I won’t work for free, or even close to minimum wage - location is even more so. I live in inner NE Portland, Oregon, and don’t care to work outside of the city limits. That means no Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, or Tigard etc… More important than either pay or location however, is the job. Before telling me about a job opening, think if it will be worth your while. If it is not a job that meets the above specifications, or does not match my skills, the chances of me getting hired for that position are slim, thus making your chances of receiving the free iPod quite slim. If you know the specifics of the job, or the employers, and know that it is not a good job, or healthy work environment, please do not send me those openings either.
After reading the above, you would like to submit a job opening that meets these specifications, then please download and read over my CV/Resume. If you still are certain it is a good fit, forward the opening to me at zac@zacparker.com
Download:
Zac Parker CV (PDF)
Thanks a million for your referrals!
March 24, 2007 at 10:20 am · Filed under design, tutorials
As you may or may not have noticed from following my posts, BittBox is one of my favorite spots on the interwebs. This last week has seen not one, nor two, but THREE posts regarding seamless vector patterns. They begin by sharing a seamless vector star pattern. A pretty simple and cool pattern that is a great addition to anyones illustrator pattern swatch.
If you are looking to beef up your swatch with even more patterns, they released another 5 seamless vector patterns on Thursday. This set contains two circle patterns, a diamond pattern, and two more star patterns. Also in that article is a reference to a great vector program called InkScape, which blows Illustrator out of the water when it comes to tracing, and best of all, it’s free!
The most recent post about vector patterns, is certainly my favorite. Instead of just giving them to you, or showing you how to make them, The Power (and ease) of Patterns in Illustrator shows you what to do with them. The author shows you how to warp them, use them as a stroke, fill objects and create a pattern from a path. A really powerful tutorial that picks up where most other tutorial websites leave off.
Have you made any patterns? Show us how you have used and implemented them in your designs. Post/discuss here!
March 23, 2007 at 4:49 pm · Filed under blogging, design
The lovely folk at TutorialBlog had the pleasure of releasing their first WP theme this week. Their first theme entitled Tuut, is a dark theme with a pleasantly barely-there seamless background pattern and big easy to read post-date buttons. All in all it is very simple, lo-fi and quick-to-load, yet attractive and uncluttered feeling. A success, if not a mind blowing first release.
Their second and third releases both came out on Wednesday the 23rd, and are titled CityScape and ShinyThings, respectively. CityScape is a slightly more graphic intensive theme, yet just as dark as its predecessor. It features the well known ‘thick stripe’ style background, and some big shiny LED looking buttons for the comments. The header graphic is as you may have guessed: a cityscape. ShinyThings makes me feel like I’m wandering through a ‘made for the internet of today’ version of one of my favorite childhood boardgames, Candy Land. Everything is butterscotch yellow, and hard candy grape. More or less a colored version of CityScape, this theme gets rid of the header image and replaces it with a simple yellow bar behind some purple text. It looks better than I make it sound, I promise. A bright, easy to read, and easy to navigate theme.
Have you got some new themes you are working on? Have some favorites that nobody knows about? Love these ones? Hate ‘em? Post/discuss here!
March 23, 2007 at 1:59 pm · Filed under art, design
I’ve noticed a large trend these days towards using hand-made elements in design. I saw this begin more on the digital ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ side of things, but watched it slowly make its way into design, marketing and advertising. These created by hand elements range from small bits of pencil drawn swirls or sketches blended into something largely digital, to pieces that have been drawn nearly entirely by hand, and then colored, touched up or turned into some sort of montage in Photoshop. Computer Arts has some great articles on this trend, and how to make sure you don’t get left behind. Their tutorial titled Hands-on Design exemplifies one of many ways of implementing real world art into digital design. To learn how to create your own hand drawn font, check out this article that makes it easier than no-bake cheesecake (creative intuition not included).
Hand created graphics are seen in nearly every aspect of the digital world now, from small web graphics like my own current header image, to national television advertising, like “Email Pants“, A commercial for Sprint/Nextel, music written by Chris Kennedy. Sure, there is still plenty of room for design that is created from rough sketch to finished product strictly in photoshop, or on your illustrator artboard, but traditional methods of art and design are coming back and being reinvented in a huge way.
March 18, 2007 at 2:59 pm · Filed under design, development
Posted Friday at BittBox, there is a great article on how to find quality freebies by using Google’s indexing feature to search within quality sites such as Digg, TutorialBlog or Smashing Magazine, which often contain links to quality material, as opposed to spending hours sifting through tons of crappy ‘clip-art’ or other low-quality media before finding what you are REALLY looking for. A BittBox reader inspired by the article created this tool, which more or less automates the search method described in the article, though searches a total 25 social media sites, and specific blogs. The Google Social Media Search tool created by illovich allows you to search for any type of downloadable media such as vectors, PSD files, code snippets, buttons and whatever else you may be looking for. Do you have other ideas for great ways to find quality downloadable free media? Post them here!
March 13, 2007 at 7:15 pm · Filed under design
Over at Computer Arts, You can potentially win yourself a snazzy new Epson Stylus Pro 3800
printer just by clicking a button! This contest ends however on the 15th, so hurry up and get to the contest page, so you can lower the probability of me winning.
The next contest going on is a logo design contest at smashing magazine. What are the rules?
In order to participate, design
- a distinctive Smashing Magazine logo for our header.
Max. height: 65px.
Max. size: 20 Kb.
Format: .gif or .png.
- a Favicon.
Size: 16×16px or 32×32px.
Format: .ico.
The logo has to be related to the topics we cover in Smashing Magazine. Take a look around and select themes you think are most appropriate.
You can use whatever color you’d like to use. Just to give you some idea about designs we might possibly prefer - you should probably take a closer look at some creative logos and remarkable favicons we’ve selected recently.
Send your designs via e-mail at office at smashingmagazine dot com with subject “Logo Contest”. Mention your name, your URL and the country you come from. If it’s possible send us also a brief description of your design and the theme you’ve selected. We’d like to know, which idea has been the driving force behind design. We’d like you to be creative. We’d like you to get really excited about it. At least as excited as we are.
And just what is up for grabs for winning such a contest?
The winner gets the SimpleTech SimpleDrive 250 GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive
. It’s a stylish, quick external hard drive with 250 GB capacity and Hi-Speed USB 2.0. Besides, winner’s name will appear in the footer of every Smashing Magazine’s web-page - as long as we use it, of course.
Not such a bad deal if you ask me. The hard drive isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, but with all the readers smashing magazine has, thats an awful lot of free advertising, and definitely worth a shot.
If you find yourself stuck while trying your hand at the logo contest at smashing magazine, you don’t have to go far for some refreshing ideas. They just posted 58 creative logos to help get your mind exploring other avenues. Now, not all of these are really that great, and some of them are certainly not very creative, but there are some nice ones, and it’s a good place to start, to get your brain thinking outside of it’s comfort zone. Now hurry and finish that logo, as the deadline is March 31st!
March 12, 2007 at 4:09 pm · Filed under design, development
Think code sucks? Me too. Rather, I design. I don’t program, and I don’t code. As many of you in the design field have likely experienced however, there is always that guy that wants to hire one person to create the design AND the code. This ends up with a lot of web pages looking really good, but having shit for code, and a lot of web pages that are coded really well, yet look like a middle schooler was trying to redesign his MySpace page with the latest version of Tom’s MySpace Generator. For the designers out there who are strictly designers, but find themselves needing to code on occasion, or anyone that is looking to simplify the coding process, you need these 42 faux-column CSS layouts from Code-Sucks.com. They also offer another 53 fixed-width CSS layouts on their site as well. All of the layouts are totally free, and all are validated against a strict doctype.
March 12, 2007 at 1:20 pm · Filed under design
I don’t know about you, but I always am looking for new works to inspire me. Some huge inspirations for me have been the teams at Nero (it looks like they’re recreating their website right now, no content), and Addikt in the design field, and O. Isaac White’s twisted photography. While poking around over at Computer Arts today, I came across a new inspiration. It’s Art Dammit. While his photography doesn’t really do an awful lot for me, the illustration and design sections of his portfolio make me want to open up illustrator and create all day. His more recent projects seem to be much much more developed, and evolved, but his work as a whole is great. If you’re stumped, or have an extra minute, or just want to see some good design, go check it out. Additionally, for more of O. Isaac White’s photo sets, as well as some tutorials, and photoshop tips and tricks, check out his blog.
March 11, 2007 at 3:27 pm · Filed under design
There are plenty of design websites out there offering tutorials, news, hints and tips. We’ll never be lacking there. Two websites recently however have stood out from that crowd, as really exception sites offering relevant tools, links to other excellent resources, and tons of freebies!
The first site I stumbled across was TutorialBlog. I came across this website while Googling for a vector graphic of an American flag, and came to their article Free Vector Downloads. There I found not only the flag I was looking for, but a link to another site with vector graphics for flags of nearly every country in the world, and many US states. In addition there are a heap of beautiful glossy buttons and bars and badges, and a plethora of other great, usable vector graphics. The rest of their site is full of equally and exceptionally relevant articles for bloggers, designers, developers, programmers and photographers. Not to miss.
Secondly, I believe in the same search, I came to bittbox, an excellent site, especially for designers like myself who are of the camp that Illustrator is every bit as powerful as Photoshop, which seems to have the world hypnotized. Lots of Illustrator tips, and some great freebies. A real dream for the vector designer.
