Arteliance

I have started posting at aprilmains.tumblr.com.

• Framework for a Strengths-Based Society « emergent by design
  how to combine the people together who will know how to use information. Framework for a Strengths-Based Society http://bit.ly/bpzO7V
  (tags: via:packrati.us)
• Unemployed over 50: A View from the Ground | Women's Voices For Change
  (tags: career education)
• Canada gender pay gap among worst in OECD | Money | Toronto Sun
  RT @ronindotca: Canada gender pay gap among worst in OECD http://bit.ly/aLQNDT #IWD #CDNPoli (via @Lamarche) The shame.
  (tags: via:packrati.us iwd cdnpoli)

• A click heard across the public service - The Globe and Mail
  Why the launch of an internal wiki could mean more for Canada's struggling bureaucracy than budgets and pension reform http://bit.ly/9Is7at
  (tags: via:packrati.us)
• 6 Tips for Writing an Artist’s Statement
  (tags: Art artist career writing)
• Visual Content: Beyond Tufte : Incisive.nu
  Visual Content: Beyond Tufte : Incisive.nu http://incisive.nu/2010/beyond-tufte/
  (tags: via:packrati.us)
• How to unlock a Persuasion Window - Core77
  How to unlock a Persuasion Window - Core77 http://bit.ly/c3jKxr signage
  (tags: via:packrati.us)
• Self-selecting what we know - The Globe and Mail
  the Net is where we go to seek out our tribe Self-selecting what we know - The Globe and Mail http://bit.ly/ab14Ep
  (tags: via:packrati.us)
• Common Questions About Design Professionalism - Smashing Magazine
  RT @vdebolt: Reading 'Common Questions About Design Professionalism' (via @smashingmag) http://tinyurl.com/yzot3ae
  (tags: via:packrati.us)
• The Art and Zen of Writing CSS
  (tags: css webdesign webdev bestpractices)
• Google - Internet Stats
  (tags: reference analytics development marketing)

• Fill your iPod with Legal and Free Tunes | BlogHer
  (tags: music)

As Eden asked:

Have you managed to post something thought-provoking every day, or do you feel like you clogged up the Internet with less-than-satisfying content for the sake of endurance?

50/50: I wrote more of my own stuff this year (about half the time, and that is a big deal for me) but also filled in with link posts half the time.

What I learned: Writing every day is a good idea. Posting every day, not so much.

Opening a file in GIMP requires one to define the RGB working space for that image. The choices are to keep the embedded profile or convert to whatever option you have defined in your preferences. Gimp.org recommends using sRGB but my preference is for Adobe 1998. Of course none of these really mean that much without printed output but it is interesting to see the subtle display differences.

Bonus tip: When calibrating your monitor take off your glasses if you have lenses with anti-reflective coating as they make everything appear slightly green and you might set your display too magenta with them on.

1. Download the scripts you want to install (.scm files)
2. Put them into Home » Library » Application Support » Gimp » scripts (may have to create the scripts folder)
3. In GIMP: Filters » Script-Fu » Refresh Scripts

Spark | CBC Radio

Okay I must be the last person on the planet to figure these things out… just subscribe in iTunes and then remember to open iTunes and listen. Sheesh.

via: BPLUSD: 11 Stories about Canadian Design.

Blogging at a Snail’s Pace - NYTimes.com

Ms. Ganley, the blogger in Vermont, has a slogan that encapsulates the trend: “Blog to reflect, Tweet to connect.” Blogging, she said, “is that slow place.”

Sometimes I long to be good at reflection and find exactly the right words… But, alas, I am more likely to find just the right code for an ellipsis (…).

Every morning I open the same applications and rather than type each of them into Spotlight or open them one at a time from the dock I made an Automator application to do this for me. Automator comes with OS X and it is easy to create your own:

1. Open Applications » Automator

2. Choose Custom in the splash screen that pops up

   

3. Type launch into the search box in Automator

4. Drag Launch Application into the working area on the right

5. Use the pull-down menu to select the application you want

   

6. Repeat for all the applications you want to launch together

7. File » Save As » Application

Now you can just type a few letters into Spotlight to get started every morning or place it in your dock if you’re a dock user.

Two and a half weeks ago I posted some sketches entitled Blog Redesign: Background and Brainstorming. One of the little squiggles was this image:

Then this morning I see this which predates my sketch by several years:

Maybe I am onto something here? Articulating abstract concepts visually is the most difficult challenge of graphic design. Damien Newman has provided an elegant and wonderful example of how design and drawing can clarify communication and thinking in an instant.

via Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog » The Design Process Simplifed

Design by Fire • Santorini in black and white (scroll down to the The Rob Carr Color to B&W Conversion Technique).

While I was cleaning out Evernote I came across this method for converting photos to black and white and decided to try applying it using GIMP:

1. Convert to LAB colour: Colors » Components » Decompose… set Color model to LAB

2. Image mode will already be Grayscale

3. Highlight Lightness (L) Layer and switch to Channels tab. Ctrl-Click on thumbnail » Channel to Selection

4. Select » Invert

5. With the selection still active, convert the image to RGB color, using Image » Mode » RGB.

6. GIMP doesn’t have Adjustment Layers so what I did turn off the visibility of the A and B layers Ctrl-Click » Create New Layer from Visible

7. Edit » Fill with a rich, dark colour

8. Adjust the opacity, levels and/or curves as needed

The B&W iPhoto effect and convert to grayscale in GIMP both seem flat to my eye.

I think I might like black and white photography better than colour.

Hint: use Channel Mixer with monochrome selected to create richer B&W photos.

Malcolm Gladwell: Presentations from Gain 2008: Gain: AIGA Business and Design Conference 2008: Events: AIGA

Gladwell discusses two elements of genius:

1. A lengthy, focussed, disciplined period of practice (10,000 hours)

2. A willingness to experiment and start over (trial and error)

via swissmiss

graphics master photo by Myra Colbert

This got every ‘commercial art’ student on the right track, complete with info about typesetting, process printing and it even contained a built-in proportion wheel.

I’m pretty sure I still have mine along with a Pocket Pal from when I was a student.

From The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

Last night at around 4 p.m. (chinook on its way here)

Weather yesterday and today (so far)

The temperature has dropped 11°C in the past couple of hours and this chinook is making it almost impossible for me to think or write today.

This morning I went for bloods and was reminded of all the times I went for bloods when I was sick and the results were life or death (although at the time I sort of blocked that out of my mind). For someone with leukemia the blood test results take on an almost cosmic, overwhelming importance. They become your whole world and are given daily in the hospital—even written on a poster on the wall in your room. They indicate how the chemotherapy and then the recovery are going. First, there is the CBC which gives your overall numbers: WBC (white blood count) needs to be up but not too far, RBC (red blood count) helps one not feel exhausted and platelets also have to be up high enough to keep one from just bleeding to death inside.

After the bone marrow transplant the CBC numbers indicate whether or not its working. i.e. whether the transplant engrafts. Later, the emphasis switched to ALP and ALT (liver function tests indicative of GVHD which is a complex process where you want some but not too much). I had moderate–severe GVHD which is more than you want. The numbers had to be monitored weekly and my medication adjusted accordingly. Fortunately my GVHD was responsive to medication and only flared up when I did good things like tai chi or art workshops (like I said, it was complicated).

Today’s bloods were just part of a routine checkup but the reminders of what bloods used to be like for me brought tears to my eyes.

• How to: Scan to Evernote (on a Mac) An easy method for using Image Capture to quickly scan receipts, scraps of paper, whatever into Evernote

• 10 Principles of Web Sites Design Applying the rules of magazine publishing to website design

• Drawing is Thinking via Acuarela “…drawing is not simply a way to represent reality, but a way to understand and experience the world.”

  I so want this book.

• Whether you’re for, against or apathetic about war, think about it “We need to keep honouring the sacrifice, but deploring the reasons for it.”

Places on the internet where I share photos:

• flickr: good community

• Picasa: larger images and unlimited number of albums

• momentile: Alpha only (not fully open to public yet).

A momentile consists of a single image, defined only by the date it was published. That’s it. Void of explanation and free from context, a momentile is pure visual communication.

My current (beginner) work flow:

• iPhoto: straightening, cropping and sometimes colour correction

• Apple Preview: sizing and emailing

• GIMP: more involved image manipulation, colour balancing and retouching

Plans:

• Culling and tagging photos so that I can find them more easily

• Learning to control my imagery even more

• Start a photographer’s journal

Stop eating bread. That’s it.

4 or 5 years ago, I would eat a couple of slices of toast for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch. I weighed over 200 lbs. By substituting cereal for breakfast and a muffin or soup for lunch I began losing 1–2 kilos a month. I went from 95 kg (210 lbs.) down to 65 kg (143 lbs). I’m 170 cm (5 ft. 7 in.) and my BMI went from 32.9 (obese) to 22.4 (normal).

I didn’t starve myself. I eat 5 times a day and get a minimum of 2,000 calories a day. But I don’t eat bread.

It is Day Thirteen of NaBloPoMo and I got nuthin’ but some really interesting packaging from my tai chi sword.

Wordpress themes:

Die Neue Typographie: The New Typography a tribute to Jan Tschichold

Writing For Designers based on Veryplaintxt by Scott Wallick

Other designs:

Subtraction by Khoi Vinh

Daring Fireball by John Gruber

These are all more Minimalist than my previous sketches. Perhaps as Twyla Tharp said:

The tricky part about scratching, however, is that you can’t stop with one idea. Henry James said that genius is the act of perceiving similarity among disparate things. In the empty room you’re trying to connect the dots, linking A to B to C to maybe come up with H. Scratching is a means of identifying A, and if you can get to A, you’ve got a grip on the slippery rock wall. You’ve got purchase. You can move on to B, which is mandatory. You cannot stop with one idea. You don’t really have a workable idea until you combine two ideas.

Typealyzer via Amy Gahran

Why I don’t wear a poppy:

• The Vietnam War 1959–1975 coincides exactly with the first 16 years of my own life

• I grew up with these terrible images every night and day in the media

• wearing a poppy feels like tacitly approving such terrible violence

Poladroid project : the easiest and funniest Polaroid Image Maker

momentile | aprilmains’s momentiles

• How to Take Better Photographs (with video) - wikiHow
  (tags: photography)

Time Map is an OS X Dashboard Widget that overlays city locations on a world map. It shows the current time in your selected cities and tells you at a glance whether it’s day or night anywhere in the world.

I don’t usually like dashboard widgets but this one is beautiful.

Polishing this pendant today I realized I’d been wearing it for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the artist’s name.

Here is a list of some of the ideas from yesterday:

• Work Environment and things that are used (concrete):

  • working - coffee cup, paper and mouse
  • computer picture
  • art tools: paper, pencil jar etc
  • print background: press sheets, loupe, pantone swatches (experience), spec-ing type
  • photographic equipment and tools (seeing and capturing) -> light?
  • typography: metal, letterpress etc
  • tools = eyes, brains, ears
  • artsy collage type thing
  • symbols and plans, wayfinding, signage, organization, clarity, blueprints
  • Type overlays photos etc (multi-layered, messy)
  • textures

• Design is (ways to define it - abstract):

  • multiple A’s (typography, many ways of presenting things, thinking about them)
  • different ways of seeing: glasses, microscopes, telescope, magnifying glass, digital, analog, insight, big picture/little picture (fractal?)
  • targets, goals, strategies, aim
  • connection (of minds); communication, transmission of ideas
  • concepts: diagrams, graphs, maps, drilling down to the heart of the matter
  • more on diagrams, abstracts, visual representation of non-create things like ideas
  • gears/machinery: design as a cog in overall business plan

• What design does (movement, emotional):

  • patterns: morphing, transformation, nothing to something, sketch to final?
  • simplicity, road, journey, prairie ref sinclair
  • life, energy, mark making, scribbles forming an image (how I draw)
  • urban sketches/story-telling (design is story-telling)
  • perspective, urban, architecture, escher, surprising
  • focus (broad to narrow)

Most designs can, IMHO, be broken down into these 3 aspects. Good designs incorporate all 3.

This blog post is just for me as I had great fun this morning dusting off and limbering up my old, slightly rusty, design skills. Its been 8 years since I worked as an Art Director/Graphic Designer and I felt the urge to give it a go. Perhaps after Tuesday, I simply felt the need to make a change (is that Obama I hear?).

Blogging about something creative during the process of creating it is risky and sub-optimal. One should finish it and then go back and write about it in a step-by-step fashion so as to give the impression that creativity is understandable and logical—especially in public. In hindsight, creativity generally is logical and understandable, however, the process is the exciting part. With that in mind and in the spirit of change I am going to blog my process—including all the messy bits.

Background

When I started this blog three and a half years ago, I made up the word Arteliance to combine the elements of art and design with experience and reliability. I also promised not to get bogged down by constantly redesigning it and simply loaded the default Kubrick template and stuck with it.

My concept of this being primarily a blog about art and design hasn’t changed and I have no desire to “monetize”, “commoditize” or “target” anything or anyone. Thus, the overall strategy is simply to provide an interesting and readable format for a diverse subject matter while at the same time sharpening up my design thinking skills.

That said, I still need a visual for what Arteliance is about and for the design that will best facilitate and communicate that.

Brainstorming

Below are a couple of pages from my sketchbook containing quick thumbnails of the things I am thinking about. The process here is to get as many ideas as possible down quickly without judging or discarding any of them and then later identify some that are worth developing further. In this process, I am defining some options for things I might want to communicate and include as part of defining what this blog is about.

The next step will be to develop some of these thoughts further and begin to narrow them down.

In 2004, when America re-elected George Bush even after his lies and deceptions had been exposed, I felt betrayed. To me America had voted against democracy, against human rights and against the world.

I became cynical, and when Margaret Wente wrote during the Democratic nomination race you didn’t have the courage to elect anyone other than a white man in a suit I believed her.

I was wrong. Yes You Can

(I would link to the Margaret Wente article and rely on more than my memory but the Globe and Mail archives are behind a paid subscription wall).

Presentation Zen: Think graphic design doesn’t matter? A nonpartisan investigation into the Florida elections in 2001 did indeed point to the crucial role design played: “Gore’s best chance to win was lost before the ballots were counted, the study shows. Voters’ confusion with ballot instruction and design and voting machines appears to have changed the course of U.S. history.”

• Why I Blog - The Atlantic
  (tags: blogging writing)

Like most of the rest of the world I am holding my breath waiting for the U.S. election results tomorrow.

Urban Sketchers is one of my favourite new blogs to see. A few years ago I spent four weeks doing sketches on buses when I went to have bloods done at the hospital every Monday morning. Like this woman I felt very alone. Since then I’ve been fortunate to start making friends and feel a whole let less alone - I have so much to be grateful for.

Wherein the author once again makes an attempt to contribute original content rather than living vicariously through other people’s blogs while at the same time remembering how to write more than 140 characters at a time. For the record, the first draft of this post was only one sentence and came in at 137 characters and I spent much longer on fooling around with the nablopomo badge and learning GIMP than I should have.

Monday Inspiration: Data Visualization and Infographics | Graphics, Monday Inspiration | Smashing Magazine This article presents some spectacular data visualizations and infographics which manage to combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information.

Gorgeous materials presented here. For most of my life I never realized that most people couldn’t simplify and explain an idea or concept out visually. As my mom would say, “Getting to the heart of things.”

Today has been an unusually warm and bright day. 23°C. Normal for this time of year is 9°C.

• 65 Bite-Sized Web Marketing Tips
  (tags: marketing)

Posemaniacs.com I keep forgetting the name of this site so posting it here to hopefully be able to find it again when I need it.

Despite the obvious need for a tripod, the use of available light in the first image makes a much better photograph.

This theme started by placing my camera on my desk and just randomly turning it and snapping pictures without looking at the display. The first one was of the white chair and then I took a few more trying to replicate that (but actually looked at what I was photographing). I think I will explore this some more with a number of black and white items that decorate the house.

This is also a test of embedding a Picasa album in my blog.

• » So You Need A Photo Gallery Website?
  (tags: photography)

Woke up to a gorgeous sunny clear morning today.

My mom’s old typewriter box and my new iMac box stored side by side in the garage.

Bright colours at our grey condos.

Kind of stormy looking last night.

An iconic image from the Hat.

I often golf at the par 3 course shown here. Golfing in a coulee is different and one of my favourite things about Medicine Hat.

• Improving Code Readability With CSS Styleguides | CSS | Smashing Magazine
  (tags: design code webdesign css)

• Textism: In which we get impatient over fractions
  using Character Palette in Leopard to set proper fractions
  (tags: typography tools)

• The Highly Extensible CSS Interface
  (tags: css design webdesign)

• Lip gloss alert: Yahoo! launches new Web site
  Until Shine realizes that there’s more to women than nail polish and a need to know the best way to hook a guy, this is one Web site we’ll skip.
  (tags: activism women)

• Presentation Zen: Typography: Going back to the future
  Dabner likens applying the art of typography in today’s world to playing jazz. That is: “You’ve got to learn the instrument first.”
  (tags: design typography)

• Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorials - Best Of | Tutorials | Smashing Magazine
  (tags: Photoshop photography)

• Vintage Logo Set on Flickr
  (tags: design)

• the Geniant blog — The Fine Art of Wireframes
  Introducing the Sketch as Legitimate IA Tool
  (tags: design tools ui webdesign drawing communication)

• Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog » Everyone has Ideas, How You Execute them is What Matters
  I have always believed that this is the big difference between a designer and non-designer, or an artist and a non-artist. Perhaps even an amateur versus a professional, you see it all comes down to execution. People always point out a piece of modern
  (tags: art design design_thinking education painting typography)

• PDFs: Embed PDFs YouTube-Style with Scribd iPaper
  (tags: blog tools)
• The Art of the Artist Web Design Collaboration : The Blog Herald
  Many of the challenges I faced in the redesign are ones I’ve encountered frequently with artist websites and non-artist sites - and maybe even your blog.
  (tags: art webdesign blog blog_redesign)

• 9 Practical Ways to Enhance your Web Development Using the Firefox Web Developer Extension | Six Revisions : Web Development and Design Blog
  I use the web dev extension but didn’t realize all that it could do
  (tags: blog design webdesign)

You’re 6:49 a.m.

You’re the time of day right around sunrise, when the sky is still a pale bluish gray. The streets are empty, and the grass and leaves are a little bit sparkly with dew. You are the sound of a few chirpy birds outside the window. You are quiet, peaceful, and contemplative. If you move slowly, it’s not because you’re lazy – it’s because you know there’s no reason to rush. You move like a relaxed cat, pausing for deep stretches that make your muscles feel alive. You are long sips of tea or coffee (out of a mug that’s held with both hands) that slowly warm your insides just as the sun is brightening the sky.

• » Don’t Work for Free Ever Again BoDo: Business of Design online » Blog Archive
  good definition and explanation of pro bono vs volunteerisn
  (tags: design activism communication)

• Writing a Book in Google Docs
  (tags: writing tools gmail googledocs Google)

• The Life of a Graphic Designer (in Training) | Nubbytwiglet.com
  (tags: education design design_thinking)

• Under the Hood With Leo Babauta
  Other key desktop apps include Cyberduck, GIMP, NeoOffice, WriteRoom and iGTD. Quicksilver, of course, is indispensable.”
  (tags: imac tools)

• Functioning Form - Influencing Strategy by Design: Design Skills
  (tags: design design_thinking visual_thinking)

• Free Thank You Note Samples — Find the Perfect Thank You Card Wording via Lifehacker
  (tags: writing reference gratitude)

• Just When I Thought I Was Plugged In…
  Instead, the government was about to choose locks over learning, property over privacy, enforcement over education, (law)suits over security, lobbyists over librarians, and U.S. policy over a “Canadian-made” solution.”
  (tags: Canada community activism)
• Jim Prentice finally appears on CBC Radio. (At 5:45am. On a business show.)
  more on Canada’s proposed copyright legislation
  (tags: Canada activism community)

• Online Survival Guide: 9 Tips for Dealing with Idiots on the Internet « // Internet Duct Tape
  (tags: writing community words)
• Design Your Life - Be Your Own Publicist
  Have a hook. Authors tend to promote the “book itself” to potential media venues, when really what they should be promoting is the “story” around the book. Every book needs a hook to get attention.
  (tags: writing words communication)
• Color Usage Site Home Page
  (tags: communication design tools webdesign UI)

• 11 Essential Tips to Writing the Ultimate Tutorial
  (tags: blog Blogging writing education teaching)

• Test your web design in different browsers - Browsershots
  (tags: webdesign testing browser screenshots)
• sevensixfive: Branching
  beautiful interesting work here
  (tags: art drawing)
• 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without | CSS | Smashing Magazine
  (tags: css code design webdesign)

• Geek to Live: The art of asking
  (tags: blog communication)

• The Tao of Mac - How to Switch to the Mac
  (tags: imac Mac OSX Apple)

Newsdesigner.com | Bhutto Front Pages

Fascinating collection of International and U.S. newspaper front pages on the Benazir Bhutto assassination.

The Globe and Mail:

all installation photos - a photoset on Flickr

Wonderful, alive and beautiful - worth visiting the whole flickr set.

via Illustration Friday

• Universities with the Best Free Online Courses — Education-Portal.com
  (tags: education school)
• Canada Post - Postal Code Lookup - Advanced Search
  (tags: Canada postal code)

globeandmail.com: Canadians need not dream of a white Christmas

Many Canadians who have already spent the better part of a month shovelling and shivering through below-average temperatures and above-average snowfalls probably won’t bat a frosty eyelid as winter officially descends early Saturday.

Despite a jump in temperatures forecast for the weekend in Eastern and Central Canada, 95 per cent of the country should have a white Christmas — far higher than in recent years, says Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips.

… In Resolute, Nunavut, which is as close as he could get to the North Pole, Phillips predicted temperatures for Christmas look at -34 C, but with clear skies.

“Nothing should get in the way of blocking Santa from getting out and getting home. It looks like clear sailing.”

• Splash of Style » Finding Your Way Around Paypal
• How To Read and Understand a Histogram (Professional Photographer Magazine Web Exclusives)
  (tags: photography Photoshop)

tech ronin: Leopard on iMac 24 2.8 - Bliss

This is my first iMac. Who knew I would love the integration and simplicity? I am beginning to see things Steve’s way on this. It’s so easy. So elegant. Sometimes options are more trouble than they are worth. That’s the religion you get with the iPhone…. I’m being corrupted but perhaps for my own good.

redhat.com | Intro to design thinking

David Burney: Design thinking is a term being used today to define a way of thinking that produces transformative innovation. While the term feels trendy, the way of thinking is hardly new. One can think of the cave painters in Lascaux 25,000 years ago as design thinkers— they first began to collect data about the world they experienced, express that data by creating visual stories, document those stories in a way that could be shared into the future, and use that data to create new and innovative ways to solve their problems. The creation of alphabets thousands of years later is an example of design thinking.

Blast from the past? Coldest winter in 15 years, Environment Canada says

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said the trend in recent years of uncharacteristically warm, short winters will be wiped out by a chilly reminder of what a real Canadian winter feels like.

GTD drawings: Picasso and creativity

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. —Picasso

AMA Road Reports - Cameras It’s winter.

Thanks to Maria Langer at An Eclectic Mind for the post idea.

The Body: Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art

In 1997 we suggested Day Without Art become a Day WITH Art, to recognize and promote increased programming of cultural events that draw attention to the continuing pandemic. Though “the name was retained as a metaphor for the chilling possibility of a future day without art or artists”, we added parentheses to the program title, Day With(out) Art, to highlight the proactive programming of art projects by artists living with HIV/AIDS, and art about AIDS, that were taking place around the world. It had become clear that active interventions within the annual program were far more effective than actions to negate or reduce the programs of cultural centers.

via: NEWSgrist

A Flickr set featuring ‘The End’ of old movies.

via: SERIF

Visible Earth A catalog of NASA images

via: Presentation Zen

A week ago I wrote “Google has a more up-to-date image of where I live now but taken from straight overhead all the coulees appear flattened out.” And now they’ve come out with a terrain view for their maps. (maybe I should’ve asked sooner?) It’s not very detailed yet but still pretty interesting.

via Google Maps: Google Maps Adds Terrains

Armin Vit (before he was so soundly trounced by Marian Bantjes in Layer Tennis) started a worthwhile and far-reaching debate on what makes a web design great:

Speak Up › Landmark Web Sites, Where Art Thou?

Design solutions that, in their consistent use as exemplary cases of execution, concept and process, don’t even need to be shown anymore and that, for better or worse, (almost) everyone acknowledges as being seminal works that reflect the goals that graphic design strives for: A visual solution that not only enables, but also transcends, the message to become memorable in the eyes and minds of viewers. Whether these projects are indeed as amazing, relevant and enviable as we have built them up to be is cause for a separate discussion but it’s safe to say that, as far as designs recognized around the profession, there are a certain few that invariably make the list, usually without question. Myself, I could list projects in every category from logos, to annual reports, to magazine covers, to packaging, to typefaces, to opening titles that could be considered landmark projects… But when it comes to web sites, I can’t think of a single www that could be comparable — in gravitas, praise, or memorability — as any of the few projects I just mentioned. Could this be?

To which some really thoughtful responses have been posted:

• Do Canonical Web Designs Exist? - Bokardo
• Subtraction: Something’s Missing in Web Design
• A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web Design

By injecting the idea of an historical perspective into a field noted for its lack of history, Armin gives web design the very things he questions—gravitas, praise and memorability.

On the home stretch of NaBloPoMo a little graphic (no, not that kind of graphic) fun:

NaBloPoMo graphic textorized using text from from my NaBloPoMo entries…

…and a picture of myself textorized with text from my blog (sort of appropriate don’t you think?).

Textorizer - vectorise a picture using text strings

I am a big fan of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and like most people from the “Rider Nation,” I will be watching and hoping for them to win their third Grey Cup today.

Update: We won!

I’m trying to direct folks to view ‘design’ in the sense of something much grander—an approach to framing problems and devising solutions. An approach that works with imperfect data and produces multiple options. An approach that shows empathy for people involved. Design is about so much more than ‘making things look pretty. poetpainter: In Defense of Eye Candy

I am often taken aback by the number of business people who are completely unable to think strategically. That is, to figure out what they want to say, why they want to say it, who they want to say it to, and how they want to say it. As designers we take our own ability to do this for granted, assume “everyone can do that”, and sell ourselves short in the process.

CKUA Radio Network

The CKUA Radio Network was founded in 1927 on the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton. CKUA is Canada’s first educational broadcaster and Canada’s first public broadcaster.

Since its inception, CKUA has grown from a one room, low wattage radio station staffed by exceptionally dedicated amateur radio enthusiasts, into a full fledged radio and Internet broadcast network staffed by world class broadcast and business professionals.

CKUA has evolved from a government of Alberta operation to a public not-for-profit foundation, with a limited commercial license. CKUA currently enjoys over 160,000 weekly listeners and is financially supported by listener donations, program sponsorships, subscriptions, and through corporate partnership.

… On February 29, 1996 CKUA became the first radio station in Canada to go online, carrying its entertaining message of life long learning to people everywhere.

CKUA is also a supporter of the Medicine Hat Folk Club Tongue on the Post Folk Fest.

My observations so far:

• It’s a good idea to write everyday; not a good idea to post everyday. Quality counts.
• It takes more time than I thought it would.
• I’d always been suspicious of blogging—thinking it might be egotistical. Now that I’m doing it everyday I see it’s the opposite—it’s not about what I can get—it’s about what I can share.

Google has a more up-to-date image of where I live now but taken from straight overhead all the coulees appear flattened out. I enhanced the colour to make it look a bit more lively.

An exercise to gain insight into blog design, colour, and structure based on this fascinating full-size, 374-page reproduction of the entire 2007 IKEA catalogue reduced & abstracted to only averaged color & lay-out structure.

Core77’s Hack-2-School Guide: Classroom

To be a better design researcher, hone your ability to observe the world around you. Keep a regular log that you add to at least weekly (daily would be ideal). Document the strange, the curious, the weird, the awesome and the funny. Learn to keep a close eye on the artifacts, signs, designs, behaviors, products and experiences that you encounter in your everyday life.

Today’s observation: The controls on my mom’s television. I was away for the weekend and when I got home her tv remote and the digital cable box no longer functioned together and the solution had her flummoxed. It was just a matter of turning the tv on and pushing the cable button and then turning the digital box on - why isn’t that easier to figure out?

Rick Poynor on the end of Emigre

I heard Rudy VanderLans speak at ACAD many years ago. Rudy said something to the effect that if you didn’t design the typeface you used, can you really say you designed the [at the time, printed] piece?

Some links on Canadian book pricing since our dollar reached parity:

• Canadians are Getting Fleeced by Their Own Dollar

  … that book I very recently purchased (for which there was no price adjustment), reflects a Canadian dollar value of $0.68. The last time the Canadian dollar was at that value was in 2003.

• Parity puts book prices under the microscope

  And the consumer hasn’t liked what he’s been seeing. His ire has focused on the discrepancy between what a Canadian pays for an imported, American-made book in this country and what an American consumer pays for that same title, with the two different prices printed right there on the book flap for all to see.

And an interesting perspective from the CBC’s Neil MacDonald on why prices aren’t going down.

• The catered life of the American consumer

  Canada might be technologically advanced and well educated, and a nation with its public finances in apple-pie order, but even in our free-trading, globalized world, Canadian consumers are a second-class citizenry.

• Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Quicksilver Plug-ins

• Type Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

  Typography may well be the most critical component in the education of a young graphic designer.

• ericson.net | matthew ericson Infographics designer for the New York Times

• Roughstock Studios: Killing Off Five Design Myths
• What makes a great logo? Logo design for me involves capturing visually what a company is about both emotionally and intellectually.

November is the month in which you post something to your blog every day, in accordance with the National Blog Posting Month challenge. So far I am 14-for-14 and feeling really good about that.

TiKouka: How to set a publication time in WordPress

Before you click the Publish button look on the right-hand side of the window and click the plus sign at the right end of the Post Timestamp heading. Some options appear that allow you to set a publication time and date. Change these to suit your post, then make sure to check the box beside Edit timestamp.

Testing this now as I’m going to be out of town this weekend.

Since getting my new iMac over a month ago I have been downloading and installing every new piece of donationware I see. So far, some of the “keepers” are:

• AppDelete Most of the software I download gets deleted and this does a pretty good job of it.
• Cyberduck Set the timeout to 60 sec. to get it to work with the site I update every month
• Firefox ‘natch
• Gimp Not Photoshop but so far surprisingly capable
• Growl May just be distracting
• iGTD Started using iGTD this week and its been really effective so far
• MacJournal261 its a toss up between this one and Journler right now - Journler has a lot more features but MacJournal is effective and simple
• NeoOffice all I need for an “Office” type program at the moment
• NetNewsWire Lite I used to use Bloglines all the time but lately it has been giving me the same posts over and over and over again so I’ve been using Google Reader a lot after using NNW for nearly a month. Yesterday I downloaded the latest NNW Lite version and am giving it another go
• Quicksilver This is probably the first thing every new mac user should download and learn to use - amazing.
• Snitter I am torn between this and the free (ad-supported) version of Twitterific right now. Twitterific is prettier but I like the larger text entry area of Snitter
• TextWrangler Using this until I upgrade my old BBEdit license (which, btw, Bare Bones was very helpful in finding for me and isn’t expensive) along with scripts from VormPlus Webtools
• Thunderbird Email has been probably the most disappointing aspect of my leap to OS X (Tiger). I looked at Apple Mail of course as well as Eudora/Penelope which was disappointing as I’d used Eudora on OS 9 but the icons in this version are just too ugly. I think what I really want is something that looks like Mailsmith in Classic and also displays the HTML emails my friends send me while filing eveything in a completely predictable way. When Gmail came out with IMAP Access, Thunderbird won. Add-ons: Quicktext

Blogsolid » Blog Archive » Dealing With Blogger’s Regret

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the inner conflict known as buyer’s regret or buyer’s remorse. That slow panic rising from deep within your gut as the question begs an answer: “did I make a mistake in paying half my salary for that thing I just bought?” Oops.

Blogger’s regret is very similar. In a brave/foolish/ignorant moment you posted an entry that you really just shouldn’t have published…

Sometimes one wants to post something in anger or link to something corny and you just know you might regret it. What can you do to get it out of your favourite blog editor and off your mind?

One solution I find useful is to set up a Gmail label and filter combination and email my words away:

1. Log in to your Gmail Account and choose Edit labels

2. Create a new label BlogNoPub for example
3. While still in Settings, select the Filters tab and click on Create a new filter
4. Beside To: type in yourusername+blognopub@gmail.com
5. Go to the next step and select:
   • Skip the Inbox(Archive it)
   • Mark as read
   • Apply the label: your new label e.g. BlogNoPub

6. Create Filter

Now when you think you might regret posting something, email it to username+blognopub@gmail.com instead and let it sit there for a few days first. After a cooling off period, you can go back and revise your words or, as most often happens, forget about it.

This morning started out with a simple question: What to blog about? In a random act of looking for inspiration I typed blog into the Google Search box and clicked the I’m Feeling Lucky link. Luckily, Google took me to the Wikipedia entry for Blog where I learned that:

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

Naturally I was propelled to learn what a portmanteau is and stumble upon this interesting tidbit:

This usage of the word was coined by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

This connection between my web journeys and Alice in Wonderland is wonderfully apropos.

• Canadian English Dictionary
• del.icio.us 1.2.1
• Firebug 1.0.5
• Google Notebook 1.0.0.18
• GreaseMonkey
• ScribeFire 1.4.2
• TinyUrl Creator 1.04
• Todoist Post 0.59
• Web Developer 1.1.4

• Geek To Live: Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client sorts out all the extra mailboxes added when you start using Gmail IMAP

• Using Firebug to Tweak Type and Layout

  In addition to offering a whole host of tools for web developers, it can also help you to tweak your type. You can quickly make adjustments to line-height and font-size, letter-spacing, and even change your type on the fly.

• 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design high-quality fonts available for free download

• What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like how all HTML files should be organized

• How to Build a Paper Research Database detailed directions to setting up Excel for containing all your research and making paper writing easier

  The big advantage this tool gives you is a comprehensive understanding of all the relevant issues. You’ll be astonished by how this legwork will change the feel of your writing process. You’ll approach the page with confidence — which is a novel sensation for most non-professional writers. This confidence allows you to write strong, declarative sentences. It removes that sense of straining to connect paragraphs and eat up space that plagues undergrad papers and disappoints professors. And it allows you to make well-reasoned, original arguments.

November is the month in which you post something to your blog every day, in accordance with the National Blog Posting Month challenge. So far I am 7-for-7 and feeling pretty good about that.

Two links that have been invaluable in helping me to write are:

A Formula For Telling a Good Story which suggests breaking the story into 6 parts:

1. Who is involved
2. What the action was
3. Where you are (described actively)
4. Conflict: the bulk of the story including the importance of the story, what happened and the action you too to resolve it
5. Resolution
6. Tag: the aftermath of the resolution, the big finish of the story

and Nail Your Next Presentation with these Classic Principles of Public Speaking that draws on the techniques of classical Greek orators:

1. Exordium or gaining the sympathy of your listeners
2. Narratio a narrative outline of the issue at hand
3. Refutatio refuting the counter arguments
4. Peroratio your final appeal

This morning started out with a simple question: What are the font variants after some of the font names in Font Book on Tiger e.g. Lucida Grande CY and CE? This led me on a fascinating journey through the  Apple  Human Interface Guidelines; onto a sort of strange but complete and nicely designed listing of resources by Luc Devroye; then naturally the Mac OS X 10.4: Fonts list; and perhaps most inspiring, a simple and informative discussion of the entire Lucida family of harmonized typefaces from the font designers themselves, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes Notes on Lucida designs; and finally, a sidetrack onto the code style font sampler. The web can be like that sometimes - taking one on unexpected and fascinating adventures.

Fascinating material and a lot to think about the next time you’re reading a web page. BTW, CY is a font that contains Cyrillic characters for Eastern European Slavic languages.

Yesterday’s blog post got me thinking about “feature creep” and how often I started using a web app only to have to abandon it a few months (or weeks) later because new features rendered it unusable on an older operating system. One piece of software that has (so far) managed to avoid this pitfall is Todoist. An elegant and simple task manager that’s no more complicated than it needs to be. I have been using it for nearly a year now and its still usable and useful on both my old and my new computer.

Some further references on feature creep:

Why Does Software Spoil?

Feature Presentation

Feature creep on Moleskine City Notebooks?

I tried Google Docs way back when it was still Writely but had to abandon it when added features made it inaccessible on my old computer. This fall, after enrolling in a first year university French course, I decided to give Google Docs another try. The workflow turned out to be surprisingly simple and effective:

• Online storage gave me access to the documents at the college or at home
• Export as Word allowed me to email it to the professor in the format he preferred
  
• Google Docs can spell check in French without the rest of the page (or my whole computer) having to be in French
• Stored revisions make it easy to go back to previous versions of the document if I change my mind

onematch.ca

Being a stem cell transplant recipient myself and being alive because of it, I can’t begin to express how important it is for people to register to donate.

Citrus theme by minimanjapan

kuler colour theme generator. One of the joys of my new computer is getting to try out lots of new (to me) applications.

My first

Nothing to see here..

lines and colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, webcomics, cartoons, concept art and other visual arts » How to Display Your Art on the Web

a rough guide for illustrators, gallery artists, cartoonists, comics artists, concept artists and other visual artists who want to present a professional representation of their work on the web.

I joined NaBloPoMo to motivate myself to blog. I subscribe to over 600 feeds and while I’m not sure I can add anything substantive to what’s already out there perhaps there is value in commenting and linking to things that interest, inflame or intrigue me. That said, I realize now that I will also need to add a profile page in order to provide context for what I link to or write about…

Please ignore.

• 15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography. Part 1 | i love typography
  (tags: typography design creativity)

• A Word In Your Ear: Design’s three ways of working?
  any analysis of design has to include whether the design contributes to, or takes away from, the world. In other words, design cannot be defined without an ethical or ecological analysis.
  (tags: design design_thinking education)

• Logic+Emotion: Are You a Synthesizer?
  they are the ones who are able to cut right through the distractions—to the essence of the problem.
  (tags: creativity design visual_thinking design_thinking)

• Cooper | Insights | Journal of Design | Articles | Using research to end visual design debates
  (tags: design visual_thinking design_thinking education research)

First Day of School

Creating an entry and trackback so that my friend who moved to Thailand can find me.

• Design View / Andy Rutledge - Professional Thinking
  (tags: design design_thinking education visual_thinking)

• Art of the Business Card - a photoset on Flickr
  (tags: creativity design reference)

• Flickr: The *Remarkable Shop Signs* Pool
  via Speak Up
  (tags: design visual_thinking design_thinking)

• Visual Principles
  via design sojourn
  (tags: design design_thinking)

• ARC ARTicles - Oil Painters of America Keynote Address - Fred Ross - Page 1/1
  “… the essence of what art is, the communication of our common humanity…”
  (tags: art drawing painting)

• Basement.org: 10 Things We Can Learn From Apple
  If we think through what makes a great design, it’s something that someone else connects with - whether emotionally or intellectually or both. When they connect, it’s a great feeling of achievement and connection with the creator.
  (tags: design education design_thinking)
• Bokardo » Design is Not Art, Redux
  (tags: art design)
• Doing Local Right
  Newspapers and local websites are a perfect match. Newspapers have the reporters, the relationships and the resources to provide better coverage of their local areas than anyone else could even dream of. That’s exactly what the team at the Lawrence Jour
  (tags: communication newspapers)

• A List Apart: Articles: You Are Not a Robot
  Deciding on scope and structure isn’t the only time web designers generalize. Throughout the design process, you continually exercise your judgment to make decisions that often have far-reaching consequences. You use your experience and knowledge of wo
  (tags: design education visual_thinking webdesign)

• A List Apart: Articles: Who Needs Headlines?
  (tags: writing Blogging)

• swissmiss: a brief history of design
  (tags: design education visual_thinking)

• Directory of FREE Online Books and FREE eBooks
  (tags: books)
• The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs
  (tags: webdesign design css blog_redesign)

• A List Apart: Articles: Contrast and Meaning
  (tags: design typography webdesign)

• CSSTYPE v2 (BETA) - web safe typography on screen for pixel perfectionists
  (tags: typography webdesign css)

2 years today.

• Font Bureau Type 101 | Blog Archive » Screen Fonts: An Abbr. Hist.
  (tags: typography)

• Gunnar Swanson writing: Graphic Design as a New Liberal Art
  the best thing we can do for design students is to make them adaptable.
  (tags: design education visual_thinking)

If this could post to my blog, it could be really useful. It is really quick and works well in my browser.

• A List Apart: Articles: The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)
  just listened to Web Typography Sucks presentation podcast from SXSW and was reminded of this article
  (tags: typography webdesign)

• Wired 15.04: The See-Through CEO
  In the new world of radical transparency, the path to business success is clear.
  (tags: communication writing Blogging)
• Embracing Transparency | Blue Flavor
  I believe that in the new new new economy (I forget which one we are on), money will be made from sharing information and knowledge, building communities around big ideas and shared values.
  (tags: Blogging communication writing)
• The New New Typography
  Jagged pixel-like edges appear stretched and inconsistent in a way that a computer would have to be coaxed into rendering.
  (tags: typography design)

• :: ( CRIT ) :: DESIGN BLOG ::: What Classes Make a Good Designer?
  My argument is that most people do need basic foundation classes and a few liberal arts electives in order to be a knowledgeable designer. There are technical schools for those who just want to learn skills.
  (tags: design education visual_thinking)

• Approximate Conversion from Points to Pixels
  (tags: webdesign typography)

• MIT OpenCourseWare | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | 6.831 User Interface Design and Implementation, Fall 2004 | Lecture Notes
  (tags: ui design education)

• Leifdrawing101: How I build an illustration
  Nice step-by-step
  (tags: creativity illustration)

• Cognitive Daily: Artists look different
  Vogt and Magnussen argue that it comes down to training: artists have learned to identify the real details of a picture, not just the ones that are immediately most salient to the perceptual system, which is naturally disposed to focusing on objects and
  (tags: art education)

• LoudLit.org
  just what the doctor ordered after eye surgery
  (tags: audiobooks books)
• LibriVox
  (tags: audiobooks books)

• Common Errors in English
  (tags: writing words reference)
• Zoe Strauss: Henry Kissinger’s portrait by Richard Avedon
  “All photographs are accurate. None is the truth.”
  (tags: art photography)

• A Word In Your Ear: Graphic design education is failing students
  via http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2007/02/graphic_design__1.html
  (tags: design education)
• Overlooked New York
  art and writing together (portraits)
  (tags: art writing)

• globeandmail.com: Albertans open up their wallets for arts
  At the same time that individual Albertans are forking out for the arts, the provincial government’s assistance to the sector has been stingy. For example, a Hill Strategies nationwide survey of government spending on culture between 1992-93 and 2002-03 d
  (tags: art)

• Thinking design: A pencil, a ruler, and a cup of coffee
  Today, everyone seems to be talking about design. Countless books,
  (tags: design)

Chinook wind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not a record, but still 25 degrees in one day.

• Giving It Away - Forbes.com
  (tags: ebooks writing publishing marketing)

• Design Sojourn » Many ways of seeing
  But if you step out and look at the rest of the world in different perspectives you can find endless inspiration for the creation and pursuit of the original design idea.
  (tags: creativity design visual_thinking art)

DSC Gallery of Canadian Drawing Masters

Drawing Society Of Canada (DSC)

Curiously Withstood, Acrylic on paper, 10 X 19 in.

Enlarge

Esplanade Art Gallery

July 22 - September 17, 2006

This piece will then go to become part of the Travelling Exhibition: The Hat Art Club at Sixty from October 2006 to September 2007.

The Canadian Design Resource

Drawing is the point of contact in which idea begins to approximate form. There is a kind of transcendent energy in the sketchbook, or the tissue, or even the napkin upon which the simplest of doodles begins its long, twisted road to realization. It’s all grist for the mill, and the studio is its incubation chamber: not the studio with the white board and the IT guy and the phones ringing and the incessant emails, but the studio in which the ideas seek, and ultimately start to find, their burgeoning, fledgling form. Cezanne once wrote that the painter must enclose himself within his work, and it is true that such investment — physical, spiritual, and deeply intentional — is, in fact, what making work is all about. But as the public’s media appetite moves further away from the dreamy landscape of imagination (think Reality TV and confessional memoirs) the danger for design, I think, is imminent. Sure, design serves a pragmatic need, but that doesn’t mean its point of departure needs to position itself so firmly in the realm of logic, does it? Drawing, as the primary gesture of making, reopens the doors of the imagination and recasts the process as something completely different. Scary, because you don’t always know where you’re going. But somehow, you know when you get there.

There’s time, later for logic, for editing, for justifying all that type, for putting up those responsible roadblocks that we all must, on some level, choose to embrace. The studio, at least a little piece of it, is not the place for such duty-bound thinking. Somewhere, somehow, it must be the place for thinking through making.

But don’t take my word for it: the only way you’ll know for sure is if you turn off your phone, pick up a pencil and try it yourself.

Design Observer: The Art of Thinking Through Making Jessica Helfand

I’ve known of Miraz since she ran a mailing list for eudora-mac back in about 1995/6 and more recently on the Wise-Women list. Her book WordPress 2 : Visual QuickStart Guide should be out at the end of May. I am so happy for her.

I am asked to talk about my art sometimes. I sense that hunger for understanding within the audience. I used to feel pressurised to come up with answers to satisfy that hunger. I have learned that it can lead to me coming up with hurried and spurious interpretations of my own work.

Such is the status that meaning can have over feeling that I bow to the pressure and engage what Steven Pinker calls the “Baloney Generator.” This is our rational self that is so uncomfortable with the potential ambiguity of an emotional motivation that it will try to pin things down with desperately formulated rationales. The cleverer we are the better we are at making up more convincing meanings and reasons.

Nowadays I employ a more open strategy and talk about the things I was looking at and thinking about when I was making a particular piece and leave it up to the audience to make their own direct connections. This feels more satisfying and true than any nailed-down explanation.

Trust your own reactions, don’t seek enlightenment Grayson Perry

via ArtsJournal

: : Speak Up > Computer = Fart, or Digital Immersion Is Not Design : :

Still, nothing changes the fact that the computer ≠ design.

ideasonideas » Blog Archive » Designers must write

Even that early on, I knew that design was about more than getting funky glasses and flipping through type magazines–It had everything to do with the idea. How could you effectively explore or begin to develop an idea without first scratching down some thumbnails and messing about?

:: ( CRIT ) :: DESIGN BLOG ::: Cookie Cutter Creativity

Creativity on the computer has become a philosophical question for me. I have a background in fine art and I’ve been around long enough to know the difference between drawing with a conte crayon and finessing a bezier curve with a mouse. There is something lost between the artist working late into the night with paintbrush and furious passion, to the ‘group mind’ connect the computer provides. It all becomes just a little homogenized when individual passion is watered down in the endless ocean of surfing. More than enough phish in the sea.

I remember when art was actually a required part of public school curriculum. Not that it was great in all cases, but it was there. Now teaching technique supersedes teaching critical thinking in American education. I teach symbolism as visual literacy for designers, which you might think would be of interest to many aspiring designers, but my classes are small compared to the newest software bells-and-buzzer offerings enough of the time to know the priorities have shifted. Even with consistently high student evaluations for what they learned in my class over many consecutive years, enrollment is not what it should be and schools promote computer training well over design philosophy instruction. And my own training? Finding available classes or workshops in esoteric studies such as semiotics or sacred geometry are virtually non-existent in this country. Do a search on Google, you’ll see what I mean. So I read and conjecture a lot. And I use, God forbid, intuition and my own experience as teaching tools.

Today is my one year blog-versary! I haven’t written as much as I had hoped but neither did I get caught in endless redesigns as happened with my previous blog starts.

Where It All Began, undated, black and white photo postcard, 5.5 X 3.87 in.

This is where my mom was born.

Kevin Cornell writes about his process creating illustrations for A List Apart.

1. The Message Generally speaking, the process for any illustration begins with determining just what the image is supposed to communicate.

2. The Concept I believe the concept is the most important part of any illustration; or any artistic endeavor, for that matter. Artistic styles go in and out of fashion quick as a rabbit on rockets; the best way to ensure an illustration remains relevant long after its style grows stale is to make sure it’s based on a relevant idea.

• jot down as many illustration ideas as possible
• take the loose visual list and sort out the best ideas.

3. The Rough The Rough Phase requires versatility. I produce my roughs with a pencil because it’s quick, easy to make changes with, and able to get across all the important virtues of the final art — tone, contrast, form, and composition.

4. Final Art

“Dissecting The Process” - A classic Bearskinrug Article.

Standing, 06.02.12, graphite on paper, 11 X 20 in.

Enlarge

Reclining Male, 06.02.12, graphite on paper, 15 X 15 in.

Enlarge

Sometimes I like to just post the drawings and let them speak for themselves, but I’m often asked to justify the way I draw — I draw “messy” because life is messy, complicated, energetic, and interconnected — how could I draw any other way?

In no particular order of importance, I believe artwork can be judged on at least the following criteria:

• Emotional provocation
• “Craftmanship”
• Innovation
• Truth
• Conceptual complexity/quality
• Integrity (or consistency)
• Transcendentalism

Edward_ Winkleman: Truth

Life Drawing, 06.02.14, Graphite on paper, 14 X 22 inches Enlarge

Still Life, 84.02.15, silkscreen on paper, 12 X 12 in. Enlarge

Last weekend I took a 2-day figure drawing workshop from an instructor I had in art college over 20 years ago. He still had this print that I had done in his first year printmaking class.

Between now and February 15, 2006, PBwiki will double your storage space if you write about PBwiki. I use PBwiki to draft ideas for blog posts and also to collect bits and pieces of information for ongoing topics. Did I mention it’s free?

Update 06.02.24: This didn’t happen. My storage space hasn’t been doubled and its been 3 weeks since I posted.

Life Drawing, 06.01.17, conté on paper, 14 X 22 in.

Enlarge

The other night one of my fellow life drawing students asked me about learning to draw. I suggested she get some figure drawing books from the library. She replied that she had read lots of books and they don’t seem to help. I told her, “Don’t read them. Draw the pictures.” In my experience, this teaches the hand and eye structure, anatomy, and proportion. The only way to learn to draw is to practice. I should also have mentioned that practice continues for the rest of one’s life.

Wedding Dress, 06.01.10, oil stick on paper, 18 X 20 in.

Enlarge

Last night’s life drawing and a quotation I like about life drawing:

The human figure has played a huge role in art this century, perhaps more so now than ever before. While video and electronic processes may seem radically distant from ‘traditional’ art, they are simply tools, and much of the art being produced by young artists today has as its subject the same preoccupation that art has always addressed: the human being and what it is to be one. How to Draw The Human Figure: A Complete Guide, John Raynes and Jody Raynes

Start smart. Plans keep your career moving on your terms—not anyone else’s.

Pay, promotion, recognition all depend on tactics like journaling, reinforcing each other at meetings, teaching ourselves to negotiate, and underlining our achievements through memos, reports, and even idiosyncratic gestures.

It’s really important to recognize that insulting/ degrading/ ridiculous comments aren’t about you—they’re about the person saying them. Don’t take the remarks personally but do take them seriously because you need to learn what’s really going on.

Being true to yourself, having the nerve and the self-knowledge to cut through the mythologies, is the only way ahead for women—and for business.

Skills are the absolute prerequisite of confidence. Because skills can be acquired, confidence can be acquired—but both must be worked at over time

Everyone needs things from meeting, negotiations, or relationships. You are more powerful when you understand what these needs are. For some it may be clarity, reassurance, details; for others, it may be new ideas, speed, raw data. Power accrues by understanding those needs and deciding how you want to address them.

…you get power by giving it, your company becomes powerful by serving.

I am struck that the most satisfied women I talk to place fairness, equality, at the heart of what they do. Their private lives are defined by mutual support, respect—and patience.

We want lives that are integrated and consistent—in which we undertake different responsibilities but with consistent, coherent, and substantial values.

…women are the true trailblazers in business today. Headcounts and salaries may be one benchmark—but, increasingly, we measure our success not in how well we play the game but in how profoundly we change it.

As I watch women leave traditional business structures and as I watch them flourish, I see the beginnings of our parallel business universe arising. It’s one in which companies work differently and in which lives are lived honestly—a world of work in which lives are integrated, not delegated.

We are smart, determined, pragmatic, and disciplined. We have high standards, for ourselves and everyone we work with. We refuse to accept that business must be dishonest and dehumanizing.

What I see all around me are millions of women inventing and discovering ways of working that are direct, fair, honest, and that earn them respect for who they are.

I came across this informative and useful book via: AntonellaPavese.com

Designers solve problems. Where style is concerned with aesthetics, as they relate to a particular cultural context, design treats this as a secondary concern. Design can be beautiful, ugly, or banal—it doesn’t matter. Aesthetics are simply a device that designers use to deliver the message and concept. It is secondary. Style is fun. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a good few steps removed from design.

To truly solve problems, we have to look at a situation closely, and personally. We can’t just apply new, fashionable, treatments. Instead, we must explore, fight, and get messy, in order to find appropriate and powerful solutions. Put simply, we have to think.…

Style is generally pretty achievable, but good ideas take a lot of work and critical thinking.

ideasonideas » Blog Archive » Competently okay

I started this blog without a clear vision of what I wanted to do with it. The challenge I set for myself was simply to post rather than to constantly redesign it.

The clearest vision might be to post my own artwork but I find myself posting links to things I want to remember and to things I find important or interesting. These things include design (I worked as a designer and art director in Calgary for 15 years), other artist’s perspectives, and various web applications that I use on a daily or weekly basis.

As I stick with this blog over time, I am learning that it can be much more than a personal bookmarking tool, it can be a place for:

• sharing ideas and doing it with authenticity and learning about myself and others in the process.
• sharing my own experiences with AML and a bone marrow transplant.
• sharing my artwork.

With these things in mind, I’d like to make the following New Year’s blog resolutions:

• post biographical information (my resume and portfolios) to facilitate contact and trust.
• posting of more Bone Marrow Transplant information to help others who are considering or going through that process (may be contained in a different blog and keep this one more focussed on art and design).
• posting more including doing and posting more artwork

And, finally, because I can’t resist:

• redesign with an emphasis on typography to support the visual information and the process of communication.

Enlarge

Last week’s challenge was to draw a challenge from the past year that you didn’t try before. I don’t actually have a medicine cabinet so I drew my “medicine box” which, thankfully, is nearly empty now.

and as a new year’s present Blogsome seems to have given us all blazingly fast servers! Thank you!

1. Discover blogs.
2. Get a Bloglines account.
3. Subscribe to 300+ blogs.
4. Discover Furl.
5. Furl everything.
6. Open a Blogger account but constantly redesign it without writing any content.
7. Abandon blog.
8. Repeat three times.
9. Open a Blogsome account. Use a standard template to see if I can generate content without constantly redesigning it.
10. Start writing:
    1. Lists of links.
    2. My own sketches and drawings.
    3. Some actual things I wrote or liked.
    4. About being a blogger.
11. Find myself writing longhand using Markdown.
12. Start to wonder if I should start more blogs to focus on different areas of interest?
13. Consider taking Panexa instead. (link via: Signal vs. Noise).

What do designers need to know anyway? In the digital world, changes come too fast for that question to be answered specifically. We may get further by asking instead: What do designers feel an irresistible urge to do?

Men and women, boys and girls, gravitate to design for any number of reasons; but common to all of them is the itch to make something—a picture, an artifact, a plan. That itch is satisfied by drawing, carving, shaping, molding—somehow using the hand to realize a concept in the mind.

If designers are more cerebral than expected, it may be because designing is more cerebral than expected. In an age when digital no longer refers to fingers, the work of the designer is no longer hands-on. That regrettable circumstance becomes truly deplorable with the realization that hands-on is never all that far from heads-on.

AIGA - Noah’s Archive: Why Designers Can Think

Communication Nation: Visual thinking practice: Finding your visual voice

tags: communication design creativity visual_thinking

This is a summary of the settings I’ve tried so far:

* error message on update

I am trying this again in case it is related to server performance problems at blogsome.

Update: still no title. I wonder if there is a way to fix that?

Result: does not contain valid XML and it didn’t update even after about 15 minutes.

Update: trying the Moveable Type API that it gives for Wordpress on the Common APIs and URLs page.

Result: Server response does not contain valid XML but it posted fine (and with a title). Now to test updating posts from Writely with these settings…. Apparently because of the error message Writely doesn’t recognize the document as “blogged” so it doesn’t give me the option to update.

I am writing this in Writely using Markdown syntax (in blogsome that plugin has to be activated). How will it turn out?

Update: It turned out perfectly (except that it used the default category). Now I wonder if I can update posts the same way?

Update 2: Looks like it just makes a new post rather than updating the previous one. Also it adds in <br /> tags and gives an error for invalid XML sent but the post goes through anyway.

Update 3: I tried this again with the correct settings for blogsome i.e. using the Blogger API as per Writely Help but it still doesn’t update or remove posts and the post has no title.

In short, when you look at a snapshot you took at the beach, the limitations of the camera mean that three-quarters of the scene will have been lopped off, the range of tones will be compressed tenthousandfold, and the information that remains will never be what you saw. Any appearance of realism will be an inference informed by learning and shaped by convention. It is not realism but verisimilitude.

Photographs may seem realistic but the technology of film prevents escaping photographic conventions, which are actually quite limiting. Less limiting is a paintbrush. A brush can produce every effect a camera can plus a great many more. Before photography, skilful and observant artists spent millennia working out how to represent reality on flat surfaces using this superior tool. Their work forms the most complete guide available on realistic ways to put pictures onto paper.

I’ve always felt that a painting or drawing should be more than a photo, more than a realistic representation of the surface of something or someone. This article explains that and details how to improve digital photographs by incorporating the principles of perception and art.

TidBITS: Reality and Digital Pictures via: penmachine.com

If you’d like the contents of your attachment to appear in a new browser window without having to download the file, view the attachment as HTML. Here’s how:

1. Open the message containing an attachment.
2. Click ‘View as HTML’ at the bottom of the message.
3. When you’re finished reading the attached file, close the new browser window to return to Gmail.

Viewing attachments as HTML is a quick and easy alternative to downloading files. You can view the following types of files as HTML: .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, .sxw, .sxc, .sxi, .sdw, .sdc, .sdd, and .wml.

Gmail: Help Center - How do I view attachments?

This is going to be so useful to me as I don’t have Microsoft Word. I tried it out today on a .doc file and it printed out really nicely.

Examples of outstanding talent which may or may not have been overlooked or forgotten. Compiled by a working illustrator and designer.

This is a beautiful blog. 100 Years of Illustration is an excellent example of how good a blog can be when it is focussed on one topic that the author knows well.

1. Quality through quantity.
2. Do NOT mix generating and editing.
3. When to judge.
4. Don’t be afraid to re-use elements.
5. How to have “lots of ideas”: permute.
6. “Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can.”
7. Don’t even bother “fixing” pieces.
8. Work fast.
9. Let your level show.
10. Don’t hide your failures.

the Scarlet Letters: Notes on Making Art

I saw Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) in my news feeds the other day and remembered the first time I’d seen this piece in a book as a child. Instantly it had struck me that a painting could be more than just a “picture of something.” I looked at that painting often, sometimes tracing or sketching it, trying to figure out how it worked. How it looked like a woman going down the stairs and yet didn’t. It had a profound impact on me and ignited my passion for visual communication.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web - a practical guide to web typography

… I started a blog post with a thought, but no idea as to where it would take me, and that’s how I’ve written ever since. When it’s going well, the words just flow out of me… surprising me with the unexpected direction. But, you know, I’ve realized that I am blogging now because I enjoy it, rather than to “look good” in front of my audience. It’s a very different feeling!

Goal-Free Living » Goal-Free Blogging

I am going to try this to see if I can make my own blogging less laboured (and hopefully more frequent).

Point . Design: why i dont bother anymore

we gave them this design. they said to do this instead, which is not only bad looking, but it is a sketch stolen from another company. Normally I would refuse to do this job, but I work for my brother, and so we’re more concerned with making a few bucks. To me, a couple grand isn’t worth it. I’d rather be poor and have my integrity. This is why I generally don’t bother seeking work. I’d rather not participate in this.

I think I should stop posting this kind of stuff as what if I needed to do design work again and it hurt my chances?

What it boils down to, in my view, when we discuss frontiers in terms of graphic design and communication design, is that the designer has a responsibility in facilitating other people to communicate.

The main frontier to cross in communication design, is that of the culture of sharing, the culture of exchange.

…design is about how to bind things that others make together.

max bruinsma: Crossing Frontiers of Understanding

Icograda | Feature

Emigre: An Ending by Rick Poynor, U.K. (reprinted from Design Observer, November 2005)

Design blogs generate a lot of noise and they sure do love their own hype, but nothing produced in this area has so far equalled the concentrated documentary achievement and design culture transforming impact of Emigre and if you doubt this, just go and look at the magazine. Emigre had a clearly defined purpose. It involved contributions by many talented people, but the conduit for all this fervour and brain power was provided by one unusually astute editor. Emigre emerged at a time when technology was changing design forever and the magazine sizzled with this energy and excitement. Nothing so momentous or contentious is happening in graphic design today. Blogs, on the other hand, lack the focus of an overriding design mission. They are places for chatter. They are about anything, everything and often about nothing of any great consequence. No one, so far, has used the medium to stake out an urgent critical position comparable to Keedy’s or Blauvelt’s in the pages of Emigre in the 1990s. Nor have blogs proved to be the medium for exploring new design aesthetics. In Emigre, form itself became a means of debate. What the magazine said was inseparable from how it looked.

I heard Rudy VanderLans speak at ACAD many years ago. He said something to the effect that if you didn’t design the typeface you used, can you really say you designed the work? That always stuck with me.

Spell with Flickr via The Design Weblog.

Left brain dominant individuals are more orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. They are good at understanding directions and anything that is explicit and logical. They can have trouble comprehending emotions and abstract concepts, they can feel lost when things are not clear, doubting anything that is not stated and proven.

Right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what’s not said, visualizing things, and making things up. They can lack attention to detail, directness, organization, and the ability to explain their ideas verbally, leaving them unable to communicate effectively.

Overall you appear to have fairly Equal Hemispheres

According to Darwinian theory, optimal evolution takes place with random variation and selective retention. The evolution savvy individual will try many different approaches when faced with a problem and select the best of those approaches. Many historical intellectuals have confessed their advantage was simply considering/exploring/trying more approaches than others. The left brain dominant type suffers from limited approaches, narrow-mindedness. The right brain dominant type suffers from too many approaches, scatterbrained. To maintain balanced hemispheres, you need to exercise both variability and selection. Just as a company will have more chance of finding a great candidate by increasing their applicant pool, an individual who considers a wider set of options is more likely to make quality decisions.

via: Marc’s Outlook on Productivity

You Should Get a MFA (Masters of Fine Arts)

You’re a blooming artistic talent, even if you aren’t quite convinced. You’d make an incredible artist, photographer, or film maker.

via: Geeky Mom

The Advertising Slogan Generator

I like it!

via: Karen Ruby

The Creative Habit : Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp

Improvising eg. dashing off a bunch of sketches (45 minutes a few days a week = lucky) Look back over them later - just let it go while doing it.

The Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn says that ideas can be acted upon in four ways. First, you must generate the idea, usually from memory or experience or activity. Then you have to retain it - that is, hold it steady in your mind and keep it from disappearing. Then you have to inspect it - study it and make inferences about it. Finally, you have to be able to transform it - alter it in some way to suit your higher purposes.

The tricky part about scratching, however, is that you can’t stop with one idea. Henry James said that genius is the act of perceiving similarity among disparate things. In the empty room you’re trying to connect the dots, linking A to B to C to maybe come up with H. Scratching is a means of identifying A, and if you can get to A, you’ve got a grip on the slippery rock wall. You’ve got purchase. You can move on to B, which is mandatory. You cannot stop with one idea. You don’t really have a workable idea until you combine two ideas.

How to Be Lucky Be generous. I don’t use that word lightly. Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you’re generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It’s like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

Whenever I feel I’m working in a groove its invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU. In return, they live up to the potential I see in them. Then I am the one who feels lucky. In the luck equation, who is the winner here?

The spine is my little secret. It keeps me on message, but it is not the message itself. … What am I trying to say? That is the moment when you will embrace, with gratitude, the notion of a spine. [spine connects the work to something larger].

Once you accept the power of the spine in the creative act, you will become much more efficient in your creativity. You will still get lost on occasion, but having a spine will anchor you. When you lose your way, it will show you the way home. It will remind you that this is the effect you’re trying to achieve. Having a spine will snap you back to attention quickly and, as a result, will inject speed and economy into your work habits. Energy and time are finite resources; conserving them is very important. I’ve always thought that one of the great rewards of being a creative person is that I get to do it.

It is that perfect moment of equipoise between knowing it all and knowing nothing that Hemingway was straining for when he said, “The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.” You cannot manufacture inexperience, but you can maintain it and protect what you have.

Beethoven was constantly switching from one skill set to another. … Switching genres was his way of maintaining his inexperience and, as a result, enlarging his art.

Analyze your skill set. See where you’re strong and where you need dramatic improvement, and tackle those lagging skills first. It’s harder than it sounds (most useful habits are), but it’s the only way to improve.

If you’re in a creative rut, the easiest way to challenge assumptions is to switch things around them and make the switch work. The process goes like this: 1. Identify the concept that isn’t working 2. Write down your assumptions about it 3. Challenge the assumptions 4. Act on the challenge

The call to a creative life is not supposed to be torture. Yes, it’s hard work and you have to make sacrifices. Yes, it’s a noble calling; you’re volunteering in an army of sorts, alongside a phalanx of artists who have preceded you, many of whom are your mentors and guides, upon whose work you build, without whom you have no fixed points of reference. They form a tradition that you have implicitly sworn to protect, even while you aim to refashion it and sometimes even shatter it.

But it’s also supposed to be fun.

Build a Bridge to the Next Day The only bad thing about having a good creative day is that it ends, and there’s no guarantee we can repeat it tomorrow. One good day does not necessarily beget another. But there are ways to increase the chances of successive successes.

Ernest Hemingway had the nifty trick of always calling it a day at a point when he knew what came next. He built himself a bridge to the next day. I cannot think of a better creative organizational tool. The Hemingway bridge is how you extend a mini-groove.

… Don’t drive yourself to the point of being totally spent. Try to stop while you have a few drops left in the tank, and use that fuel to build a bridge to the next day.

Every creative person has to learn to deal with failure, because failure, like death and taxes, is inescapable. If Leonardo and Beethoven and Goethe failed on occasion, what makes you think you’ll be the exception?

I don’t mean to romanticize failure, to parrot the cliche “If you’re not failing, you’re not taking enough risks,” especially if that view “liberates” you to fail too often. Believe me, success is preferable to failure. But there is a therapeutic power to failure. It cleanses. It helps you put aside who you aren’t and reminds you who you are. Failure humbles.

To get the full benefit of failure you have to understand the reasons for it.

First, there’s a failure of skill.… There’s only one solution to this type of failure: Get to work. Develop the skills you need.

Then there’s a failure of concept. You have a weak idea that doesn’t hold up under your daily ministrations… Sows’ ears tend to remain sows’ ears. Get out while the getting’s good.

A third kind of failure is one of judgement. You leave something in the piece that should have been discarded, left on the cutting room floor.… The only way to avoid this mistake is to remember at all times that you’re the one who’ll be judged by the final product.

The worst failure is of nerve. You have everything going for you except the guts to support your idea and explore the concept fully.… All I have is the certainty of experience that looking foolish is good for you. It nourishes the spirit.…

There’s failure through repetition.…Repetition is a problem if it forces us to cling to our past successes.

Finally, and most profoundly, there is failure that comes from denial.… Denial becomes a liability when you see that something is not working and you refuse to deal with it.… Change-changing the work and how we work-is the unpleasant task of dealing with that which we have been denying.

…fix the things you know how to fix. (a blessing, a reprieve, a miracle shot at getting a second chance.)

Main Page (CBCunplugged.com)

Blog and podcasts by locked out CBC workers. Great stuff. I particularly enjoy Shelagh’s Caravan.

A List Apart: Articles: High-Resolution Image Printing

ALA Redesign includes a new illustration style. I love it. Different and a bit “off” = more interesting.

The illustrator is Kevin Cornell.

I’ve been getting quite a bit of comment spam so comments are moderated for the time being and may take awhile to appear on the site.

From Children Raised in Brothels, Glimpses of Life’s Possibilities - New York Times

These are images taken by children learning to see themselves and their world in a new way, with the help of a magical new tool. If you ever doubted art’s efficacy as a path to valuable self-knowledge and confidence, and thus an essential part of education, look for confirmation here.

…It is hard to separate the photographs from the aura of their story, and the determination and hope they reflect. It is also possible to wonder if a 10-year-old living in a brothel in Calcutta could ever not take pictures that would prove interesting to Western eyes. Still, most of these images have a pulse. Documenting a little-seen world with grace and intimacy, and infused with the thrill of discovery, they manifest the wonderful availability of photography and the healing power of art.

via edward_ winkleman

More material for my Artist’s Statement.

Digital Black and White

Another technique I want to remember.

Google Blog: Fill in the blanks

An alternative is to get the search engine to ‘fill in the blank.’ So instead of asking [who invented the parachute?], you can enter the query [the parachute was invented by *]. (The blank, or wildcard, search is marked by * - an asterisk.)

My Sock Feet, 05.07.14 Enlarge everydaymatters Links: 23rd week - Draw Your (or a) Foot

Everyday Matters: Slow=Know

Drawing is about reaching for pure being…

This says it much better than my Artist’s Statement

Format is:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/43Folders/feed/msgs.xml

(using the subscribe to email groups page and entering the url of just the group doesn’t seem to work in Bloglines right now)

Learning Styles

My results:

Looks like when my parents said, “In one ear and out the other,” it was probably true.

Via: TiKouka

Saskatchewan Quotations - Celebrating the Centennial - CANADIAN HISTORY NEWS

If you have a blog click on the image and take the survey. It only takes a few minutes.

Sarah, 05.04.26, graphite on paper, 12 X 20 in. Enlarge

HIWAY #3 Connections

An exhibition of life drawings, paintings and sculptures from the “Group With No Name” (Lethbridge) and the “Hat Art Club Life Drawing Group” (Medicine Hat).

• Trianon Gallery, Lethbridge, August 3 - September 18, 2005
• Crowsnest Pass Gallery, Highway 3, Crowsnest Pass, Oct 22 - Nov. 21, 2005

This is one of two pieces selected for this year’s show.

Based on number of views from My Furl Archive:

1. Content with Style: A CSS Framework template for layouts 19 views
2. Commentary - Culture in the Age of Blogging excellent and thorough essay on the arts in news media 9 views
3. Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground: Six Great Ways to Unmuddle Your Writing 8 views
4. How to Talk to an Artist 6 views
5. Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web 5 views
6. Pretty Pink Ponies Edition… » Secrets of WP Theming: Part 1 5 views

I have always been fascinated with drawing the human figure. In my work I strive to capture the energy of life and depict what it means and takes to be human and alive.

In 2000, I was diagnosed with Acute Myelogeneous Leukemia and underwent four rounds of chemotherapy including one round for a Bone Marrow Transplant. I came to Medicine Hat after that and discovered an active art community that I could work and exhibit with. I started showing my work in 2004 and found that my experiences with illness made the depiction of energy, life and humanity even more important to me and my own work became fuller, more authentic and dynamic.

My work has been influenced by my art instructors who told me that I should study Giacometti and by Bev Tosh who showed me that our mark is the same large or small by having us draw on a tiny piece of vellum and then putting it in a slide mount and projecting it on the wall. I have been using an intense, energetic, and web like line in my work ever since.

Sarah, 05.05.10, graphite on paper, 18 X 24 in. Enlarge

The Scourge of Kubrik

Do something different.

I’m working on it. Honest. I still have a lot of work to do, but here is the photoshop mockup so far:

Enlarge

Kubrick is really nice, btw. That’s why everyone (including myself obviously) picks it.

Keyword Tags: kubrik wordpress drupal themes design

Alberta’s Unsung Heroines Paintings by Izabella Orzelski-Konikowski & Bogdan Koral-Konikowski

Jadwiga Pierzchajlo (oil on canvas 2004)

A Centennial Exhibition of oil paintings and mixed media works celebrating Alberta’s women.

May 4 - 27, 2005 Cultural Centre Gallery Medicine Hat, Alberta

We all know one or two. The helpful ones - the ones who give of themselves to make the lives of others better. And they do it not for the glory or the recognition but because of who they are and the societal values that are strong within them. They are the Unsung Heroines. These twelve women have exhibited courage, strength, determination, and compassion to all who are around them. They have given much to the world we live in. They have been the front line in supporting people in need. …This exhibit is but representative of all our Unsung Heroines and in a very small way says thank you.

There is an interesting show on now at the Cultural Centre Gallery. It is a series of powerful and direct portraits of Albertan women. The women are a diverse mix of cultural backgrounds, ages and stages of life. Each woman is depicted in 3 pieces: 1. oil portrait, 2. mixed media collage, and 3. the woman’s story on a page beneath the portrait. The portraits are well executed and the life stories of the women are full and fascinating.

Each subject is on a black background looking directly at the viewer effectively communicating their courage and strength. The portraits aren’t idealized “magazine” women - they are real and detailed and full of life and character.

Alberta’s Unsung Heroines also taught me about selecting subject matter and developing themes for gallery shows that include life drawing.

Leukemia…eh!?

I met Justin online through a friend whose sister had AML and a bone marrow transplant at the same time I did (June 2000). I had forgotten how really hard it and the GvHD were. Reading Justin’s blog brings it all back. He is a very strong and brave young man.

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom

via: 15 things you can do with RSS and Gmail RSS Feed at Forever Geek.

The first time I tried this with Bloglines it didn’t work. I tried it again this morning (and set the subscription as private) and now it does. Thanks, Bloglines for fixing that.

Update 05.07.12: This doesn’t seem to work anymore?

Enlarge Chris Ironchild, Life Drawing 05.02.08, graphite on paper, 12 X 15"

“59 and Counting” June 2005 An Exhibition of the Hat Art Club for the Alberta 2005 Centennial Cultural Centre Gallery, Medicine Hat, Alberta June 2 through July 2, 2005

The Hat Art Club began meeting in 1945 and was formally established in 1946. We are celebrating our 59/60th Anniversary in the Centennial year of the Province of Alberta.

Based on number of views from My Furl Archive:

1. How to Create a Frames Layout with CSS
2. learn web standards :: floated page layout
3. everydaysketch
4. Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs: Visual Blogs
5. Communication Arts: Columns: Visual Reflection Notebooks
6. Welcome to the Web Gallery of Art

   The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical and Romantic periods (1100-1850)

7. First Draft by Tim Porter: New Values for a New Age of Journalism

Gmail has updated their learn more page and now allows users to choose a no browser check option to access a standard view of their account. Before, I was getting only the basic HTML view because I have to use a version of Mozilla 1.3 that works on Mac OS8.6.

In Gmail’s HTML view filter creation, settings (including forwarding and POP), spell checker, keyboard shortcuts and address auto-complete were all unavailable. I also didn’t have any invitations. In the standard view, the only functionality missing for me had been keyboard shortcuts. While I can understand their wanting it to work perfectly in every browser, I was better off and had more functionality with an imperfect standard view than with a perfect HTML view. Thanks to Gmail for fixing that.

Based on number of views from My Furl Archive:

1. Fecklessmind » Definitive Solution to Image Replacement
2. 3x5 Art: Your daily creativity fix
3. Trendy Artists Pick Up an Old-Fashioned Habit Figure drawing!
4. DaveNet : The Web is a Writing Environment
5. Matt’s Googly Site - WordPress is not PHP Tutorial on Wordpress templating system
6. Drawn! » Blog Archive » Girls are Doing It! women creating cartoons and comics
7. Five Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do with Perl
8. Five Simple Rules for Talking about Art
9. The Canada Council for the Arts - Canada Council for the Arts - Conseil des Arts du Canada
10. One Idea is Better than Three
11. Stopdesign | Multiple Design Directions Presenting one design is best.

Based on number of views from My Furl Archive:

1. Quick Online Tips: Free Essential Tools for Blogger
2. Library Journal - The Ethical Blogger
3. How to Spell the Alphabet
4. tecosystems: How to Get Into Blogs, 101 Good introduction to Bloglines
5. What Makes a Painting a Painting?
6. A perfect climate for painting to triumph

   The popularity of painting often coincides with boom periods of art buying - the last time people spoke of painting as being “big”, for instance, was during the 1980s. New collectors, in particular, attracted to a buoyant art market, tend to go for paintings. Their ease of display, combined with their historical legacy and their aura of originality and uniqueness, means that paintings are unrivalled not as works of art, but as commodities. Perhaps the best way to view the current status of painting, then, is not so much as an artistic phenomenon, but as an economic one.

7. Kelly Mark: Drawing - Graphite Drawing Series
8. An Artist’s Perspective on Visual Literacy

   No matter how manipulated a photograph is in the darkroom or on the computer, it does not have the same weight and feeling of a drawing or painting, nor should it.

9. AIGA - The Re-Skilling of the American Art Student

10. TCS: Tech Central Station - Science, Pseudo-Science, and Architecture

    As for esthetic value, I would bet on the architect whose project reflects enduring human values in architecture.

And my personal favourite: IT Conversations: Malcolm Gladwell - SXSW Interactive 2005

Malcolm Gladwell is the author Blink and The Tipping Point. Fascinating, often anecdotal, podcast about snap decisions and how to change the environment to improve decision making.

Wise-Women: Tutorial: The Early Bird Catches the CSS: Planning Structural HTML