Caturday: On Networking

Don't network to get nose boops. Network to meet cool people and give nose boops.

Interactive Resume

Robby Leonardi has created an interactive resume that is getting a lot of attention. It is good reminder about what you are up against for competition, especially a couple years out of school.

At the same time though, while it functions as a great portfolio piece, he is not only creating a barrier to getting his contact info, but he is missing an opportunity to link to his design portfolio and to a resume that can be saved and kept. Unless they hack his url to get to the homepage, a potential employer would have to go into his Dribble portfolio to get back to his main site to find the info they need research further whether they want to hire him.

The upshot is, clever look and feel isn't enough. You still have to start with your user and work backwards or you risk talking to yourself.

A great series on digital painting on Chris Oatley's web site. Oatley is a Disney character designer and concept artist who teaches digital painting and he has a lot of outstanding information to share. Especially check out the Animal Farm color comp demo. Too many illustrators, especially student illustrators, dive right into the finished illustration without really exploring all the possibilities and he talks a lot about the power of working things out in a comp, usually multiple comps, first. Plus, just watching him paint was a huge education in painting in photoshop.

Caturday: The difference between UI and UX.

The refrigerator is the UI. The tuna inside is the UX.

Don't Smile for posterity

From the Atlantic magazine online, an article on why people didn't smile in old portraits. The reason isn't what you think (but it is similar to why you make sure you don't have pictures of yourself doing beer bongs on Facebook.)

A realistic look at what it takes to be a cartoonist written and illustrated by Spike, owner of Iron Circus Comics and author of the successful web comic, Templar Arizona.

Similar to the book How to Make Webcomics, Spike is really clear that it isn't enough to make great cartoons, you need to be constantly marketing yourself, networking with your peers, and producing good work. Being a cartoonist, or an illustrator, photographer, fine artist, or any other profession that produces a creative product for sale aren't for the faint of heart. But, you love to do the work, and you will be doing it anyway, so why not give it a shot?

Forced Perspective

Amazingly detailed dioramas using model cars and forced perspective from photographer Michael Paul Smith. You can see more of his work at his flickr page.

The Creative Group 2014 Salary Guide and Salary Calculator

The 2014 Salary Guide and Salary Calculator from The Creative Group (TCG) is out.

This is incredibly useful for recent graduates since even though you won't usually be able to command these salaries in your first job, it is important to know what you should be aspiring to once your skills have solidified.

For folks who have been out a few years, if you aren't within the range of salaries listed, its time to either ask for a raise, or start plotting your move to a firm that can pay you what the market says your time is worth. (and FYI, depending on your skill set, TCG might be able to help you make that step....)

The super nice thing about the TCG guide is that is lists salaries for illustrators and game artists as well as graphic, motion, and interactive designers so everyone can get a feel for what they should be making.

Motion Graphics Pioneer Iginio Lardani

Over at Art of the Title there is a tribute to Iginio Lardani, who with director Sergio Leone and composer Ennio Marricone defined what we now think of as the Spaghetti Western. Lardani's titles looked like no other titles for a western and have more in common with animated titles of Saul Bass and Maurice Binder. While the effects used are easily achieved via computer now, Lardani used a creative mix of in-camera optical effects, practical effects, and a repurposed multiplane Pace 1 camera.

His irreverence, low-budget ingenuity, and unvarnished design style split a new branch off the title design family tree, stemmed from the modernism of Bass and Binder via Andy Warhol to become a rallying cry for B-film productions everywhere. Quoted liberally in subgenre and exploitation films throughout the ’70s, his work has since become shorthand for indie credibility and gritty nihilism... 

One thing the article incorrectly calls out is his use of doutones. Lardani is using fake doutones in the titles, but that is a minor quibble with a great profile of one of the pioneers of motion graphics.

ht: NCAD Alumni Noah Read

Caturday: Your wireframes need work.

I'm editing your wireframes. They need more tuna.

iPhone Movies

You don't need fancy equipment to make movies. Dave Altizer and Ben Worley shot this movie to show off the powerful new features of the iPhone 5s (and composed the score using only iPhone ringtones.

Matt Morris iPhone 5s Adventure

And, in the world's first Instagram TV show, three friends struggle to find their way back to Palm Springs after being transported to a distant galaxy.

Desert Friends

San Francisco Zoo Web Site Redesign

This spring, San Francisco Zoo in-house designer Brenda Fletcher redesigned the web site for the zoo. It wasn't an easy process:

the zoo has about 250 animal species, and each one has its own information page on the site. Plus, every department of the zoo is represented on the website...

In addition to wanting the site to be easier to use than the old site, the new site would include online ticketing. She did the front end coding while the dev team worked on the back end. The project took nearly nine months from concept to launch.

Resources for Unity3D

An extensive list of Unity resources for folks just getting started with Unity from my friend Adam at UK based game studio, The Ant Ranch.

Impostor Syndrome

http://www.boothedog.net

Zach Leatherman noticed a common thread among people giving talks at conferences and meetups:

They’d often start their talks with “I’m not the most qualified person to speak on this topic,” or “I’m sure you guys are all smarter than me.”

In response he gave a talk about Impostor Syndrome.

It is a short talk, and very fun. It is also a pretty good example of a really good projected presentation. He is breaking the rule about not projecting what you are saying—you should only project the high-level bullet points—but he is mostly doing it in meme form for comedic affect, so it is effective anyway.

One Page Web Sites

Everyone knows how much I love one page web sites. They are such a potentially brilliant solution for sites that don't have a lot a content but need more interactivity than a typical static brochure site.

Front End Development

Everything you wanted to know about being a front end developer.

Post Graduation Internships

As you are looking for job opportunities, don't forget the possibility of doing another internship. Some internships are paid and are designed with recent graduates in mind. If your networking got off to a slow start, another internship would be a great way to gain more experience, get more mentorship working in an agency setting, and be in Seattle regularly so it will be easier to attend networking events.

I would not do another unpaid internship, or a remote internship. You want the face-time and networking that an in-house internship could provide.

Craigslist, Internmatch, Idealist.org, and the SVC Jobs Board are all good places to watch.

There are lots of "for credit only" and unpaid internships mixed in, so watch out for the ones that just want to exploit you. You want to make sure you will be learning a lot, that you will be able to contribute, and that you will have access to networking opportunities.

Box & Dolly

This is amazing not just for the technology on display, but for the all the thinking, planning, creativity, and teamwork that it took to create this piece.

Cool lettering and die cut

A shot glass built into a greeting card with lettering by Joel Felix