I started a new job right around the time I last posted here in September. Which was convenient considering who I was doing websites for wasn’t paying me any longer. To be fair though, the clients weren’t paying them, so it’s hard to pay me in return. Regardless, I’m now working for a small chain of bicycle retail stores here in the DC/VA/MD area called Revolution Cycles.

I worked for Revolution from 2000-2004. That’s when the design bug really infected me. Started doing signage, business cards, and even a logo. I’ve been designing ever since. Now coming back into the fold I actually have some idea of what design is. Which is good considering it’s my job! I’ve been hired officially as an Assistant Buyer & Marketing Manager. Which means I get to play with and buy cool bike stuff as well as design posters, signage, logos, maintain the retail website, design and code new sites, and manage our social media. It’s a huge freaking responsibility with a ton of work that I had to hit the ground running with.

Some of the work so far

I’m producing an intense body of work in an unbelievably short span of time. The leisurely pace of freelance is gone. At any given time I could be working on 3-4 design projects, a couple of web updates, as well as maintaining the face of our social media campaign. The one big lesson I’ve learned is, I can’t be perfect; there’s no time! Needless to say I’m loving the speed. Here are some examples of what I’ve created:

Look! I’m an über-important designer!

Look at me cranking out the serious design work. Notice how grown up I appear by using a seriffed font in my piece. Also notice how important I am by the stance that I take by calling out other designers that don’t like using seriffed fonts in their work.

Whatever. Bodoni Poster is super-retro-trendy right now so it’s no stretch to use it in work such as this. Although I recently used FritzQuadrata on a logo that a client loved. So yeah, I’m a serified baller. Oh snap - serified! Another poster!

I’m a frickin’ genius!

Anyway, if you’re interested check out some of the other typo pieces I’ve posted on Flickr.

Had a slight burst of creativity today. So I wasted it on a new Twitter background. Kindof a mishmash of crap I had in the Bridge (see what I did there?) so I cooked up something new with it. Got some trendy color circles that look like they’re floating with some of the far away. That was from some tutorial. If I find the link I’ll add it.

Then I switched up HARD and threw down with some Bodini Poster and Trade Gothic. Got my Swiss on without having to resort to the old standby. White letters left-justified on a black background makes it Swiss. I read that or saw it somewhere.

For those on displays larger than 20” who also stretch their browsers to fit that ridiculous size, I have included a special, personalized message. Enjoy.

Wine in the Woods

I just recently completed a couple of sites with Wine in the Woods (above) being one of them. WIW is a wine festival in Columbia, Maryland running on its 17th year. I produced the site for/through the BMCGroup. BMC, which also located closed to Columbia is having their business portfolio site redesigned by me as well. I’m working on that project right now. Lots of great opportunities!

There are a few things that I would’ve like to have had for the launch, but time was of the essence. All the information that the festival coordinators were feeding me was more important, so some of the “cool stuff” had to be kicked to the digital curb.

Monalco Marketing

This is another site I produced for BMC. I was working this and Wine in the Woods simultaneously. First time to really push myself to keep everything straight as an independent freelancer with multiple projects. There were many “learning experiences” but that’s what’s needed to get better.

Thematic Framework

Part of my learning experiences was taking on a new WordPress framework. I’ve been using either the Default theme, or K2 and breaking it down how I wanted. These sites were built on the Thematic framework. I should clarify and say they were sort-of built on Thematic. I was in such a rush at the beginning that I completely ignored the process of building the sites using child themes. Bad choice, really bad choice. Thematic makes heavy use of PHP hooks to call the elements of the framework and make the site. I’ve never used a theme that relied so heavily on that method. So I struggled. Then I looked for help on their forums and received what I thought of as sub-standard information and help. Turns out, if you actuallly build the site using a child theme, then the advice makes complete freaking sense.

Long story short, the new BMCGroup site is being constructed using the latest Thematic build and I’m doing it right; and things are MUCH smoother! Once I’ve completed the site, I’ll give a little overview of my experience.

Okay. It’s Helvetica Neue Heavy kerned extra-tight to fit it all in there. Incorrect punctuation is so hot right now so I had to hyphenate this in the most inappropriate manner possible. Scandalous. Shirt name is “Broken Hyphen.” Yes, that hyphen. Comes in a rack of colorways for the dudes, and a few tasteful versions for the ladies. All on American Apparel wearable canvases.

Next I’m image humping. I’m researching past artists, designers, whoever to see what can be done, and what has been done. I’m collecting more now too. The web is massive. There is shit everywhere. My latest addiction is ffffound.com. The strings you can find yourself on are endless. I’ll end up with multiple windows with up to 30 tabs open. I’ll burn through 4 gig of memory with Safari alone.

The stage after that is frantic creation. I’ll open an Illustrator page and use the entire, and I mean ENTIRE canvas.  I’ll fill everything all the way to the grey. The center of the page is only a place to describe what I’m brainstorming about. Sometimes the pages take forever to load depending on what effects or path intensity I’ve created.  This stage coincides with the, “Damn, somebody already did that!!” period as well. Regardless of the research you do beforehand your path leads you all over the place visually and you end up seeing your work elsewhere.

After this you reach the “zone”. You’re creating your own original work that truly is original. Now it’s a race to get it exposed. I’ve been posting a lot to my blogs, as well as my Flickr account just to get stuff out there. Problem is others with larger bankrolls are getting their work produced. I’ve lost count of all the shirts that I’ve done that I couldn’t get out before another brand did. This gets frustrating. But it also makes you hungry!

Subject Header

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

UPDATE: Those below added after initial post.

Swiss Font Porn

I’ve announced this with many different scenarios/metephors, but I think my favorite is what I put down on my Virb account.  It’s in the backend, so only my contacts see it.  Here it is now:

I’m providing a little bump for your font addictions. Have a taste of 100% Swiss perfection and wear it with pride. Let everyone know just how much of a problem you actually have. Nothing like big, plainly stated fonts to force people to look at you like you’re high. Luckily you are! High on the greatest Swiss import ever. That and the knife.

Damn I’m a wordsmith.  Anyway, Helweights all jammed together with some tight-assed kerning/tracking and some ampersands to truly show I’m humping some shark-jumping shirt fads.  At least I know what I’m doing and not hiding it.

If you like ‘em let me know.

I’ve been fine tuning my site for Windows after a relaxing development period in OS X. I didn’t even get past the header when I noticed that it was significantly darker than on my MBP. What makes this funny in a sad, I’m an alcoholic clown who lives in a van down by the river kind of way, is that I was viewing the site using the same browser on the same display!

I hook my MBP up to my display which also shares a connection with my XP PC. So the only difference is the operating system considering that I viewed these both in Safari and Firefox for PC and Mac. What makes this even more strange is that the screen shots I took on both OS actually come out the same!? The browsers can’t render at the right brightness but still come out correct when screenshot? Not sure about that.

Pistol-whipped fonts

Next is font rendering. I took a class with someone once that told me after I took two screenshots of my site, one from Mac, the other PC, that they couldn’t see the differences. Let’s just say their work reflected their that level of observance. Here are two examples of those differences.

Now I don’t know about you, but in the Mac shot I actually see fonts. On the Windohs side I see something I’m embarrassed to have to call my own work. Obviously the text-rendering engine on Windows is different than on a Mac and here we see the results. I’ve tested my sites on IE7 as well which is supposed to be using a newer font-smoothing technique, but it still falls far short of what Mac does naturally.

Nothing new

This is nothing that we haven’t seen before, but it pissed me off enough to write about it again. Anything to be able to write about how crappy Windows is, and I’ll go toe-to-toe with anyone on that subject!

Long answer: This site was yellow. It was VERY yellow to be exact. I was going through a dry-spell visually and yellow is what I came up with.  I guess it was more of a punishment than anything.  In addition to the dry-spell I was researching design and art during the early days of the Third Reich and the creation of DIN 1451.  Unfortunately that still doesn’t explain the yellow…

New directions

Now the site is black; VERY black to be exact.  I had to remix everything to match some of my new endeavors to keep the visual experience all in one place.  While it’s a style that’s over the top, and über-trendy, it’s a helluva lot of fun to work with!  I got to keep up with the kids these days.  Besides, someone has to teach them what the 80’s really were like right?

It’s this new direction that’s to blame in part for my “soft-launch”.  I want to get my shirt designs out sometime this century and I needed a home base for everyone to start from.  My Spreadshirt shops are already built and I’ve already ordered my new wardrobe for the Summer/Fall.  I’m still working on how everything is going to fit together so there’s not too much redundancy or missed connections.

I would like a system to manage my content

I’m starting to thoroughly enjoy Wordpress as a CMS.  The community is great, the plug-ins are strong, and the back end (2.5+) has greatly improved.  I just wish it didn’t take me so long to make the jump.  Here’s a small rundown of what this site is built with:

• K2 - (Theme) An OG in the WP barrio providing an intuitive and malleable interface allowing for dynamic customization.
• Featured Content Glider - (jQuery) Dynamic Drive had a bare bones version of what I was looking for.  I just had to tweak the settings and give it a pretty face.
• prettyPhoto - (jQuery) Lightbox clone.  I like it better than Lightbox.  No rounded corners though.
• cforms - (Plugin) Learned to code PHP forms at the exact same time that I learned I never wanted to do it again.  Saves me a TON of time! Great customization and superb back end.
• Slide toggle - (jQuery) Butchered some jQuery that I think was from the home site.

Okay, but why black?

I needed a challenge.  I started down the shadowy path of light on dark and I couldn’t stop.  I also got hooked on the whole Electro, Neo-80’s Club Kid vibe while designing shirts.  So now you have bright, blown-out neon cutting through a starless city night.

Oi! What’s this about lying then?

I gots things to do.  Those things involve getting this up for people to see it, regardless of the state.  I’m pretty desperate to get those things I gots to do DONE!  On a lighter note, I want to launch the shirts with a good starting point for everything and I want to start writing again.  I miss hearing myself type.