Pictaculous – Free Color Palettes Based on Your Images
May 4, 2012
Here’s a nifty little service brought to you by the fine folks at mailchimp, the free email marketing service. It’s called Pictaculous and it does one thing wonderfully well. You upload an image and it spits back a color palette based on it. I find this sort of thing very useful in the early stages of a design project for limiting my color selections to a range of compatible choices. (It’s also a nice way to jump-start a project you may be stuck on).
Restrictions are file formats of png, gif & jpeg only and a file size of 500k. You can download an Adobe Swatch File (.aco format), view the HTML color codes or see what COLOURlovers suggests. BTW, COLOURlovers is a great site to get color inspiration from. They’ve got over 2 million user-created palettes to scan through.
How to Bleach Images in Photoshop from Mac|Life
April 21, 2012
The bleached out color effect is a popular one these days and you may have wondered exactly how this is achieved. This tutorial on the “bleach bypass process” by Rob Lawton from the Mac|Life website shows you how to do it in clear, easy to follow steps.
I’ve been a subscriber to their print magazine since it was called MacAddict and was the first American Mac-centric publication to include a CD-ROM with each issue back in 1996.
The editorial tone is far less fannish and insular these days and more accurately reflects the broad appeal of Apple products to the audience beyond the fanboys. They used to have an inane stick-figure mascot named Max and their reviews used to rate software and products from “Blech” to “Freakin’ Awesome.”
At that time it always seemed to me a mash-up of skate-board kulture and computing. Adults would hide their copies behind an issue of the more mainstream and respectable MacWorld (where New York Times tech columnsit David Pogue got his start).
Today no one needs to hide their copies of Mac|Life; it’s been one of the most successful re-brandings of a print publication in this new century, IMO.
Dain Fagerholm’s Stereoscopic Drawings
March 29, 2012
Seattle-based artist/illustrator Dain Fagerholm is making excellent use of the classic Compuserve GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) to create wobble-stereoscopic drawings (see examples below).
The second version of the GIF format (released in 1989) supported animation on multiple file layers with a palette of 256 colors and has been responsible for some of the most annoying visuals on the web since the early 1990′s. So it’s wonderful that after all this time – and the rise (and fall) of Flash and HTML5 – someone is using it to create real art.
The illusion of depth is compelling and the charm of these low-tech, hand-made creations is captivating. Please check out Dain’s website and support this artist’s unique work.
Optical Illusion of the Day
March 26, 2012
I found this one on the InterWebs today and thought it was worth sharing. I didn’t find any credit for it, so if someone knows who created it I’d be happy to acknowledge their artistry. The illusion of kinetic motion as your eyes scan this design is very impressive. Click on image for larger size and best effect.
The Rolling Stone’s “Lips” Logo was Created by Jon Pasche, not Andy Warhol
March 26, 2012
Credit Where Credit is Due Department: I’ve read over and over again that Andy Warhol created the lips and tongue logo for the Rolling Stones and would like to put this canard to rest once and for all. The original artwork (below) for the design is now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
From their website:
“Designed by John Pasche in 1970, the pop art design perfectly encapsulated Mick Jagger’s sensuous lips and the band’s rebelliousness and has been in continuous use by the Rolling Stones ever since.”
“Pasche was commissioned to produce the logo after Jagger approached the Royal College of Art in London in 1969 to help him find a design student – the Stones had been frustrated by the bland designs offered by their record label Decca Records. Subsequently, Jagger visited Pasche’s degree show and this led to discussions for a logo and other work for the Stones’s own label, Rolling Stones Records, after the group’s contract ended with Decca Records in 1970.”
Great Mac Software Bundles – at Great Prices for a Limited Time
December 15, 2011
MacUpdate is offering a bundle of 12 applications, including the essential repair utility Tech Tool Pro 6. A total retail value of $741 for only $49.99 (a 94% discount, saving you $691). As of this writing you’ve got 6 days to take advantage of this offer.
BundleHunt is also offering 12 applications for $49.99, (95% off a full retail of $1,100). Six are design-oriented and six are general Mac apps. Included are 14 e-books, listed below:
- Mastering CSS for Web Developers
- Professional Web Design, Vol. 2
- Getting the Hang of Web Typography
- Mastering Photoshop for Web Design, Volume2
- Create Selling eCommerce Websites
- Mobile Design for iPhone & iPad
- Mastering Photoshop for Web Design
- Successful Freelancing
- Professional Web Design
- Creative Set for eBook Design
- Book 1: Where Stellar Messages Come From (55-page PDF)
- Book 2: Formatting & The Essentials of Web Writing (54-page PDF)
- Book 3: Headlines, Subheads & Value Propositions (52-page PDF)
- Book 4: Buttons & Click-Worthy Calls to Action (55-page PDF)
“Just My Type” by Simon Garfield: My Favorite Book So Far This Year in Any Category
September 10, 2011
Just My Type by Simon Garfield is a unique book about a subject that is all around us and, except for professional graphic designers, mostly ignored by the general public.
However below the radar the subject of typefaces may be, it is also abundantly clear that they exert an enormous influence on how we perceive the written word. In everything from brand logos, the headlines and body copy of newspapers and magazines and, of increasing importance, in all digital user interfaces from the Web, smart phones to eReaders and tablet computers.
This book is sure to be on this Christmas’ wish lift for every graphic designer you know, but I would argue his real achievement is to take a niche subject and make it thoroughly engaging for the lay reader. Everyone is confronted with a variety of fonts every day, they are literally unavoidable. So I’d make the case that this book can be rewarding to every reader, not just those with a professional stake in the game. Because the story of typefaces is, at its root, also the story of people and communication.
26 letters plus a variety of numbers and symbols (ligatures, accents, fractions and dingbats) yield an almost infinite variety of styles, past, present and future – new typefaces are being designed and released every day. And all more accessible than ever before to the average computer user – even if all you ever type is a business letter – from the drop down menu in your word processor of choice. We can thank Steve Jobs and his college course in calligraphy for the early emphasis on good fonts in the personal computer market.
Garfield uses short chapters and abundant illustrations of his subject matter that include both biographic and historic detail that I found fascinating. I learned perhaps more than I ever wanted to know about the personal life of the creator of one of my all time favorite typefaces: who would’ve thought that a book on fonts could include topics like incest and bestiality? (It’s ranked number 8 on the chart below).
The take-away? Just My Type is my favorite book so far this year in any category and carries my highest recommendation. Buy it, read it, give a copy to every graphic designer you know.
Here’s a wonderful chart that’s used as the end papers of Garfield’s book, the Periodic Table of Typefaces – Popular, Influential & Notorious.
Click on image for larger size. Note: Full image is 3150 wide by 2100 pixels high.
There are No ‘Colors’ There is Only Light
August 24, 2011
The grey tiles on the left look blue and the grey tiles on the right look yellow. But they are grey in each image.
Beau Lotto is appearing on the BBC’s Horizon show with a program called Do You See What I See? about color perception where he explains that color (or colour) is not in the objects we perceive, but rather manufactured in our brains. The conclusion he draws from this is, I think, wonderful.
So we all see the world differently. Indeed, we have no choice about this because our experiences of the world are necessarily different. None of us sees the world as it is. In this sense we are all delusional, what each of us sees is a meaning derived from our shared and individual histories. This awareness, possibly more than anything else, provides an irrefutable argument for celebrating diversity, rather than fear in conformity. Which is liberating, since knowing this gives you the freedom (and responsibility) to take ownership of your future perceptions of yourself and others.
Comic Book Economics: 3 Hours of Entertainment for $120. Is This Sustainable?
July 18, 2011
I’m a long time comic book fan, going back to the early 1960s. I agree with the late Harvey Pekar’s view that comics are words and pictures and, despite the medium’s fixation in America with long underwear super heros, there’s no inherent limitation in how good either the pictures or words can be.
Recently I went to a local comics shop and bought a first issue of Deadman and the Flying Graysons, part of the Flashpoint story arc.
In order to read the entire Flashpoint storyline DC Comics requires the purchase of 37 comic books (with 18 pages of content each) at $2.99. With sales tax where I live this comes to a whopping $117.66!
New York based artist Alex Katz once referenced a survey that claimed people at fine arts museum spent an average of 7 seconds looking at a painting. “I try to give them their 7 seconds worth,” he said. His works, like most painters, took weeks of effort to complete, and more often far longer than that.
The 18 pages of Flashpoint #1 took less than 5 minutes to read; a bit more perhaps if you linger over the art.
That works out to 3 hours and 5 minutes of reading time for close to $120.
By comparison, in 1965 an issue of Green Lantern had 21 full pages and 3 three-quarter pages of story and art. An issue sold for 12 cents. (Phun Phact: According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that 12 cents would be 86 cents today).
What else is competing for your entertainment dollars in today’s recession?
The popular video game Call of Duty: Black Ops retails for $60, provides a much more immersive experience and gamers can play this for dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of hours. The current box office blockbuster Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 runs 2 hours and 10 minutes, the ticket price locally is $11.50 and it’s in 3D to boot!
Back to the saddle-stitched four color process product. Obviously, you can develop a far more complicated storyline given 666 pages rather than the 23 and 1/4 of the 1960s. And the production values of today’s comics are without question much improved in two areas: the quality of paper used and the complexity and subtlety of the coloring.
The basic art of penciling and inking may be better, in general, according to your taste. Although during their run on Green Lantern 46 years ago the combination of Gil Kane’s pencils and Sid Greene’s inks is the equal to anyone working today, in my opinion.
Certainly in most cases anatomy drawing has suffered as several generations of comic book artists have learned their figure drawing skills not from life but from aping the exaggerations of earlier comic book artists. For example, Gil Kane’s women are realistically sexy without the need for breasts larger than their heads.
My conclusion is that the current business model for selling ‘floppies’ or individual issues of comic books is unsustainable. As a fan I hope there is a way for the form to reinvent itself before it sucumbs to market pressures and the competition from other media.
Perhaps the move will be to digital distribution on tablet devices like the iPad, the current trend for the magazine industry in general. Will this mean the end of the ‘brick and mortar’ comic book specialty shop as it has for the bookseller Borders? Tune in next time: same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel. . .
The Nietzche Family Circus
June 1, 2011
Bill Keane’s The Family Circus appears in over 1,300 newspapers and is ‘read’ by millions of Americans each day of the week. It began in 1960 and is still going strong. Considering the generally low quality of most syndicated strips these days, it’s a bit surprising to me how often this particular one panel cartoon comes up for ridicule/parody/rants/angry criticism. Yes, it’s bland and unfunny but so is Beetle Bailey, right?
Anyway, here’s a truly twisted take that I have to imagine even its creator might appreciate: The Nietzche Family Circus which pairs a random quote from the philosopher with a random Family Circus panel, see example above. Now someone has to do the same thing with Batman and Robin and John Rechy’s City of Night. . .