workiversary

Today I am celebrating the one-year anniversary at my job, aka my workiversary. Looking back on this past year I must admit I've reached a level of success that I didn't think possible. You see, when I left the military and my wife and I moved back home I had no clue as to what lie ahead. My only direction was the way that God was moving in my life. And when He said "yes" to me getting out of the military I didn't waste one second. Of course we had made preparations for our move back home, such as saving $10,000 and making plans to stay with friends until we found an apartment, but there was no job waiting for me. If there's one thing God has taught me though, it's that making preparation is just as important, if not more than, the actual manifestation of his promises.

So it was no surprise when the first job I took was working in the photo lab at Walgreens. That lasted mmm... less than a week, and with the famous last words "Thanks, but no thanks" coming from the manager, I gladly removed my vest and walked home. That was on a Friday, and I started at Half Price Books the following Monday. My month long stint at Half Price was enjoyable, I met some cool people and fulfilled one of my desires to always work at a bookstore. (FYI - it's just another job) But I knew something better still awaited me. And around the middle of September I got a call from a recruiter who knew of a company that was looking for a web designer. Let me back up and say that if it weren't for my friend and resume writing ninja, Sydney Smith, I would've never got that call. Thanks.

I think there are few times in life when you know, without a doubt, that The Lord has directed your steps and you are exactly where you need to be. My interview at WaveTwo was one of these moments. When talking casually with my future boss, John Arnott Sr., after my interview I came to find out that we did the exact same job in the military. Only his service preceded mine by a good thirty years. And that may not seem like much to the natural eye, but after I heard that something inside of me knew this was a perfect fit. Now a year later my knowledge of web design and development have far exceeded my expectations. Even having to work with Microsoft products has taught me to humble myself and my attitude towards those who aren't fortunate enough to know the joys of owning a mac.

So it's been a good great year for me. My only hope is that this next year is even better.

community

I know I've always valued the importance of community but today really hit home.

Saturdays are usually a difficult day for me, one because I have nothing to do and two because I can think of a million things to do. (Note: When you own a home your "to-do" list never seems to end.) So I usually try to take it easy and have no plans made. That way I'm not committed to anyone or anything, making it easier to enjoy my weekend and be spontaneous.

However, within the past few months I've started to take a more active role in becoming involved in the design community in the greater Dallas area. I started with the Refresh Dallas monthly meetings, which are a great way to learn about new and interesting technologies. And just today I attended my first WordPress meetup group. I was nervous thinking about who I would meet and what kind of people actually attend these things. Not to mention that it started to feel like more of a burden the more I debated going. My thought pattern went something like this:

• Will there be anyone I can relate too?
• Am I going to show up and everyone just ignores me?
• Did I put on too much cologne?
• Am I overdressed?
• Thanks TomTom for directions, now where is the damn deli?

My nerves were put to rest the moment I walked in the door of the restaurant, P.D. Johnson's, as I was waved over to the table and began to make my introductions. The next two hours were spent chatting about WordPress (obviously), twitter, dogs, Plurk, servers, Ping.fm, our failing economy, the new homeless, as well as enjoying what everyone else was talking about. The range of experience from everyone brought about a nice balance to the conversations. There are those who run multiple sites on multiple servers to those who are just learning about websites. It was great to see how everyone was treated with the same respect and no one was left out.

Now I just have to be patient for WordCamp Dallas 2009.

smashing magazine anniversary poster

At 9:33 AM I received an email from an unusual name, a Mr. Sven Lennartz, who just so happens to be one of the guys behind my favorite online design magazine, Smashing Magazine. Then I burst with excitement when I read:

congratulations, you won the exclusive Smashing Magazine 2nd Anniversary Poster, designed by James White.

Thanks again Smashing Magazine for randomly choosing me, and I will have to send you guys a picture when I get it framed and displayed proudly at home.

interview: kelly dyson

When I first stumbled upon the work of Kelly Dyson I was in awe. The magical, emotional view of his characters reminded me of a darker Alice in Wonderland ... as if it weren't dark enough. His use of grunge and splatter textures are refined and not overpowering to the main focus of his illustrations. So when he told me he would love to do this interview I was delighted. Please enjoy.

1 - I love your style. When did you first become interested in design/illustration?

Thanks. I guess I was interested in drawing from a pretty young age. I have memories of doing drawings in junior school and the whole class standing around my table saying how great my drawing was... I never made the link between drawing and illustration though, so when I left school I went on to mostly irrelevant courses, worked in factories, in care, etc. Eventually I landed a lucky job through a friend to do drawings for a leaflet he was doing - through that I realised that there was a whole world of people out there who do this illustration thing for a living. That's when I first became interested in illustration as a profession as separate from drawing as a hobby I guess.

2 - What is your background in art and design and what made you become a designer/illustrator?

I have a degree in photography which at the time felt like there was a point to it, but when I finished I didn't really pick up a camera in the same way again. My passion for many years has been creating music rather than anything visual. Why did I become an illustrator... initially because it seemed absurd that I could get paid for drawing I guess and it's a nice clean job that doesn't involve wiping bums or getting verbally abused by naughty kids or anything like that. It's taken about three or four years for me to develop an aesthetic that I feel is getting somewhere and to be able to say that I'm doing it because it feels good.

3 - Who or what would you say has the biggest influence on the work you're doing?

Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Mount Eerie, Pavement, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc pretty much on shuffle all day long. Illustration? I really don't know. It's only recently that I've started bookmarking other illustrators websites and feeling excited about stuff to be honest. I don't know the name of any illustrators or designers off the top of my head and I don't really spend much time thinking about it. But I could name you loads of bands or poets or authors, but I couldn't honestly say that they had influenced my illustration work. Maybe that's why I feel like a bit of a fraud when it comes to illustration. I never trained at it and never really built at it. I really want to produce something meaningful but have to keep producing commercial work to pay my debts. So it goes.

4 - What tools do you normally use for a project from start to finish?

Straightforward stuff - if it's a regular commission then I'll start sketching ideas with pencils, then once a rough is agreed I'll try to do the whole thing properly with pencil, then scan it and do all the lines in Illustrator. This is what takes me ages - I create all my lines with the pen tool in illustrator. I mean I actually make the appearance of an inked line by creating a shape. It takes me a long, long time but I haven't figured out a way of getting a better line yet. I've recently invested in real pen and inks, but I'm still experimenting with them. I bought Corel Painter not too long ago, but I haven't had much time to play with it, so for the time being I'm stuck with the pen tool in Illustrator. From there I copy the 'inked' illustration into Photoshop and usually colour it with shape layers and muck about with transparency, layer effects, etc until I'm happy with the finished thing.

5 - What has been your favorite project you've worked on, and what has been the hardest?

That's a difficult one to answer. Without a doubt, my favourite and most challenging project has been the most recent album we've just recorded. It's the first time we have worked with a producer - do you know Adem? He's worked with us in the studio and really pushed us to create something that we wouldn't have forced out by ourselves.

As far as illustration is concerned, my favourite projects are self initiated work. When you have a quiet spell as a freelancer you get the opportunity to create work for the hell of it and you feel your work developing from day to day. Then when the work starts coming in again, you are asked to produce illustrations at very short notice to strict deadlines and so you don't get chance to mess around - you have to go with what you know just to get it done on time and to budget. I don't think that commercial commissions are the right place to experiment and have fun. That's until the next quiet spell when you can start playing again :)

6 - How would you say being a designer influences your life? Do you feel you have a different perspective on things around you?

Sometimes. Sometimes you feel really 'tuned in' to what you are doing, you have about five projects on the go and just walking down to the shops you start seeing 'hidden meanings' or messages (that probably don't exist) in advertising boards, juxtaposition of banal objects, poetry in things people say, that kind of stuff and you jot it all down and it feels great and that's what it's all about. On the other hand, most of the time you can be worrying about paying the bills or where the next job is coming from and that puts an abrupt end to creative thinking eh.

7 - How do you spend your spare time?

I don't seem to have very much of it, but when I do I play with my band, I'm in a mountain rescue team, I like cooking vegan food, drinking in the local pub with friends then staying up all night on the Playstation, I take my dog for a walk, chill out with my girlfriend, run in the Peak District, do a bit of hillwalking, waste hours browsing crap on the internet, that kind of thing. I've recently started drawing in a Moleskine sketchbook for fun.

8 - What are your five favorite sites you visit?

• Last.fm
• Photoshop Disasters
• Freelance Switch
• AOI forums
• Google analytics

9 - What is the meaning behind the name of you site "don't wake me up"?

It's the name of an album by the Microphones.

10 - Thanks for taking the time to participate. Do you have any last words of inspiration or a favorite quote?

I don't know, there are so many amazing words out there to quote but they wont mean anything out of context and part of the fun is finding them for yourself :)

The commercial side of Kelly's work is more lighthearted and kid friendly.

Kelly is also in a band, Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love.

For even more Kelly Dyson: Don't Wake Me Up Kelly Dyson Illustration 20 questions with Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love Official Site

weekend update

This weekend was a lot more busy than usual, which in this case was a nice change of pace. On Friday night I met Josiah and some of his friends from Nectar up at the Dallas Museum of Art Late Nights event. It was a really good time considering I met Josiah online two days prior, but the guy is awesome. On Saturday I had the opportunity to take some photos for the one and only, Phillipp Scott. With the help of fellow friend and photographer Bob Hedlund with the studio lights, as this was my first time shooting with controlled lighting, I was able to pull off some great shots. Not to mention that Phillipp is in love with the camera.

You can view the full photo gallery on the Phillipp Scott flickr set.

Today, Sunday, I am hanging out at the 2008 Governor's Cup Tournament. My wife is really beginning to find her niche in roller derby, and I couldn't be happier for her. So I must return to the action. Hope everyone had a good weekend.

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

The Pangram, or "pan gramma" from the Greek meaning "every letter", is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams are most commonly used to display typefaces. The most popular pangram in the English language would probably have to be the title above, but to my surprise today there are tons of pangrams available.

After combing through piles of pangram junk, I finally put together a short narrative with all 10 of my favorite pangrams.

I sat quietly nervous on my first day of class. First days were always my worst.

“Who am taking the ebonics quiz?”, the prof jovially axed. I looked around wondering if I was the only one hearing correctly. But before I could answer my own question I saw the lazy major was fixing Cupid’s broken quiver in a day-dream.

Suddenly I awoke to the sound of my name and quickly gave the first answer that popped in my head, what is "amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes." The whole class sat silent for a moment, than erupted in to laughter like a bomb going off in my ears. My face fell flush with embarrassment.

After class my professor stopped me, and with his slow southern drawl said, "playing jazz vibe chords quickly excites my wife." But you don't want to hear that, and I don't want you sleeping in my class. If I catch you sleeping again I'm going to ask you to "Quickly, open your jaw and guzzle this laxative before me," understood?

Well I think that went well.

On the way home I saw that a crazy biker roughed up Steve McQueen’s flexed jaw. Not his actual jaw, since Steve McQueen is dead, but rather a billboard of him. Too bad, I thought, I always liked that picture of Steve.

My stomach growled, food is what I needed, and the sign up ahead read "Pablo’s dazed Mexican taqueria: just take Highway Five." Lucky me, the first and only time I tried Pablo's tacos I was sick for the next three days. I hated tacos anyways, so home cookin' it is.

I think my sister gets paid to watch MTV, she never turns the damn thing off. To my dismay I am stuck hearing what goes on in the world of pop-culture. "Joaquin Phoenix was gazed by MTV for luck" I heard the talking head exclaim. And funny, I thought, since he seems to be doing fine on his own.

Finally some peace and quiet, time to hit the books. My first test in my typography class was over kerning. A case study in my book said that AJAX and AVEDA labels require much of a type kerning wiz, seeing as how they both use the diagonal letters A and V. But the thing I found most interesting was how Macintosh used the pangram "cozy lummox gives smart squid who asks for job pen" in post-System 7 computers for font sampling.

References:

• The Daily Pangram
• Pangrams on Wikipedia

web vs print

There seems to be much debate these days between web and print designers. Not that this is anything new to anyone working in the field, but an important topic nonetheless. As someone who works hand-in-hand with both print and web I've had a small glimpse in to both worlds. But why should I choose sides? If you lay aside the degrees, the associations, the requirements, aren't we all the same underneath? Creative people all looking to make the future a more aesthetically pleasing and usable place to live?

One of the biggest divisions I think between the two is experience. Traditionally, if you wanted to receive recognition as a designer you earned your degree and worked your way up from intern to director. Building a strong portfolio of work along the way. But now with the web it's possible for anyone to make a name for themselves. Notice I said it's possible, not guaranteed, because more often than not the average Joe who makes a website will very rarely receive any type of recognition. And this goes without saying of course that for all the millions of blogs available today, maybe 5% of those are worth reading. Yes the rules of time still apply to the web.

In his article "Dear AIGA, where are the web designers?" Jeffrey Zeldman addresses the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) with an important question in regards to their upcoming Business and Design Conference.

... I can’t help noticing that for all the brand directors, creative directors, Jungian analysts, and print designers, one rather significant specimen of the profession is missing. Where are the web (or if you insist, the interaction) designers? I am probably missing someone, but I count two people with web experience, and neither gets more than 60 seconds of stage time.

For "the oldest and largest membership association for professionals engaged in the discipline, practice and culture of designing" this is a sore mistake. It doesn't make sense to me that an organization like AIGA still refers to web designers as "interaction designers". And why the delay with welcoming in the new breed of designers who are blending, cutting, pasting and pushing the limits of design? The web should not be thought of as a passing fad but embraced for what it is, the new printing press.

Now more than ever are we able to produce information at an amazing rate of speed. But even more than that we are able to present that information multiple ways on a single page. But you could say the same about print. And of course you would be correct. However I've never had the ability to look at a piece of printed material and been able to change the layout of it on the fly. But then again, there is something beautiful and delicate about a printed piece of work.

So why all the fuss? Why all the title divisions and disputes over what medium is best? It's like fighting a reflection, you can't win when the other person follows your every move. We must become willing to accept what the other does if we want to be respected in our own field. Or as Mr. Zeldman put it:

"If you exclude us from the conversation, the conversation may end up excluding you."