Happy Birthday To Me

Today is a special birthday vlog. This week has been crazy busy, with my Mom being in town and all. But I wanted to share a few things that have really struck me recently.

1. Yesterday I watched this clip of Gary Vaynerchuk at the 2008 Web Expo where he talks about doing what we love, and forgetting the rest. Not necessarily that we quit our day jobs, but that in our spare time we really dig deep in to what we our passionate about. And if we can turn our passion in to profit then that's even better.

I have a huge amount of respect for every single freelance/independent designer out there who is making a living. They are the ones pouring their hearts in to projects that they love, not projects for some other company or organization. One day I will cross that threshold, but for now I am going to kill it in my spare time.

2. Tinychat is blowing up. I've been on it at least 3-4 times over the last week, and it's a great way to put a face with the name of the people you talk to on twitter. I've had some great conversation already, but I'm really excited to explore the possibilities it offers us.

Earlier this morning I had a chat with fellow artist and twitterer Brad Colbow about his work. I've been following him on twitter and on his website for quite a while now, but tinychat allows us to break the visual barrier and meet semi face-to-face. While we were talking he showed me a board game he designed for his daughter last christmas called Soapy the kitty game. Brad is seriously talented.

Finally, I have to say I'm extremely grateful for Garth Humbert throwing a few projects my way. I met Garth through Aaron Irizarry and have to say he is another talented, freaking awesome guy I have met via twitter. I am really looking forward to collaborating with him on these couple of projects and whatever is to come in the future.

Here is a sneak peak snapshot of me sketching away on one of the projects. (via @charleswilliams)

Thanks everyone.

p.s. - If you haven't heard already, Squarespace is giving away 30 iPhones in 30 days. Genius marketing scheme? Or the end of twitter? Either way I want one.

People Not Popularity

I'm back with my second video blog, thanks again to all of you who left a comment, critique or other piece of advice. I value what you have to say and it's helping me get better at this.

Today I wanted to talk about relationships, and how important they are in the realm of social networking. Regardless of how many followers I have on Twitter, because sometimes it can be overwhelming, I am glad to have a group of people to really invest in. And that's what I think we should focus on, people not popularity.

Other links to check out

Why I never want to be an expert by Seth Simonds Who Do You Know? (Part II) by Nate St. Pierre

Vlog #01

Here in my first "official" video blog I talk about the design community and give some shout outs to a few people worth mentioning. I recorded this last night in bed, armed with just a few notes on what I wanted to talk about and my sleepy dogs for comfort.

This is part of a process where I'm learning things don't have to be perfect in order to be posted. So please, I would love to hear any and all comments (so long as they're constructive) and any tips to making it better. Hopefully this will become a regular part of my blog.

Links Mentioned

Brandon Muth - BrandonMuth.com on twitter @brandonmuth Matt Simo - Matt-Simo.com on twitter @m_a_simo Joseph Allen Kohlhas - JosephAllenKohlhas.com on twitter @joseph_allen Designer(d) Advice from Joseph Allen Kohlhas Arcade theme and free wallpapers at From-The-Couch

I'm the worst designer

With all the huff and puff about "top css galleries" and "top designers to follow on twitter" and "how to be a rockstar designer" floating around the web these days it's hard to feel like your work has any value. Because it's all about who you know and not what you know, right?

So I'm proposing a, well... not so new, perspective for the rest of us "non-rockstar" designers out there. A frame of mind where we stop comparing ourselves among ourselves and instead start building each other up with encouraging comments and constructive criticisms. What would/could happen if we disembarked from our present journey of searching endless hours on so-called "inspirational" sites and started looking inward for our own inspiration?

Someone once told me that the best way to get is to give.

I don't mean to sound all "new-agey" dr. feelgood, living in a world of rainbows and unicorns. I know we all have dark days where nothing inspires us and we can't find any thread of motivation. But again, we can't simply focus on ourselves at times like this, then we're no better than those self-indulgent "rockstars". Someone once told me that the best way to get is to give. And I like to take that literally, meaning that the more I give my time or my skills to help someone else out, I always end up with more inspiration in the end. It's that creative "bump-in-the-road" we all come to, and how we get over it depends on our drive, desire and our knowing we can do better. If you haven't seen the video of Ira Glass talking about the creative process, he explains it much better than I ever could.

But why then do I consider myself the worst designer? Because that's how I feel right now, measuring myself up against giants like Jason Santa Maria or The Perel Trio or Rob Morris. These guys are on top of their game right now, and while it's great to see and admire their work, it leaves me feeling less than adequate to redesign my own site. But honestly, this is just another bump in the road (like I mentioned earlier) that I have to cross. And because I have become comfortable enough with myself to know that more often than not my work is solid, I know this isn't the end of the road.

So while I wade through the thick muck of designers block, I came up with a list of ideas to help get the juices flowing.

Take a walk. Dance a jig. Get some sun. Don't take yourself to serious. Cook something ethnic. Play the 3 chords you know on guitar. Go get coffee. Tell a bad joke, to yourself, and laugh. Look at the way a leaf is made. Overhear someone else's conversation. Write it down. Remember it later. Get some sleep.

Note: I'm putting this out there as a practice to not be perfect. My hope is that it helps you, whoever you are/wherever you are, get through all the distractions in our lives that want to clog us up. We will never get anywhere by standing still, and we will never succeed by being busy.

the blackthorn project

On Wednesday Tim Thornton (half of The Blackthorn Project) emailed me asking if I would be willing to design some album covers for a new collection of songs called "Simple Series" they will be offering on iTunes, as well as from their website. Here are two ideas I created for them:

They have decided to go with the first concept, as they like how the two birds represents them. And with each new volume they release, there will be slight variations to the cover art. Whether it's a new layout or just simple color changes, each one will be unique. So make sure you subscribe to their podcast below, even if it's just for the artwork. :)

But honestly, Tim and Laurie Thornton are two wonderful people who I have had the pleasure of meeting. Their music is made with a heartfelt passion for the Heavenly Father. If you would like to support The Blackthorn Project by purchasing their music, hosting them at your house, or simply giving them a donation please visit their website → theblackthornproject.com.

You can also subscribe to The Blackthorn Project Podcast

Twitter Mix CD Design

A few weeks ago my fellow twitterer @ableparris posted a tweet asking if anyone was interested in doing a twitter mix cd.

And since I'm a huge lover of music and design I knew this would be a be a fun project to work on. So this weekend I finally had some room to breath, and with a little creative nudge from my friend Alex I got crackin' on my mix cd packaging design.

I wanted to keep things simple and consistent, but I didn't have a clear vision of how I wanted it to look. So as I began rummaging through my old book collection I came across the perfect solution. It was a book of bird illustrations I bought a couple years ago and had forgotten about until just then. It was perfect.

The insert of the packaging is a sleek contrast to the exterior. I created my playlist and overlay templates in Photoshop. Then I printed the playlist on graph paper and used a heavy-stock vellum paper to print the overlay on. The results turned out quite nice for using just an all-in-one printer. But that's just my awesome design skills in effect, well that and the fact that I used the Archer typeface. mmm...

You can view the full set on flickr here.

PS - I have one extra copy to give away. So if you are interested in getting your hands on one of these beauties, and like listening to good music, leave me your best comment below. I'll pick the winner this Friday (the 15th).

Congrats to Garth Humbert (@iamgarth) for winning the extra copy.

Minor updates

Just wanted to post a quick update about what's going on here at kylesteed.com. This past Friday I finally moved my site over to MediaTemple with great expectations. But things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. On Saturday I migrated my site and came to find that I could only view my homepage, no other links would work, at all. So after some quick investigation I realized there was a permissions problem with my .htaccess file. Ok, boom, fixed that problem but my site was still lagging horribly. No kidding, I would have to wait at least a minute or two before my site would even load. I submitted a trouble ticket on Saturday and then Sunday ended up calling the 24/7 support desk at MT. I really didn't get much troubleshooting help besides being told to try and disable all plugins and see if that helps. Well it didn't. Fast forward to about 30 minutes ago when I just installed a fresh version of WP and imported all my old content back in. Everything was running smoothly until I uploaded my theme and tried to activate it that I found the real problem all along. There is something in my theme that is causing the huge lag time on my site. But since I am working on a new theme I just wanted to get something simple and clean up here in the mean time. Thanks to @iandstewart for the fantastic thematic theme. It provides me a very clean look while I finish up my brand new look behind the scenes.

So with all that said and done I am very happy to be on Media Temple. The increase in speed is quite noticeable over my old host, GoDaddy. And another plus I was able to get an extra $40 credited to my account for mentioning the code "TWEETLUV". So Now I can purchase my wife's domain name and get her set up with her own website. She'll be happy about that.

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Updated January 13, 2010 - My site is no longer hosted with MediaTemple, but instead I am now in the awesome care of Firehost.