We know the economy is currently in a bit of a tough spot, but nothing could get things rolling better than a stimulus shot compliments of the graphic arts students from UIW. “Help Is On The Way” was more than our shows slogan, it was a pledge of the creative recovery plan.

A big thanks to all who showed up at the Stimulus design show at the Radius Café Thursday night in San Antonio. We had a really great turnout and all of the hard work and months of planning surely paid off. A great environment, free food, booze, and great friends made it an ideal send off and a great precedent for future shows.

A few photos from the show:

Extra Linkage:

View the Stimulus website

Just a quick post for now, but I’ve been working on my latest and last project before I graduate in about two weeks. It’s taking quite a while you could say, but I’m beginning to like the result. I’ve created the room you see below from scratch (from the ground up, really) for a short motion graphics piece that I’ll eventually be able to animate. I don’t want to give away too much at the moment but there will/should be three to four custom rooms I’m building for an interior design show.

It took a few fails to get to feeling comfortable with the photograph/vector combination, but the more I nudge a few pixels, the more restful I feel with my idea.

Feel free to share the love/suggest improvements/yell at me. I’ll promise not to cry. Oh, and you might recognize a few of the pictures hanging on the wall. I thought it would be nice to recognize a few of my influences for the project.

Happy Friday!

Click on the image for a larger view.

–UPDATE – 4.27.10–

Here’s the next room I created.

Click on the image for a larger view.

–UPDATE – 5.04.10–

And the last of three rooms is completed.

Click on the image for a larger view.

–UPDATE – 5.08.10–

Okay, so Shatner probably wouldn’t have hosted…but come on!

Extra Linkage:

Site Inspire – One of the top web inspiration sites out there!

Feedly – Organize your favorite sites into a magazine-like start page.

Dinobrain – A comedy podcast that keeps me company late in the early morning.

Those who aren’t new to this blog may have noticed a bit of a change from the last blog I was running. So why the change? Well, to put it simply there were two main motives for the upgrade:

1. The need to separate work from play

Out with the old, in with the new.

Things got pretty cluttered as I added more content and projects to my old blog. Needless to say, there was a lot of competition for photos, text, headlines, etc. that needed to be worked/planned out smarter.

A portfolio is a designers most prized possession. You can’t buy time. There are no refunds on substance and critical thinking. Showcasing your work in your physical portfolio and website should be as methodical as the design process itself. I felt it necessary to showcase my work in a more professional and intelligent way, where it would have a presence independent of unrelated blog content. Thus came the decision to divide my work from ramblings.

2. Faster, Better, Stronger (Thanks Daft)

The new blog is quite simple. Okay, it’s really simple…but it’s me. The load times are down, the content hierarchy has a more solid structure, and the website is more flexible (no size restrictions embedded behind .jpg’s, strange wraps, etc.) to the content. Oh yes…I have an ad area on the sidebar. Click it once won’t you? I feel good karma headed your way already. ;)

When I created my new website I wanted the portfolio site and blog to behave as two separate entities. It was important for the user to be conscious of what they were looking at and where they viewing the content. I did some research, observed how others handled similar situations of blog/portfolio pages and recognized that about half of all designers I researched designed their websites and blogs in a similar (if not exact) aesthetic appearance. To put this in a nutshell, I could design either as I liked.

I started at 100 and reduced down, down to the bare essentials of what a blog was primarily meant to communicate: its content. It’s knowing what needs to be there and what doesn’t. Through reduction and simplification, you’re truly setting yourself up for more versatility.

Satisfaction.

Odds & Ends

You might have noticed that I pulled a few articles from the old blog and left others behind. If you would really like to see a post that didn’t make the migration list, don’t be reluctant to send me an email. I’ll set it back up faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

Also, I touched on the advantage of simplification and its flexibility in the paragraphs above. Look out for some minor additions to the blog and other little experiments on special occasions.
Hint: What’s a guy to do with all of this white space? Watch for fresh paint.