I decided to embrace the fact that I deal with digital media and traditional media in two different ways. It’s time to focus on one or the other, and traditional media came out the winner. There’s probably not going to be a whole lot of digital emphasis here for a while.

I purchased a new Moleskine today with the intent of making it a “proper” sketchbook. Apparently, the white half of me can’t get enough of these suckers. Instead of being filled with lists, haphazard notes from meetings, and personal finance budgets, it’s going to be filled with creative mistakes.

It’s time to widen the gap between these two facets of my creative self and see what comes of it.

Not a very good likeness and that eye is jacked. Need more practice with faces and ballpoint pen.

QuadCamera is it. This thing is amazing. These are the first two shots I’ve taken with it, and I love it.

The canned filters it uses are quality. Makes everything look good.

I just want to say that I got lots of great feedback from friends and strangers regarding the redesign of my portfolio site. And thanks to all of you for it.

The two biggest issues (and I whole-heartedly agree):

1. The logo was weak and didn’t fit in.
2. The italic typeface didn’t read well in longer chunks.

So, instead of spending days on a logo treatment, I just put my name up in big, simple VAG Rounded Bold. And I used it for any type that was living on a white ground. I think things got balanced out with the change. Feeling better about it now, at least from the side of legibility.

Ta-da!

Well, that took long enough. Last night I launched the new version of mikecreighton.com. This morning, I polished up a couple things, so technically this post is a “YESTERDAY, CREATED.” update.

There’s still some work to do, like hooking the content up to ExpressionEngine, implementing this “Faust” technique, and sticking some Google Analytics events in there.

But for now, I’ve got something fresh online representing some of my work.

Still moving along on this. Here’s a little effect for transitioning between a project’s images. Feels a little too random right now…probably because it is, in fact, just random. I think I’ll move to something a little more organic that “sweeps” the grid mask across the image.

Now to figure out how to do that…

I needed to get this prototype out ASAP since some of the strength of the design direction I’ve chosen has to do with this uber-zoomed image pixel grid thingy. When I was designing it, I wanted to take advantage of Flash’s ability to smooth a scaled Bitmap. So, that’s what you’re seeing in this prototype.

I still have to figure out what to do with the motion, but the overall effect is achieved in the prototype. In the end, I’ll be sampling a 35×35 pixel rect of a loaded image and blowing it up to fill the stage. This is a little smaller than that, but the performance remains fast at either size.

I’ve started the redesign of my portfolio site. I created a lot of crappy looking stuff in the last two days, and I’ve finally reached a design direction I’m happy with.

I’m trying to get something up by the end of the weekend, so we’ll see how that goes.

Did I mention that designing is f’ing hard? Here’s another screen:

Yesterday, I was trying to unload the charge of my (now old) MacBook Pro, in an effort to calibrate it. I thought, what better way to kill the battery than to open up Netflix Watch Instantly, pump up the volume (or the jam), and jack the display brightness as high as it would go. Movie of choice: Helvetica.

I was drawn into the interview at the beginning with Wim Crouwel and his description of his use of the grid. The man is absolutely masterful using the grid as a constraint and rule system — and exploiting the hell out of it.

Inspired, I decided to continue playing with that word pair “Hyper Violent“.

Also, my first time using the new Illustrator CS4…

On my new 15″ MacBook Pro…