Adelie Design

Google Apps Dropping Support for IE6

2010-02-02T13:17:03Z

Google is officially ending support for Internet Explorer 6 in Google Apps. This affects users of Google Docs and Google Sites beginning March 1, 2010, and will affect users of Google Mail and Google Calendar later this year.

This is a welcome change. Providing support for a decade old web browser is severely limiting what we can do on the web and driving up development costs unnecessarily. Hopefully this move by a major player such as Google will goad enough people to upgrade that we can finally leave IE6 behind us.

In the meantime, if you haven’t upgraded you browser recently, perhaps it’s time you do so now. You can upgrade Internet Explorer to version 8, or try another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome.

Classical South Florida

2009-11-10T16:04:39Z

While vacationing in Miami the other month, we recently stumbled across Classical South Florida 89.7 FM. Unlike most public radio stations, Classical South Florida is all music all the time. It was wonderful having such a large collection of music available and it reminded us how disappointed we are with our own local public radio stations. Luckily for us, Classical South Florida streams over the web, allowing us to listen to it from Indiana.

Because we listen 12+ hours every day, and it truly increases our productivity, we have decided to support Classical South Florida for the month of November. So for the entire month of November, when you go online and listen to Classical South Florida through the “Windows” link, you will hear a “prepend” about Adelie Design and see a little logo and link to our website.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2009-11-06T00:59:27Z

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is over until the show airs on ABC in January. We found out that the selected family was Cowan-Brown family of Bunker Hill. Their daughter Kori, 12, was diagnosed with a congenital blood disease when she was six. Since spending time rooming with a young cancer patient in the hospital, Kori has raised over $35,000 for the American Cancer Society. Because of mold in her home, Kori has had to have several surgeries for growths in her sinuses, and other family members have suffered as well. Hallmark Homes and numerous volunteers have banded together to build this family a new home.

My role in all of this was to make sure all of the sponsors received recognition for their hard work and generous donations. I worked with D Ashley Design + Events to create the “Hall of Heroes.” Over fifty businesses sent me photographs, logos, and statements about why they wanted to help out with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I had less than a week to combine these elements into a poster for each business. Although each poster was not very difficult, the sheer quantity and time frame kept me working like crazy.

Thanks to Janel Bantz for the excellent photograph.

Here are some other links:

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2009-10-20T22:35:14Z

I’m doing design for the project in the Kokomo/Peru area. Tomorrow we find out who the blessed family is.

I’m designing posters for the Hall of Heroes to recognized all the sponsors and volunteers. I just started getting art on Friday and So far we’re at about 25 posters. This has been insane and really neat.

I’m writing this during a quick breather waiting for the next email. I’ll post more about this project after it’s finished. Visit http://hallmarkextreme.com/ to learn more about the build.

Our Forebearers

2009-08-20T21:23:03Z

As a designer, one program I use a lot is Adobe Illustrator. It’s a good program for building logos, artwork for screen printing, and other simple illustrations. Back in 1963 Ivan Sutherland developed a program called Sketchpad that helped make future computer drawing programs (like Illustrator and AutoCAD) possible.

Hat tip: swissmiss

Let’s “negotiate”

2009-05-29T14:31:16Z

People are always trying to “negotiate” with designers to get the “best deal”. Many of us are more than willing to help you work within your budget, but sometimes the requests are downright ridiculous. This video shows you just how ridiculous those requests sound.

Hat tip: Swissmiss

How to watch a race

2009-05-29T14:04:20Z

As a designer, I love a good infographic. The Indianapolis Star has a great video infographic showing the position of every car during the Indianapolis 500.

Are you certain crowdsourcing your logo is the best solution?

2009-04-26T19:38:10Z

When budgets are tight, businesses try to cut expenses any way possible. This often means looking for “affordable” design solutions. Although crowdsourcing your logo may seem like a good way to save money, there are some reasons you should avoid this route.

The most obvious reason is amateur results. Sure, you’ll probably get at least one logo you like. And it might even look pretty good to grandma. But in the end, it would be a surprise if an experienced and trained designer actually took part. (Crowdsourcing looks a lot like “Spec” work to them.) This leaves you with something that might look okay, but doesn’t have the thought and research put into it to create a lasting mark.

There’s another reason to avoid the crowdsourcing route that you may not be aware of. The individuals that enter these contests are usually entering lots of other contests at the same time. The goal is to win as often and as “efficiently” as possible. To keep up the pace, they submit very similar logos to many different businesses, meaning your logo may not be nearly as original as you think.

Even worse, there’s always they chance you could get in legal trouble. Sadly, there have been several instances of individuals submitting art they have no permission to use. Sometimes they are misusing art they could legally use for other types of projects. Other times, they are actually stealing the art from another company. When you choose your favorite logo, you have no idea whether you truly have a legal right to use it or not.

Although hiring a respected designer to create your logo might cost more, you can be certain it is unique, targeted, and legal.

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Nate Voss has written an excellent post about this topic.

Happy Pi Day!

2009-03-15T20:02:01Z

Don’t forget to celebrate pi, that incredibly useful constant. You can even toast the moment at 1:59.

Designing the Code4Lib Logo

2009-03-11T19:18:55Z

I recently designed a logo for Code4Lib, a community of library software developers and technologists.

As with every design project, I started out by identifying the needs and desires of the client.

There should be an understandable connection between the logo and the organization, not just a random mark.
Code4Lib is no longer just an online community. They have a professional journal, annual conference, and many other activities. The logo needed to be flexible so all the aspects could be brought together under one brand.
Many members of Code4Lib are committed to open source, so this needed to be reflected as much as possible.

Code4Lib is run by consensus. They vote on everything. All the members of Code4Lib worked together to create guidelines for what they wanted/needed. Fortunately for me, volunteers then formed a committee to actually shepherd the project through to completion. Although all members expressed their opinions at different stages, the logo committee distilled everything to something reasonable to communicate.

I started out with several different logo ideas. Some went in more of a coding direction while others went in a library direction. After a great deal of back and forth over various ideas, the logo above was decided on. The serif font harkens back to printed books, while the brackets relate to the coding aspects.

Logos for other aspects of the Code4Lib community use the base logo, with the name of that activity incorporated into it. I designed a few derivative logos and figured out the appropriate font size, letter spacing, etc.

Because of the commitment to open source I tried to make the logo as “free” as possible. The main Code4Lib logo was created using the free font Centabel Book. I tried very hard to use a free font for the “activity” name as well, but could not find one that fit well. Although many programmers dislike Microsoft, I used a Microsoft font, which has the benefit of being available to a great number of people.

I also released the logo under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. This allows the logo to be used by anyone for any purpose.

The saying goes that, “Design by Committee,” is hell, but that was clearly not the case. The committee was very knowledgeable, and the community as a whole was very receptive. It was a pleasure to work with the Code4Lib community to design their new logo.