Blog entries

Some big changes

Jay Swanson — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 02:50:34 +0100

So I haven't had time to dedicate to this blog for a long time. Something about working all the time on other people's projects takes away from the drive and desire to work on your own. I've gotten a lot done in the last year, and had some big struggles and failures as well; blogging about them all hasn't been my highest priority so much as making it through them.

It finally happened

Jay Swanson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:28:51 +0100

I actually enjoy it now... tweeting. It's ridiculous. You can follow me on twitter now if you like. Below is the avatar that I designed just for Twitter. I almost feel ashamed =)

As for me, life is really busy. We had to move into a new house over the weekend (it's pretty dang awesome) and are of course without internet for a week. This does not help me get work done fro...

Busy busy busy

Jay Swanson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:08:54 +0100

I've obviously managed to keep from writing anything in a long time, largely due to the fact that I'm too busy. I took this job editing photos for a company in Spokane that, while temporary, is currently full time, and it's been eye opening.

One reason it's eye opening is that it reminds me regularly that I prefer being my own boss. It's also encouraging to work for a company that's run by kind, competent people. I've had some rough jobs (as I'm sure we all have) before in ...

bsd v3

Jay Swanson — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:26:53 +0100

So I finally managed it, Blue Swan Design v3 is up and running. Of course this last week our internet went down, so I spent most of my time sitting in the Service Station (a local coffee joint) working as best I could. It's amazing how much a change of environment can really throw you for a loop, concentration was a problem.

The new site has a few glitches to work out, thus the "under construction" bit in the logo, but I'm really happy with it regardless. I'll keep pl...

Veritas - the logo

Jay Swanson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:37:59 +0100

Working on a graphic design project for my friends' church. They're in need of some promotional stuff for their college ministry and I'm working on some posters as well as their logo. Here's what I've got so far; I like it personally.

Cliff's Jump

Jay Swanson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:17:11 +0100

My sister's buddy, Cliff from photography school made a cool stop motion video with his camera and posted it on his flickr page. I thought I'd share it since it's pretty cool.

Pro Software

Jay Swanson — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:43:22 +0100

In working on the devEdge website, which will be up as soon as their owner returns from a trip to Africa, I figured I should make some boxes for their software. The thing is that distributed online software doesn't exactly have its own visual representation. It used to be that software came in shrink wrapped, pretty little boxes.

Now thanks to online distribution services like Steam your video games and development tools and word processors all come in streams of data that...

Icons

Jay Swanson — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:30:03 +0100

Icons, the little pictures that are meant to represent a particular function, application, or simply give a graphical representation of anything you want in general are pretty important. I'm working on implementing them in more of my work, but they take time and (especially if you want some unique and attractive ones) a lot of effort.

I decided to scour the interwebz for a good tutorial to give me some inspiration and found one. Here's the result.

Fiddling

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:09:33 +0100

I know I'm currently on v3 of the website but I'm already wanting to get back to the darker feel that I used to have... I have enough problems to work through without wanting to redo my website again but... well it's impossible to settle on mediocrity and it feels like I can do so much better. It's so much easier to make something satisfying for other people; I guess I'm weird.

Either way I'm working on capturing the original logo design that was in my head. Kind of late af...

From magical to explosive

Jay Swanson — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:12:03 +0100

My sister took some promotional photos of a magician named Drew Worsham recently, she ended up with some sweet shots. Anyways I was playing with light effects in Photoshop and of course wound up using some of her photos, I thought it turned out well.

You can see the original on flickr.

The Colorado Rockies

Jay Swanson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:06:29 +0100

I'm currently in the Colorado Rockies running a kids camp for a church planting organization. Basically just taking care of the kids while their parents are in session. I'm also trying to take some time to re-vamp the site (again, I know) when I can. You'll notice some new work has been added to the websites section, but expect to see some more changes soon, however subtle they may be.

Magic in a hat

Jay Swanson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:59:48 +0100

Like I said earlier, I end up using my spare time to try out new stuff on my ongoing projects. This one was while I was playing with lighting effects in Photoshop. I didn't have time to create a top hat so I borrowed it from Very Icon who make some amazing icons. They saved me probably 30 min of work, which is a lot these days.

Anyways, it's fun to play with text and light, this based o...

Playing with text

Jay Swanson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:47:35 +0100

When I've got nothing better to do I end up playing around with tutorials and usually try to do something with text since it's usually so necessary in everything you do. I've been inspired by some of the 3D text art out there to get back into 3D modeling, hopefully I can do that soon.

Until then I'll stick to Photoshop. You always need something to work with so I usually end up applying what I'm messing around with to my own stuff (like Live Charge) or my sister.

...

The new site... why?

Jay Swanson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:25:28 +0100

Well to put it simply I threw the other one up over the course of an afternoon simply because I hadn't had time to get it done. This one has taken more of a concerted effort and instead of basically using my business card as the main logo (and only graphical attraction on the site) I decided to take some time and make this one a bit more engaging.

It is completely different in style though so hopefully no one gets completely lost in expecting a white page with a blue box an...