Randy Humphries

What’s one of your strengths and a weakness?

Randy — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:41:05 +0000

That was a question presented to me at a recent interview. It’s a question that you should be prepared for and I don’t know why but I wasn’t prepared for it. As I start to discuss one of my strengths being a grid based designer. Something that I’ve spent a lot of time being a champion of, since I first read Khoi Vinh’s post several years ago and spent a lot of time talking to other designers and convincing front-end developers to use the 960.gs framework I realized that it may also be a weakness.

Can a strength be a weakness? I realized half way through my presentation of my strength that it was a weakness of mine. I’ve put so much effort into thinking about grid-based design, how the design can be coded, etc. Sometimes I forget to just be creative. As a designer that is your main job after all, to be creative.

It’s hard to realize a weakness sometimes and mine came to me at a bad time; after all it was in the middle of a job interview. But I’m glad it popped into my head, because now it’s something I can work on and improve.

So don’t forget that you sometimes have to think outside the grid.

A few new projects

Randy — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:44:22 +0000

What a year it has been. Below are a few of the projects that I’ve worked on at Agency 1903 and as a freelancer under the moniker of ARS Creative with my friend Scott. It’s been an interesting and challenging time as we figure out all the wonderful and surprisingly robust solutions we can accomplish with WordPress and also some of the shortcomings of a few plug-ins that I won’t mention.

Agency 1903

Agency 1903 is a new digital agency hailing from Uptown Pittsburgh. This project had a tight deadline so Val Head and I tag teamed this project in a design tennis match lobbing designs back and forth. It was an interesting and fun way of coming up with design solutions.

MEMS Industry Group

A couple of years ago I designed a brochure and signage for the various trade shows MIG participates in throughout the year. When they where ready to update the website they came back to me to help overhaul the site’s architecture and design. MIG decided to launch the site in multiple stages, so more of the design and UI work I’ve done will be implemented over the next year.

Interactive Swim

Interactive Swim (IS) is a digital marketing agency headed by “Head Nerd” Holly Maust. Holly came to Ars Creative to design and build her site as she ventures into the world of self-employment. We helped develop an identity and built a robust website in WordPress which allows IS to easily maintain their content.

You can see more of my work here.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, 2010

Randy — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:36:31 +0000

Coachelletta from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

I love tilt shift and I love fast forward. I love this video.

Another sneak peek

Randy — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:04:42 +0000

Working on this homepage design for a site that currently is in beta.

Sneak Peek

Randy — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:48:00 +0000

Wanted to share with everyone a little sneak peak of a new project going on here at Ars Creative that we are very excited about. We are especially excited about our little robot.

Apple vs. Adobe Heats Up

Randy — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:53:41 +0000

Little while ago Apple posted this about why it will not add flash to the iPhone, iPod Touch or the iPad. Now Adobe has attacked back by launching an Ad campaign “We love Apple”. You can see the banners here. Adobe is striking back pretty strongly by running a similar campaign on their homepage even.

I’ve been a supporter of both Apple and Adobe my entire creative life and it’s those two companies that are responsible for creating the tools and hardware that I’ve created the majority of my work on for the past 14 years on.

I can honestly see both sides of the argument, Apple makes some great points in it’s Open Letter. Although I don’t find Adobe’s response as compelling, I’m still a supporter of Adobe.

My wish is that this “WAR” does not go too far. I don’t want to see Adobe software unavailable to Apple hardware, even though Apple has made some of it’s hardware not available to Adobe.

I have not used flash in any of my web projects in the past year but there are times that flash is nice to use. I have used flash extensively earlier (although forced by previous employers to use it, even if not needed), there are times when it’s beneficial and can really create something beautiful.

Maybe if Adobe can address some of the issues that Apple has with the Flash technology things can change, and we can see Flash on the iPhone, iPad, etc.

Here’s to hoping this does not go too far and I’m forced to use a PC again!

Kudos to Apple – Jerome York

Randy — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:43:22 +0000

Have to give kudos to Apple for putting the sales pitch away and honoring Jerome B. York a member of their corporate family. This is something that you rarely ever see on the homepage of a major corporation.

Loving the Wired Reader

Randy — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:01:07 +0000

This is simply just amazing. As a former magazine designer and currently an interactive designer I’m in love with this. Just imagine how much more content can be displayed through rich media not only for the articles but also for the advertising. Let’s just hope Apple does not block Air on the iPad. This should have been used as the demo for the announcement of the iPad.

Steve Krug’s The Least You Can Do™ about Usability.

Randy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:00:34 +0000

Great presentation on usability and the importance of doing even the most simple user test. Be sure to download the free chapters of his book Don’t Make Me Think on user testing.

Web apps for freelancers

Randy — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:01:03 +0000

Thought I would share some of the web apps I use when doing freelance work. These keep me focused on doing more design and less project management. The majority are well known and also written about to death but maybe you will find one or two here that you never heard of. Check out each apps site to get a full understanding of there capabilities. Most have trial or free subscriptions.

Basecamp

This is the hub of it all. Manage all your projects through Basecamp; create tasks, deadlines, milestones etc. Has an open API so there are tons of other web apps that work well with Basecamp. Plans start at $24 a month up too $149 per month. This web app is becoming the application that does everything you need including time tracking, billing and file sharing.

http://basecamphq.com

Tick

This is a fantastic web app for time tracking and keeping you on budget. Tick integrates nicely with Basecamp also. It has a variety of desktop widgets to use that make it easy to keep time or you can just use the website. I use the AIR widget which is very simple and has a great play/pause function. Tick has free and low monthly subscriptions.

http://www.tickspot.com

Dropbox

Need to share files with others? Every time you save a file locally it’s updated on the website and pushed to others that you share that folder or file with. So it keeps you and the people you are working with up to date with the most recent file. Also keeps multiple versions and a history of each file. Which saved me once when I accidently flattened a photoshop file and had to get a previous layered version. Dropbox has free and monthly subscriptions.

http://www.dropbox.com

Blinksale

Easily create custom invoices. Can import clients from Basecamp. Automate billing with recurring templates. Has only paid subscriptions of $6, $12, and $24 per month. I have a legacy account, which is free.

http://www.blinksale.com

Get SignOff

I use GetSignOff to share my designs with clients and get feedback and approval. Create and manage multiple versions of each design. Integrates seamlessly into Basecamp. GetSignoff has free and monthly subscription plans.

http://www.getsignoff.com/