http://resistmedia.net/ en beth@resistmedia.net Copyright 2011 2011-01-05T08:38:05+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/move_along_nothing_to_see_here/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/move_along_nothing_to_see_here/#When:08:38:05Z New year, new site, new life. I never could have predicted any of this. I entered 2010 in a depressed cocoon. I wasn’t happy with my life or surroundings. I hid in my apartment for 3 months listening to weird music and drawing scary posters, trying to avoid the snow. I finally decided it was time to do all the things I’d been putting off. I got some of the posters screen printed and sold them, they turned out beautifully. I got an awesome new job and moved to San Francisco, embarking on a harrowing 5 day road trip with my best friend, full of the worst weather the United States has to offer in every time zone. After a 2 hour, white knuckle ride down Donner Mountain in a freak blizzard (don’t worry we didn’t have to eat anyone) I found myself in a place I can finally call home. I’ve met the most amazing and positive people, who are a constant source of inspiration and creativity. I spend my days working with some of the smartest and most talented people, in an office with a view that never gets old. I spend my nights and weekends playing with my dogs, bumming around the park, reading on the beach, playing guitar, drawing, drawing and drawing, and with my friends. I live in a beautiful painted lady. Everything I could ever want in the universe is just a 15 minute walk or train ride away. A new chapter in my life calls for a new site, where I’ll be posting all the comics I’ve been drawing. If 2011 is anything like 2010, I’m in for an awesome time. It doesn’t make much sense to keep up a design portfolio when I can’t really post case studies from my last few jobs due to NDAs. Someday I might post here again, but consider this an official leave of absence. Thanks for reading Resist all these years, and I hope you’ll enjoy my comics on the new site. 2011-01-05T08:38:05+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/so_long_cleveland/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/so_long_cleveland/#When:14:17:10Z I’ve always taken it very personally when people trash Cleveland. It seems ignorant, people just don’t realize what we have here. (And quite often, it’s people who’ve never spent much time here doing the trashing.) Over the years I’ve been sad to watch many people I care about leave for “fairer” cities. I’ve maintained that Cleveland is actually a great place to live if you can get past the snow. But now, I’ve got the itch and I’m leaving too. I was offered an awesome gig at Hotwire.com. Pure user experience, and no code. (I love code, when I don’t have to bastardize it.) Suck it IE6, you can tangle with someone else now. The job comes with awesome travel perks, and just so happens to be in one of the most beautiful cities in the country. I’d even speculate it is THE most beautiful, but there are a lot of places I haven’t been. So in just a few weeks I’ll be dragging all my remaining belongings and two wiggly dogs cross country to San Francisco. I feel a little bit like a hypocrite for leaving, but I have my reasons. Cleveland has a lot of great things other cities do. When the weather is nice, parts of it are beautiful. I even find some of the industrial decay charming. There really is nothing quite like fall in Ohio. The lake can be pretty. We have tons of awesome restaurants, there are some good record stores, and some good bands come to town. I have no idea where I will find awesome kraut and pierogies after I leave. But what I’ve realized is everything cool Cleveland has, bigger cities have times ten. I guess if I had a spouse and kids I’d be more inclined to stay, there are some good schools, the cost of living is very cheap so you can afford a big house on a pretty street without having to make a lot of money. It can be quiet. But I’ve had it with snow, I don’t like 3 months of oppressive weather that keep you from going anywhere. Did you know most people in Ohio have a vitamin D deficiency? Yeah thanks crappy weather. In the summer time it’s incredibly hot and humid. I’ll be grateful for a moderate climate. Dealing with the overwhelming local “mistake by the lake” attitude is pretty daunting. It’s hard to like where you live when so many other people here hate it. Parts of Cleveland are pretty suburban, I’m definitely interested in a more urban lifestyle. No more strip malls, no more ladies in puffy paint holiday sweaters with mall bangs, no more Kmarts, no Applebees, no offended old people staring at my tattoos as though I might rob them, no more soccer moms with double wide strollers trying to mow me down at the grocery store. I got to be part of a wonderful organization, the Cleveland Web Standards Association, which definitely kept me around here a lot longer than I ever planned. These folks showed me what having a community was all about. We had great and informative presentations every month but the best parts have always been geeking out over a couple beers afterward, and swapping war stories about clients, bizarre RFPs, and IE6 induced grey hairs. More than professional colleagues, these folks have been awesome friends, and I don’t think I could be doing the things I am now without them. It’s hard to leave family and friends, but I’m hoping living in a great city will entice everyone to visit. My grandma lives in the bay area, so I’m very excited to make up for lost time with her. Professionally I realized I needed to grow in ways I wasn’t anymore. I started turning to personal projects and illustration to fulfill my creative needs, and realized that wasn’t why I put myself in student loan debt for life. I’m paying too much money to not be psyched about work every day. I felt I owed it to myself to try something new, something has been not quite right for a long time and I made a lot of excuses for why I wasn’t changing it. I guess I finally ran out. 2010-04-04T14:17:10+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/spicy_orange_marmalade_recipe/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/spicy_orange_marmalade_recipe/#When:00:24:26Z I had some citrus fruit that was going to go bad before I could eat it all, so I thought a marmalade would be a good way to keep it from going to waste. Ingredients 1 lb clementines 2 lemons 1 lb sugar 3 dried thai chilis 1 tsp. thai chili flakes 12 cloves garlic 1 tbsp chinese 5 spice powder Instructions Peel clementines, removing as much pith as possible. (A sharp paring knife makes this a lot easier.) Take 1-2 clementine’s worth of peel (rinsed) and slice into long thin strips. Peel and seed lemons. Puree clementines and lemon in a food processor or blender until slightly chunky. Puree garlic. Pour all ingredients in sauce pan with affixed candy thermometer, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, stir frequently and simmer until mixture reaches 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Skim any foam off the top, and pour mixture into a preheated (so it doesn’t crack) glass container. You really could use any combination of fruit you have lying around the house. Most jam / marmalade recipes recommend a 1 / 1 ratio of fruit to sugar. (A kitchen scale is a tremendous help.) This didn’t turn out really spicy, I tried to keep the heat down in case I use it to cook for friends who don’t like hot food. I figured I could easily add more pepper flakes on a dish by dish basis. This could also be canned if you sterilize jars first. Some excellent uses are stir fry, spread on grilled cheese, or a glaze for any kind of roast. It finishes pretty thick, so if you want to use it in a stir fry you will want to add some liquid as well. The Asian ingredients can easily be obtained at your local Asian grocer. If you don’t have one you could substitute other pepper flakes / dried peppers, just keep in mind the Thai variety is much hotter than typical red pepper flakes. The five spice powder can be substituted with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and a tiny bit of cumin. If took about an hour on low heat for my marmalade to reach 220, if you don’t have a candy thermometer, when the mixture starts to become thick put a glob on a chilled plate and run a knife through it. If it runs together, it’s not done. Food, Recipes 2010-01-25T00:24:26+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/food_projects_id_like_to_tackle_this_year/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/food_projects_id_like_to_tackle_this_year/#When:03:02:32Z Making my own: Bread Cheese Jams (canning in general) Butter (and subsequently, herb butter) Prosciutto Sausage Pickled peppers or veggies Soda or root beer Food 2010-01-24T03:02:32+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/on_designing_in_the_browser/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/on_designing_in_the_browser/#When:02:31:37Z Would an architect start with a hammer and nails? Does the butcher use a steak knife because it will be the implement of his product? The bottom line is you should use whatever is most effective for you, but for me starting in the browser is working backwards. I learned a design is done in layers, and I believe markup is just one of the outer layers. When I draw a figure I begin with a gesture, then a skeleton, then muscle, skin and clothing. If I start with the clothes I don’t understand what’s under them and how they should fall, where the light and shadows belong. When I build a website I start with a list of the content it requires, then a doodle, a wireframe or a combination of the two, a comp, and finally markup and style. There are a variety of tools for any of these steps, but the browser is only a tool for one. Skipping any of those steps seems lazy and like a missed opportunity to think a design completely through. Yes, you certainly need to be aware of browser limitations when creating a design, but those shouldn’t dictate your design. (People who have zero fluency in markup have no business calling themselves web designers.)Creativity in code can come from trying to make a good, usable design do everything it can and should. This is how we push new browser standards, or end up with tools that help fill the gaps, like jQuery. 2010-01-06T02:31:37+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/slayers_reign_in_blood/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/slayers_reign_in_blood/#When:13:44:33Z “Angel of Death” is the kind of explicit reminder you won’t get from the Arcade Fire, Radiohead, or some emo singer who thinks life in modern America is a series of sad, overwhelming events. Slayer warn us: When authority goes wrong, your entire family can be slaughtered, their bones crushed to dust, and forgotten in mud. D.X. Ferris Quote 2009-12-08T13:44:33+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/pictory/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/pictory/#When:13:39:03Z Just as I was lamenting the lack of awesome web design, this bomb drops. I love a site about story-telling. I love that it’s designed to be viewed full screen. I love the simple, but elegant use of color. I love the subtle (read: not cartoonish) iconography. I love that you can navigate with your keyboard. I love how clean the code is. There isn’t anything I don’t love about this site. I want to high five the designers. Link 2009-12-08T13:39:03+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/web_designers_please_stop_doing_this/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/web_designers_please_stop_doing_this/#When:03:24:14Z We’re at a point where it’s time to stop calling ourselves web designers and to start thinking of ourselves simply as designers. That’s the only way we’re going to be taken seriously as a profession, and stop following all these ridiculous trends. Everywhere you look these days sites using some variation of the above template are getting accolades. What is wrong with us? I have been kicking around my general gripes about the state of “design” in web design for a while now but wasn’t inspired to write an article until I saw Paul Scrivens’ Smashing Magazine Killed the Community, and was in almost complete agreement. Where is the value in compiling other people’s content or screenshots of their sites offering no additional input other than to regurgitate it as your own for the sake of a few Diggs? And where is the credibility in these Top 10 Crazy Ass Things to Do With Type sites anyway? Have you ever seen a truly reputable designer you know writing for them? And now they’re selling you a book. All these sites do is glorify trends and cliches. This got me to thinking, whatever happened to the CSS galleries of yore? Now there are scores of them, all the featured sites with the same cookie cutter layout. I don’t think the problem is as Paul said, that CSS galleries were something easy to replicate. I think the problem is one of content. These sites aren’t scouring for anything pushing boundaries, they passively accept suggestions and post accordingly. Now that people with dollar signs in their eyes are flocking to the industry in droves, an appetite for this garbage has been cultivated. I can understand how sites like this might be good reference for someone just beginning their career, a starting point to see what’s been done before, but they become dangerous when they preach trends as gospel and all of a sudden every new site on the internet looks the same. Remember Web 2.0? Where did all those designers go? Gradients, drop shadows and rounded corners gave way to Photoshop effects, mismatched social media icons and poorly executed grunge type. Do we really want to be the David Carsons of the web industry, slowly becoming caricatures of ourselves? Once upon a time we had wonderful places to go for web inspiration, like Stylegala. Now it’s time to stop looking at the web for inspiration. So many people in this industry do not come from a design background, we need to get back to design basics. Design school 101. Real typography, not just “picking out a cool font”. Grids, and not out of the box solutions, but thinking about a real working grid for our sites. Using an out of the box grid is equivalent to using an out of the box Wordpress template with no regard to how it fits your content at all. Color. Strip away Photoshop techniques. Software is just a tool, designs should be able to survive without effects and shadows. Stop designing your content for your CMS and work the other way around. Want to learn about storytelling? Take a comic book illustration class, even if you can’t draw. You’re not going to find a quick solution for good design in a top ten list. Real design is hard, that’s why we expect to be paid well for it. Stop listening to people spend a lot of time talking about web design but doing very little design themselves, and instead go back to real designers. Start at the beginning. Start at Bauhaus. Start at De Stijl. Start at military propaganda art. Start anywhere but with freaking web design. P.S. Can we please stop doing this also? This is like lens flare part two. Design 2009-11-29T03:24:14+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/november_2009_mix/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/november_2009_mix/#When:00:43:25Z Listen to this while falling asleep at the end of a long, grey day. The new Black Heart Procession album blew my mind a little, it’s the darkest thing they’ve done in a while. I had to include the first track, which sounds like what you’d hear while having an out of body experience. Lovers and Carissa’s Wierd are probably the saddest bands you’ve never heard, the latter with members splintering off into S, Grand Archives and Band of Horses. Candy Girl might be my favorite new song in a while, can’t wait to hear when they have a full album recorded. The Black Heart Procession - When You Finish Me Rachel’s - Water from the Same Source Warpaint - Stars Mount Eerie - Voice in Headphones Azure Ray - Don’t Make a Sound Lovers - Ginger Carissa’s Wierd - Die Glorytellers - Anonymous Elliott Smith - Miss Misery Cat Power - Wonderwall Lowlights - Last and Alone The Mendoza Line - It’ll be the Same Without You The Pacific Ocean - Adam’s Song Foreign Born - Holy Splinter Arms - The Frozen Lake Trailer Trash Tracys - Candy Girl Download November 2009 Mix (80.5) Music, Mix 2009-11-20T00:43:25+00:00 http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/paul_renner_on_what_is_modern/ http://resistmedia.net/index.php/articles/view/paul_renner_on_what_is_modern/#When:19:28:52Z The truly Modern, that is, the undistorted expression of an objective zeitgeist, is only what we hold today to be timelessly perfect. This is not the same in all periods, because the insight into the timelessly valid changes from generation to generation. Paul Renner Quote 2009-11-14T19:28:52+00:00