blog.stublag.com

We have a robot here at the office that consists of the back...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:48:48 -0500

We have a robot here at the office that consists of the back half of a bike and motor. Ghost Rider can be controlled remotely, and is used for endurance tests of the Pedal Brain.

It needed a wordmark.

Chester This is the icon for an internal Pedal Brain testing...

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 11:06:15 -0500

Chester

This is the icon for an internal Pedal Brain testing app, that will be used on all of 3 iPads. The app tests 8 of our units at once, showing a dashboard of the current tests as they happen. The dashboard itself is still being worked out, but I’ll post more as it progresses.

Audio

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:38:27 -0500

Mega Macro After seeing a tutorial about pulling off mega macro...

Tue, 18 May 2010 13:22:39 -0500

Mega Macro

After seeing a tutorial about pulling off mega macro with a DSLR, I had to try it. All you do is turn your kit lens (or any lens for that matter) around and hold it against the body of your camera while taking a photo. Pretty awesome.

Helping Others

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:24:00 -0500

Whenever you stick a group of graduating graphic design seniors into a room, it does not take long for the conversation to steer toward the program’s shortcomings. “They didn’t teach me this!” “They wasted so much time on this!” Over the last few months of ceaseless discussion about these problems, I have actually come to terms with what the program has offered.

When talking to a few friends about how much I help people with web development, it always comes up that this must be a major specific thing. “That would never happen in __________, everyone is out for themselves” they say. Their logic is that I’m crazy for helping so many people that I am in direct competition with in the graphic design world.

To them, I say: Screw it.

Did the program do an awful job of teaching the technologies we will be expected to know? Definitely. Is it the Universities fault that some students feel unprepared? Not at all. To help, I have been trying to get my fellow students over the “internet is too hard” bump and surprisingly, had moderate success.

Since most people do not know where to start, I began by giving out a promotional code for Dreamhost accounts. This promocode gives students an enormous discount on a .com and their first year of hosting from one of the best solutions out there. Hopefully, this becomes the kick in the pants that gets them really motivated to go out and learn something new. At this point I offer a basic run down of what they have gotten themselves into as well as some helpful information for getting their portfolio off the ground. This entire process ranges from a basic explanation of how FTP works, to a full blown tutorial of how HTML & CSS work and interact with each other.

Essentially, all I want to do is help people get over the admittedly daunting first wall of information into web development. Being available to answer the simple questions like “How do I upload files”, to longer discussions about the minutia of CSS has become immensely gratifying.

Over the last year I have learned two things:

Starting communities is easier than I thought it would be.
I’m probably crazy.

Pedal Brain Door Sign

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:37:12 -0500

Over the last week I’ve been in charge of creating a door sign for the new Pedal Brain office. This ended up being much more of an ordeal than I originally intended it to be, but I’m proud of how it turned out.

To begin, I had to model the entire Pedal Brain logo in 3D. Well, actually, I had to learn how to model anything in 3D before slapping together the 3D version. I ended up using Modo to model it after SketchUp produced some less than ideal results. Although modeling the logo in Modo took considerably longer than SketchUp, it produced a much better logo and convinced me to try more things in 3D.

From there, my recently modeled logo headed to our 3D printer. This printer is primarily used for printing out prototypes of our iPhone mount, but I thought it would be great to use it for creating a door sign. The printing process took nearly three hours, but turned out much better than I could have anticipated.

Once printed, I had to stock up on some painting supplies to apply the official Pedal Brain Orange. After a few coats of white the logo was almost ready to go. Applying the orange around the outer edge put my lackluster painting skills to the test, but ended up being fairly easy.

Finally, we spent about 25 minutes trying to remove the door from the hinge with no success. From the stripped screws you could tell the previous renters also tried to get the door off, and quit at the same point. After some careful measuring, it was time for what I referred to as a round of high stakes kerning.

Several hours of work, one menacing bottle of super glue.

Brand Dilution

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:16:00 -0600

Hey man, look. I’m glad you’re trying out the whole blogging thing, really.

You began a huge campaign over the last week wherein you’re letting the world in on 40 snippets of mostly great design advice. I’m enjoying it, truly. But hey – quick note: Consolidate! You’ve got your personal brand all over the place and it’s become really, really confusing to handle. It’s the internet equivalent of repeatedly moving your primetime TV show to a different time slot on different networks.

Lets get down to it: for the love of god, stop using Cargo Collective as your blogging platform. It is not one. Pick a (real) blogging platform and stick with it. As of this writing you’ve got the “Lent Marathon” running on a Tumblr blog, iframe’d into an increasingly long Cargo Collective entry.

While this is a little bit deceptive (who uses iframes anymore, anyway), its mostly just confusing. I’ve got your feed coming in through my Tumblr dashboard, and that seems to work alright. I also subscribe to your old & busted RSS feed, which you seem to be migrating your posts back to. I mentioned this to you a while back, but your posts are still coming through in my RSS reader as enormous walls of text.

I realize that this may be a small use case (RSS readers and all), but I’m trying to look out for you, man. Down the road, when you want to show your kids your 32 totally hilarious blog posts about design ideas, wouldn’t it be great if they were in some sort of reasonable format?

With love, your friend, Paul.

Target Field + Fog (via stublag)

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:43:20 -0600

Target Field + Fog

(via stublag)

"Good luck in life. You’ll go far. Unlike Joe over there. Just kidding Joe!"

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:10:00 -0600

“Good luck in life. You’ll go far. Unlike Joe over there. Just kidding Joe!”

- The strangest goodbye from the same co-worker that introduced herself as “Hello Paul, you’ll hate me”.

What a job.

Graphic Design Referenced A truly fantastic book from the folks...

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:13:00 -0600

Graphic Design Referenced

A truly fantastic book from the folks over at UnderConsideration.

An Internship

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:51:00 -0600

Thats the great thing about working in Flash. You don’t have to worry about what it looks like in different browsers.

In the interview, I was told this after showing my own portfolio and explaining how much went into it. Despite being diametrically opposed to this way of thinking, I smiled politely and continued try my hardest to get the job.

There were several factors in play at the time that made me accept these flaws. These factors centered around fear. Fear that I needed an internship to graduate. Fear that for some reason this is my last shot at doing so. But hey, I said, maybe they will let me illustrate sometime.

Spoiler alert: they won’t.

I walked into the position being okay with working in Flash, even though I knew I didn’t enjoy it. To be fair the first 3 months were about 70% Flash, 30% XHTML. Out of the gate the projects were not what I anticipated, and involved very little creative contribution. I realize that many internship positions operate this way, and that I’m in no position to complain. What I’m getting at is that I have no one to blame but myself.

If I have learned anything from this internship, it is that I should stand up for what I believe in during interviews. Since taking this internship in August, I have interviewed at two other places around Minneapolis. The first was a total train wreck, but the second went exceedingly well. Instead of swallowing my pride and saying I was “alright” with working in Flash, I stood my ground.

“No thanks” I said, “I’d prefer to stick to web development.”

Blue Bear Photography Just finished up a new identity for...

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:33:04 -0600

Blue Bear Photography

Just finished up a new identity for someone at work’s childrens photography studio.

Big ol’ sketchbook Finally getting around to taking...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:16:29 -0600

Big ol’ sketchbook

Finally getting around to taking pictures of some of these.

Nap Time Challenge This is a poster that I made for an event at...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0600

Nap Time Challenge

This is a poster that I made for an event at the WBSC that was all about the appreciation of napping. Activities were to include public nap mapping, and a sleepy art slideshow.

Shackleton's Fifty Below

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:23:00 -0600

This six-pack of beer was just put together as an assignment for Graphic Design 3. It involved compiling, printing and putting together 7 bottles and the 6-pack they’re sitting in.

The entire idea behind this fictional beer was to take the “this beer is cold” schtick and run with it. I always thought it was hilarious that beer companies advertise how cold their beers are while in reality, that part is up to you. On the back of the bottles the copy goes on about how the beer was brewed in Antarctica, which is completely impossible.

STUBLOG After sitting on my old blog template for far too long,...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:26:43 -0600

STUBLOG

After sitting on my old blog template for far too long, I finally got around to putting together an all new theme. This process took way longer than anticipated because I mocked up and (nearly) put together something like 7 different templates over the last year.

Indecision is brutal.

Audio

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:11:19 -0600

@zombiehat Just drew a new icon for Kaitlin’s twitter...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0600

@zombiehat

Just drew a new icon for Kaitlin’s twitter account.

Happy Fall, Internet. Leaf macro from the walk to...

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:51:00 -0500

Happy Fall, Internet.

Leaf macro from the walk to Kaitlin’s.

Its probably time for a new rear tire. But even so, those...

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:06:00 -0500

Its probably time for a new rear tire.

But even so, those Bontrager tires were really nice.