This Belt Buckle for Type Addicts makes me wish I wore belts.

Make The Logo bigger! - a rocking MP3 anthem suitable for every designer’s ipod.

Kick. Ass. :tup:

I know change is hard. I know many readers liked, and miss, the old look. A few have even whined at me. But let me explain… As I said in a earlier post, I wasn’t planning on changing systems as fast as I did but after deleting the 600th spam comment of the night (which was happening more and more often) I was finally so pissed off over the issue I just went and DID it to make it finally stop. Call it a “rage induced moment of clarity”. It worked for me.

The hardest part of being a web designer is trying to sell the client on drastic changes to what they might have grown comfortable with. In a blogs case you have two clients. The blogger and the reader. The readers associate the blog with the look, they get comfortable with the decor. I’ll admit I did makeover for me.

The classic VBB design integrated it into my new professional site over five years ago. In the terms of design and the net, that’s damn near geriatric. Everytime I entertained a change more people would arrive to rave over it (Seems I’m ahead of my time for being retro). So I would say “six more months”. Well that turned into a few more years. For someone in my profession it’s downright unforgivable.

I’ve always said ART is permanent, design is not. That’s why I hate the term “graphic artist”. Art is expression and emotion, it’s only purpose it to be looked at. Pondered. Examined and extrapolated. Art is timeless. Design’s purpose is to sell. To whore an idea, a look, a product. Design is fleeting and mercenary. Evolutionary and extraneous. Design has a shelf life. Both art and design are powerful things, they can even cross pollinate, just don’t confuse them. They are what they are. Design that doesn’t change doesn’t make it art, it just makes it stale.

VBB/VBD was stale.

I got sick of looking at such an old design, and got tired of MT. I had a domain that I wasn’t “using” other than in redirect. Verybigdesign.com’s redesign is on the list for “Things wot need doin’ this year” since BADLY NEEDS updating and a major makover. So, the look of the blog would be changing regardless. And if it’s going to change and move out on it’s own it seemed stupid to update to MT 3.3 on a domain I didn’t want to keep the blog on requiring it to be installed somewhere else as well later. VBB’s install I had was so olde skool it was never converted it to mysql, so it was all cgi-bin run so that’s another huge PITA and slooooow since there was over 3100 entries. It took an hour to rebuild! It was a mess.

Will this look “retro super highway” look stay? Dunno. But I felt it at least needed “Jenifying” until I know what it is I want to do with it for sure. I’m still poking at WP so if you visit and it’s gone all wonky, you know I’m playing right that instant. I hope you like it in the mean time (bonus points if you get the right image…

Also, I have to admit I just wanted to try wordpress. Everyone keeps raving about it, and I like to learn new apps liek that. I have to say I like how easy it is to add things and it’s simliar enough to other apps I’ve customized that I’m not feeling terribly lost.

Anyway, thems the reasons. I hope you stay, I hope you get used to the look if I don’t change it right away, but I promise to not let it get stale again.

Menu and Icons

Awesomeeeee!

And speaking of… you know those guys you read about as a kid who would write the new testment on a grain of rice? Litterally small time. This guy carves ships on crystals of sugar.

Be sure to scroll down to see them all, I like the Henry and his six wives in the eye of the needle myself…

(hat tip to Gamera Spinning for the link above!)

Sketch Furniture. Motion captured, laser rendered… Be sure to watch the whole film. Woah.

In iTunes, the title graphic for Battlestar Galactica has TWO Baltars. I know they were making a composite and they probably just did a arrow move probably with the option key down by accident and cloned his layer, but come on, that’s PS Amateur 101.

Thought I’m sure some will read into it as a secret clue Baltar IS a cylon… I’m still undecided…

Caligraft - pick a tool, when it starts just type and hit return.

How cool is that?

Photoshop Seminars | Photoshop CS2 Creativity Tour : Columbus, OH

$99 for an entire day of classes on very indepth photoshop stuff. WøOt! Mr Man was in a good mood and he gave me the A-Okay to register!

If anyone reading wants to go with (or meet up at) let me know.

Stumbled on this Luke and Leia fanfic site - my god the pain. And not just from the webpage “design”.

The last couple days I have been in FONT HELL.

Every once in a while, usually when I need it most, my font app (Suitcase) goes tits up. Usually this requires me to pitch all my application prefs for it, start from scratch, and make my sets and stuff ALL over again. It can take a day or two to get back in the swing.

Now being I am a font organization whore (folders by foundry, then by letter!) it takes me a long time to do 26 or so Adobe folders, and as many for a few other foundries I have. It’s a hassle I shouldn’t have to do becaue I don’t want all my good fonts mixing with those unsavory cyrillic and graffiti fonts from the other side of town.

So, anyway, tonight after another day of the fonts I needed mostly just plain not working (and pyschocotic bouts of me cursing like a sailor and then crying like wee girl) in Suitcase 10.1, because I hadn’t upgraded it since before Tiger (probably the reason for all this heartache) began trying other apps instead of trying their new version and paying through the nose to be an unhappy camper every six months. I wasn’t liking the new choices much.

Then Dave, my personal saviour many times over, pointed me to Linotype FontExplorer X.

OMFG. It’s iTunes for fonts! It’s wonderful! It’s FREE! FREE! You heard me gawdamnit. EF AR EE fraking EE - FREE! It’s every bit the app Apple should have made instead of that suck ass limited Font Book program they stuck in a couple years back that chokes like a 5 cent hooker if you have over 200 fonts. (Which means of course that Apple will steal the whole everything and release their own version next release. It’s that good.)

Breakdown: You can make sets of fonts (think playlists) have “smart sets”, make folders of sets (I have a retro folder with my various retro collection each in a set) - and did I mention it’s itunes like? Dear god it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a font app and more. Oh, and like iTunes, if you decide you need more fonts, you can buy and download them directly from the app. I want to french kiss my monitor right now.

The best part, I don’t have to make folders! When I hit apple+O to import more fonts I can tell it that I want ot make a new set of the folders I select and EACH folder gets it’s OWN FOLDER already named and everything! If I select multiple folders, it makes multiple folders! Sweet Jesus that saved me, and I’m not kidding, eight hours!

And when I activated fonts? They worked! And get this the program can activate fonts as needed on it’s own as you open apps from before. No more warning screens saying that font you used last time is not active… it’ll go do it for you.

The app is still beta, and I will note it DID crash me hard a few times (once it killed every running app but itself, and once requiring a restart because NOTHING was accessible) but I think it was due to trying to add too many folders or fonts at once, but IT” BETA. I can’t imagine how much better this can be once it’s gold.

I faithfully reported the bugs I found to linotype and I will make a animal sacrifice to my new God later. This is worth a couple goats easy. (A windows version is coming out soon, quit yer bitchin!)

Oh, and more more thing - when you go to install it it will ask to navigate and import your fonts - don’t do it there if you are a font organizer like me. Tell it NO, continue setup and do it by hand That way you can import in your folders as sets (as you need and like them organized) so they aren’t all in one big pile.

This guy is a master of The Art of Retouching. You’ll never look at a magazine cover the same way again. Roll over each pic to see the original shot. I found myself rolling back and forth dozen of times to spot all the changes. You will too.

A photoshop master indeed - I bow in his general direction.

This Glenn Feron, a white dude btw, seems to have the market cornered on black women. It’s interesting to see the boobs and butts get bigger but the thighs and waists get smaller. I wonder if the white models get smaller butts or what?

I did find it extremely comforting to see Halle Berry has bags under her eyes too.

This guy is younger than me and nearly from my home town, still living in my state - and is a member of the “midcentury juniies” club like me.

WONDERFUL vintage pinup girls with a modern twist. And the t-shirts are HOT. I can see so Shannon in a couple of them.

He makes me want a new Pixeldecor logo sooo bad. Been toying with it a while, want a pinup pose of a busty red head in a Donna Reed dress and lots of cleavage with a naughty naughty paint roller.

Go check out his stuff, buy some shirts, especially if you are a buckeye.

Speaking of cooking, I met Alton Brown today. Details and pics later!

This just made it into my Handy Junk section of my links, and my Firefox bookmarks bar - Typetester.

OMFG so handy.

The Sun UK on Worst album covers…ever - and man what is it with christian music and bad cover art anyway? Does being pious make you give up good taste?

Anyhow - I think they missed one! This one is a personal favorite. It even says it’s rated XXXX! 4 X’s! Woah! It must really be dirty, or talk about taxes or something.

Some Pixeldecor fans might recognize the fabric on the left puppet. Yup, that’s where I got the pattern from. Inspiration comes from the oddest places.

Yo Cincinnatians… But depending how much you need a fix it might work when a five hour trip to Ikea is out of the question. LOTS more expensive though.

Maybe Ikea will take notice if the store does well?

CHeck out these blenders the design is so sweet.

Photolabs refusing to print pictures that look “too good” for fear they are professional and therefore copyrighted.

Konakai.com makes me want to put on a grass skirt - which would be BAD.

PHALLIC LOGO AWARDS the winner is one I showed here a few weeks back.