Design for Good: Everyone Deserves A Roof

I'm starting off 2009 with a story from the folks over at Mental Floss on someone who's designed a product for the greater good.

Here's someone who's designing a practical way to help the homeless: EDAR (Everyone Deserves A Roof) it's a military-grade one-person shelter for homeless people who don't want to stay at a shelter. It's portable, fireproof, and water resistant. What a great way to help those who are less fortunate, kudos to Peter Samuelson!

And if you'd like to start off 2009 doing something good for someone, consider donating to your favorite charity. If you don't have one, I suggest one my personal favorites, Manchester Bidwell corporation: "Bill Strickland established Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild in 1968 to help combat the effects of economic and social devastation experienced by the youth of his inner-city Pittsburgh neighborhood."

Happy 2009!

I hope that all your dreams and wishes come true in 2009! May peace and happiness be your guides throughout the new year.

Strange Singles Ad

I've been on Facebook for several months now. Generally I ignore any ads on it. However, it finally started to dawn on me that all the ads were singles ads. I assumed this was because my status of "single" in my profile. So I turned off my relationship status and looking for, yet I continue to get the singles ads on the right-hand column. Most are "Over 30 & Looking?" and feature a photo of an attractive woman who is nowhere near 30. This is the strangest one I've seen, and I'm still scratching my head over it:

What the?! I don't even know what to say about this, other than how the heck did a photo of a dog replace a human in a singles ad? What are they really advertising here? Needless to say, I'm never going to use this dating service, as you might get a real dog for a date. 

Merry Christmas!

I hope that you have a Merry Christmas! 

Here's a cool link from the folks over at Mental Floss on about the first Christmas Card.

Want to give a meaningful gift this Christmas Day? You could always donate to one of my favorite causes and donate to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. (I don't work for 'em, but I believe in what they're doing.)

Cool Design Links

Here are a few great design inspiration links:

Archive of Postage Stamps by Type Designers

Great Book Covers from 2008

Smithsonian's Flickr Page

Lee Sutton's Flickr Page

Time Life Photo Archive (hosted by Google)

Enjoy!

My Holiday Card - O Christmas Tree

So I've been planning this year's holiday card since last year. I had a few too many sketches from last year that I felt were cool enough, so I made life easy for myself this year and started from these sketches from last year:

I decided to "zoom in" on the what I call the "swirly" Christmas tree and use that as my base. At first, I envisioned my standard workflow of digitally inking my sketch and laying out flat color in Illustrator then taking that into Photoshop where I add lighting and texture. I reached my usual point of having all the flat colors laid out and I even made a Photoshop version of the file:

But something just didn't feel right (yes, the blue and purple, but I typically change my mind on colors in Photoshop, so that wasn't a big concern for me at this point). I set it aside and let the idea marinate a bit. I came back to it and added some more elements and details in Illustrator. And then more. And then I played with some of the filters to create a parchment-ish texture for the background.

Inspired by my success with the background texture, I attempted several versions of texture for the tree. However, after much experimentation, I couldn't develop a texture that worked for the tree (nor that matched my vision in my head). So I decided to continue the swirls inside the tree as its texture which unified the design better.

My previous 2 cards featured a dove and I decided to add it in to this card to keep with my tradition and to reinforce my wish for peace for the new year.

While I was skeptical of just leaving everything in Illustrator at first, especially since my work usually includes many different textures, I think the illustration is much better for it, and I might experiment more with creating those textures in Illustrator for future work.

Agile Design Tips

Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB has an interesting essay on his ideas on ideas blog about how to streamline your creative process to be less rigid and more agile while keeping it efficient and productive. While the changes he suggests are small, I believe they make sense for the most part and I'm willing to give some of his ideas a go-round. What do you think? 

Just what they didn't want for Christmas!

I was out shopping the other day with a friend and we were looking at the Christmas stuff. Along with the typical Christmas lights, candy, and displays there was this:

I call him "Gansta Rappa Spuds Mackenzie", and he sings and lights up. He has either a gold or silver plated "grill" in addition to his way cool pimp-dog metal. Woo. Just want I didn't want for Christmas. I wonder how this one got past the suits and onto shelves.

Cool Last Minute Christmas Gift Idears for the Designer in Your Life

Are you a procrastinator? Me too, that's why Santa Nick's got ya covered on some cool gift idears:

For those last minute shoppers with some dough, here are some way cool gifts:

Vertical Blinds Lamp (very clever design and technology)

Gesture-Based Interface (Ok, this one's not out yet, but this is too cool, it could be the future of how we interact with electronics)

Flying Car! (Ah, my dream is nearly a reality! Too bad it's not a Delorean... :)

Oh, and if you do have money to spend, consider building a secret room in your house! I've got a buddy who has the skill. He did one for a friend's parents and it rocks! If you're interested, lemme know and I'll connect ya (serious inquiries only please).

And some more practical ideas:

Goldberg Change Sorter/Counter

HOW Design's Gifts for Designers

And if none of those strike your fancy, you could always try something from Core 77's Ultimate Gift Guide. 

Good luck! This is the last weekend to shop before Christmas, so if you celebrate, this is your last shot to get that perfect give for the ones you love. Or you could hand make them something special, or fake it with a gift from an Etsy shop.