February 6, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Bananas, evil, & more

11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

February 5, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Fake UIs in movies, solid caricatures, and more

11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

January 22, 2010

(rt) Illustration: "Crayola's Law," Photoshop, & the Beatles

[Update: Speaking of Atari, welcome the newborn & excellently named Leo Atari Pitaru, son of the very talented Amit Pitaru.]
9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

January 16, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Best & Worst Logos of '09, more

12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 14, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Classic letterheads, the retro future, & more

9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

January 9, 2010

(rt) Illustration: Killer posters, plus Nic Cage everywhere

8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 7, 2010

"Gee, I wish I were a man...": Vintage ads & posters

7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

December 27, 2009

(rt) Infographics: Cereal selection, nukes, & killer jellyfish

8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

December 26, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Negative space, minimalism, & more

7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

December 16, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Top 10 Book Covers, Man-hunger, & more

10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

December 13, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Accidental geography, Expressionist video games, & more

9:57 PM | Permalink | No Comments

December 7, 2009

(rt) Infographics: Megafonzies, mind mapping, & more

9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

December 5, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Great business card designs, laser-etched Macs, & more

8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

November 29, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Edgy ads, clean vectors, and more

10:02 AM | Permalink | No Comments

November 25, 2009

Animation: Visualizing the fall of empires

Here's a rather fascinating animated infographic from Pedro M. Cruz. Stick around for those late-20th-century fireworks:

Here's some behind-the-scenes info on the project. [Via]

11:45 AM | Permalink | No Comments

November 18, 2009

Fascinating slow motion water drops

Trippy!

[Via]

Coincidentally, here's a cool tutorial on milk-drop typography using Photoshop.

1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

November 16, 2009

(rt) Infographics: Violent death, Hey Jude, & more

11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

November 9, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Amazing concept art, Vintage VDubs, & more

7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

November 1, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Japanese monsters, skulls, beer, and more

12:51 PM | Permalink | No Comments

October 30, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Friday Infographics

3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

October 27, 2009

How goes the war?

9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

October 23, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Martians, killers, and more

1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

October 18, 2009

Video: The creation of the CBS Eye logo

Being ever curious about logo design, I found this brief history of the creation of the CBS Eye logo interesting:



Funny to think that the work was expected to be just a one-season item. [Via]
12:29 PM | Permalink | No Comments

October 15, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Mickey D's to Decapitated KFC's

6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

October 10, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Bold type, controversial covers, & more

7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

October 9, 2009

Sneak peek: Illustrator + Flash + Dreamweaver -> CANVAS

Check out this demo of Illustrator handing vector art to Dreamweaver, and DW binding the artwork to data so that it can be displayed via the HTML5 CANVAS tag:



Mordy Golding summarizes the demo as follows:

[The engineer] starts by taking art drawn in Illustrator and copies it to the clipboard. Then he goes into Dreamweaver, selects a DIV and chooses a function called Smart Paste. Dreamweaver then pastes an FXG conversion of the Illustrator art directly into the page. If you aren't familiar with FXG, it's basically a better SVG* (you can get more information on the open source FXG spec here). In other words, you draw in Illustrator, copy and paste into Dreamweaver (which converts it to code), and the art displays as vector art in a web browser. What's more, the engineer proceeded to actually bind XML data to the chart.

After that, the presenter copies an animation in Flash Professional as XML, then pastes it in DW as a CANVAS animation.

It's kind of funny to see this demo now, as Illustrator could export XML vector graphics (SVG) to the Web some 10 years ago. Later people made various efforts to display & manipulate SVG using Flash. This new demo uses different tools & a different display engine to do similar things.

I think this is a key point: Adobe makes money selling tools, not distributing viewing software. Those tools must address customer needs. If Flash Player is the right choice for some projects & HTML/CANVAS for others, no problem: we get paid to help you solve problems, not to force one implementation vs. another.

* I have no idea whether FXG is "better" than SVG overall & don't want to get into a debate on that subject. FXG is based on SVG but maps more closely to the Flash drawing model.

12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments [8]

October 4, 2009

A little Adobe-flavored bloodletting

Longtime InDesign PM Will Eisley has decorated his inner forearms with some bold type (larger image). Replying to my sharp-eyed wife, he says, "Yes, the marks are color and grayscale bars which are part of InDesign's printing marks." Hard core.

Next up, he says is "a series of 3's in ITC Franklin Gothic Heavy. One of the best 3's in all of typography, IMO." Will also recommends checking out Body Type, dedicated to tattoo typography.

Previously:

[Photo courtesy of John Cornicello]

1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments [8]

September 28, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Charlie Parker, Busted coffee, & more

7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

September 22, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Escher, Che-on-Che, & more

1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

September 21, 2009

Monday Illustrations: Retro-modern Coke heads

6:34 AM | Permalink | No Comments

September 7, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Filter Heroes, puke-inducing logos, & more

[Quick reminder: The "(rt)" in the post headline signifies that I've previously posted these links on my Twitter account.]

12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

September 2, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Mosaics of waste, Pantone rainbows, & more

9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

August 29, 2009

Saturday Infographics: Delicious-nasty coffee & more

12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

August 22, 2009

(rt) Illustration: CS4 cupcakes, Orc pee, & more

11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

August 18, 2009

Vector graphics software... from 1963

JFK was in office, and yet the app Sketchpad (from then-25-year-old Ivan Sutherland) offered multitouch input, auto-correction of vector strokes, and even reusable symbols (a la Flash, Illustrator, etc.). Very cool:

Apparently Dr. Sutherland once employed--you guessed it--John Warnock, seen here introducing Adobe Illustrator in 1987. [Via]

7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments [8]

August 16, 2009

Sunday Illustrations: Creepy ads, Fruit cannibalism, & more

10:59 AM | Permalink | No Comments

August 10, 2009

Neat 3D sketching tools

  • According to Gizmodo, "By using a ubiquitous interface metaphor (the Etch-A-Sketch), Sketch-3D allows anyone to participate in generating stereoscopic imagery in a way that is simple and engaging." Very cool, though what's nerdier than an adult playing with an Etch-a-Sketch? An adult playing with an Etch-a-Sketch while wearing those glasses. [Via]
  • The always intriguing Amit Pitaru created Rhonda, a 3D sketching tool that's best understood through the short video on the site. Apparently they're looking for beta testers as they move forward.
  • I could swear I've blogged previously about the even more ambitious ILoveSketch, but I guess not. Developer Seok-Hyung Bae has visited Adobe to demo the app & discuss ideas for the future.
3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

August 6, 2009

Thursday Infographics: Maps as fashion & more

1:49 PM | Permalink | No Comments

August 4, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Pimp my warp drive & more

7:12 AM | Permalink | No Comments

July 29, 2009

(rt) Illustration: AT-ATs, optical illusions, & more

6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments [5]

July 23, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Amazing light paintings & more

7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

July 19, 2009

Quick Illustrator tips: Create a ribbon; batch convert

A few Adobe technical folks bounced around some ideas last week, responding to a question about how one would create a pink ribbon-style illustration. Stéphane Baril made some great suggestions in this very brief, five-step tutorial (PDF). (Live Paint is your friend!)

Elsewhere, developer Richard Bates has created a free utility & notes on Batch SWF Conversion with AIR and Illustrator CS4. [Via David Macy]

7:26 AM | Permalink | No Comments

July 18, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Paper madness, Grassfitti, & more

7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 14, 2009

(rt) Illustration: Man vs. tank, Pixar vs. Dreamworks, & more

7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 13, 2009

Illustrations: Creepshows

10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

July 12, 2009

(rt) Illustration: PS Playboy, World War III, and more

7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 8, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Geekery, skating, & more

7:33 AM | Permalink | No Comments

July 7, 2009

Tuesday Infographics

7:52 AM | Permalink | No Comments

July 6, 2009

Monday Illustrations: Snacks + Chroma

9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 4, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: From subways to space

6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

June 25, 2009

Infographics in motion

  • Hot Rocks: The NYT presents an interesting 2:30 overview on the dangers of drilling deep to tap geothermal power.
  • Realtime 3D Airtraffic Network Simulation: Lufthansa's Brand Academy features "a 14-meter-wide, 180-degree projection [that] lets the visitors dive into the fully navigable, realtime 3D visualization of 16,000 daily Lufthansa and Star Alliance flights." Check out the video. [Via] Update: Looks like the links have been pulled, at least for the moment. Check out alternate links (courtesy of Ken Beegle) in comments.
7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

June 24, 2009

Assorted Pixar Awesomeness

8:44 AM | Permalink | No Comments

June 22, 2009

Monday Illustrations: All tutes, all the time

9:59 AM | Permalink | No Comments

June 18, 2009

Thursday Infographics: From Rambo to D&D

10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

June 11, 2009

Cool recent infographics

10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

June 8, 2009

Monday Illustrations: Monsters, luchadores, and more

June 4, 2009

Logos a-Go-Go

12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

June 3, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Lines, holes, & more

  • Line Art:
    • Air Lines is "an art project showing worldwide airliner routes. Every single scheduled flight on any given day is reresented by a fine line from its point of origin to its port of destination, thereby forming a net of thousands of lines." [Via]
    • Simplicity rules these ads for the Ikea Assembly Service. (I wonder if they have a service for gluing all that shattered MDF back together again.)
  • On the street
7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

May 30, 2009

Illusions & explorations

  • Richard Russell created "The Illusion of Sex" by using only image contrast to affect our perceptions of masculinity & femininity in a face. [Via Nicolas Chaunu]
  • WebExhibits uses a simple Flash viewer to demonstrate some of the magic behind Monet's Impression: Sunrise. [Via Todor Georgiev]
  • Mark Frauenfelder points out some optical illusions you can explore using by Photoshop to check real color values.
7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

May 29, 2009

Friday Illustrations: iPhone art, Mao, & mo'

12:42 AM | Permalink | No Comments

May 28, 2009

Keepin' it real... hostile

6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments [12]

May 25, 2009

Video game art, 8 bits at a time

7:09 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

May 23, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: DIY Terminator, useful AI scripts, and more

10:45 AM | Permalink | No Comments

May 20, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Swine flu, Gang bangers, & more

2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

May 18, 2009

Monday motion goodness: Waves in HD, bearded hippies, and more

  • Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg used chalkboard drawings to produce the Autumn Story music video for Firekites. [Via]
  • Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational early-70's Scanimate demo. Some part of me kind of wishes that Adobe tools involved more retro levers, switches, cable splicing, etc.--and of course that their use was accompanied by funky 70's horn sections.
  • Infographics:
    • Melih Bilgil's The History of the Internet tells, well, you know, using minimal lines but loads of attention to detail. (The fly-over of Cuba is terrific.) Adobe designer Ethan Eismann writes, "My new personal mission in life is to bring this level or higher of engaging instruction to an Adobe welcome screen near you."
    • Slagsmålsklubben would be cool just for its name.
7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

May 13, 2009

Infographic comedy jams

7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

May 12, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Terminators, Punx, & more

11:11 AM | Permalink | No Comments

May 5, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Paper, pantslessness, & more

7:06 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

May 1, 2009

Illustrator 1.0 - The complete video

Last year I uploaded the first ten or so minutes of the instructional video that accompanied Illustrator 1.0, hosted by Adobe co-founder/Illustrator developer John Warnock. I received some requests for the full recording, and now Adobe evangelist Rufus Deuchler has tuned up the audio & posted the entire video, split into five segments.

Seeing the video, and remembering that Dr. Warnock was (as I recall) one of just four names on the Illustrator splash screen, I can't help but think of videos posted now by the developers/founders/executives/chief bottle-washers of various Twitter-related startups. (Here's a good one for Birdhouse.) 20 years from now, will we be passing around one of these links, remembering when so-and-so got her start?

1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

April 29, 2009

Wednesday Logos

10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

April 27, 2009

Monday illustration tips, tutorials

  • Scott Hansen has created a tutorial (with source files) demoing the techniques used to create a Dylan poster homage.
  • Heh--I had no idea that it's possible to designate a "key object" in Illustrator & align objects to it. Check out Terry Hemphill's quick tip to learn more.
  • The Chopping Block does symmetry with these Illustrator reflection templates. (Illustrator's combo of live effects + the ability to target anything from individual paths to groups to layers is enormously powerful--and woefully underused. The Appearance panel in CS4 makes things much easier, but I find that many artists just won't make the cognitive leaps necessary to harness this power.)
  • PSDTUTS shows how to create insectoid 3D text using Photoshop + Cinema 4D.
7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

April 26, 2009

Business card excellence (and horror)

9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

April 25, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Lucky teens, giant walkers, & more

10:21 AM | Permalink | No Comments

April 17, 2009

Friday Science: All space, all the time

9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

March 31, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Creeps, guns, & more

11:46 AM | Permalink | No Comments

March 28, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: All autos, all the time

Cue the Gary Newman...

3:28 PM | Permalink | No Comments

March 27, 2009

Friday Illustrations

11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

March 22, 2009

Sunday Logos

10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

March 21, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Fast cars, skiing toilets, & more

10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

March 11, 2009

New Illustrator team blog launches

I'm happy to see that the Illustrator team has launched Infinite Resolution, their new blog. On it they're looking forward to "sharing knowledge about Illustrator and vector graphics in general as well as linking to and discussing some of the things we see going on in the world of vectors." I'm expecting some good give-and-take between passionate customers & app-builders.

2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

Wednesday Illustrations: Super Mario, free textures, & more

  • I love this crafty little Super Mario riff from NYC.
  • Omid Sadri made himself some awesome multi-functional businesscards: "There are three different cards within the set. One which suggests to use portion a of the card as a dental floss, one for cleaning under nails, and one for chewing gum."
  • I'm digging Paul Lee's crazy characters & punchy palettes.
  • Speaking of punchy, check out the colors & images in Jimmy Roberts and Brian Christopher's collaborative project Exquisite Corpse. [Via]
  • Free resources:
    • There's a big free texture archive on Flickr. [Via]
    • Sketchory hosts more than a quarter million Creative Commons-licensed sketches. (You largely get what you pay for, of course.) [Via]
12:05 AM | Permalink | No Comments

March 3, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Crayons as pixels, tutorials, & more

10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

February 28, 2009

Covers, best & worst

The CD Cover Meme is pretty terrific, challenging you to combine randomly selected Wikipedia topics, quotations, and images from Flickr into album covers. Check out some of the results. (Here's my personal fave of the moment.) [Via Kent Christiansen]

Elsewhere in cover-land:
10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments [6]

February 27, 2009

Friday Illin': Edgiest quilts ever & more

  • Quiltsrÿche promises to let you "bark at the moon in the coziness of a hard-rocking, handcrafted heirloom."
  • MoMA's The Printed Picture is "an exhibition of physical specimens made using all the different ways that type and image can be printed on paper, metal, glass, etc, with a special emphasis on dozens of photography techniques, from albumen prints to dagguereotypes to color photography." [Via]
  • I like the ghostly simplicity of Levi van Veluw’s ‘Light’ Portraits. (To spare you any suspense, nothing really happens in the videos.)
  • You can view now extremely high-res presentations of famous artwork, courtesy of Google Earth.
  • These brand-name ripoffs seem like dyslexic Photoshop jobs, but they’re apparently real. [Via]
8:30 AM | Permalink | No Comments

February 18, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Excellent Photoshoppery, scary logos, & more

8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

February 13, 2009

Friday Illin'

10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

February 6, 2009

Friday Illustrations: Painting as a game & more

1:23 PM | Permalink | No Comments

February 5, 2009

Recent infographics

12:02 AM | Permalink | No Comments

February 3, 2009

Lego NYC

Christoph Niemann's Lego renderings of NYC ephemera are so totally great that they deserve a post all of their own.  (The rest of his portfolio is well worth a look, too.)
7:42 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

Drawing from sound

  • "Want to try something hard?" asks Ze Frank.  His sound-powered drawing toy produces some wacky results.  Low volume produces counterclockwise curves, medium volume goes straight, and high volume curves clockwise.  I'd love to see videos of people trying to use this thing.  (I'm letting it run in a team meeting, but voices are too faint to do much interesting.) [Via]
  • Johannes Kreidler fed Microsoft Songsmith with charts based on plunging stocks, deaths in Iraq, and other dismaying stats.  The results are kind of depressingly awesome. [Via]
4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

January 31, 2009

Logos n' details

10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments [5]

January 27, 2009

Tuesday Illustrations: Killer movie posters, RUN-DC, & more

6:03 AM | Permalink | Comments [6]

January 18, 2009

Interesting Inaugural bits from the NYT

  • The New York Times features an interactive photography portfolio called Obama's People, offering portraits of key staffers. The audio commentary (via the link below the photos) is worth a listen, describing the subjects' choices in what to bring to the shoot (e.g. a chocolate chip cookie for David Axelrod).  The separate making-of piece features Kathy Ryan talking about how shooting digitally has enhanced the collaborative aspects--and maybe the time pressures--of portraiture.  [Update: Ellis Vener points out a hilarious "Real Behind-the-Scenes" take on the shoot, followed by some good discussion in the comments.  "Blue Steel..."]

 

  • The paper (that term seems more than a little outmoded, doesn't it?) also features an excellent overview of the Inauguration Day goings-on via a 3D-rendered map and timeline.

 

 

I'd love to be in DC in person, but that map triggers a memory of having gotten stuck on the Metro under the Potomac on a sweltering July 4 years ago.  With Tuesday temperatures due to hover around freezing, maybe I'm okay with TV after all.

9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 17, 2009

Saturday Illustrations: Stalactites, stained glass, & more

10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

January 14, 2009

Wednesday Illustrations: Presidencies to video games

11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 13, 2009

Photoshop Subvertising

Artist-vandals in Berlin have rather brilliantly hacked a set of subway posters, overlaying them with stickers showing the Photoshop UI. [Via Mark Stern, Serge Jespers, Jeff Lietz, and others]

 

I have a soft spot for the trippy impromptu public art projects that subway posters often become--everything from Van Dycks & puke lines to political commentary.  I got an unreasonably big kick out of a Bourne Identity poster in the NY subway that featured three images of Matt Damon on which someone had scrawled, respectively, "Loner... gun owner... stern taskmaster." (Told you it was unreasonable.)

 

[Update: Kottke links to more photos on Flickr.  Apparently the project is called "Don't Forget..." [Via]]

 

[Previously: Real-world Photoshop.]

9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments [6]

January 9, 2009

Kuler adds Community Pulse

The team behind Kuler, Adobe's color harmony creation & sharing site, has introduced a neat new feature:

 

Explore the Kuler global community with Community Pulse, a big picture view of color usage. This is a beta feature, using data visualization (screenshot) to show the relative popularity of colors across a sampling of countries, time periods, and tags.

 

To check it out,

 

  • Sign in with your Adobe ID to play around with it
  • Mouse over the histogram to see the hues on the color wheel
  • Try the granularity slider to see more/less color detail
  • Use the comparison icon (two circles) to compare/contrast

 

If you have questions, check out Kuler Help.  And don't forget to check out the Kuler panel in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and InDesign CS4 (see Window->Extensions->Kuler).  Here's a couple of screenshots, plus a video demo. [Via]


9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

January 1, 2009

Pen Zen for 2009

Mordy Golding offers 10 Illustrator Resolutions for 2009--ten great suggestions for getting more out of this amazingly powerful app.  My notes:

 

  • If you do nothing else, try double clicking your artwork to enter "isolation mode."  It's just like editing a symbol in place in FlashStop doing the whole lock/unlock, group/ungroup dance.  Isolation mode is your friend, particularly in CS4.

 

  • Mordy is right on about the power of the Appearance panel.  In CS4 the panel is at last just what I'd hoped it could be--namely, a killer one-stop shop for adding and editing object effects and parameters.

 

  • My personal addition to the list?  Envelope distortions.  Create some artwork, then choose Object->Envelope Distort, then either Make With Warp or Make With Mesh.  I like choosing the latter, then selecting the Free Transform Tool (E), clicking and dragging on one corner, and then while still moused down holding Cmd/Ctrl to do a perspective transform.  Bam, instant re-editable Star Wars text.

 

 

If you really want to brush up on your fundamentals & really wrap your head around the Pen tool, I recommend a couple of great resources:

 

 

 

And oh yeah, Happy New Year!  We'll see whether my blogging can hold up under not one but two bambinos.  Bring him/her on! ;-)

2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

December 19, 2008

Friday Illustrations: Vader, fractals, & more

7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

December 8, 2008

Monday Illustrations: Fast cars & dirty fingers

4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

December 1, 2008

Illustrator CS4: Faster launches, new scripts, & more

As I've noted a few times, I really like the way the Illustrator team focused on the fundamentals in CS4. Among these, they've made some great headway in bringing down the application's launch time. Brenda Sutherland from Illustrator QE passed along a few benchmarks:

 

Win XP CS3 CS4
Cold Launch on Benchmark Machine* 21.7s 12.8s
Cold Launch on User Machine** 36.4s 19.5s
     
iMac (Leopard)    
Cold Launch 25.5s 16.4s

 

* Benchmark machine is the optimized setup machine for taking consistent launch performance numbers. It has no virus scanner and a totally defragmented hard disk.

** User machine is the one similar to user environment, having a virus scanner, fragmented hard disk with a few common applications installed.


My own unscientific tests (using Watch It on a 2.33GHz MacBook Pro) produce similar findings, knocking about 35% off the cold launch time & cutting the time for a warm launch roughly in half relative to CS3. Thanks, guys!

In other AI-related news:

8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments [9]

November 22, 2008

New Illustrations: Mad Men to Hot Rocks

Dept. of Mad Chops:


Illustrated misfortune:


Self-aggrandizement:

  • The pixel masters at eBoy featured yours truly among a field of 'Dobe peeps. Thanks, guys! (Incidentally, this illustration plays ridiculously well with content-aware scaling in PSCS4.)
  • At the recent party to celebrate shipping CS4, Photoshop engineer Geoff Scott took a cool shot of me that I turned into a quasi-Hot Rocks-style illustration via the new PS Pixel Bender plug-in. (I used subblue's Droste Effect filter kernel--a free download.)
6:42 AM | Permalink | No Comments

November 15, 2008

Illustrated Miscellany: Obama, the Joker, & molten wax

History & politics:

Packaging & Objects:

  • Veerle showcases some beautiful packaging.
  • Go Media sells PSD templates that can help you drop artwork onto various wrinkly shirts.
  • Virgil O. Stamps will print on just about any crazy material--duct tape, shredded targets, National Geographic pages, etc. [Via]

Cool Devices:

  • The notional Virtuo virtual palette "uses sensors and light to mix digital colour and apply it to a screen." [Via Jerry Harris]
  • Man, I can't wait for our son to get old enough to rock out with the Crayola Glow Station. (My mom used to let me paint with crayons using paper on a hot plate. Ah, the '70s: a simpler, less safety-conscious time. ;-))
9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

November 6, 2008

Real-world Photoshop

Straight-up awesome. :-) [Via Lori Grunin & Adam Jerugim]


Update: By popular demand, here's a higher-res version, plus the making-of photo set. [Via Rob Christensen]

Update 2: According to Laughing Squid, ad agency Bates 141 created the project for Software Asli. [Via Keith Johnson]

11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments [24]

November 5, 2008

Post-election bits

I'm finding it hard to get back into the blogging game after such a* historic election.  Doesn't blogging about megapixels and keyboard shortcuts just seem kind of... trite?

 

In an effort to spool back up, here are some interesting visual bits I've encountered:

 

  • Oh yeah!: "The Final Endgame Go Time Alpha Action Lift-off Decide-icidal Hungry Man's Extreme Raw Power Ultimate Voteslam Smackdown '08 No Mercy: Judgement Day '08.That's what I'm talkin' about.  Peep The Daily Show's ode to/mockery of over-the-top motion graphics.
  • Jason Kottke has aggregated a huge list of election maps from around the world, from whiteboards to the Onion.  I love the way various maps, including the one on the NY Times site, let you zoom into states to see a county-by-county patchwork of voting.  Also check out the way the NYT map features "county bubbles" and a voting trend comparison slider.
  • Mark Newman's maps offer insight into voting patterns by geography and population. [Via]
  • The Guardian features a gallery of newspaper front pages from around the world. [Via]
  • In The Living Room Candidate, the Museum of the Moving Image features TV ads from US presidential races, 1952-2008.
  • Typography:
    • Channeling campaign fatigue into type, This [Farging] Election aggregates many of the year's memorable phrases into a single column.
    • Obama + dingbats = ObamaBats, courtesy of Jeff Domke. [Via]

 

* Not "an".  Hah; I knew it.  We're not Cockney, for crying out loud.

11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments [6]

October 31, 2008

A handful of Halloween art

4:31 PM | Permalink | No Comments

October 24, 2008

Recent political illustrations, animations, & fruit

The US presidential election is motivating all kinds of creativity, from posters to pumpkins. (And before anyone flips out, let me say that A) I’m trying to be evenhanded in the distribution of links below, and B) I picked things to share based not on political affiliation, but based on creative/graphical interestingness.)

 

11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

October 20, 2008

Monday Illustrations

A slightly random sampling for a Monday morning:

 


8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

October 6, 2008

Monday Illustrations: Current events to optical illusions


11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments [13]

October 1, 2008

"Dear InDesign, Illustrator..."

Continuing a bit of a theme:

 

  • InDesign Sr. PM Michael Ninness has responded to nearly all the top 25 beefs reported on DearAdobe.com.  He's also provided another 15 responses to other gripes that they plan to address in a future blog entry.  (Regarding the gripe about the lack of a color picker, although it's not exactly what's being requested, I'd point out that InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, and Photoshop CS4 all feature the same Kuler panel (screenshot) for color selection.  We're sharing more code, but it's not an overnight thing.)
  • Meanwhile former Illustrator PM Mordy Golding has surveyed the remarks about Illustrator, and he's posted responses to the top 25 comments along with good points about what does--and doesn't--constitute useful, actionable feedback.
7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments [10]

September 25, 2008

Illustrator CS4 goodness

Among the comments on my list of details polished in Photoshop CS4, a number of people wished for a similar list for Illustrator & suggested that the Illustrator team start a blog.  As it happens, my friend & former Illustrator PM Mordy Golding runs the great Real World Illustrator blog, and he's posted some illuminating resources:

 

 

In the past I've said "I swear because I care," and caring a lot about Illustrator, I've directed some well-intentioned swearing in their direction over the years.  I distinctly remember sitting at my desk at Agency.com some nine years ago and hearing a (long since departed) Illustrator PM dismiss my request by saying, "Oh, customers don't want multiple pages."  (At that point I started wondering, "Now, is it still murder if it wasn't premeditated, and can I claim temporary insanity...?")  That's why I'm delighted that they've both addressed some eternal requests (yay, multiple pages--er, artboards!) and have polished lots of existing functionality.  As Mordy writes,

 

In the past, Illustrator had a reputation of adding new features, but never really going back to refine them in subsequent versions (i.e.,gradient mesh, 3D, brushes, graphs). With an improved Appearance panel, more capable graphic styles, a revamped gradient feature, better clipping mask behavior, isolation mode, and Smart Guides in CS4, it's refreshing to see the team adding much needed polish to some of these "older" features.

 

The more I've played with the new Illustrator, the more I've found the "little" changes to have a big impact.  I think you will, too.

12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments [9]

September 19, 2008

Friday P-shoppery

  • What would happen if you applied every single filter in Photoshop to an image?  Well, someone had to try. [Via]
  • If you ask people on forums to edit your images, you never know what you'll get (possibly NSFW). [Via Michael Ninness]
7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments [5]

September 17, 2008

Political illustrations

12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments [6]

September 14, 2008

Vintage Sunday

3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

September 6, 2008

New infographics: Hockey Moms to Wu-Tang Clan

7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

September 5, 2008

P-shopped Chrome

Heh--good for a Friday laugh: Google's Chrome browser comic gets mauled by a bunch of wiseasses.  (Mocking goateed hipsters will always, always sort me out.) [Via Fergus Hammond]

 

Other random graffiti-ish bits:

 


10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

September 2, 2008

Spraygun Mona Lisa, hipster anatomy, & more

Recent illustration finds:

 

 


9:21 PM | Permalink | No Comments

September 1, 2008

Chinese political illustration, then & now


2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

August 29, 2008

Friday Illustrations: Beer, bathrooms, & The Shining

  • Stay frosty:

    • For the Beck's Canvas project, "Four young artists will be selected by a panel of judges from the Royal College of Art to showcase their art on the labels of over 27 million bottles to be distributed nationwide from August 2008." [Via]
    • Bryan Hughes came across a great Photoshop beer-drawing tutorial from Eren Göksel.
  • How to draw anything in one step: Draw a dog covering the thing you can't draw.  (You may want to combine this with the drinking.) [Via]
  • It's the Waiting for Guffman of puzzle-making: Garson Hampfield, Crossword Inker is a subtle, insanely well observed parody of craftsmen who are just a tad too into their work.
  • Love this set of paintings of families from films (the Torrances from The Shining, the Griswolds from Vacation, and more).
  • Interesting bathroom decorating idea: pixels to tiles.

2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments [7]

August 28, 2008

On-demand skate decks & more

I'm always intrigued by technologies that enable on-the-fly creation of media (print, Web, video)--what Adobe dubbed "network publishing."  Recent examples I've found interesting:

 

  • "MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. All you have to do is upload a PDF and we'll take care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management, and more."  (Kind of a step up from my 8th-grade experiences publishing a skate 'zine with a friend's Mac & my dad's office Xerox.)
  • On another skating note, Zazzle now enables creation of customized skateboard decks. [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes]
  • Faber Finds publishes out-of-print titles, generating a unique cover for each on the fly. [Via]
4:57 PM | Permalink | No Comments

August 27, 2008

Recent infographic goodness

  • Stefanie Posavec creates beautiful, sometimes abstract images from data in her "On the Map" project.
  • The NYT renders Olympic medal counts by country, also enabling the user to navigate through time.  (Tossing it around too freely, I managed to blow up Safari.)
  • "UFO sighting convincibility" is on the rise, thanks to Photoshop. [Via Rob Corell]
  • xach.com offers a cool way to visualize 2008 box office results. [Via]
  • I think I should chart my mood on a line stretching from "Earnest" to "Scurrilous*," as Vanity Fair does with the content of their Blogopticon. [Via Tom Hogarty]  It's similar to New York Mag's Approval Matrix.

 

*Defined as "grossly or obscenely abusive... characterized by or using low buffoonery; coarsely jocular or derisive."  Hells yeah.

1:51 AM | Permalink | Comments [5]

August 25, 2008

iPhone GUI bits

  • The guys at teehan+lax have created a slick, well organized iPhone GUI PSD file.  Geoff Teehan writes, "We created our own Photoshop file that has a fairly comprehensive library of assets – all fully editable."  Nicely done! [Via Joel Eby]
  • Felix Sockwell offers a detailed walk-through of how he developed icons for the NY Times' iPhone app.
  • Vaunted info-design expert Edward Tufte critiques iPhone interfaces in terms of their info-to-overhead ratio. [Via]

 

Marginally related at best, but too good not to share: the highly unique unboxing video for the Samsung Omnia. [Via Russell Williams]

12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

August 23, 2008

Saturday drawerings, from Tron to rayguns


1:08 PM | Permalink | No Comments

August 12, 2008

Tuesday Illustration: Iron Man, lasers, and more

  • Semi-political strangeness:
    • Politicians often serve as pincushions, but it's rare that they're actually made of pins, as in this Thumbtack Obama. [Via]
    • Gene Tempest's long but interesting essay covers the Posters of Paris '68, talking (among other things) about how the French artists played on memories of Nazi collaboration.
    • "Did United Artists doctor a photo of anti-Hitler plotter Claus von Stauffenberg to make him look more like the Top Gun actor?" asks the Guardian. [Via]  (Even weirder: My wife just glanced at the image and said, "I thought that was you for a second.")
  • Designer Marian Bantjes has been producing great stuff lately:
    • Her Design Ignites Change is a limited-edition, laser-cut poster that dramatically changes appearance under different conditions.  Proceeds benefit kids orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Kenya. [Via]
    • In Love Stories she creates a riot of great type--some of it edible!

6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments [5]

July 27, 2008

Killer animations o' the day

  • Despite finding it some time ago, I've been avoiding blog The Art of the Title Sequence, knowing that it would likely take over my life.  Sure enough, it's loaded with good stuff.  Check out the beautiful titles for El Don, whipped up by Santiago artists Smog.  I saw motion graphics pioneer Kyle Cooper (SE7EN, etc.) speak years ago and remember him saying that every frame should hold up on its own as graphic design.  This piece aces that test.  (For unrelated goodness, see Smog's "monkey-headed dancing guy" (or whatever "un mono bailarín" is).)
  • Motion artist PES creates incredible stop-motion films using found objects.  KaBoom and Western Spaghetti are particularly great (c'mon, Candy Corn as flames?).  Check out his work before People for the Ethical Treatment of Upholstery shut him down. [Via John Peterson & Maria Brenny, "Because (re: KaBoom) I know what you do in the desert"]
  • My Drive Thru is a new stop-motion video for Converse, produced by the team at Psyop.  Behind the scenes, Pharrell Williams talks about rescuing Chuck Taylors from the taint of Punky Brewster, and Glossy interviews the Psyop crew while posting some high-res stills. [Via]
  • Superfad has kicked out a trio of stylish ads for Sprint.  The Hurricane Katrina spot is particularly worth a look.  
12:17 PM | Permalink | No Comments

July 22, 2008

*Real* Real-World Photoshop, Vitruvian Wookies, and more

  • In his Tell a Lie project, Henry Hadlow "uses a camera to mimic common Photoshop effects."  Killer! [Via Paul McJones]
  • Vader Crossing the Delaware: On Worth1000, P-shoppers mash up Star Wars with fine art.  Surveying a couple of the pieces, Bryan Hughes remarked, "Man, that is some seriously disturbing stuff. Sort of like Joe Satriani for the eyes ...which is to say that, yeah, I know there’s crazy talent there... but what a way to misuse it!" [Via Dave Dobish]
  • Green Patriot Posters bring kick-ass poster art to the fight against climate change.  Nick Snyder writes, "Contributions from other designers will be featured in the coming months. In September, Green Patriot Posters will launch an online competition where participants may submit Green Patriot Poster designs, view other posters and vote on designs."
8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

July 20, 2008

Walruses, Wolverine Monkeys, & mo'

  • Animation:
    • In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview.  38 years later, I Met The Walrus is the Oscar-nominated short film that resulted--5 minutes of fluid, often surreal images morphing into one another over the recording.  YouTube hosts the full piece in high quality.
    • I'm not sure what to say about the coffee-stirrer-based (?) Endless Not stick animation, but I can dig it. [Via]
  • I love the crazy little characters made by Matthew Porter.  (His Dr. Wagner portrait is staring down at me now.).  Next time you need to commission a Wolverine monkey, you'll know where to turn. [Via Margot]
  • Coca-Cola's very cool WE8 site brings together illustrators, musicians, and other artists from West & East in the spirt of friendship (well, that and of selling tasty sugar water).  The site features interactive 3D Flash versions of the packaging they've created, downloadable desktop images and more. [Via Terri Stone]
  • Peep the charming skulls of Kristina Collantes desktop wallpapers.
  • Public service:
    • Speed bump: $1500.  Drawing of a speed bump: $80.  Effectiveness: pretty comparable--at least until people catch on. [Via]
    • What do the "Safetymen" on signage do all day?  Signs of Life aims to shed light.

10:01 AM | Permalink | No Comments

July 18, 2008

The Ocelot, in ink

Wow--now this you don't see every day: John Pischke, an Image Capture Manager at Quad/Graphics in Minneapolis, has used the "Ocelot Rampant" image from this blog in a tattoo on his arm. I furnished him with the original Illustrator file last year, and on Tuesday it was turned into ink. "You’ll be happy to know it was completely designed in Photoshop," writes John P. Nice!

Tangentially related surreality:

10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments [7]

July 17, 2008

Great #$!@!'in Type

  • What the %@^! does one call those "random non-alphabet characters to indicate cursing?"  Answer: Grawlix.  (Bonus cutting aside: "Is that the sound of a designer waiting for Adobe Updater to complete?"  Oh, from the top rope!) [Via]
  • On Flickr, user "el estratografico" collects "retronomatopeya"--classic sound effects in cartoons.
  • Batman may have gone all modern & hardcore, but "Las onomatopeyas o Batsigns" showcases the sound-effect renderings of his classic, corny past. [Via Rob Corell]
12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 16, 2008

Wednesday Illustration: Cash money & Mo'


7:03 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 9, 2008

Wednesday Illustrations: Smoke, fire, and floods


8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

June 25, 2008

Wednesday Illustrations


6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

June 19, 2008

Infographic stylings: From bacon to Ludacris


11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

June 18, 2008

The Color & the Shape, in PS & AI

9:22 AM | Permalink | No Comments

June 14, 2008

Random Saturday brilliance

Gold-plated vertically integrated batter-dipped Photoshop-rendered AJAX-flavored Flash/Flex 3D RIA workflow mash-ups: Impressive.

 

Also impressive: A Sharpie, a stove, and something to say.  (I wonder whether any dead people read my blog.) [Via]

 

Elsewhere: Willie Nelson in Kiss make-up (hey, why not?).

 

Off to eat BBQ,

J.

4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

June 11, 2008

Dolla Dolla Bill, Mickey D's, and more

 

  • "Change We Can Believe In": the typography.com guys compare the new currency designs of the UK & US.  (Honestly, the giant purple Helvetica "5" is a prank... right?) [Via]

 

*or "David Car-five-n," as an art director of mine used to call him due to his once-unorthodox method of substituting characters, e.g. "5" for "s"


8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

June 10, 2008

Infographic goodness

The NYT has been kicking out the good infographic jams lately:

 

 

Elsewhere:

 

11:59 AM | Permalink | No Comments

June 9, 2008

Monday Illustrations: In Cars


10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

June 1, 2008

Sunday Illustration

  • Jacqueline Pytyck produces some seriously foxy work with a nice sense of depth.  I especially like her self portrait. [Via]
  • PingMag covers Steven Wilson's cool Psychedelia, made using Illustrator & Photoshop.
  • Right 'round like a record:
  • Politcally themed:
    • "God Is a Graphic Designer?"  Chip Kidd plumbs the meaning of a curiously torn newspaper.  (This reminds me of when I returned to my laptop once and found the "Y" key missing from the keyboard.  I was convinced that my legitimately crazy and dangerous roommate was trying to send me a message.  Turned out to be the work of my cat, though... I think.)
    • Somewhere I stumbled upon a cool Obama illustration.
  • Veerle Pieters has been featuring some great illustrators:
    • She interviews Alberto Seveso, creator of a really distinctive photo-illustration style.  (For a number of links to his work, see previous.)
    • Elsewhere she chats with the wonderfully talented Oksana Grivina.
10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

May 24, 2008

Miscellaneous interestingness

New fatherhood -> sleep deprivation (yeah, still) -> abandoning any pretense of categorization.  That said, here are a few interesting bits I've seen lately:

 

6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

May 21, 2008

Viva frilly bits

Who doesn't like the occasional dingbat & swash?

 

11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

May 18, 2008

Illustration in motion


11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

May 12, 2008

I say "Adobe" you say...

...what, exactly?  That's what Noah Brier's fun Brand Tags project asks, and here's what people have said so far.  It's kind of fun to read the small print, too: "arcane awesome bastards... stucco structure... techy teepee telefónica terrorists..."  (Too bad Adobe doesn't make people think "hot cyclone action," like Dyson does.)  You can play your own word association game on the main page, and you can go backwards, playing name that brand based on what people say. [Via Mark Baltzegar & John Dowdell]


PS--Speaking of things affecting the Adobe brand, there's always Adobe Updater, now the subject of its own music video. [Via Zalman Stern]
7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments [8]

May 10, 2008

Calef Brown rocks

Having a wee man in the house certainly cuts into the time I'd otherwise put into scouring the Web for good bits to share; hence the dearth of illustration, photography, and type links lately.  On the other hand, it exposes me to books and illustrations I'd never otherwise see (not, y'know, being in the typical Pat the Bunny demographic).

 

My wife Margot turned me on to the works of the wonderful Calef Brown, poet & illustrator extraordinare.  Both the text and the art are hilariously loopy.  Check out some samples from Polkabats and Octopus Slacks to see what I mean.

 

Of course, it's fun to revisit the classics as well--Goodnight Moon especially.  Each night as I read it aloud, I try to amuse Margot by sneaking in some new reference to illustrator Clement Hurd's smoking habit--a penchant now hidden through Photoshop.  A little Googling reveals that other Photoshoppers couldn't leave that news alone, staging a "What Is Clement Holding?" contest.  (Keep kids off the Soloflex!)

Next up, I need to prevail on my folks to send us my old & very well-loved set of Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and a Frog books--totally wonderful.

4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

April 18, 2008

Strange Photochops

12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

April 15, 2008

Lasers, Orwell, and Mad Magazine

New illustrated biz:

2:39 PM | Permalink | No Comments

April 12, 2008

Adventures in album artwork

Back when vinyl was giving way to tapes & CDs, I heard purists bemoan the loss of a large-format way to distribute album artwork. Now with the prevalance of downloads, do you know offhand what artwork is attached to most of your music?  iTunes tries to help, but it's an uphill battle. Anyway...

  • Nikolay Saveliev's rad Pop Matters project consists of "Vinyl record sleeves with 2-sided insert featuring faux-academic material on pop music and the state of the record industry... Snuck onto used& new record store shelves."  Personal fave: "Nickelback: The Recursiveness of Professional Mediocrity."
  • Pitchfork picks The Worst Album Covers of 2007.
  • Listropolis has translated the artwork for Rolling Stone’s Top 20 Albums into color palettes. [Via]
  • Should classic album covers be redesigned every few years?  Ben Wardle makes that case, with examples. [Via]
11:36 AM | Permalink | No Comments

March 22, 2008

Logo trends, past and future

8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

March 18, 2008

New Illustrated Hotness

4:03 PM | Permalink | No Comments

March 10, 2008

From D&D to decapitations, in infographics & maps

12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

March 1, 2008

Now showing: The original Photoshop icons

With Photoshop recently having celebrated a birthday, it's fun to stumble across the original Photoshop icons.  Make that "PhotoShop," as the big S was present when the application was briefly bundled by BarneyScan, before it became an Adobe product*.  The original product icon, designed by Photoshop co-creator John Knoll, was replaced by the eye that served from 1990-2003.  John added his perspective in the blog post's comments. [Via]

If this is up your alley, you might also enjoy:


*Until recently, however, the spellchecker in MS Office insisted on inserting the capital S--completely annoying.  I filed a bug with Microsoft, but I don't know whether the change made it into Office '07.

8:16 PM | Permalink | Comments [5]

February 26, 2008

Fun with physics-based drawing

The great thing about computer-based drawing and painting tools is that they do exactly what you expect, over and over [reliability => productivity.]. That's also what kind of sucks about them, though: happy accidents can be hard to come by.

Taking a different spin on things, Umeå University's Phun is "an educational, entertaining and somewhat addictive piece of software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a cartoony fashion."  Although it's not a drawing tool per se, Phun mixes literalness with a measure of unpredictability.  Check out this video of it in action. [Via Jerry Harris & Jim Geduldick]

If that's up your alley, take a look at Nelson Chu's amazing MoXi watercolor simulation (details).  Computer power (GPU power in particular) is starting to enable sophisticated simulations on every desktop.  Look at the way an app like Little Big Planet leverages a great physics engine and redefines the process of computer-based creation (in this case using a PlayStation, but so what?).

It seems like every other day I read about some app or other using the Flash platform to partially emulate old versions of Photoshop.  That's all fine, but I'm much more excited about harnessing the platform to build much richer, more immersive, and (optionally) less predictable creation experiences.  We can have the best of both worlds, and that's what keeps me amped & in the game.

10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

February 25, 2008

Poster Flava: eBoy on AIR & more

8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments [5]

February 24, 2008

Naked saunas, 3D Flash globes, and other infographic goodness

  • My wife and I are nervously quizzing each other on these expert (and very funny) baby care instructions (boosted wholesale, it would seem, from David Sopp's Safe Baby Handling Tips). [Via]
  • Wable is "a coffee table that displays a user's web activity via physical bar graphing."  Yes, I remember pining for such a thing not ever. (Are Venn-diagram kiddie pools next?)
  • Maps:
  • Signage:
  • Blogging software has made self-publishing seem simple, but beneath the covers, a whole lot's going on.  Wired has a Flash-based diagram showing what all happens when one hits "Publish." [Via]
10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

February 19, 2008

A history of logos, great desktops, and more

7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

February 18, 2008

Meet Adobe Illustrator (1987)

As promised a couple of weeks ago, I've uploaded a copy of the VHS tape that shipped in the box with Illustrator 1.0, hosted by company co-founder/president/Illustrator developer John Warnock:

Many thanks to Andrew Keith Strauss for digitizing the tape. Of the video Dr. Warnock writes, "That video demo tape was shot live, with no editing. We didn't have video production tools at that time, and we didn’t want to pay for a professional to do it, so I did the demonstration." It's fun to contrast this tape with the Illustrator 88 video made just a year later.


4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments [12]

February 15, 2008

Fun & clever recent infographics

I'm endlessly fascinated with how people display information visually.  Here are some cool recent examples:

  • JamPhat features a hilarious (and huge!) collection of hip hop-inspired infographics.  Images are helpfully linked to YouTube vids of the related songs. It was a good day...
  • Fun with Venn diagrams: I love the simplicity of this clever music elitism t-shirt. (Compare to Wu-Tang Clan.) [Via]
  • What if we regarded flags as info visualizations?  That's what Brazilian designer Icaro Doria did for the magazine Grande Reportagem.  [Via]
  • Call it "Most Inscrutable. Karaoke Interface. Ever."  Or just call it pretty.  Robert from Flight404 (see previous) has used Processing to create the lovely video Solar, incorporating lyrics from Goldfrapp. [Via]
  • HistoryShots sells prints of really cool infographics
  • ArmsFlow presents global arms transactions, visualized in an interactive map.  Clicking individual countries shows their import/export flow for a given year.  Interesting concept, but the lines overlap so densely that it's hard to see what's happening.  I'd love to see the whole thing taken further.  [Via]
  • Knowing things Biblically:
  • Virtual China features a Chinese diagram on how to cook chicken with beer.  [Via]
12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

February 7, 2008

Shat Shat Revolution, car cutaways, and more

"Some creators love a great sunset; some have in mind my bloodshot eyes..."  So says William Shatner of The Shatner Show, a gallery presentation and now book of artwork inspired by the man, rendered in every conceivable medium (including Lego).  B to the zzare.  The project reminds me a bit of Naoki Mitsuse's Elvis Paintings.  (I have a particular soft spot for Tiny Elvis.)

In other illustration news:


9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

January 30, 2008

Recent illustrated goodness

11:57 AM | Permalink | No Comments

January 28, 2008

Back to the Future with Illustrator 88

Pass the banana clips and fire up Less Than Zero: It's time to visit the late 80's with the promotional video for Adobe Illustrator 88.  It's fun to see all that was possible even then, and to hear that the marketing message of "do more, and more easily, so you can focus on being creative" is eternal.  Now I shudder at visions of a besweatered James Spader dropping the French curves and grabbing a mouse.  [Via]

The timing is kind of spooky: for nearly a year I've been meaning to upload a copy of the John Warnock-hosted VHS tape that shipped in the Illustrator 1.0 box, and just last week I got serious about doing so.  Of the work Dr. Warnock says, "That video demo tape was shot live, with no editing. We didn't have video production tools at that time, and we didn’t want to pay for a professional to do it, so I did the demonstration."  Pretty cool that the company co-founder and CEO was not only one of four names on the product splash screen, but also the main demo man.  ("Everyone sweeps the floor around here," said Chuck Geschke of that time.)

This posting lights a fire under me, so look for the Warnock video soon. [Interim bonus retro fun: the 1987 Apple Knowledge Navigator video. Everything old is new again, and self-serious yuppies will always be with us.]

8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 23, 2008

Logos a Go-Go & mo'

7:11 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

January 20, 2008

Sunday Illustrations: From snowboards to Wonderbras

5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

January 11, 2008

It's not the size of your brush...

Cue "It's In The Way That You Use It" (and good luck getting that out of your head):  Illustrator Bob Stakke uses Photoshop 3.0 (no, not CS3--the one from '94) to create some great-looking characters.  In a tech-saturated, next-next-next-oriented world, it's nice to be reminded that creativity comes from people, not from machines and other tools.

Shakespeare could have rocked out in WordStar, and heck, you can draw Scarlett Johansson using MS Paint if you'd like.  That's not to say that new tools don't enable tons of new things, of course, and hopefully let creativity flow more freely.  It's just a reminder that a car is nothing without its driver.  [Via Doug Nelson]

Speaking of Photoshop demos, "You Suck At Photoshop" returns with volume 2 of its depresso-funny PS stylings.  No "shaggin' wagon" this time, but there is some territory-marking. [Via Clare McLean]

10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 7, 2008

War and rebirth, in photos & illustration

  • When not driving between continents & documenting the experience, German-born, Brooklyn-dwelling photographer Christoph Bangert produces gripping photojournalism in Iraq, Darfur, and elsewhere.  You can find his Iraq effort reviewed here, and on the NYT site Christoph narrates over a selection of his photos.
  • Offering a different take on Iraq, Shooting War is a graphic novel written by Anthony Lappe & illustrated by Dan Goldman.  You can find background & a review on MotherJones.com.  According to that site, "To layer drawings and shading on top of photos, Goldman drew everything directly onto a 21-inch touch screen using an electronic, wireless pen, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop. Everything combined, this is a slick-looking book."
  • On a rather brighter note, the NYT features a slideshow on kite flying in Kabul--a colorful pastime banned under the Taliban.  See related article, with video.
11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

December 27, 2007

Zeppelin inspires art

Given all the iconic images that Led Zeppelin has inspired over the years, a chance to add to that legacy sounds like a dream commission:

  • A few weeks back I saw Led Zeppelin's complete works being advertised on iTunes, and the graphic up top struck me as in the vein of Obey Giant auteur Shepard Fairey.  Sure enough--he was asked to do the work.
  • UK-based illustrator/animator Steve Scott got the nod to create an animation that would accompany the band's recent reunion concert.  "So after four weeks of hard work there I was watching Led Zeppelin play Kashmir live in front of the world's largest monitor--a 28 x 12 meter giant--and 20,000 screaming fans."  Here's the result (B.Y.O. contact high); screenshots are on the main page of his site.  See also The Society of Victorian Mutants & other solid illustrations on his site. [Via]
3:02 PM | Permalink | No Comments

December 21, 2007

I got yer brains, *right here*...

The ol' noggin provides endless inspiration for artists:

In other skullduggery:

  • Brawndo "will make you wonder why you haven't ever crushed a human skull with your bare hands!!"  Delicious!!  (I need to order a case of this stuff for the Photoshop team.)
  • The Skull-a-Day blog provides just that. [Via]
  • For next Halloween (or, just to be weird, maybe Valentine's, or Arbor Day), you might hang onto these pumpkin skull templates. [Via]  I still think they'd have a time beating my wife's Dia De Los Muertos-inspired doppel-pumpkin.
  • If this stuff is up your alley, see previous for lots more.


12:27 PM | Permalink | No Comments

December 20, 2007

Old-school Star Wars, Lego graffiti, & more

Mo' betta illustration:

  • Star Wars goes old old school Euro in Baroque Wars. (Dig that crazy Death Star.)  [Via]  Coincidentally I just stumbled across this Wikipedia-hosted rendering of similar-looking Landsknechte mercenaries.
  • If, like me, you're a no-good, non-gift-buying slacker, you can try to compensate by banging out festive imagery for loved ones.  These Photoshop brushes could help. [Via]   (I'm doing a mid-day mall sprint after publishing this; hopefully my boss isn't keeping up on the blog. ;-P)
  • Street art :
    • A graffiti artist has found Jesus in the urban landscape. [Via]
    • Legos visit the Summer of Sam era with some stop-motion train-tagging.  (In light of recent world history, I wouldn't be tossing around the phrase "train bombing" myself.)
  • Tyskie Beer commissioned some crafty flag renderings using its packaging as raw materials.
  • Kavel Rafferty offers "A reference for vinyl geeks and graphic artists" in Record Envelope--a whole blog devoted to record sleeve art.  I like the big-mouthed Knäppupp in particular. [Via]
  • The opening of Mark Ovenden's Transit Maps of the World features a groovy subway map of the world.  (I take a weird pleasure in San José appearing (with accent!) on the map, but SF getting shut out.) [Via]
  • Hire An Illustrator will help you... um... bury people in Grant's Tomb?  (Maybe it'll just help you hire an illustrator.)
  • Edward Hann's Internally Displaced People '06 attempts "to demonstrate the scale of humanitarian crisis in Western Darfur and Eastern Chad," and a quarter of the profits from its sale go to Amnesty International. [Via]  It's too bad that the Web presentation makes it hard to see the work in detail, as I can't really assess how it's tackling the problem.
12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

December 14, 2007

Friday Illustrations: Japanese cuteness, Grand Theft Auto, and more

3:46 PM | Permalink | No Comments

December 9, 2007

Gandhi as potato, Spam as art, and more

  • George Carlin points out that when considering life via license plate slogans, "Somewhere between 'Live Free Or Die' and 'Famous Potatoes,' the truth lies... I'm guessing it's closer to 'Famous Potatoes.'"  The Pfanni company might agree, and they cheerfully offer "Only good potatoes."
  • Guilherme Marconi's illustrations explode with color and detail. [Via]
  • Christopher Lee makes super fun, retro-fab creations.  Roll over the little hearts under the pieces in his illustration setup to see details & concept sketches.
  • Linzie Hunter beautifully subverts junk mail with her Spam one-liners illustrations.  [Via]
  • "My line paintings are painted using one continuous line with a beginning, and an ending," says Geoff Slater of his line paintings.  "Although it changes colour, the line never touches, or crosses itself. [Via]
  • MIT's John Maeda talks about his process for creating an illustration for the NYT.
  • Creator & creation: There's something in the water reminds me of Animator vs. Animation.
  • Veer offers a rad collection of vintage sci-fi imagery.  (I think I once had this guy as a gym teacher.)
10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

December 1, 2007

Best Vector Graphics Ever, and more

12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

November 2, 2007

Illustrations with bite

I've been running across examples of illustration designed to shake things up & reflect on the world, for better & for worse:

  • [Note: Not for those offended by profanity]  Paul Krassner's 1963 "F Communism" bumper sticker is a an incredibly efficient little satire of politics and obscenity.  Check out Kurt Vonnegut's commentary on the work for historical context.
  • On war & walls:
    • The NYT features a piece on Baghdad muralists hired to beautify, or at least adorn, the city's grim anti-suicide-bomber blast walls. "With few opportunities for work, [the artists] are delighted with the money, but are also uncomfortably aware that all they can do is paint the symptoms of a conflict that has mired their city in death squads..."
    • Elsewhere in the region, elusive British street artist Banksy has decorated Israeli's security wall.
    • Back in this part of the world, online company Brickfish kicked off a contest to "Design your own border fence" for the US-Mexico frontier.
  • The San José Museum of Quilts & Textiles (we have a museum of quilts & textiles?) just concluded a show cataloging the ways war is represented in traditional folk art. I was struck by the Afghan war rugs, featuring enormous craftsmanship: "Weaponry images are rendered in extreme, accurate detail, so much so that one can distinguish between a Hind Mi-24 attack helicopter and a Hip Mi-8 troop-carrying helicopter."
  • Worth1000 members have fun subverting propaganda posters.  Yes, giant bloody kaiser space gorillas scare the hell out of me, too.
  • In response to the Boston PD flipping out earlier this year about Lite-Brite depictions of cartoon characters, deviantART member Kalapusa has worked in the same medium with an eye towards really getting their goats. [Via]
  • Ethan Persoff has dug up a creepy segregationist comic from 1962. [Via]
  • Jessica Hagy offers concise political commentary by way of a Venn diagram. [Via]
9:49 AM | Permalink | No Comments

October 29, 2007

Hipsters, gangstas, & unacceptable haircuts

Chart! And! Graphs!

  • Maps
  • Graphs
    • Artist Andrew Kuo spent the summer hitting as many NY concerts as possible, and he "obsessively charted the entire experience, from reviewing the bands to counting the number of porta-potties." Check out the results.  See also the brief accompanying article.  Many more infographics live on his blog.
    • Protec' ya neck: Chris Sims lets us peer into the rigorous science of gangsta rap. [Via]
    • This Australian dating ad uses infographics to make its pitch.  (Only 11% of suitors have "unacceptable haircuts"?  They must not be counting the vast number of Aussie dudes with fauxhawks.)
6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

October 22, 2007

Using Illustrator to print money; more

Illustrator mensch Mordy Golding reports an interesting interaction at a recent show:

After my tutorial this week, one of the attendees approached me, telling me how much he enjoyed the session. Then he told me he'd like to present me with a gift -- a quarter. No, he wasn't trying to bribe me to lobby the Illustrator team for multiple pages. But it was a special quarter indeed, because he designed it.

Check out Mordy's post for more info & images.


In other illustration news (no real thematic connection here, but that's what I get for more airport blogging; the audio system has a real Harrison Bergeron effect):

6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 28, 2007

Tracking graffiti with help from Flash, Google

The Graffiti Archaelogy project uses a Flash interface to let visitors navigate to different heavily tagged spots (links at left), then see the work at various stages (links at bottom).  Using the M & N keys to cruise back and forth in time, I'm reminded of watching time lapses of plant life exploding on a surface, dying, and being reborn.  Yesterday Adobe hosted a visit from project founder Cassidy Curtis, but I had to bail in order to avoid guys driving by the building at 180mph.  Fortunately Archaeology.org has the whole backstory on the crew & project. [Via]

Elsewhere you can find a Google-powered map that tracks Seattle-area graffiti tagging.  The NYT talks about the way that mapping services are enabling people to plot all kinds of info, from hydrofoils around the world to yarn stores in Illinois.  (No progress yet in getting yarn graffiti pioneers Knitta Please to my hometown, I see.)

9:37 AM | Permalink | No Comments

July 27, 2007

Grade-A Illustration

Linework in the key of A:

Animation

  • Celebrating the family's big screen premiere, Harper's Bazaar feautres a great spread of Simpsons Couture.  "Marge lets down her hair for Versace. Lisa gives up her pearls for Alber Elbaz. Homer dresses as Karl Lagerfeld. Selma & Patty in Viktor & Rolf." [Via]
  • Illustrator Techniques demonstrates how to use the app to imitate A Scanner Darkly.  They also interview lead animator Sterling Allen. [Via Thorsten Wulff]

Avian

Automotive

  • For the Audi A5, UK-based designers GT have created A Rhythm of Lines--a site that lets you create abstract car-related artwork (kinda; I find it a little obscure). [Via]
  • Car Design News is hosting a series of tutorials on car rendering, heavily using Photoshop. [Via]

Assorted

Amazing

  • Yukio Miyamoto is a master Illustrator artist, producing insanely detailed, photorealistic artwork.  Fellow artist Kevin Hulsey (himself a total badass) hosts a number of Yukio's pieces.
  • Elsewhere in Japan, farmers make huge rice paddy renderings of famous artwork.  Arigato! [Via]
2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

July 21, 2007

Cool new infographics

  • The Internets, it's well known, are a series of tubes. That reality is now depicted in this info graphic from Information Architects Japan, mashing up online players with a map of the Tokyo subway system.  Nice to see Adobe occupying what seems to be some sunny downtown space ("They continue to move towards the center of gravity without being too loud about it").  More info on the project is here. [Via]
  • Edward Tufte celebrates the NYT infographics of Megan Jagerman in a detailed profile on his site. [Via]  Speaking of work done in the paper, this week they posted a cool Flash-based map of The Wealthiest Americans Ever, efficiently plotting net worth, rank, and life span.
  • CraigStatsSF combines data from Craigslist with Google Maps in order to produce heat maps that depict housing cost and density by region.  (Disclaimer: "We only identify with hotpockets which are tasty and lethal.") [Via]
  • I don't know whether it's an infographic per se, and it's hardly new, but Henrich Bunting's 16th-century depiction of the world as a cloverleaf (joined at Jerusalem) is interesting enough to deserve mention. [Via]
  • Free Press features a visual representation of how AT&T has been reconstituted, T2-style, after being broken up in 1984. Somehow I keep hearing Johnny Rotten saying, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" [Via]
  • Update: Greg Dizzia has posted a chart that graphically depicts the details of every relationship he's ever had. (Note: The chart is work-safe, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea.) [Via]
3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

July 18, 2007

Pagans, Spinners, and Mentos, oh my

  • "HWJR": How Would Jesus Roll? One man's sacrilege is another's act of devotion, as displayed through these illustrated Jesus rims. [Via]
  • File under "How [Not] to Win Friends and Influence Pagans": folks in England are displeased by the giant chalk Homer illustration. [Via]
  • The I Am Bored blog has amassed a great collection of CD hole art.  (I wonder whether CD art will someday be a collector's item, as album art has become.) [Via] On a related note, a certain pharmaceutical has gotten a similar notion. (I suppose the pagans would approve.)
  • Mentos pioneers gumvertising, creating images out of the iconic little freshmakers. They have a site for creating your own images by drawing with gum, but it seems to be down at the moment.
  • The "Zebra memorial crossing" is meant to memorialize pedestrians who've been struck by cars, thereby making the streets safer.  Seemingly obvious irony: it appears to distract pedestrians at exactly the moment they're in harm's way.
  • I enjoy the work of Russian illustrator Gordei.  Not speaking Russian makes things that much more mysterious & intriguing. [Via]
  • Washroom iconography: Useful. Washroom iconography + wiseass labels: way better. [Via]
2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

July 16, 2007

Great Star Wars-related art

Something about the Star Wars franchise continues to inspire all kinds of creativity:


11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments [4]

July 4, 2007

Blowin' up real good

While getting frozen yogurt the other night, I observed a posse* of little boys--maybe 5 or 6 years old--swarming around a small pink "Little Mermaid"-themed chair.  They were goading one of their little buddies to body slam himself into the chair, chanting "Dooo it, dooo it... Destroy IT, destroy IT!!"  Ah, the complete purity of that human impulse to see some stuff smashed all to hell.

In honor of today's American holiday devoted, in some part, to that impulse:

  • Gene Gable features some cool vintage Fourth of July artwork on CreativePro.com.
  • Similar goodness comes from American U.  Go heavy or go home, right?
  • The NYT hosts a slideshow from explosives summer camp in Missouri. Adios, watermelon. (Here's the accompanying article).
  • In the spirit of fire-breathing, wheel-popping patriotism, check out these shots from a Wisconsin tractor pull (recalling a little slice of my youth).  Not pictured: Sierra Club reps.
  • Not tied to the Fourth, but in the vein of vintage artwork, check out these fruit crate designs. [Via]  (See also previous.)
  • Update: For more bombs bursting in air, see Firework-Art.com. Man, all this really makes me miss summer car trips as a kid, where we could buy legally questionable goodies from web-footed Southerners by the roadside. [Via]

Happy (and grudgingly safe) Fourth,
J.

*What would the correct term (a la "pride of lions") be? Gaggle of boys? Hootenany? Fisticuff?

10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

July 1, 2007

Of Dilbert, Hipsters, & Samurai Hamsters

  • Dilbert creator Scott Adams has posted descriptions & photos of how he draws Dilbert in Photoshop via a Cintiq monitor. [Via]
  • Oogmerk Opticians show how overconceptualized eye furniture can make anyone look like a hipster.  (Too bad one of the "after" images isn't labeled "Adobe UI Designer." ;-))
  • Through Christopher Koelle's blog I found Justin Gerard, who has created a heck of a portfolio featuring Samurai Hamsters and more.
  • In Holland a coke-addled driver created some impromptu land art (illustration of a sort) while trying to evade police. [Via Reen Bodo]  Elsewhere fruit flies make their own weird illustrations when exposed to cocaine. [Via]
  • I love the illustrations on these White Stripes limited-edition USB thumb drives, featuring Jack, Meg, or both. [Via]
  • The Strange Maps blog features and interesting map of the US, with states labeled according to countries with similar gross domestic products. [Via]  And on a related note--and back on the Lego tip--kids are creating a massive Lego map of the US.
  • Iconfactory offers a beautiful set of Dia de lost Muertos icons. [Via]
11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

June 28, 2007

War, illustrated

  • "Machine gunner turned author" Colby Buzzell has recorded his Iraq war experiences on his blog and elsewhere.  He's now teamed up with illustrator Christopher Koelle and animators The Law of the Few to produce Men in Black--four and a half gripping minutes of storytelling. [Via]
  • Christopher shares his thoughts & the Photoshop techniques behind the work on his blog.
  • In a related vein, Canadian trooper Richard Johnson's Kandahar Journal offers an illustrated, soldier's-eye-view from Afghanistan. [Via]

Side note: I type this from the Denver airport, where I find myself holed up (thanks, lightning).  After showing a CNN ad saying "Get the Facts. Not Fear," CNN Headline News just featured a segment titled--I kid you not--"Watch for underwater terrorists."  I shall, uh, get right on that.  (Apparently Atlanta is where irony goes to die.)

8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

June 15, 2007

Friday Design: Booze, kids, and cutlery


5:56 PM | Permalink | No Comments

May 21, 2007

Tasty Flash bits: Milk, missives, and grins

I've encountered some savory Flash business around the Web recently:

  • Get the Glass features gorgeous illustration & great game play--all in the name of milk. [Via Veronique Brossier]
  • I'm not sure whether Blank Missives has a point, or whether having a point is the point, or... anyway, it sure does look nice.  Dig that typography, too. [Via]
  • The reflective "wet floor effect" comes to the excellent SlideShowPro.  More info is at developer Todd Dominey's site. [Via]
  • Neave.com features what Bridge engineer Rob Corell calls a "grin-inducing Flash effect."  This kind of thing makes me really want to capture the life and imagination of Flash apps & infuse it into desktop tools.
  • Buzzword is a terrific name for what promises to be a cool product: Flash-based online word processing. Here's more press on it.

And finally, on a note near and dear to my heart, ZDNet's Ryan Stewart lists his Top Five Features in Flash CS3.  #1?  Photoshop integration!  [Via]

9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

May 18, 2007

Friday Illustration

From the Dept. of the Brilliantly Simple:


And elsewhere:


Finally, it's a little tangential, but I spotted a nice shout-out for CS3 on illustration blog Drawn: "You’ve probably already heard all the buzz about it being the biggest upgrade ever, bla bla bla. Well, this time the buzz is true... I predict our industry (I mean anything graphically creative) is about to undergo a huge jump in look, feel, efficiency, and impact because of this." Thanks, guys! [Via Joe Ault]

9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

May 16, 2007

FreeHand no longer updated; moving to Illustrator

After a long and storied career, Adobe (neé Altsys, Aldus, and Macromedia) FreeHand has reached the end of its development road. The application has not been revised since Macromedia released MX nearly four years ago, after which the company removed FreeHand from the Studio product line.  Adobe has created an FAQ (PDF) that explains the details of the decision not to rev FreeHand, talks about Illustrator CS3 features added to make FreeHand users more comfortable, and more.  [Note: The official product pages aren't all updated yet; hence my posting this info on the blog.] Here are the highlights:

Adobe and FreeHand
Adobe does not plan to develop and deliver any new feature-based releases of FreeHand, or to deliver patches or updates for new operating systems or hardware. Adobe will, however, continue to sell FreeHand MX, and will offer technical and customer support according to our support policies.

FreeHand Upgrade Path
A special upgrade to Illustrator CS3 is available to all registered owners of FreeHand for $199 U.S. This upgrade is available worldwide through the Adobe Store and through the Channel. There is no direct FreeHand to Creative Suite 3 upgrade, but FreeHand owners who also own Adobe or Macromedia products that are eligible for upgrade to the Suite can use that path to move to the Suite.

Support for Customers Making the Move
A number of materials are available at no cost to help customers make the move from FreeHand to Illustrator. All of these materials can be found on the Switch to Illustrator pages on Adobe.com and on the Illustrator Design Center.

FreeHand to Illustrator Migration Guideavailable as a PDF and in printed form.
Targeted to designers and illustrators, this four-color manual provides a graphical comparison of the FreeHand and Illustrator workspaces, along with differences in terminology, features, and functions between the two applications.

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator: A technical resourcePDF format
Designed for production managers, IT managers and designers, this technical resource provides the best ways to move legacy FreeHand content into Illustrator, handle different file formats, outputting files, and other information.

Migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator with Mordy Golding—(video training)
Video training produced by lynda.com. The CS3 update to this series is completed and will be available shortly.

7:39 AM | Permalink

May 14, 2007

Scoble, the Phillustrator, & me

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Scoble (former Microsoft blogfatha) visited the Adobe San Jose office.  We spent just under an hour talking about Photoshop, and you can catch the broadcast here (also available fullscreen).  Our chat touches on engineer/pilot Thomas Knoll's frugal Midwestern ways; HDR imaging; Eyes Wide Shut incantations; raw Smart Objects; the redemption of Brightness/Contrast; and more*.

Robert also spoke recently with lots of other Adobe folks, including Phil "the Phillustrator" Guindi**, talking about what's new in AICS3.  Here's a full rundown of recent sessions:

Adobe Premiere CS3 49 minutes.
Adobe Flash/Flex architecture overview 30 minutes.
Adobe Flex goes open source 25 minutes.
Adobe Flash CS3 overview 55 minutes.
Adobe Apollo overview 43 minutes.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 34 minutes.
Adobe Connect overview 29 minutes.
Adobe Acrobat 8.0 19 minutes.

*And it includes, of course, my weird lip-smacking mannerisms; yeesh.  Yeah, and you thought it was hard just to listen to oneself recorded...
**Naming credit goes to our friend Bryan Hughes. I persist in calling Phil's new little son "Phillustrator Elements."

8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments [5]

April 27, 2007

Adventures in Infographics

I'm intrigued by work that strives to make sense of large, complicated sets of data (see previous).  Along those lines:

  • This London-style NYC subway map is generating a lot of conversation, both online & inside Adobe.  Weird, I remember discussing this exact topic when I first started at an NY Web shop--nine years ago!  Bridge engineering manager Arno Gourdol points out Mr. Beck's Underground Map, a thorough account of the Tube map design.  And from there I found this page, brimming with more resources on the subject. [Via]
  • PingMag chats with Andrew Vande Moere, creator of the Infosthetics blog, about the beauty of data visualization.  Both links are chock full of loveliness.  (Bonus: No Edward Tufte w/young white-gloved flunkies.)
  • The Strange Maps blog depicts right- vs. left-hand driving around the globe, while providing the interesting back story of how these conventions came to be. [Via]
  • Covering 5000 years in 90 seconds, Maps of War shows the tides of conquest that have swept through the Middle East. [Via]
  • The US government gets into the game, using census data to drive home the aging of the populace.
  • I dig illustrator Christoph Niemann's witty little visual comparison of some pieces of music.  (I'm a Jaws-level pianist at best.)
  • Pentagram designer Paula Scher created this anatomy of a blog conversation for the NYT. Ahh, the descent into ennui... [Via]
  • At FITC last weekend I really enjoyed meeting Evan Roth, the dude behind the SkyMall demographic visualization, laser graffiti, and much more. Though I'm coming up short on links to it, he's created a method of visualizing one's daily clicks: wiring up two USB cables from a single mouse, plugging one into a main work computer, and plugging the other into a machine running Photoshop or other graphics app.  As you click around email, the Web, etc., you produce a drawing (of sorts) on the other machine, with paint blobs mapped to the same coordinates as your clicks.  (It sounds like AttenTV might be doing vaguely similar, for profit.)  Oh, and bringing this post full circle, Evan's crew at Eyebeam has created an interactive NYC subway map.
8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

April 18, 2007

Illustration bits: Dust My Ride, Creep My Clown, & more

  • It's tax time in the US, and illustrator Christoph Niemann created an elegant commentary for the cover of the New Yorker.  Elsewhere, his "Empires of Evil" flags (lighter-hearted than the name would suggest) are inspired, and he certainly has a new take on, er, dental hygiene. [Via]
  • Dust artist (yes, dust) Scott Wade has produced some amazing images for Mitsubishi's new ad campaign. (For more dustiness, see previous.)
  • I can dig illustrator Tara McPherson's muted palettes. [Via Geoff Scott]
  • On the other end of the chromatic spectrum, Nathan Fox punches up retro-fueled imagery.
  • Our pals at the Chopping Block have launched Chop Shop, a spot to sell all manner of groovy swag (gotta love the 10-Year Plan).  I delight in the great spit and polish (try rolling over the little characters in the header, for instance)--excellent A2Detail.
  • Everyone's favorite alcoholic raven/alt newspaper survivor, Drinky Crow, is getting his own show. [Via]
  • And lastly, Digital Newsflash offers an interesting moniker for a certain CS3 branding image: "Creep-o the Clown." Heh--yeah, that does induce a little coulrophobia, no?
10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

April 9, 2007

Poster art, giant chickens, & more

//na// Illustrated bits worth sharing:

11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments [6]

April 8, 2007

A great video tour of Illustrator CS3

"Oh my--it's like Illustrator and Flash have run off and gotten married," says Mordy Golding in the latest episode of his Real World Illustrator video podcast.  Mordy, formerly a PM on the Illustrator team, hits not only the big-ticket items, but also the little things that sometimes matter most.  I only wish Mordy had spent more time on the rad Live Color feature in AICS3--but he promises to delve deeper into it in a future episode.  (It's one of those features that makes Photoshop and the other apps jealous, so we'll have to try to steal it in the future. ;-))

From the podcast I learned a little detail that I think is quite cool: the new Flash Text panel (screenshot) lets you designate text to be used in Flash as static or dynamic.  You can even designate the URL from which the text is fed.  And, as I've mentioned previously, Illustrator now lets you name & edit symbols just as you do in Flash, and symbols, instance names, gradients, etc. are preserved when you copy and paste from Illustrator to Flash.  Niiice.

3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

January 5, 2007

Photorealistic painting; Make your own "Cars"; more

  • Artist Cali Rezo creates some beautiful, photorealistic paintings in Photoshop, as well as more stylized pieces.  She shares some behind-the-scenes snapshots, as well as a step-by-step animation of a piece coming together. [Via]
  • I Met The Walrus is an Jerry Levitan's story of how, as a 14-year-old in 1969, he snuck into John Lennon's hotel room & recorded an interview.  The trailer (or is it the whole film?) features some great illustrated animation.  (More on the story is here.) [Via]
  • Make your car resemble those in "Cars" by following this tutorial.  Appropriately, a Pontiac Aztek gets a goofy, gap-toothed grin & actually looks better as a result. [Via]
  • Weirdly, I encountered the same topic on Autoblog just the next day.  They've posted some great examples, and now their collection of images is growing.

For more automotive rendering bits, see previous.

10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

December 18, 2006

Terrific whiteboard stop-motion video

Created by Kristofer Strom of Ljudbilden & Piloten, the video for Swedish band Minilogue's "Hitchhiker's Choice" is the antithesis of high-tech, CGI-laden graphics we're accustomed to seeing--and I love it. [Via].  The work reminds me of Mario Cavalli's marvellous Compaq "Bird" ad from several years back.  (Working on the Compaq site at the time, I always scratched my head that the company's UK office could be so adventurous while the folks in Texas always sought to play it safe.)  Kristofer has also created Pen on Paper, a free-flowing montage drawn on one long, continuous strip of paper (as seen in this video).

9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

December 4, 2006

Excellent Worth1000 Photoshoppery

  • As kid I loved Wacky Packages, the little 70's-era goofs on popular brands of the times.  Now the crew at Worth1000.com grabs that baton, mashing up classics with commerce in these Fine Art Ads. [Via]
  • Along somewhat similar lines, Kasper Hauser's Sky Maul is a pretty darn funny compendium of "Happy Crap You Can Buy from a Plane." [Via]
  • I love this take on Escher as a child--hilarious and kind of heartbreaking all at once.  ("Don't let the bastards grind you down...")
  • Elsewhere the site features good critter-hacking: Evolution Gone Wild, and some rather excellent Cybernetic Animals.
  • It's deeply, deeply nasty--to the point where I didn't scroll too far--but the "That's Not Turkey!" gallery may make you grateful for what you didn't eat on Thanksgiving.
  • Oh, and if that's not quite disturbing enough, how about a meat chess board, or meat body suit? Rare is the new black, I'm told.
6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments [1]

November 30, 2006

Kicking the Tires: Photoshop rendering tutorials

My fellow Photoshop PM Ashley Still interacts with customers using Photoshop in vertical markets (engineering, healthcare, etc.) and has turned up some good resources on using the app in automotive, industrial, and clothing design:


On a slightly related note, Michael Halbert is one talented motherscratcher, offering a wealth of tutorials (including good videos) on achieving a traditional scratchboard look. [Via].  He's also featured in the Adobe.com Print Gallery.

3:48 PM | Permalink | No Comments

Zombies, Communism, & other illustrated goodness

  • I'm a fan of both Constructivism & retro-ironic propaganda (think Chinese military ballet), so I dig seeing this collection of Soviet Photomontages 1917-1953.  See also Soviet carpet propaganda. (Doesn't it seem a little weird to encourage walking all over your icons?). [Via]
  • Think your colleagues are zombies?  ZombiePortraits.com will illustrate your point for just $85. [Via]
  • Talk about mudflaps, my rickshaw's got 'em...  Okay, I have no truck, much less a rickshaw, but if I did I'd be tempted to pimp it with beautifully illustrated Bollywood mudflaps. [Via]
  • Flags of our Clients shows what happens when you're too attentive to feedback on your illustrations--in this case, flags of the world.
  • Computer Arts discusses the digital illustration revolution. Memorable quote (from 1992): "John Warwicker, Creative Director of design collective Tomato, said without even a trace of irony: 'I can envisage a time when we’ll all need our own individual Macs.'" [Via]
  • Illustration Friday has an interview with illustrator Anita Kunz, showing some of her great images.
  • Alberto Cerriteño does straight-up gorgeous work. [Via]
  • Creating optical illusions in a room is one thing, but can you make your room look like a cartoon? [Via]
  • I haven't tried Akvis Sketch, but the new version of this Photoshop plug-in promises to convert your images to sketches quickly and easily. [Via]
  • Gene Gable has posted a collection of lovely vintage map art in his CreativePro.com column.  (Sadly, nowhere be monsters.)

11:59 AM | Permalink | No Comments

November 24, 2006

Animals photographed in the womb, & more

  • Using a combination of three-dimensional ultrasound scans, computer graphics and tiny cameras, a team of filmmakers has been able to show the entire process of animal gestation from conception to birth.  Here's the article and amazing photo gallery.  [Via]
  • Created in After Effects & Lightwave by XVIVO for Harvard biology students, The Inner Life of a Cell depicts mighty mitochondria and the like doing their thing; check it out in high- or low-res Flash video. [Via]
  • Among the more unusual images I've seen, here's the sun shot through the Earth, displaying neutrinos that pass through the planet's mass.
  • Speaking of celestial imagery, this month's National Geographic features stupendously gorgeous images of Saturn--just a hint of which can be found on their site.  [See also previous]
  • Rick Lieder must have the patience of Job, and it pays off in his insect macrophotography at BeeDreams.com [Via]
  • BibliOdyssey has posted The Concept of Mammals, a collection of antique critter renderings. "As was the fashion of the time," they write, "the animals were placed in contrived settings and often given human facial qualities, which only serves to heighten the sense of bizarre. And thankful we are too." [Via]  The site is jammed with other good bits, including claws, shells, whales, and more. (And if stuff trips your trigger, check out Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.)
7:15 PM | Permalink | No Comments

November 15, 2006

Of skulls & skaters

Okay, I know that 11-year-old mallrats & their feckless Hot Topic enablers have all but stomped the life out of skull imagery, but dammit, there are some good bits left:

[See also previous skullduggery]

12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments [5]

November 12, 2006

Pantone tats, Evil timesheets, & more

A fistful of illustration goodness:

11:54 PM | Permalink | No Comments

October 21, 2006

Hidden Illustrator<->Photoshop integration

Illustrator and Photoshop have been quietly growing tighter, and you may have discovered that it's possible to export a very editable PSD file from Illustrator (preserving nested layers, masks, editable text along a path, etc.).  But what about going the other way--turning a layered PSD into a layered Illustrator composition?  It's easy to do, though not at first glance.

Background: The compositing model (i.e. the layer blending modes & options) used by Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat is different than the one used by Photoshop. Therefore some blending options in Photoshop (for example, complex "Blend If" settings) can't be replicated in Illustrator. As a result, when you place a PSD file into Illustrator, the blending is isolated.  That is, the PSD is treated as things a little world unto itself, and the blending modes within it don't interact with anything else in the Illustrator document.  Objects like drop shadows (set to Multiply mode) only multiply against other things inside the PSD.

But here's the trick: if you place the PSD and embed it in your Illustrator file (by unchecking the Link option in the import dialog), you can tell Illustrator to convert each layer into a separate Illustrator object. In that case the blending options should come through largely intact. Even things like text & vector layers (including text on a path & text in a shape) will be converted to the native Illustrator versions.

This is quite powerful but, ah, shall we say, non-obvious.  I don't have a perfect solution in mind for making this capability more discoverable, but we'll give it some thought.

10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments [9]

October 2, 2006

Bert Monroy video talks FX painting in Photoshop

Master digital painter Bert Monroy (he of 15,000-layer PSD fame) is featured in the inaugural episode of Pixel Perfect, a new show on Revision3. Bert shows how to create "lightning, sparkles, and a mystical vortex the same way professional effects and movie matte artists do." [Via]

2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

September 30, 2006

I {Heart} Pixel Art

David Pogue in the NY Times recently posted links to a number of great examples of pixel art:

Elsewhere, DSicons.com is devoted to pimping Mario Karts on Nintendo DS's & will design artwork on commission. [Via] And meanwhile citizens of Taiwan are protesting their government through this virtual sit-in.

Slightly related: I love the line art in Röyksopp's "Remind Me" video, and though it's not pixel art, I like Adam Simpson's bleak little isometric city. And posted previously, here's how to draw a pixel portrait tutorial.

5:06 PM | Permalink | No Comments

September 21, 2006

Iconfactory talks, Illustrator listens

In case you don't know 'em, the guys at Iconfactory have been making some top-notch pixel art for more than 10 years. (I seem to remember using their stuff back in the System 7 days to get that ultra-mod "Copland" look.) Anyway, they've been migrating from FreeHand to Illustrator & posted their Top 5 Adobe Illustrator CS Pet Peeves, plus the provocatively titled follow-on "Et tu, Adobe?". It's all good feedback, if a little frustrating (only because we're always needling one another about these things already).

So, a bit of good news: Illustrator PM Phil Guindi dropped these guys a note to let them know of some welcome changes coming down the pike, prompting Gedeon Maheux to write, "Phil, all we can say is...wow! We had our finger's crossed that someone at Adobe would see our post so your email has made our day, and probably our year. :-)" Nice! It sounds like we've kicked off what should be a very fruitful dialog with these talented artists.

The other key point here, I think, is that what Gedeon & co. want isn't more features per se; it's functionality that simply works better. This is true across the board: no one says, "Oh, Photoshop? Yeah, I'd buy that, but there just isn't enough stuff in there..." Rather, people mainly want things to work more smoothly, to just flow. I'm happy to report that the Illustrator team has a whole bunch of spit & polish tasks on their list, and I'm keeping a list of "Brain-dead things we fixed in Photoshop CS3"--now somewhere around 20 items. And that's the goal: saving the world, one non-slapped forehead at a time. ;-)

12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments [6]

September 10, 2006

Illustrator Techniques newsletter launches

The folks behind Photoshop World & Layers magazine have just launched Illustrator Techniques, a newsletter & Web site aimed at Illustrator users of all stripes. The site is sharing some sample tutorials (here's one on 3D in Illustrator) and hosts a user forum as well as a gallery of user work (nice 'Vettes). The team, which includes editor/author of Illustrator CS2 Killer Tips Dave Cross & his co-author Matt Kloskowski, plans to publish 8 times annually. Much success, guys!

4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

August 29, 2006

Mojizu: Social networking through character design

Like Japanese-style character design? You'll be among kindred spirits at Mojizu, a site devoted to creating, sharing, and discussing little creations ("Mojis"). Members send their Mojis into battle, and the most popular ones make their way into merchandise & are up for various prizes. (Oh, and Illustrator being involved, there are of course more pinups involved.) [Via Phil "The Phillustrator" Guindi, Illustrator PM]

9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

Pimp My Wildlife, Photoshop-style

Heh--no real attributions to the artist(s) are provided, but these animal mash-ups are quite well done. Sadly enough, no one created a liger (which apparently does exist) or a manticore. Gosh!

[Update: Jeff Tranberry points out the weirdo "carcass art" of MART: the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. Much unwholesome madness is in their gallery. If someday I want to get my beloved cat posthumously placed onto a hang glider, or into a Kung Fu pose, etc. I'll know where to turn.

MART in turn links to Beast Blender, a Flash-based tool for banging out custom critters. (Hey, I think I did a portrait of one of my high school teachers.)]

9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments [4]

August 26, 2006

Vector Vixens, Belgian Béziers

1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

August 24, 2006

Photochoppin' (cars, not broc-co-lee)

Auto enthusiast/Photoshop hoss Peter Smith has gone photochopping-crazy, pimping more than 200 cars on his Digimods site. In addition to the creations (e.g. a lowrider ice cream truck), he offers a a wealth of simple, effective tutorials (complete with charming Brit-speak about modding your car's boot, bonnet, windscreen, etc.). [Via]

[Note: No broccoli was chopped in the posting of this entry.]

11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments [2]

August 15, 2006

Destroy your property value, the Photoshop way!

Now, here's the flipside to the relentless pursuit of aesthetic perfection: take one pristine Victorian home, apply generous dodging & burning, and you'll get something fit for Norman Bates' mom. Sébastien Gaucher offers a nice little set of tutorials on his site, along with other examples of his work. (The sad thing for Bay Area residents is to realize that even the mauled "after" versions of each house would still set you back a few million bucks around here...)

11:25 AM | Permalink | No Comments

August 11, 2006

Groovy Photoshop brushes & rendering techniques

  • Designer Jason Gaylor has created a handy, stylish set of Fresh Foliage Brushes (Vol. II) for Photoshop. If those are up your alley, see also Vol. I of the same set, as well as Jason's graffiti brushes and worn brushes (Volumes I, II, and III). [Via] (For more on worn brushes & distressing images, see previous entry.)

  • Putting brushes into action, automotive designer Jonathan Tatum shares some of his moves. Seeing details pop into existence from step to step suggests a big equation with "And then a miracle occurs" hidden among the steps. (For more on automobile rendering, see also Kevin Hulsey's techniques.)

    4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments [6]
  • August 8, 2006

    My New Clip Art Technique Is Unstoppable

    HDR, 3D, plenoptic cameras... who needs all that high-fi chaos when there's the simplicity of le cinema de clip art? [Via] Of course, I still think it's got nothing on the (incredibly) profane genius of My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable* (speaking of giant pixels...).

    See? Clip art is your pal! Now, fire up some fatty drop shadows & bevels, and get busy mixing 384 typefaces per page; you'll be a pro in no time! Related: Woman Has Perfect Clip Art For Party Invitation.

    * [Note: Chock full of bad words. Really. Just in case that's not your bag.]

    5:27 PM | Permalink | No Comments

    July 19, 2006

    Etchin' & Scratchin'

    If pimping your ride is passé, how about pimping your PowerBook? Cognitive scientist Dan Kurtz laser-etched a Magritte painting onto his machine. Wicked. (Here's another image of it, plus the original Magritte.) If you're feeling adventurous (and laser-equipped), see the how-to overview. (You could also go after your machine with a metal drill bit.)

    Bringing this a tad closer to home, Adobe's resident creative whirlwind Russell Brown had a ball laser-etching wood at the recent ADIM Conference (check out these examples). In fact, he'll be doing an etching class here on Monday and will have his laser in tow. Hmm, I've got 17" of aluminum just itching for etching, and I'm partial to flames...

    On a similar etch-stuff-on-weird-surfaces, CBS is promoting its fall lineup by scrawling ads on millions of eggs [Via NPR]. Evidently Chicago-area company EggFusion ("Promoting freshness with every impression!!") is doing the honors. Every bite a delight, no doubt.

    And lastly, illustrator George Vlosich is a terror on the Etch-a-Sketch, lavishing dozens of hours on each creation. [Via]

    2:52 PM | Permalink | No Comments

    July 17, 2006

    Great lettering & happy accidents, inside Illustrator & out

    Not long ago I came across the excellent hand lettering of Fiodor Sumkin. I love the intricacy with which he fits characters and shading to various shapes. [Via]

    In particular, his drawing of these hands got me thinking about the enveloping functions in Illustrator. Click this image for a quick overview of how to fit type to shapes:
    Text warping tutorial

    Using these techniques, I set out to emulate Sumkin's work. First I traced the outline of one of his hands in Illustrator, then blocked out a number of regions. The Pencil tool works well for this, as does a Wacom tablet. The result was a skeleton for the next steps:
    Outline

    Then, needing to turn each region into a solid object, I copied and pasted all the paths into Flash, broke things apart, and then used the paint bucket to block them in. I probably could have used the Illustrator Pathfinder tools and/or the new Live Paint features, but old habits die hard, and I knew I could get what I needed from Flash:
    Colored in Flash

    At that point I copied and pasted everything back into Illustrator, then picked a font that seemed likely to fill the shapes nicely--in this case Adobe's 60's-style Mojo. Using the text "Word Hypnotize" and the enveloping technique described above, I got... this (click for a larger version):
    Hand

    Hmmph--it's nothing like Sumkin's lettering, and were I to try harder to emulate it, I think I'd fit each chunk of text to an envelope mesh, then use the various mesh, path, and warp tools to deform it as necessary. But you know, I kind of like the sinuous, abstract quality that resulted--a bit as if Slim Goodbody dipped his hand in an inkwell.

    So, there's my little happy accident o' the day. Software generally makes it pretty easy to repeat the same steps over and over, so I'm glad to experience a little serendipity & creative destruction now and then.

    By the way, Sumkin's lettering reminds me a touch of Marta Monteiro's, and for more cool lettering, you might check out Rodney White (overview/gallery). Oh, and tangentially related (at best): the look of the hand I made slightly reminds me of WWI-era Cubist ship camouflage. [Via]

    8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

    July 1, 2006

    Illustration sensations, vol. II

    • TechVector.com shows off the work of Reggie Gilbert. "All vector work is created 100% in Adobe Illustrator," he writes. "No Photoshop 'touch-ups,' no 3D rendering software." Outstanding. [Via]

    • Veerle Pieters highlights the work of Paul Rogers, whose illustrations nail the look of classic poster art. Love, love, love the Incredibles and Dos Equis pieces, to name just two. (His Strange Cargo design could have worked well for Photoshop 5.0--a.k.a. Strange Cargo.)

    • Chris Rhoadhouse points out Real Trace, the work of Takashi Morisaki. What Takashi pulls off with the gradient mesh is completely out of hand. (The actual cat on my lap looks comparatively crude.)

    5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments [1]

    June 29, 2006

    In Dust we Trust

    Sometimes you just know you're among your people. A few years ago, when I was new to Adobe San Jose, someone parked & more or less abandoned a car in the West Tower parking garage. After a few months the car's windows had grown almost totally opaque, coated by the unending flow of construction-related dust. And so, in classic Photoshop style, someone had drawn in the dust a little tabbed palette with a slider marked, "Opacity: 80%." Yeeeah, thass' my geeks...

    I thought of this when seeing the work of "dust artist" Scott Wade. Scott makes his filthy Mini into a canvas for reproducing everything from da Vinci to dogs playing poker; check out a gallery of his work. [Via] Maybe now I can convince my wife that I've been prepping my once-blue Jetta to be an artistic medium, not just letting it go to seed...

    [For more on impermanent works, see previous entries on artists working in packing tape and chalk.]

    8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]

    June 19, 2006

    Illustration sensations

  • Yukio Miyamoto creates gorgeous, photorealistic renderings using Illustrator. Click each image for a larger view, then roll over it to see a wireframe of the vectors underneath (as in this crazy Harley). [Via]

  • At lifeinvector Brooke Nuñez shows off similarly mad chops, and on her downloads page she offers a tutorial on using Illustrator's gradient mesh to create a realistic red bell pepper. As on Yukio's site, you can roll over illustrations to see how they're structured. [Via]

  • Dropping jaws in an entirely different way, autistic savant Stephen Wiltshire--"the Human Camera"--has a superhuman ability to remember and reproduce visual details. In this amazing 5-minute film , Stephen draws a 5-yard panorama of Rome from the air, after seeing it just once from a helicopter. More on his life & a gallery of his work can be found on his site. [Via]

    11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments [3]
  • June 14, 2006

    Photoshop Illustrators Gone Wild: Frodo & Mo'

    • On The Photoshop Experiment, illustrator Cory Godbey walks step by step through his creations in Photoshop. (More of Cory's work is here.) I love seeing the pieces move from the simplest of sketches to richly toned paintings. [Via]
    • Vishal Pawar checks in from India with a terrifically detailed portrait of Frodo Baggins. [Via Mike Downey]
    • Fantasy vehicles & creatures come to life in the work of German artist Daniel Simon. Daniel starts traditionally with pen and marker, then applies digital airbrushing. [Via]
    • My old Agency.com colleague PJ Loughran brings a great sense of color and texture to his illustrations, combining brush and ink with Photoshop composites. His work appears in print, on the Web, and even on Burton snowboards.
    7:52 PM | Permalink | No Comments

    May 4, 2006

    Manga Zoomlines for Illustrator

    Plug-in maker GraphicXtras has released Zoomlines, an Illustrator utility for making the focus/zoom lines often seen in manga and other comics. The interface is a bit inscrutable, but for $12 a lot can be forgiven. Just don't stare too long a the vibrating centers of your creations, lest they induce a seizure. [Via]

    I dig this kind of little single-purpose tool: quick, affordable, and built to solve a particular problem. We do need to make it easier to modify Adobe authoring tools to encourage this kind of development, and we're working on that.

    The images created by Zoomlines reminds me of some fun I've been having in Illustrator lately, trying out ideas for this blog. I was kind of taken with the album art for Volante, so I experimented with techniques to make something similar. In case it's useful, I've illustrated the steps taken to create the basic artwork that became the background for this page. I think it's got kind of a Soundgarden/Rollins Band thing going on.

    8:14 AM | Permalink | No Comments

    April 3, 2006

    15,000-layer Photoshop file

    'Tis the season of gigantic PSDs: Digital painter Bert Monroy sees Kevin Hulsey's work and raises him a couple of gigs. Bert, a former matte painter at ILM and elsewhere, has been pushing Photoshop since v1.0, and at Photoshop World he unveiled his latest creation: a monster painting that's 1.7GB (when flat!), comprised of some 15,000 layers, 500 alpha channels, and 250,000 paths. Man... what a testament to Bert's artistry & commitment to his craft. [Via]

    Photoshop handles tasks from creating sub-1KB Web graphics to wrangling files of basically unlimited size, and that makes it tricky for us to ship the app with settings that address all scenarios optimally. The Support team publishes some tips on optimizing performance (Mac/Win), and we're looking at ways to make it easier to tune the app.

    [Update: Tobias Hollerich points out that the site has been "dugg," making it slow to load. The Digg.com entry lists some mirror sites & links to videos of Bert in action.]

    8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments [3]

    March 24, 2006

    720 hours in Illustrator; Painting with light

  • Think you've got patience and attention to detail? You'd need it to match the work of illustrator Kevin Hulsey. His site features a variety of tutorials that demonstrate techniques for building up artwork in Photoshop and Illustrator. Creating "Radiance of the Seas" took some 720 hours, and it's fascinating to watch a fully rendered ship develop from line work in Illustrator into color in Photoshop, rendered in lavish high resolution. Kevin's ghosting technique produces some lovely translucent results, too. [Via]

  • Playing with blending modes in Photoshop can enable some very cool painting with light (a la Picasso, not this dude). Computer Arts features a rather neat tutorial on the subject.

  • On a related note, this month's Surface Magazine features a piece on Swedish collective Front, who use motion capture technology to sketch with light pens, then render the results as functional furniture. Check out images as they move from conception to finished pieces. Kind of reminds me of Moholy-Nagy's Leda and the Swan. [Via]

    6:08 PM | Permalink | No Comments
  • February 26, 2006

    Mind-blowing design portfolio

    Oh my God... Who is this Dave Werner guy and what kind of government lab built him? Simply put, this is the most effective portfolio site I have seen in years. Dave makes outstanding use of Flash video to tell the story behind each of his featured projects, ranging from print to Web to furniture design, filmmaking, writing, and game creation--sometimes all at once. As I browsed from the scrolling treasure map (see Illustrations) to "Ninja birds with Katana blades" (in "Cadence"), I felt my eyes re-open to the possibilities of technology & storytelling, much like they did when encountering From Alice To Ocean back in '93. Damn. I just hope he doesn't take a shine to product management... [Via Core77]

    5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments [35]

    December 21, 2005

    Math rock in Illustrator, Josh Davis-style

    Adobe.com features a new profile on Joshua Davis and his work that brings together Illustrator with scripting to create generative art. The work combines known building blocks (sketches scanned & vectorized in Illustrator) with algorithms that introduce chance and chaos. Josh presented a great lecture on this work at the Adobe Ideas Conference earlier this year--a bracing, whirling blur of charisma, tats, code, and f-bombs that lit up an otherwise sedate gathering.

    I've been thinking for quite a while about ways to make our tools freer, to tap into what my friend Matthew calls the "math rock kids"--the sort who make and use experimental apps like Auto-Illustrator (no relation). People can build beautiful, freeform interactive drawing pieces in Flash, so why can't we use them in Photoshop or Illustrator? Why not make it easier to create offbeat interfaces that leverage these deep imaging engines in new ways? And could we combine that power with the linear animation chops of After Effects? Let's be less predictable, more playful, more absurd.

    [Adobe.com link via Branden Hall]
    [More from Joshua here and here.
    He's also contributed a chapter to John Maeda's Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation.]

    11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments [7]
    Copyright © 2009 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
    Use of this website signifies your agreement to the Terms of Use and Online Privacy Policy (updated 07-14-2009).