July 27th, 2011
The $999 MacBook fades away. It's been fun.
Over the past week, Apple released a full version upgrade to Mac OS, Mac OS 10.7 Lion. Roars, apparently. They also released new computers and an updated, Thunderbolt-enabled display. There are new Mac Minis, and a very impressive and aggressive update to the MacBook Air. Apple’s pretty proud of themselves over it and they have a right to be.
“According to benchmark tests performed by Wired, the new 11-inch MacBook Airs increased their speed performance by 149% over last year’s model. Their tests put the 11-inch MacBook Air on par with last year’s 17-inch MacBook Pros. The power behind this beautiful machine is incredible, especially when you consider that it’s 2.38lbs is nearly half that of my old 13-inch MacBook Pro…” – Cult of Mac, Sleek and Powerful, the New 11-Inch MacBook Air Will Blow You Away, Again
After a spate of rumors, simultaneously with releasing the new Macbook Airs, Apple did actually EOL and discontinue the MacBook. Not TOO much of a surprise. It’s consistent with the current ark of Apple’s relentless thinking different… and relentlessly forward. Still, It does raise the eyebrow a bit. Read the rest of this entry »
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April 10th, 2011
Click above for Large Image (900 x 600 px)
“Ook ook ack! Eeeeeek! OOOK!” [Trans: "My God, it's full of apps... " ]
I usually don’t repeat subjects, and I JUST reviewed the iPad2. But sometimes a marketing campaign can trod over the same raw nerve so many times before one has to spout off on it.
I don’t want to get off on a rant here but…
Apple’s overuse of the word “magical” when promoting the iPad just gets under my skin. Actually it annoys the poop out of me. Probably because it’s patently horseshit. It’s a piece of TECHNOLOGY, people, not the gorram Philosopher’s stone. We’re not a bunch of knuckle dragging homo habilis hominids howling and flinging rocks, sticks and poop at the frakkin’ monolith. Sometimes I wonder what Apple’s marketing people think of their audience. I do realize what they’re getting at, the idea of an information appliance so immediate and intuitive to use, that the actual interface disappears and you become immersed in just using the thing. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Creative Pro, Designers, Graphics, Hardware, iOS, iPad, Mac, Marketing, Technology
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March 21st, 2011
Apple iPad2 - in Black and White. Thinner. Lighter. Faster. FaceTime. Smart Covers. 10 Hour Battery. Original Image: Apple
Been A little while, I’ve been working, and that’s a good thing if you’re a self-employed designer. I also broke my ankle back in August while camping, so been recovering. So blogging a slightly lower priority lately, but here I am again.
I had occasion to be out and about and took the opportunity to visit my local Apple store and take a look at the just released iPad2 for my local Apple User Group. Just like it’s predecessor, it’s a very appealing little slab of electric crack. It’s also a more appealing experience than the original iPad. Apparently, a lot of people think so too, since Apple seems to have sold close to a million of the things in the first weekend of availability, selling out at most locations.
When Apple released the original iPad, they were diving out into uncharted territory. As of last year, no one had gotten a tablet computer out there that captured the public imagination till they completely redesigned the interface. Their success with the iPhone, turning the smartphone market in it’s side, suggested they were on to something. But it wasn’t till the first year of iPad, that the realized that they had something quite amazing on their hands. People are doing things with the iPad that Apple never expected. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Apple, Apple Store, Flash, Hardware, iPad, Mac, Review, Software, Tablets
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November 26th, 2010
An intruder has infiltrated the Samurai Art Director's castle....
In which we bring a Windows 7 laptop into a house with three Mac workstations.
As anyone who reads this blog is well aware, as a Creative Professional, I am a Mac user. Now I have to lead in with the total disclaimer straight off. I try not to take sides in the platform wars, and when people ask me about computers, I tell them to buy the machine that does the job you need to do at the time you need it. That will vary on the required tasks, if you’re an office drone, a designer, a gamer, or just surfing the web, fetching your emails and hitting Facebook. I also tell people, “buy the heaviest iron you can afford and stuff with as much RAM and the biggest hard disk drives you can afford.”
But at the time I got into my career, and we’re talking 1980 B.C. (“Before Computers”) and when desktop publishing came on the scene, the Macintosh was a dominantly superior platform for graphics and design. The Mac generally sustained an advantage through the 90’s and into the early 2000s due to it’s Graphical User Interface (GUI) and ease of use. My forays into the Windows PC world, as I got introduced to web design and the pain of cross platform testing, did not impress me. Read the rest of this entry »
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October 16th, 2010
My Typical HALO:REACH experience. Photocomposite and Illustration: Kurt Griffirh. Source renderings: Bungie
This time around I am going to drift off my usual design focused view of the world of technology and creativity. Today I am going to talk about video games. Say what? Yes, this irascible and opinionated almost-an-old-timer is going to venture into a whole ‘nother geekdom. Not just the classic stand-up and 8-bit arcade games that I grew up with, but the overheated world of console games. It may surprise some of you who read this blog to know, I don’t spend every waking moment behind this workstation. Well, I do spend rather a lot of my time here, both professionally and recreationally. Any design professional in the electronic age has also become by default a technologist. Computers are not only our working tools, but also our sources of information, research and resources. So I am here not only working, but studying, catching up with my mob on Facebook, reading webcomics, news–both tech and the rest of the world, and surfing for pleasure. Oh yeah, I also write a blog in my huge free time. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bungie, Computers, Games, Geeks, Graphics, Halo, Hardware, L33t, Machinima, Reach, Technology
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August 22nd, 2010
The current Mac Pro update disappoints actual pro users. Image: Apple Computer
Apple recently released, after over a year in waiting, an update to their Mac Pro line of tower configuration computers. They introduced the Westmere line of the Xeon workstation processors and now a version with 12 computing cores is available. But for many Apple watchers, the update was a bit of a disappointment.
For openers, while Apple has been determinedly cutting edge on their new flagship mobile products, iPhones, iPads… were notably conservative on this update. New tech such as USB 3, Firewire 1600, Litghtbridge, or even established desirable standards as eSATA were skipped. Few expected Blu-Ray support, since Steve doesn’t like Blu-Ray. The video cards options offered by Apple are decent, but somewhat mediocre by contemporary standards. But all in all, commentary in the tech blogs has negative commentary edging out positive reviews. The general consensus seemed “meh,” with a lot of dissatisfaction centering on performance versus price issues compared to alternatives on the Windows and Linux side.
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Tags: Adobe, Apple, Creative Pro, Creative Suite, design, Designers, Graphics, Hardware, Mac, mac pro, Software, Web Design
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June 27th, 2010
Tweaking Bleeds in InDesign for the Tri-fold Cut Line. Yes, I'll explain...
For openers, I have been reminded that if I want to keep people’s attention with a blog, I actually have to POST, at least more regularly than I have been doing. The current occasion is the Hudson Valley Business Edge 2010 Conference, an event that I highly recommend if you’re in the region and work in a small to medium size business, especially as an Owner, Proprietor or Principal. The presenters are all very knowledgeable, and the content is presented in a very dense manner, in short, accessible sessions. Last year I presented on “When Do You Need a Design Pro?”, and hope to do so again on subjects graphic. But to the point, while I fairly recently posted back on June 7th, the one before was March 20th.
I have been busy, hence the lean posting. So this time around I’ll talk about a recent client experience.
This is a long term client that I have been working with for many years. I’ve built and rebuilt his website, will do it again soon. This time around I was updating his brochure. This is a fairly standard tri-fold brochure, a pretty common and useful staple of business marketing. This item is usually not a terrific chore if you have a focused client, and their graphic identity is already in place. Typically brochures are put together after logo design and identity projects are complete. But what happens when your client is perhaps over focused
The short answer is: 63 design comps, seven candidate “final” versions. Three rounds of pre-press, PDFs and AAs. Hundreds of photo retouches and composites. 2.4 gigabytes of data. And sent the press proofs back to press… twice. What on earth happened here? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Career, Creative Pro, design, Designers, Desktop Publishing, Graphics, Indesign Brochure, Marketing, Printing, Web Design
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June 7th, 2010
Taking Print content to the Web
Yes, it’s been months since I’ve posted here. And haven’t been that active in my Live Journal or Facebook pages either. The Studio’s been busy, folks. And have been shoving a number of projects through the house. And when you’re a self employed Creative Pro, paid bookable hours trumps blogging. I had been tempted to rant on about the evolving throwdown between Adobe vs Apple vs Google (sort of) vs Mircosoft, centering around the mobile market, web standards, web video, HTML5 and Flash. But the simmering war of words, with flaming fanboy camps tossing off on each side has grumped me out, and it can wait.
So I decided to talk about some of the under the hood tech that makes contemporary web sites work, with a bit of diversion about bringing print content online. I’m going to pitch this to the web user and business reader, so my fellow web pros will probably be bored to tears. But for the rest of you, we’ll demonstrate the main idea of the marriage of HTML and CSS by taking a look “backstage” with a print and web design project called, Living in The Petri Dish. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Blogging, Browsers, Creative Pro, CSS, design, Designers, Graphics, HTML, Web Design
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March 20th, 2010
Some of you may, and some of you may not know this, since I haven’t talked about it here. But I do have a Facebook account, then of course, like any good Design Pro, I have a Page for the Studio. And as more of my clients ask about *gasp* social networking, I have to become more familiar with some of the options and technologies.
Now this blog is powered by WordPress, WP hacks can tell from the very lightly modified default Kubrick page design. But one of the things I love about WP is that there is not only an abundant supply of themes, but also a HUGE zoo of plug-in to perform all manner of digital legerdemain. Since I have been manually posting notifications on FB about my Blog Posts here, I figured, with the rising popularity of Facebook, there was probably an app or plug-in that would allow Me to post notices to the page automatically. So after a bit of research, I’ve installed the WordBook Plug-in on the blog. This was literally it’s test flight.
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Tags: Blogging, Creative Pro, design, Designers, Facebook, Social Media, Web Design, Wordpress, World Wide Web
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March 8th, 2010
No Snow Days
This is going to be a pretty random post.
Deal with it. But I’ll try to say something of interest. In the interest of learning more about using the WordPress back end, I had to apply myself to digging under the hood in the tech realm of server file permissions. Look it up if you’re curious. The issue I had was getting the image upload feature to work properly. It errored out with folder permission problems. And all the more irritating, since another installation I did for a client was functioning perfectly. So… WTF?
A trip to the WordPress Codex and Docs and I got enough info to fire up my FTP app and massage the permissions on my web server and got it working. Hmmm… guess it should test it? What to upload?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Business, Clients, Commuting, Content Management Systems, Creative Pro, Facebook, home, Self-employed, Snow, Studio, Wordpress, Work
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