So you’re about to start the best project in the world and are thrilled to have it in your portfolio. Fast-forward twenty days and you’re now wishing that you’d never agreed to do this project because your client has forgotten why they hired you as a designer–to build something really great. It’s safe to say that that most of us in the industry have experienced a similar situation. Feel free to vent your story in the comments.
Hit the jump to read the comic and have a good laugh.
Over the last few weeks my network on Twitter has grown larger enabling me to give away a bunch of t-shirts to lucky followers. I have plans to do more in the near future. Thing that I like to do on Twitter include: posting interesting photos from my iPhone, links to interesting articles, links to awesome videos, links to websites, and shoutouts at follows/designers/photographers.
Quite a few of my readers are already on Twitter, but for the rest, sign up and follow @Wanken!
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The first time listening to this talk by Malcolm Gladwell at the 2008 AIGA Business Design Conference was eye opening. The first few minutes of the video pulled me in as Josh Liberson steps onto the stage, introduces himself, and then proceeds to tell us of how Malcolm knows nothing of design. Malcolm then comes to the stage and starts speaking about Fleetwood Mac–I’d never heard of the band at this point–and I began to wonder where he was going with the topic.
It’s not until the second and third time listening in that you’ll really start to process what Malcolm is saying and how to apply it. So lets back up and look at his points main points:
Dedicate at least 10,000 hours to whatever it is you’re trying to master.
Only 10,000 hours? Well, yes. If you look at the time it takes to master something, it takes about 10,000 hours–that’s roughly four hours a day for ten years. It’s not to say that creativity and mastership of a profession can’t be had overnight or in a shorter period of time, but it just doesn’t happen for most people unless they’re solving a problem that can be summed up that simply.
Malcolm then goes on to say that the choice of profession is not trivial–I agree. The example that Malcolm uses is that if you decide to be a teacher, being a great teacher is not something that simply happens. It is something that comes out of an investment of your time (10,000 hours) and the things you’re a part of. You can’t just walk in and become a teacher and be great at it. It simply doesn’t work like that. The same goes for being a designer, photographer, or a profession in any other field. It takes time to learn and and develop each of the creative tasks and then solve them.
Additionally, someone could invest a large amount of time to a profession and still be terrible. You have to take into account the quality of the time and the underlying intent for spending that time.
Here is the link to the video again as well as a transcript of it word-for-word so you can gather more information from his enlightening talk.
This election has been one of the largest elections in history with a huge turnout in both the youth and middle-age groups. Leading up to the election there was a lot of skepticism to which candidate would be the best choice to lead and be the president.
With Obama having 338 Electoral votes to McCain’s 156, this election was nearly a landslide. You can still see the voting polls at Cnn.com.
Two speeches were made tonight, one from McCain and one from Obama. McCain’s speech came before Obama’s and was, in my opinion, one of his strongest and best speeches that he has done in all of his campaigning this year. It was straight forward and supportive of Obama’s election despite the booing of his very own supporters. Here is a quote of what McCain said:
“Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country…” and continued on to call Obama a “good man.” I do really think that this was an outstanding gesture to not only Obama, but to the McCain’s supporters. It hopefully gives them faith to support Obama through McCain’s support for him.
After McCain’s speech, Obama spoke at Grant Park in Chicago where he spoke a great and welcoming speech that included this:
“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America–I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you–we as a people will get there.”
Congratulations to our new President, Barack Obama. We will all be supporting and awaiting the new changes to come.
Our Friends over at Substance seem to be having some fun. They just moved into the new Substance Head Quarters. Some of their moving day was captured via flip cam.
Substance Moving Day from Substance on Vimeo.
Nacho Challenge
All moved in and now they’re off to the Substance Nacho Challenge. I’m not sure if this was fun in the end, or if this was torture, but some things to know before you watch:
- Cory, Shaun and Erin are the competitors.
- Each container of nachos was from 711.
- There is no way these nachos tasted great.
The Nacho Challenge from Substance on Vimeo.
Canon Canada seems to be taking a new approach by teaming up with Avril Lavigne. Why Avril? There are so many other well known people that would appeal to a larger audience.
Go to http://shootlikeastar.ca and you can sign up for their photo contest and possibly win some goods.
Photoshop CS4’s new Adjustments panel (Screenshot courtesy Adobe)
Today Adobe has announced the availability of Photoshop CS 4 and the entire Creative Suite 4. It features a tabbed interface, enhanced color correction and non-destructive editing tools. After using Photoshop CS4, I noticed quite a bit of areas where they speed things up. The interface is also much smoother and fluid than CS3.
Here are a list of things to look for in Photoshop CS4:
-Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation
-Adjustments panel
-Auto-blending of images
-Improved Adobe Photoshop Lightroom workflow
-Masks panel
-Better raw image processing (for us Photogs)
-Extended depth of field
-Content-Aware Scaling (this is very cool)
-Ability to work with 3D objects with one Click
Check out all of these features and more.
Also available today are the following: Photoshop® CS4, Photoshop CS4 Extended, InDesign® CS4, Illustrator® CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver®CS4, Fireworks® CS4, Contribute® CS4, After Effects® CS4, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4, Encore® CS4, Soundbooth® CS4 and Adobe OnLocation™ CS4. Pricing for the new programs is available at Adobe’s online store.
To those who didn’t make this event, shame on you, it was awesome. Besides Chase’s two Hangar photo events he hasn’t made a public speaking event like this since 2001. This was my first of his events that I’ve been to since living in Seattle. The book signing took place at REI in one of the conference centers on the top floor.
The purpose of the event was to sort of launch Chase’s new Stevens Pass photo book. You can visit the microsite for the book, here. Unsurprisingly the book sold very well and there were about 200+ people in attendance. If you have a few bucks, snag a book before they go out of stock.
With there being quite a few people and each having their book autographed, I was only able to sneak in two questions for Chase. The first concerning the amount of web traffic that his site gets and the second one was asking him who is doing the design end of things for the business. After the questions, I snagged a few pictures of the crowd and Chase’s assistant/right hand man Scott, raffling off items. Along with the raffle, there was a silent auction of Stevens Pass season passes to benefit the Northwest Avalanche Center. I’ve posted some pictures from the event and also one of the videos that was played during the presentation.
Nearly every chair was filled–picture was taken right before everything was wrapped up.
There were 3954 still frames were used in this video, pretty cool right? Here are some words from industry known professionals:
“Chase’s images have always had that certain intangible quality that set them apart. It takes a photographer who really knows skiing and snowboarding to document it well, and Stevens Pass captures this beautifully… What I also love about this book is that the photos go beyond cliff hucks and deep powder. By including some beautiful scenics, some quiet moments, and images of little tykes learning to ski, Chase has made this book something that everyone can enjoy.”
- Chris Jerard Associate Publisher | Freeskier and Snowboard Magazines“Images and moments from one of Washington’s classic ski areas, Chase’s photos provide an intimate look at contemporary NW ski and snowboard culture.”
- Jeff Galbriath, Publisher, The Ski Journal & frequency: The Snowboarder’s Journal“If a picture really is worth a thousand words than Chase Jarvis’ images from Stevens Pass go a long way toward putting us writers out of business.”
- Crai S Bower, 2008 Northern Lights Award Winning Writer
Prior to taking this test I was unsure if I could distinguish between some of the color chips. Now that I know I’m able to see the hues correctly, I’m curious who else can.
Post your results in the comments.
You tend to not realize how large a city is until you can’t find what you’re looking for. These past two weekends a friend and myself have been looking for some bmx trails/jumps that I was told were on Queen Anne. Well needless to say, we didn’t find the trails, but we did stumbled upon quite a few great locations to shoot photos and some interesting vantage points looking over Seattle as well as a more northern look towards the University of Washington.
This shot has nothing to do with the search except for the fact that you can see just how large Queen Anne is. Check out the Map print out below.
The darkened area is the area that we covered twice. The area where the lines are drawn is the area that we only passed through. If anyone knows the whereabouts of these so-called trails, please leave a comment or send me an email.
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