New Site

OK, I've made the switch.

From this point on I'll be blogging on my main site over at Lowe Studio Inc. (http://www.lowestudio.com)

It still needs a LOT of work but at this point I just gotta get it up and work on it when I find little gaps of time.

This blog will still be here I think. I'm still debating whether I need to separate my personal rants and observations from my actual design stuff...but the new blog let's me categorize my posts, so maybe it isn't an issue.

Either way there's like 3 years of crude here I probably don't want to delete so I can look back and laugh at myself one day.

To those silent readers out there...thanks for sticking with me all this time. For some reason if you find what I write interesting, then I'm both honored and a little sorry for you at the same time. I know, you just like hearing my screwups.

I'll be "seeing" ya over at the new site!

Getting kinda sick of the Olympics aren't you?

About the new site, sorry it's just taking me WAY longer then I expected to put all my information up. With my big mouth there's just too much to say. Not to mention I'm juggling a work load that's superhuman right now and I'm fighting the urge not whine about it

Hey, having too much business is a GOOD thing! At least that's what I have to keep telling myself when I'm up at 2 in the morning and my wife is happily snoring away in bed.

The other day I was in one of my pissy moods half groggily driving my wife to work. On the radio I hear the story about how the US swimmer Michael Phelps has this super grueling schedule between all his races, how he gets up at 6 in the morning, hops in a billion pools to win gold medals all before lunch, saves babies from drowning, yadda yadda. I'm like, "Fucking Phelps...that kid is ruining the curve for the rest of us underachievers in the world. Now we can't complain about anything!"

Anyway, give me about a week and I'll be de-butt-ing my new website. I'll probably be full of holes while I continue to flesh it out but at least it'll be up before I start this Fall lecture course at KCC.

3rd Anniversary

You know, this month somewhere around this time marks the 3rd Anniversary of Lowe Studio Inc. That was freakin' fast! It's still a little hard to grasp that somehow I'm getting this done, I'm surviving on my own.

What was significant about year 3 in business? I think at this point you're just slightly less concerned about where the money is going to come from. I mean the effect is very slight -- I still stress sometimes mind you, but I've kind of struggled through 2 prior years before and survived. So it's easier these days to just shrug my shoulders and go, "Meh, it's slow right now but it'll pick up in a few weeks"

The client base is a LITTLE steadier. You've picked up enough clients here and there that there's some steady repeat work, while picking up new clients is also slightly easier now that there's some portfolio built up.

Banks don't look at you like you're a retard anymore. You've paid your dues on your own for 3 years so now the banks don't consider you as huge a risk as they did before. Thank God or else this new condo wouldn't have been possible.

I think year 4 will be a different challenge altogether. I'll write a book, "How to run your own business with playing Mr Mom with a screaming toddler in your office" Yikes!

New site soon

This may be the last one or two posts I'll have here on this blog. Yeah don't go pretending like you don't read my blog once in a while to see how Raph screws things up now and again. I know you're out there.

No no no, I'm not quitting this. I need an outlet to talk about what I do and how my life is going. Like I said since day 1, this blog started more as therapy for myself to get away from the stress of everything and just let it out.

The good news is I'm FINALLY close to getting a new updated website out that will finally let me bring all the elements of my work together in one place. I can get rid of my Flash website (managing it was a pain), tie in this blog, and then integrate my portfolio.

Since I'll also be teaching a college course this Fall, I'm going to have my course and syllabus information on there to. We'll have resource links for the students as well as recommended reading materials. Whether you're a student of mine or not, that kind of stuff is always useful don't you think?

This effort to get a site up for Lowe Studio has been ongoing for 2.5 years. I simply cannot please myself. It's way easier to create things for others in my opinion. I've ditched over a half dozen sites I've started for myself over these years. I like them one night and then I wake up the next morning and go, "DAMN!" *delete*

Finally I just found stuff out there I can use. Clean and simple.

So anyway, I'll be porting this blog content into my new site that will be run via Wordpress. If for some reason, my transferring screws up this blog somehow in the next week or two, you'll know why. Just check back at my main domain URL and you should see the new stuff soon!

New software again

Yeah yeah, I know I sound like a broken record, "buy lightroom, buy lightroom". Yadda yadda.

Hey you know what, in my little business this is just about the only news I have relevant to what I do. Well, except for taxes of course. But that's nowhere near as fun.

Anyway, I'm a few days late but the full release of the lastest Lightroom 2.0 is out. If you're a NAPP member you can get the upgrade for around $85 and it supports multiple licenses so I had it installed on both my MAC and PC machines without any problems.

Once again, if you do any photography at all this is the program to get. The other night my uncle was in town and I heard him discussing this with my father. They had just returned from a 2 week long trip to the Canadian Rockies and returned with about 4000 digital images of their trip. Beautiful shots.

Both of them are somewhat like camera buffs. My dad was always somewhat of a good photographer since I was born. While my uncle just picked up a new Nikon D40 or something right before going off on this trip. They're all going off about whether or not they can fit my dad's 30-year old camera lenses on my uncle's new DSLR...

ANYHOO...they come back after this trip with all these photos taken with loving care on their fancy new cameras, and what do they do? They spend this huge discussion about which free software is better then the other to catalog and "fix" their images. They're using software that would require them to manually drag each photo off their camera one at a time, use multiple steps to do simple fixing tasks (permanently damaging the photos BTW), and then manually cataloging it. At this rate, I think my dad will have his 4000 photos ready for me to see by early 2010.

With the risk of sounding elitist....I say, look....if you can spend thousands of dollars on your fancy cameras, you can spend about $80 for a program that help you with the photos that come out of them. It'll save you countless hours, plus it's damn fun to use. It REALLY is, it makes some of my crappiest photos look somewhat half decent. No brainer.

Go git.

Little Lowe

Well, the cat's out of the bag for many of the closest people in our lives, I guess it shouldn't hurt to announce the coming of our little one next year.

How's that for fast huh? About a week before our move this little surprise news came into our lives. I think we're still in denial because my wife really isn't showing yet and there's no sign of any morning sickness.

One day a few years into the future, this little one might be looking back and reading this very post from Dad. I'll say this to you now, "Babe...I love ya. But you picked a helluva time to come"

More pics of our new home and recent small house party are up.

Tricksies

Illustrators can be pretty mischievous if you rub them the wrong way. Remember all those stories about Disney cartoonists who would put all these promiscuous hidden objects in the Little Mermaid cartoon?

Well, an associate of mine sent me the funny illustration above. On the surface it looks like 2 dancers....or does it?

Font Humor

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Here's a little font humor...whodathunk? I thought it was pretty cute. But the commentary for videos like this are pretty interesting too.

When you talk about font types, some designers (most?), are VERY touchy about it. I see some people have their favorite fonts and never stray from them for decades. Others are so good with their type they can recognize even the most obscure ones just by sight.

Me? Well, I think I have growing interest in it....I'm the type where I'd walk by a movie poster and try to see if I can recognize the fonts they used for it. But I'm not hardcore to the point where I need to argue with someone about why Helvetica is the best font ever.