I don’t have as much time to read as I used to. Which MAY possibly be just another contributing factor to my design blocks in recent weeks. I’m thinking about this new book from Stephen King called “Under the Dome” which sounds like a good read.

Interesting that Amazon had this little tidbit about the design of the bookcover:

“The jacket concept for Under the Dome originated as an ambitious idea from the mind of Stephen King. The artwork is a combination of photographs, illustration and 3-D rendering. This is a departure from the direction of King’s most recent illustrated covers.

In order to achieve the arresting image for this jacket, Scribner art director Rex Bonomelli had to seek out artists who could do a convincing job of creating a realistic portrayal of the town of Chester’s Mill, the setting of the novel. Bonomelli found the perfect team of digital artists, based in South America and New York, whose cutting edge work had previously been devoted to advertisement campaigns. This was their first book jacket and an exciting venture for them. “They are used to working with the demands of corporate clients,” says Bonomelli. “We gave them freedom and are thrilled with what they came up with.”

The CGI (computer generated imagery) enhanced image looks more like something made for the big screen than for the page and is sure to make a lasting impact on King fans.”

It IS actually quite an arresting bookcover art. I was impressed when I first saw it at the bookstore. Now if only I get to read to story to find more about how this image was inspired!

If I can sum up this year…I’d say it’s been a huge life change. 10 months after Kingston arrived in my life it’s been amazingly rewarding and yet amazingly frustrating at the same time.

The amazing parts are obvious. If you don’t have a child in your life yet (wait don’t rush into it!), it’s hard to explain, but even the SMELL of your child is invigorating. No, we’re not talking about the stuff that comes out of the bottom end. But the smell of his hair, his face, even his baby breath is something I love.

I’m sure they’ll come a day when he’ll wake up with hauna (Hawaiian for stink) breath someday. But for now I’m enjoying what I can. When Kingston laughs, my whole world laughs with him.

The frustrating part of this year comes as an indirect result of such major life changes. I’ve faltered a bit in my business and it’s been personally very stressful and debilitating. My business is a bit like my first child…a big part of my pride and personality is thrown into Lowe Studio, and now it’s like I forgot about my first child because all my attention is on Kingston.

The last thing I want is for my clients, new and old, to think, “Oh, I can’t go to Lowe Studio anymore because he’s distracted with his kid”. I think there’s been a little of that going on I’m sad to say and I’m sure it may have affected a client here and there.

Why bring this up? Meh, you know guys…I’ve always had this web log of my business since the day I started this company. Once in a while I like going back 3 or 4 years and reading up on what might have been good and bad times back when. I want to be able to document all the bad parts of my business experiences just as much as I want to do the good parts…one day 3 years from now I can read this and think about how I might have tackled this problem.

What can I do? I’m not sure I have an easy answer to that. Apparently I might have to reverse the usual mantra “Work smarter, not harder” and for a while I’ll just have to work harder for a change until I get back on the good foot.

Apparently I’m not smart enough yet….

Kingston’s 10 months old now. He’s gotten to the point where he’d be considered actively mobile? I guess that’s the fancy way of saying he can get to where he wants to go whenever he wants to go.

Case in point…here I’ve caught him in the act of touching my audio equipment. I think he has a little bit of an idea that he isn’t supposed to go there. See how he looks at me while he does it? Oh yeah, those are the eyes of a guilty party I know it.

I can’t quite figure out how to discipline him yet. Back in my day my dad might have smacked me upside the head. I think today I’m trying to practice more civilized methods but I’m not sure he’ll get what a “timeout” is just yet either.

For now, it just amounts to Dad getting up every 5 minutes to pick him up as he beelines for my stuff.

I just finished my last evening of a series of non-credit photography classes yesterday. Overall I found it to be fun. In the 2nd class I don’t think I learned quite as much as I’d like to simply because it was a critique class and as these typically go…critique is often not quite as direct and harsh as is helpful. You know, sometimes you want people to look at your photo and say, “You know Raph, that photo really sucks because you didn’t put the flash in the right spot”

Instead, what you typically hear is “I like it”  I find this true whenever I try to get my students to critique each other when I teach as well. It’s a challenge encouraging people to both speak up AND do it in a manner that offers objective criticism to one another.

I digress. The reason I mention my Photography class was that I heard the news from our instructor that Lightroom has a new public beta out for version 3.  Long-time readers of mine may have heard me tout this program more than once in the past. Hey, I’m an Adobe fanboy what can I say?

You can download the beta version for free. Or you can just wait and watch some of the videos they have previewing some of the things you can do in this program. The vids are a little bit on the snore-fest side…but if you’re in any way interested in photography I think there’s enough there to tease you into conformity.

Note to Adobe though…I’m not a big fan of having to upgrade software every year. I liked it better when Adobe would historically release a major overhaul to their programs once every other year or so. I think 2 years between versions is good simply because I don’t want to spend so much on software and it allows the developers to really bake on revolutionary changes rather than just staggered upgrades.

/getting off my soapbox

A couple of my colleagues sent this link around lately. It’s a WIRED article that’s a couple years old already about Eye-Tracking Billboards. Try as I might I can’t find any more recent articles about this technology so I don’t know if it was an idea that just phased out of if there have been any test trials of this yet.

But I found it interesting. As a consumer, my initial gut reaction was to reel back from this a bit. It feels a little “ooogey”…a bit like they’re invading my privacy. Everywhere and everything we do these days from surfing the web, flipping channels on our TV, or recording shows on our TiVo is being recorded and analyzed by someone out there. Just having another thing monitor our activity out there feels viscerally wrong somehow. If I walk up to a billboard or poster and my eyes fixate on a woman’s boobs, it’s a little embarrassing having anyone know that.

Yet…as a graphic designer, I can’t help but feel technology like this is HUGE. I spend my career trying to help my clients guess (educated guess, but a guess nonetheless) about what their customers want to see and what makes them react. Armed with information that might tell me XXXX many people react to certain types of design and imagery, can greatly help me achieve the goals my clients want.

Besides, I don’t really care that company YYYY knows I looked at a boobie provided it’s an anonymous collection of data from every passerby rather than having data that’s specifically tied in with my personal information. I think that’s a huge distinction. In fact, it might help designers design more things that I like to see.  More boobies for everyone!

I thought this was a very interesting concept where psychology meets art meets interior design.

Artist Daniel Rybakken created this end-table that projects an illusion of sunlight coming through a window. You might think, “What’s the point of that?” But in practice, light can be shown to give a perception of expanded space. So if you’re stuck in a claustrophobic small window-less room, something like this might actually help.

Check out his other work, he seems to have several projects involving perception and light.

OK, I got a good laugh out of this one. (spotted on Monster-Munch)

On that note, what’s with all the sex scandals coming off of pageant women anyway? NOT that there’s anything wrong with it… *wink*

It’s been a slower month. It’s a little scary. Not because I haven’t had slow months before, but even after 4.5 years of business, I still panic when there’s a change in activity.

I keep thinking, “Is this it? Is this the big ‘recession’ everyone keeps talking about?” That kind of thinking can be bad for a small business owner like myself. I think some part of business is a self-fulfilling prophecy so as soon as such a thought comes up I try to rail back.

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The NY Times had this recent article about Typography purists…you know, those guys I’ve mentioned here and there that know everything and anything about fonts.

I think the article’s got a point about the issue that as a purist you might have a tendency to “spoil pleasant moments” Kinda like how my dad can’t enjoy 9 out of 10 of the restaurants we go to because he’s such a good cook himself?

I stumbled across these beautiful playing cards designed by Michelle Lam. Apparently it’s intended to inspire other designers with the use of typography and iconology. I think it’s quite nice, it’s inspired me thank you Michelle!

I’ve had a couple of people approach me to design playing decks for them before. Unfortunately in both cases they fizzled out for me as soon as they heard how much it might need in budget to design and print these things. Come on folks….54 cards in a deck?  That’s like 54 individual designs plus a package design to match?  It’s not easy I’ll tell you that.

But if I ever had a card deck project…I’d love to do something as nice as these…  (via Lovely Package)