70’s Logotype
Someone put up an out-of-print copy of old 70’s logotypes on Flikr. There’s some pretty beautiful stuff there. I know I’m personally highly influenced by art from this era because this was my dad’s day and I grew up watching him design stuff like this back then. (via Aqua Velvet)
read moreProduct Shots
Last week I took a stab at helping some friends take product shots for their online store. It’s kind of freebie work since I was hired to do their e-commerce site…I spent all that effort getting the site to look decent I wanted their shots to be somewhat better than what we could find online. Didn’t turn out half bad for some of these considering I didn’t have any extra light sources beyond just natural light and my on-camera strobe. I still give professional product shooters credit though, this kind of work is tough....
read moreBack in working shape
This was one hell of a rough weekend. We did heat treatment for our condo last week which meant that the house and office was a wreck. What they did was heat the whole unit over 130 degrees to basically cook the termites wherever they were in our house. So we practically had to stuff almost 75% of our belongings into boxes and hope and pray it didn’t all melt away in the process. Turned out we managed to get by ok…one of my expensive Polk Audio speakers was a little singed but should be ok, and unfortunately I killed my fish. (Yes...
read moreAss kicking
Sorry if you’re one of my clients trying to reach me by phone today it may be impossible. There’s construction vehicles outside of my office window that’s repaving the parking. Beyond the fact that it’s driving me insane with the noise, I don’t think there’s any way I can have a decent conversation by phone today so I’m just letting all calls go to voicemail. Stacked on top of that, we’ve had to pack up 50% of our house in boxes so we could hire some folks to do a heat termite treatment on our...
read moreFree Fonts
The words of the day are “Free Fonts” AAAAAAHHH /end my best Pee Wee Herman impersonation. You know, I don’t think I’ve EVER had the opportunity to use a handwritten script font in a project, which either means I’m unlucky in my projects, or I haven’t been creative enough. But either way, it’s nice to see there are some available options to use that won’t cost and arm and a leg. There are some nice ones on the list that look remarkably like some of the expensive fonts I see in the Adobe font...
read moreBlister in the Sun
I have to ask my brother about this. He’s living on Melbourne these days and I wonder if he’s gone to visit this installation yet? Apparently this animated sun can be manipulated in some way by anyone carrying an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. AAACK! Again nothing cool like this ever gets done in Hawaii! (via Gizmodo)
read moreSmokescreen
You know with all the hoopla going around with Flash vrs HTML5 these days, take it upon clever people out there to find an opportunity to do something about it. This Smokescreen project is aimed at giving advertisers/developers the option to convert Flash into HTML5…thus making it more iPad & iPhone friendly.
read moreForever Yum
My sister-in-law has a great talent in creating this knitted stuffed toys. Apparently this is an art called Amigurumi. I knew there was this growing culture in creating these things but I didn’t know they had an actual term for it all this time. I really dig that Katamari figure up at top…I’ll have to sweet talk her into making one for her favorite brother-in-law. I think you can check out the rest of her work over at her Facebook page, Forever Yum
read moreMemorial Day at the Park
Memorial Day weekend went well despite the fact most of our time was spent watching this little guy. He’s getting more and more brave and exploratory (is that the right word?) each day. He must really trust his mom & dad because he’ll just walk headlong off any ledge at all and just trust that we’ll catch him. Notice the pajama pants. I don’t know if he’s too young yet, but I’ve started letting him pick and choose his own clothing so we end up with the weirdest combinations.
read moreLiving the dream?
Having the “American Dream” isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. I have a beautiful family, nice home, good car…everyone’s healthy. I should feel like everything hunky dory but the weight of all this stuff to take care of feels really heavy at times. It’s no surprise of course, I knew when I altered my life heading in this direction a few years back that there would be these new responsibilities; but it’s one thing to know it and quite another thing to experience it. There are times where my...
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LoweStudio Inc was founded by me, Raphael Lowe, a Honolulu based illustrator and web designer. I presently design and manage a few dozen commercial websites, but my main focus these days is acting as the head developer for Kapiolani Community College and teaching