Marvel Wall Art
I’m really tempted to get some of this comic book wall-art. This company in the UK, called Surface View, sells wall murals or prints of classic or vintage Marvel comic artwork like the one above. This might be perfect for my “wall of inspiration” above my desk where I’ve begun collecting prints that I like to look at. I used to love comic book artwork right around the point it got really popular – John Byrne was fading away and being replaced by Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane. Unfortunately the artwork looked better...
read moreIKEA verdana
Here’s another font-related issue for your type purists out there. This was brought to my attention by a friend (and occasional reader) of mine who signed a petition on the issue that IKEA changed the design of their marketing material to use the Verdana font as opposed to some of their offshoot Futura fonts they’ve been using these many years. There’s more information from a ranting designer here. (via Iancul) Personally, I’m not sure what to think. I’m not a big fan of using Verdana (I think I might have used...
read moreLight Art Photography
Stumbled across another photography site that focuses on Light Art Performance Photography. It would be fun to do this. One problem is I don’t know anybody to come out and try this with me. Second problem is I don’t want to get mugged walking around some of the more sketchy areas around town in the middle of the night. I can imagine the story – Mugger says, “well what have we here?” Raph says, “Nothing sir, just me playing with lights and photos” Insert crying and running here…. (LAPP via...
read morePublic Speaking
I’ve been visiting some Toastmasters meetings recently. It’s part of my commitment to spend at least a little time each year for personal development. I figure, being able to do better public speaking will always be helpful to me no matter what happens to Lowe Studio in the coming years. While I’m not a great orator (is that the right word?), I wouldn’t count myself that bad. In fact, I don’t think I fear public speaking anymore these days. I’ve done it so many times it doesn’t phase me so much...
read more2 new websites
A couple of quick mentions of recent websites I’ve finished this week. I don’t think I’ve ever finished 2 websites on the same day before, but I guess the schedules just worked out this way. Both websites fell under similar budget constraints, but they each had very unique challenges. Above, the East Asian Marketing Strategy site was the first site in a good many years where I had to deal with foreign language type. As it turns out, it wasn’t near as hard as I imagined it. In fact, it was almost disappointingly simple...
read moreBooooo Google!
My email seems to be down today. (Bad gmail bad!) I can only assume it’ll be back up soon. It IS Google mail after all, how many people do they serve? I’m not the type to stress over having email down for a little while…in fact it might be a welcome break. Go ahead and continue trying to reach me by email if you can. Otherwise the best way to reach me today is by phone or text message. 808-781-9529
read moreBad robot
So my site has been down for about 24 hours. Did you miss me? (Sometimes I’d love to see the expressions on my reader’s faces, I bet there is more than one person out there rolling their eyes right now) The problem is that I had exceeded my bandwidth. Not that it was a big surprise, I had been monitoring the traffic to my site almost on a daily basis, hoping it wouldn’t go over. In fact, I had just increased the bandwidth a couple weeks back. It’s up to 17GB of bandwidth a month right now. Frankly, I have no allusions...
read moreBackOffice Solutions Hawaii
Finished a new logo brand this week. BackOffice Solutions Hawaii is a business designed to help support other new businesses and non-profit organizations. Say you need help with alternate financing, accounting, payroll, taxes, marketing, branding, etc, they’ll act as the backbone for you. I kind of wish I had access to support like this 5 years ago when I started Lowe Studio Inc! The stress of getting it all started was painful. Anyway, about the logo…we went through a series of pretty unusual ideas. When I have the chance...
read morePutzing around the mall
My wife complains of being bored in Hawaii every once in a while. I have to admit sometimes it’s rather limiting to be on an island…granted, it’s a big island and a good sized city here in Honolulu, but there’s only so much to you can do. Every weekend we usually go walk around the Mall. Yes, the same one week after week, Ala Moana. Yes, we have other malls here in Hawaii but they all really suck. You can walk around for about 30 minutes and then you’ve seen everything. Plus my wife’s not your typical...
read moreRandom Thoughts
It’s been too hot to think lately. A couple of near storms around the Hawaiian islands this season has come by and blocked our tradewinds. If you’ve never been to Hawaii….basically all year round we have weather that is near ideallic. But the one-time you don’t want to come here is when we don’t have our tradewinds. The humidity rises and it’s just to sticky and hot outside to do anything. I couldn’t even think yesterday, I had to drive down to work at a Starbucks for the air conditioning. The day is...
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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