08 25 2008 / 11:20

The picture below was taken during the ‘golden hour’ — which in this case was at 6pm sharp — at Balboa Park, one of the best art & culture spots in San Diego. This can make it a tourist trap, but once in a while it’s worth it to elbow your way through the bustling crowds and enjoy the pleasant summer evening.

08 22 2008 / 14:31

I’ve set a challenge for myself, and it’s to come up with at least one wallpaper a month to showcase and share with you, my totally awesome reader. It helps me hone my Photoshop Jit Su, and it’s a free little piece of eyecandy to sweeten up the sometimes depressing world wide web.

August for me was always the time summer vacation ended and school started. No more beach bonfires or sitting on the boardwalk at night, watching the waves come in. I despise the heat in the day but I love staying out on hot summer nights. So, inspired by that, here is the start to a monthly wallpaper feature:

08 18 2008 / 13:10

I’ve yet to see an episode of Heroes, but this minimalist photoshoot of actress Hayden Panettiere caught my eye. I love editorial design and most of the time I’ll look through fashion rags more for the glossy adverts and featured photoshoots than the articles themselves. Ad campaigns for the fashion industry tend to be done with a remarkably high level of polish and artistic quality, and it’s that level of quality I strive for in my own work.

From an aesthetic and design perspective, this photoshoot is a great example of simple, uncluttered design. The white-on-white adds a subtle, classical touch and makes for a beautiful contrast against the warm tan of her skin. This brings a design mantra to mind: You know it’s done not when you can’t add anything more, but when you can’t take anything else away.

08 7 2008 / 16:36

“Tell the Truth” — a rap collaboration by Mos Def, Immortal Technique, and Eminem — is a passionate political statement slamming the Bush administration’s actions regarding 9/11 and his War of Terrorism. Watch with caution if you’re at work, or at least put the headphones on so you don’t get in trouble.

08 5 2008 / 13:31

I attended a meetup for local bloggers last week and it’s always nice to connect the faces behind the screens. Some had personal blogs, while others had sites geared towards webdev and technology, travel, business, food, and what have you. The main requirement for starting up any sort of blog is a keen interest in the subject, so we were united not as much by our topic niches but by our commitment and passion for what we wrote about. If you think about it, you might as well like what you’re going to be writing if you’re going to stay committed and expend all that time and effort on it.

Which brings me to the next point…

08 1 2008 / 14:06

First off, let’s all wish Creative Curio a happy birthday — today is the site’s one-year anniversary! LaurenMarie’s got some great resources over there, and I consider her site to be an authority on how to optimize your designs for press so they print beautifully. That’s not all she writes about, though, so check her site out for lessons on design principles and Photoshop/InDesign best practices.

It’s not a mental asylum, it’s art school

Now, with the school season about to start back up, I know some people are preparing to go to art school. Having gone through the wringer myself, I’ve learned a thing or two. Perhaps these little pearls of wisdom will serve some good to you or someone you know.

07 30 2008 / 14:18

There are tons of articles written about the benefits of writing lean, semantic code, and designing with web standards in mind. The SEO Rapper has managed to compile all of these best practices into a concise, entertaining video that takes less time to watch than it takes to get through a single article. Who knows? Some brave soul might even attempt this at the next TechKaraoke Night. Enjoy!

07 23 2008 / 11:37

Here’s a little something to make you laugh over the lunch hour - what if there were no stop signs, and a large corporation was tasked with inventing one? A scary true-to-life re-enactment of what really does happen with some projects and the clients who commission them.

07 22 2008 / 16:59

Previously, “social networking” was the exclusive territory of sites like Myspace and Facebook. Now, a ton of smaller, more specialized social networking sites have crept up, each serving a particular niche. Here are a few notable ones…

07 16 2008 / 14:51

Last night I went to an event at the LaFayette Hotel for local Twitter users to meet up and get to know each other. Drinks were had, along with breaded chicken tenders for appetizers (as well as some wierd red quesadillas that went mostly untouched), and many pretty faces. I’ve met some new Twitterfolk — Twits? Twitteers? Twitterers? Twitters? That last one sounds like a breaded appetizer — and it was a great chance to expand my social network.

A lot of the people who attended either work directly or are interested in new and developing technologies (a fancy way of saying “I like/get paid to play on the Internet”), so it was a comfort to find that — should I say it? We were all birds of a feather.

Now, I must confess, I’ve always been a little weary of diving deep into social media…