Alan Houser

Today I was contacted by a designer friend, Anton Peck from antonpeck.com, who saw that I had posted some Socketcreep site designs on dribbble.com. The good news— Anton offered to provide me with some design work for the project!

I am thrilled, because the dude is talented.

What this means is, you can expect a few t-shirt designs, poster(s) and some killer DVD artwork! How awesome is that? (so-very)

Here's some of Anton's (unrelated) work:

"MOUNTAIN" © 2010 anton peck"ALIEN" © 2010 anton peck"HARDBOILED" © 2010 anton peck

I've been looking at cameras for years, going back to the early 90's. I've always rented, as purchasing the latest thing took a serious investment, and the realization that whatever I get will be out of date within six months.

Jeff (Crone) and I were passing emails back & forth about camera models, and Jeff suggested I look at the Canon EOS 7D DSLR. I've heard of others who were thrilled by the quality, but never considered shooting a film with a DSLR.

Last night I spent a little time searching for "7D" tags on Vimeo, and after what I saw (see below), I was totally sold.

I just spent an hour talking to my good friend Randy Thomson of Cameras & Crew in Fishers, IN. Randy has been doing live production work for over 20 years now. He is one of those guys who has every last piece of video, projection, editing and audio gear that you see at the big corporate events. In-short, he knows cameras VERY well.

After talking to him about our production needs, he confirmed that the 7D would be perfect. Even more-so than a pro-sumer Sony model. The main reason is that the Canon has gorgeous glass lenses that are inter-changeable. He also confirmed that the depth-of-field that an SLR can provide is what filmmakers are after.

Here's only a few examples of the 7D footage out there... enjoy!

Being a very visual person, I tend to have to sink my teeth into more-tangible things to make sure I'm heading in the right direction. I really think this process of pre-planning and even location-scouting, helped me come-up with the general concepts of the film.

The script hasn't been finished, but tonight I drove-out to map-out potential locations to shoot. It wasn't a difficult trip; it's my home-town.

Sheridan, IN is your typical small Indiana town. We have a few restaurants and several "mom and pop" businesses. Most everything has been untouched for decades. The businesses that sprout-up quickly usually will move-into pole-barn construction, which just has a very temporary feeling. The only "strip mall" in town is this type of construction.

I love our little town, and I can't wait to help put it on the map.

In this video, you'll see Sheridan's Main street, a few parks, the American Legion (bingo hall) and a few other small businesses. As you'll see, it's a very amateur video. I drove around with my iPhone and really didn't pay-attention to what I was saying. :-) Enjoy!

Oh, and that ending? I snuck my iPhone into Dollar General Store and shot totally incognito, only to learn later I was holding it upside down. Instant. Art. Film.

Today, I am thrilled that I finally came-up the the missing part of the plot.

I have goosebumps just thinking how perfect this little story is. Once I filled-in the blanks, I immediately called Terry to get his opinion.

As per usual when I'm on the phone, I paced-around the house telling the story, dusting and re-arranging Missi's various home accessories. When I'm really excited about an idea, I tend to walk and jump-around so much, that I lose my breath.

Terry really liked the direction, and immediately added a few things that rounded-off the sharp bits.

Our next step is to write the script so that all people involved with the project will get an idea of what we expect.

I really want to spill the details, but I think at this time I'm going to wait until we're a little bit deeper.

How does a film project really start? This one starts right here.

I thought it would be fitting to fully-document this project, both because I'm glued to the interwebs and also because I love reading all of the gory details in other people's projects.

A real inspiration for this site is Mike Davidson, who's blogging about building his modern home. It's a unique project, and why not document each and every step?

For the entire decade of the 90's, I produced corporate/industrial videos for an audio-visual company and in-house at a local pharmaceutical company. For the past decade, I've been designing websites. Aside from occasionally painting and podcasting, it's occurred to me that I really miss creating art. And no, I really don't feel that designing websites is art. It's a problem-solving business.

So here I am. I've started co-writing this film called Socketcreep. Terry Coffey is the co-writer, and when we get to production, I'll be Producing/Directing.

I'm excited beyond what you can even imagine. Let's do this...

It's been a busy month here at Creative Component!

After the launch of Squareflair.com a few months back, I've been so busy with Squarespace development I could puke jump for joy. Seriously, if there's any question about my love for this platform, then you don't follow me on Twitter, so do that now.

Here's what was just released into the wild, and there's more that are wrapping-up very soon.

This observation takes me back several months in the the dribbble-sphere.

If you're a web designer, then you already know about the insanely-awesome site called dribbble over at dribbble.com.

"I liked it so much, I bought the shirt!" -- A. Houser

in their words

Dribbble is show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives. Share sneak peeks of your work as “shots” — small screenshots of the designs and applications you’re working on.

Designers are "drafted" to play, and by "play", I mean post images of what we're working on. It's an extremely-social atmosphere, and you can actually get some great feedback through the process of posting design iterations.

I was drafted by my good friend Eric about 5 months ago, when it was still considered a private beta. Even with thousands of players, the public couldn't view player's shots.

"Behold, the Ampersand" by Alan Houser (my fave), courtesy dribbble.com

Then the ads came. Today they appear on the right-side of the site, typical to site banner advertising, the ads are outside the context of what people are there to do. One of these early advertisers was MailChimp, one of the leaders in newsletter software.

... months and months go by ... (segway music here) ... dribbble is now a public site, meaning that the world can go view activity. They still can't participate unless they're a drafted player. While that part adds a bit of tension for outsiders, it seems to keep the quality at the highest level possible.

A few weeks back, I noticed that Dan Rubin, designer to the stars, posted a few MailChimp images, and this week, I see Veerle Pieters is now posting some. (all posted below)

Between these four images, there were 2,816 eyeballs that clicked-in to view the images. These eyeballs were mostly designers who are potential MailChimp customers, decision-makers or at the very-least, influencers.

It's this designer's opinion that MailChimp targeted these top designers, knowing (possibly encouraging) them to post shots on dribbble. Maybe it's far-fetched to assume that MailChimp recognized this awesome opportunity, but these dribbble shots posted by the web's top designers are ads themselves, and the very essence of social marketing. And that's why I say IT'S GENIUS.

Visit me on dribbble.

"Mmm, Paper." by Dan Rubin, courtesy dribbble.com

"Finishing touches" by Dan Rubin, courtesy dribbble.com

"Where's Freddy Looking?" by Dan Rubin, courtesy dribbble.com

"Bricks X Dots" by Veerle Pieters, courtesy dribbble.com

When working on Adam's website, we had the discussion towards the end about his brand.

I was in the process of changing the site's title text, and added the little orange dot in-palce of "just a period". I then emailed Adam and joked how just this orange dot should be his logo.

Then it hit me:

What if the front of a business card is all black, like the site, and only says ".director"? (An incredibly simple, yet bold stroke, or so I thought)

To begin working on the card concept, I asked Adam "what would you like on the card?" and he responded "Name, Phone and Email... there isn't much more we need is there?" I agreed. Appreciating his grasp of simplicity, I gladly made the backside of the card as basic as possible.

After the second iteration, I realized that we didn't even list the website on the card! I designed the site, and forgot that all-important part!? It's funny how something so obvious can stare you right in the face.

For the third, and final design (below) I kept the full website heading on the front, then for the back I just swapped the .director with a .com, and — BOOM! Nailed it! — Back-away from the computer, this thing is done!

From front-to-back, the client/card-holder knows that Adam is a director, and appreciates a simple statement.

In this case, the identity wasn't forced at all.
It just sort-of arrived.

I'm happy to announce the launch of another Creative Component Squarespace site. This is one of several projects I'm working on with Adam. You will soon see that the man is one talented Director.

Enjoy AdamRichardJones.com

The Godfather of Web Design, and my Web Design mentor, made my month brighter with one Tweet. I love this guy.

For over 20 years, I've wanted to make a film. Before my decade of professional web design (2000-today), I worked for a decade in audio-visual production, working on commercial/industrial video production.

As you can imagine, I have several original film ideas, but sometimes with the unkown, the starting is the hardest part. I quickly realized that without a team to work with, my dreams of becoming a filmmaker would never be a reality.

Taking the plunge.

I decided the easiest project out of the gate would be a short film. I called-upon co-writer and close friend, Terry Coffey, and after a few weeks of passionate chewing, I have a great concept for a short art film that we're going to write together. I will also be Producing/Directing.

This is going to be awesome!

Follow the project behind-the-scenes, over at SOCKETCREEP.COM

I've always wondered if users ask "why do I need to re-type my password?"

Soundcloud keeps it simple for humans. Nice job!

Adobe Flash Catalyst is currently in its second beta, and I thought I would try it out.

The product is designed to be used between design and development teams, if your end product is Flash. I don't work in Flash, and know very few Flash developers to try, so why would I bother using Catalyst?

As a UI Designer, I work with many front-end and back-end developers. I will often create wireframes depicting page interactions, and will move-on to specify a higher-fidelity design. I've found that one of the more-difficult things to communicate are interactions or animations with moving parts. It's sometimes too late after a component is built to say "no, it should move like this".

After a few hours of playing with Adobe Flash Catalyst, I can say that it’s not as fast for rapid prototyping (as Fireworks or iPlotz) but once you learn the basics, it is fast for showing page interactions, and even animations within those interactions.

Here's a teeny, quick example I built. (on a parked domain)

To Summarize, I'm trying to use Catalyst to better-communicate to developers and clients, by showing advanced interactions on a wireframe.

Exporting
I thought I would use the exported SWF file within a Confluence wiki, but considering there are so many linked files, it looks like the exported files should be installed on a traditional hosted environment. I may even consider running interaction demos locally, while connecting to clients via WebEx/Skype.

You can also export a complete, installable AIR application, which is way-more portable.

Try it out!

For the past few weeks I've been running a Twitter contest, asking designers to tell the world why they love design.

There were some incredible entries, but I'm particularly-fond of this one:

I cannot agree more. Design is not art or necessarily making something pretty. While art is partly made from design, Design should be though of as SOLVING PROBLEMS. And when solving those problems, I get a high from it as well.

I don't consider myself a "blogger" or a writer, so I'll point you to a great article on the topic. Joshua Porter is known for his controversial "Design is (sort-of) not Art" stance. Design is Not Art, Redux (bokardo.com)

So congrats Dani Kelley! @accidentalArt | accidental-artist.com

Subscribe to this journal's RSS and friend me on Twitter so you won't miss the next contest!

Our next episode of CreativeXpert Design Interviews is now live.

43 Kristina Halvorson {43} Content Strategy by CreativeXpert Design Interviews

This week on the show, we had the great opportunity to talk about Web Content Strategy with Brain Traffic's founder, Kristina Halvorson, one of the leading practitioners in the web content world.

Listen to the show now!

In this episode we speak with Dan Rubin about forming solid partnerships with other designers, developers and creative peeps.

Holy Cannolis! Did you hear about CreativeXpert’s nomination for Podcast of the Year? Why haven’t you voted!? Vote at www.thenetawards.com … NOW!

In this episode we speak with Scott Belsky, founding partner of Behance, designers of products and services that organize the creative world. The creative community is responsible for making the things that make life interesting and enjoyable. On the other hand, the creative community is probably the most disorganized community on the planet. Behance enables the creative individual to make ideas happen.

We’re joined by Craig Birchler, IxD to the stars. We talk about why so many projects fail — it could be the lack of passion across all of your team.

This week Eric and Alan are flying solo — just enough time to get caught-up on a little podcast business.

Remember when you saw #squarespace on twitter everyday, all day for a month? Tyler Thompson, the Squarespace Creative Director joins us to tell us what’s behind the hashtag, and more — why Squarespace is THE WEB PUBLISHING SYSTEM you should be using.

This week we’re joined by Ryan Stewart, Adobe Platform Evangelist who shares the gospel of Flash Catalyst. Adobe defines Catalyst as: “a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.”

We meet the Indianapolis-based Interaction Designer, Craig Birchler who is crazy about apps.

We meet freelance designer Dustin Curtis and discuss the letter he wrote to American Airlines about his experience as an AA customer. We also hear what it's like to be a continental drifter-designer.

by Mike Matas

Nonsensical Infographics by Chad Hagen

The science of infographics is an interesting beast. Infographics' level of success is always based on how much and how well they communicate their data—the classic form follows function. In this series, I reversed these roles—form is king and dictates what the infographic communicates. Welcome to the world of fictional visual information.

Visit chadhagen.com

Illustrator Greg Peltz continues to wow, this time with his series of Victorian Star Wars Portraits. This brings-back memories of the 80's, when there were Victorian-themed photographers in the mall (or King's Island), where the whole family would dress-up for a sepia photo. Good times.

 I stumbled-onto Peat Wollaeger's work when I was googling "Mexican Wrestling Masks" (don't ask), and after landing on his collection on Flickr, I spent the next 30 minutes thrilled. 

Thanks for the distraction, Peat.

Also visit artdimensions.org stenSOUL.com