Julian Marley – Violence in the Streets
Great single, haven’t checked out the rest of the album yet
Wallflower Mashups
So I’ve been working with patterns lately in Illustrator, and felt like I made some progress worth sharing.
I’m interested in learning more about use of transparency and opacity with overlapping patterns to create new patterns, part of the process employed here.
Additionally, something else to work on (which I’ve already been incorporating into my work) is overlapping transparent images in a website. so as content moves or browser windows expand, the image presentation will adjust seamlessly and dynamically.
Side Effect:
I’m not recommending this, but if you stare at these images, they work like Magic-Eye images, except minus the cool 3d image of a landscape or something; just a stange trick to play on your eyes.
Grids: Music & Design
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the similarities between music and graphic/web design (both part of my personal duality list) and the modern methods for creating each.
First a little background on my abilities and interest.
Read the rest of this page »
I Don't Want to Reinvent the Wheel, I Just Want to Know How it Was Built
just thought I would share that 
Why Designers Fail
So last October I attended UI13, an annual usability conference presented by User Interface Engineering (you can check out my recap here). One presentation I was fortunate enough to see was Scott Berkun’s talk on why designers fail.
Recently, in promotion of the upcoming UI14, UIE sent out some podcasts from last year’s conference, and Berkun’s was one of them.
Basically, Berkun talks about the need for designers to fail, where by failing we learn from our mistakes and know how to address similar scenarios in the future.
Without saying much more, I figgure I will let Berkun do the the talking
You can also follow along with the slides he used to present though they are not synced to the audio (so it’s really just one big guessing game )
Disney, Marvel, Woot's Predictions
So as many now know (or should know), Disney recently purchased Marvel Comics along with all their characters and content. As a life long Marvel fan, I’m not too excited by this move because I think Disney may not make the best choices of how to portray the world’s most bad-ass super heroes within the Disney-Family-Fun guidelines (let’s face it, we’ve been waiting for years for good, true-to-the-book, versions of comic movies, and just when we start getting them, the most white-washing media company gets a hold of the rights).
Anyway, I saw this morning Woot posted in their blog, the Marvel/Disney crossovers they would like to see. My favorite being
Bambi’s Mother vs. Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility” – or, “If you’d just been a better kid, I’d still be alive.” The neuroses of tomorrow begin here!
I guess on the upside, Disney will do whatever makes them the most money, so hopefully all the “fanboys” of former years now own software companies or fortune 500s, and can afford to make an impact on the market.
(props to Emily for the image)
Capital Culture, Remembering Ted
I woke up this morning to Bailey telling me that Ted Kennedy had passed away, and while I was not surprised, I felt sad and relieved; his battle with brain cancer was a tough one and to be battling no more is a blessing.
The following track has been in production for over a year, but in the past few months we really started hustling on it, and this morning when I got to my desk, I finally recorded my verse and finished the track.
I don’t want to claim Capital Culture as a tribute to Ted, but the parallels are uncanny, and while it speaks to larger social issues, it is without a doubt a nod to all he has accomplished.
So here you go
Streetfrog Presents: Capital Culture
(you can download it here)
Featured on this track: Double O’Dub, Tim “Reggie” Brown and Rich LeBranti
Call to Action for Great Music, Charity
Funk Aid for Africa is a very well done compilation of Funk, House and World music, with proceeds from the album going to NextAid, “a Los Angeles based nonprofit organization committed to developing and implementing innovative sustainable solutions to the challenges facing African children.”
You can preview and buy the album digitally or you can get one shipped from funkaid.com. The record was produced by Dubspot Records
I’ve been listening non-stop since I got it, it’s really great, and a great cause too.
Let everyone know what you think
(props to Adam and Uhuru Afrika)
Website Props
One of my sites, www.votetomas.com for City Councillor at-large candidate Tomás Gonzalez, received a shout out in the Boston Phoenix the other day.
“On a side note: Gonzalez also has the prettiest Web site in the field”
-The Phoenix
I built and continue to manage and develop the the site, but one of Tomás’s other friends handled the branding and layout; I think he has done an incredible job on it
Don’t forget to vote for Tomás in the primary
Molskine Journal, Photo Op
Found this on the interwebs the other day and am just now getting to post.
I think it’s a very creative way of using the small format of a Molskine journal. I’m very impressed.
See more of Michael Murdock’s work on his Behance portfolio.