Virtu@l Sean

Computer Aided DesignMay 12th, 2011

Spent several hours working with Photoshop and Bridge to get a small gallery of my 2D design photos up on my website. As expected with most auto-generation, it was bloated and didn’t produce optimized images.

I did create some automations in Photoshop to resize my print quality images but could not figure out how to automate the DPI changes that happen if I manually save for the web. Optimize fail.

Guess I have to dedicate more time to the process and learning the software.

Design A Day – lost momentumJanuary 10th, 2010

Ok.. I stopped designing. I seriously hit a wall. Complete paralysis. I hope that when I start my class, it will jump start my creativity.

Design A Day – Jan 5January 5th, 2010

Couldn’t really think of what to do for design today. I used “Art Text” software to do some artful texting. I created a cool curved text design. Unfortunately, the software crashed when trying to export. So I really did “design” something tonight. Just with no proof.

Design A Day – Jan 4January 4th, 2010

Ok tried another program for a logo. This time Paintbrush for Mac. Level limited functionality. Not quite right for the stuff I want to do.

Design A Day – Jan 3January 3rd, 2010

Well I “forgot” to design something today. We’ll maybe setting up the dinner table (with folded napkins) counts?

Design A Day 2January 2nd, 2010

I decided to repeat the design that I attempted yesterday. This time I used the vector graphics program Inkscape. Again it is an X11 application but has a much better integration.

I was able get a much better result. However, I still don’t know how to properly export it as a web image.

//TODO: get the image exported

Design a DayJanuary 2nd, 2010

Smashing Magazine had a very interesting idea for the new year: Design Something Every Day! So yesterday I started by creating a new logo for VirtualSean.com.

The design idea: Cross the words Virtual and Sean on the shared “A” and replace the “A” with an “@”.

I tried GIMP for my Mac again. It is really annoying to use. It uses X11 and it’s very difficult to choose tools and apply them to the current image. I tried to create a vertical layout of “Virtual” I couldn’t figure out how to align the letters properly. I was able to create multiple layers for the words to create the cross and even line up the “@”s. It’s a good start.

//TODO: attach the logo image

New Year / New DecadeJanuary 1st, 2010

Wow. It’s amazing how fast time goes by when you’re not paying attention. I will now be paying attention. Watch out world.

The biggest problems about users interfaces are the usersMarch 29th, 2009

Well no.. not really. The biggest problem in UI design and implementation is meeting user expectations. Due to conditioning, due to habits, due to resistance to change, due to ignorance users are not the best judges of UIs. Unfortunately they are the only ones that truly matter.

A successful UI gives the users not what they want but what they need. A spectacular UI makes users abandon all preconceptions and use it as the gold standard going forward.