Yes, I do enjoy the smell of smoke and gas mixed together. Thus, I have an on going project called RacerResume that is designed to educate, inform and strengthen the racing community. One of the challenges of designing a website for this industry is that colors play a very important role in the vehicle manufacture branding and identity. So, choosing the a neutral color pallete is almost a given but, I wanted to still give it some edge and texture. This project is about to explode so stay tuned.

I am an iPhone junkie. I really love my iPhone and I have had the opportunity to help develop and design a few apps for it. I was particularly taken with this app as it brought science and real world application to a new place. The app is called “dB“. The concept is to take a sound level meter everywhere you go and “tag” the event, location or memory in an interesting new way. Then you can share the Tag via email or Twitter This is the best deal on the app store right now. Certainly the best UI

BREAK OUT

Take a risk. Try something new. Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Take a class in something you have never done - paint, sculpt, mythology (one of my favorite classes that I took a chance on). Branch out and invest in yourself and the world around you.

“Paint your own colors. Make your life your masterpiece”

This is a concept based on a character idea I have had. It’s a robotic superhero of sorts. I enjoyed the process of sketch to final. See the following images for the sketch and illustration steps

Why is this such a problem you may say. There are those very handy USB ports sitting there. Let me briefly describe why USB 1.0-2.x is not an equal to Firewire:

• Hardware acceleration:
  USB is CPU dependent for it’s transfers. It will utilize CPU cycles to help especially when the connection is not direct from host to peripheral. You can daisy-chain FW all day and no performance is lost.
• Better physical connections:
  The USB connection design is generally pretty poor. However, the real devil here is the “mini-usb” connection. It easily detaches from it’s host with even the slightest movement. As a mobile user, this is very vexing to me and has caused me data loss. The Firewire connection is solid. I would have to pull rather deliberately to disconnect it to the point that I lose connection with my notebook.
• Power:
  Firewire can direct power and data from the same connection much more reliably than USB. There have been times when I have managed to get a USB 2.5″ drive to power up from a single connection but, I had to align elements just right and not try to do anything very difficult on the computer or it would lose it’s connectivity. Firewire is a dream to use in terms of portability. I can connect a 2.5″ drive with no issue or performance hit. You can even connect multiple drives as there are FW enclosures that have two raided 2.5″ drives that power up from the single connection.

My petition to Apple is to stop and desist this pattern and move forward with Firewire that has been your steady companion through the good and bad. There are so many reason to continue with it despite the plaguing adoption of USB. The advancments in FW development have a great potential - can you say firewire via rj45? How about the slick new SMDI connection?. Legacy support is also an issue but, that is not the real loss when all is weighed. The great emptyness will be in what we are left with - a terrible excuse for real connectivity.

I love to explore shapes and relationships and I had some intermingling pattern ideas I wanted to explore. The result was this illustration. I actually have a series I hope to find time to do.

When I was contacted to design and assemble a website for Northland design, a landscape architecture firm, it was clear that there was one primary purpose for the site - to promote the quality of their portfolio of work. The design of this site is oriented to helping the viewer experience the quality of the work they produce. The cleanliness and hints of texture also reflect their own design sensitivities.

In 1997, Apple decided it would be a good idea to highlight a selection of their users who had some kind of notoriety or flavor. So, they created the “AppleMasters” program. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with some fabulous designers like Jeff Zwerner on some promotional items for the kickoff event and do the production work on this video that was shown at the kickoff.

I love skiing and I love film. I have always wanted to merge these loves so, clearly the solution is to…make a skiing film? Nah…everyone does that. So, I designed a ski. This is a ski design that is a clash of drama of skiing and film for me. I took the opportunity to choose the Bluehouse Ski company as a model to work off of. I have some other ideas I am working as well that I will post at some point.

With a strong identity in place, I worked with Faber Acoustical to bring the identity and branding over to the web presence. The look and feel of the site is tailored to the audience and customer-base to be useful and appealing.