nanovivid

As I mentioned in my previous post about the redesign, it’s been in various states of non-progress for about three years. I figured it might be fun to talk about how it evolved over the last year (since that’s the only time I actually did anything slightly serious) and finally ended with the Dirty you see today. I always find the evolution of a design interesting and hope that you will too.

Oddly enough, the very first idea I had for a new design had the most similarities with the final product. The colors came from the Cherry Cheesecake theme on Kuler.

Then I wandered off down a rabbit trail lined with spring grass and fresh raspberries. Or something.

After I got bored with that, it was another six months before I tried anything. At that point, did some iterations with brown and blue stripes.

By the third revision, it was starting to get somewhere, but it still wasn’t feeling right. So I took another break. When I revisited the ideas a few months later I promptly dropped the blue and faded the background, moving the design a little closer to the final product.

(I kind of abandoned this one midway through, I think.)

Then I got Super Mario Galaxy and well, that was the end of that. (Because that game? Is made of awesome).

Once I had gotten all 242 stars (yes, that’s 121 as Mario and then the same 121 as Luigi… what can I say? I’m a completionist), I got inspired to make a worn version of the circles logo.

However, Copperplate didn’t feel quite right for the logo, so I started surfing around for distressed fonts that might have the look I wanted. As soon as I discovered Bleeding Cowboys, I knew I had the right font. When I added it to the design, however, it obviously needed some tweaking.

So I did some editing to eliminate the flourish of the second n and differentiate the i’s, v’s, and n’s. The other tweak I made that I think really makes the logo work better was to remove the serif from the a and join it with the n’s flourish.

After that, it was all just implementation.

♫ Goat Explosion - I'm Always Alone

Wow. Wow. Wowowowow.

Sorry, my mind is a bit blown by the amazingness of Amora. David Lanham always makes beautiful art and Amora is no exception. The initial inspiration was the video for Björk’s All Is Full Of Love (which is also great).

Now my Mac is all tricked out with Amora and it’s wonderful.

♫ Slyder - Lex Luther

In addition to being a lazy-ass loser, one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging lately is called Deanach OSX.

It’s a port of Deanach3 for Windows to the Mac that I’ve been working on (with Anubis from MacThemes Forums) for, oh, the last four months or so. Theming OS X is insanely time consuming, because there are exactly thirteen-bajillion elements to skin. I’m not kidding. I counted. And by counted, I mean… approximated.

Today, however, I am freed from the time-consumingness of this theme (well, except for the bug-fixing and tweaking). It’s finally released, and the reactions have been good. Finishing a project of this magnitude and having people like it feels quite nice.

For as much as I enjoy pixel hacking, I’m definitely going to wait a bit before diving into a new theme. The amount of time sucked down by creating (or even porting) a theme is rather insane. Plus, Bryan gets tired of me constantly having my nose in ThemePark and Photoshop.

To celebrate Deanach’s release, we’re going out to eat with Bryan’s friend Sandra tonight. Actually, dinner has nothing to do with Deanach. But I can pretend that it does, because I’m a dork like that!

♫ Swimmer One - Cloudbursting

With apologies to Ryan and Toby.

(If you want to do this with your Adium, just grab the Dinosaur Comics Emoticon Pack).

♫ The Killers - Somebody Told Me (Mylo Mix)

It’s only been a week since my last post… pretty good for me as of late, n’est pas?

Dave and Olivia came for a quick overnight visit yesterday. We had a good time hanging out and talking and watching some Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Space Ghost. It’s kind of funny that both this and last time they visited, it was for less than twenty-four hours. Hopefully someday Bryan and I will be able to spend more time with them than that.

After they left, Bryan and I took a trip to Costco and Target, spending much more at Costco than we planned (as always). People who have visited us will be happy to know that we got an electric pump for the air mattress, so no more half hour foot pump sessions. Then we spent most of the rest of the afternoon cuddling on the couch and watching Alias.

Today I also got Bright Like Neon Love by Cut Copy. Amazing album. It’s got this great New Order meets Daft Punk vibe that is just incredible. I highly recommend it.

In my (lately more limited) time, I’ve been working an an adaptation of Rokey’s POPO emotions as an emoticon pack for Adium. Check them out… I think they turned out well.

♫ Cut Copy - That Was Just A Dream

What happens when crazy artistic types come together with, um, me? Things like visual numbers, which translates numbers to their chosen color counterparts. Go play with it and have fun! I’m so 1337.

♫ Bob Marley - Sun Is Shining (ATB Mix)

I just ran across the personal website of shelest, one of the guys from Creolab. He has some great wallpapers on his site, and the flash work is pretty nifty. So… go get some desktop decoration.

♫ Sufjan Stevens - Damascus

how did this get in my eye?

This wallpaper by mandolux is amazing.

Small Dog’s new ad campaign is cute. It’s a spoof of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (great show, btw) called Mac Eye for the Wintel Guy. Hehe. (Thanks to Jeremiah for the link).

Much thanks to Jenni for hooking me up with the free Dido cd. I’m really enjoying it already. Honestly Ok and My Life are both beautiful, and of course the singles that were released to radio are good.

I definitely need to give props to Matt for showing me css Zen Garden. There are some amazing designs there and they all have the source code easily available. Some favs: Zunflower, prêt-à-porter, RPM, and Costal Breeze. Browse the full list of designs yourself.

Ok, time for (late) dinner with Ney, Josh, and his bf (that’s boyfriend, not the other meaning of bf, for those down with the lingo) and somebody else they know. Should be fun/entertaining.

♫ Dido - Take My Hand

I was looking through my bookmarks the other day and rediscovered Dodging the Parabola Fish. It’s an awesome, hilarious article about Mario games and a couple people who were obsessed with them. One of my favorite quotes: "Ghandi Mario has achieved enlightenment!" (Read the article, you’ll get it).

Tonight, Ney and I watched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and were very entertained. It’s sort of like What Not To Wear, only the scary guys with long hair are getting made over, not telling other people what to do. A good change, I’d say. During that time, Bravo showed the new G5 commercial three times, and I’m already tired of it. It is a sexy computer though.

I got a pretty big freak out earlier today when I posted an entry and it promptly disappeared from the site, but was still in the database. It turned out that my provider was moving my site to a new host and I happened to catch it in transition. All is well now, but that was much too stressful.

I luuurve this song. Nickel Creek is the shiznit. Also the shiznit: Adam’s mad photo skillz. I keep coming back and looking at this picture in particular. I can’t put into words what I like about it… it’s just awesome.

♫ Nickel Creek - Green and Gray