“ The two opposing sides of the card represent the inner and outer character of a single person in two different forms. What is more desirable, inner or outer beauty? ”
Some beautiful letterpress Old Maid cards in this set.
Via Zeldman > Samantha Warren.
I don't draw enough any more. Broke out the graphics tablet this week — expect doodles.
A couple of days ago I posted an article about creating an offline portfolio, and why you might want to. At the end of that post, I briefly mentioned setting up the Apple remote to allow you to easily navigate through your portfolio during an interview — without getting in the way of the people you're trying to demonstrate to.
I had a sudden (and slightly unexpected) job interview last week, which resulted in the usual portfolio-based panic. Over the weekend, I quickly put together an offline portfolio site, built specifically to be shown on my MacBook during the interview. This turned out to be a far more interesting project than I had expected, so I thought I'd share my process, as well as my thoughts on putting this kind of project together. I'm not saying this sort of portfolio will guarantee you the job of your dreams (let's just say I'm still available for freelance work for the foreseeable future) but I certainly found it a great way to show off my screen-based work.
Don't ask!
The Loft is the studio of Helen Dowthwaite, a talented designer from Cumbria. Helen asked me to help her create a simple portfolio site for The Loft — she provided the layout and graphics, I put it together in Flash and Javascript (with a little touch of PHP out back).
Has it really been over a month since my last little flurry of posts? I make a terrible blogger. To be honest, at least I've got a decent reason this time — I've had a whole bunch of great freelance projects that have occupied approximately 92% of my waking time (the other 8% was G&Ts in the sun, and why the hell not).
Yesterday I made it to Super Mondays for the first time. Like many of the amazing things going on in this town, I only recently found out about it — I was gutted to find out that I missed a talk on Arduino recently. Not that I was disappointed at all, as there was a load of great stuff to see — students from the Culture Lab were demonstrating their work. This included 'home-made' multitouch computers and their 'ambient kitchen' project, which is aimed at helping sufferers of dementia to retain independence in the kitchen, and features Wiimote-based utensils which are able to sense the action which is being performed. Following the general demonstrations, there were several interesting talks — Patrick Olivier kicked off with an introduction to the work that takes place in the lab, and later Andrew Waite gave a short but informative talk about collecting Malware with the low-interaction honeypot Nepenthes. For me though the highlight of the talks was digital jeweller Jayne Wallace talking about the amazing work she has created with the lab.
Mychael Barratt is another excellent printmaker that I hadn't encountered before my last trip to the Biscuit Factory. I was particularly taken with his Marriage a la Mode set — a six-piece series of prints chronicling the process of a relationship (and which caused a mini-argument about interest-free credit between myself and Kathryn). The image above is the fifth part — temptation — and while the reference should be pretty obvious, my soft spot is based on a (slightly more nerdy) nod from my childhood.
One of my favourite things that yesterday's little jaunt to the Biscuit Factory turned up is the work of printmaker Anja Percival. Her work is a beautiful study of hazily lit urban areas — gentle glows picking out and softening abstract sections of carpentered environments. These prints manage to capture the contrasts of the subject — the implied warmth beyond the window contrasting with the lonely, slightly sinister feeling of being outside looking in. I have to admit that they reminded me of nothing so much as the beginning of Braid, when the protagonist makes his way through the darkened city to his home — which, not coincidentally, is one of my favourite moments in a game, ever.
