snap2objects » Interview

30 Covers in 30 Days

richenda — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:55:29 +0000

Every year, thousands of people voluntarily put themselves to the ultimate literary challenge: to write a novel. Last year, 21,683 did.

It’s called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. Now an international phenomenon, over 100,000 writers, professional and amateur, have signed up at NaNoWriMo.org and pledged to do the seemingly impossible. If you can write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November, you win.

The challenge has already inspired spin-offs, from the sanctioned Script Frenzy (100 page screen- or stage-play in April), to NaNoEdMo (edit your novel) and 24-Hour Comic Day (write and draw 24 pages in 24 hours). Now designer Chris Papasadero, co-founder of design firm Fwis, has taken on his own challenge.

Papasadero is going to design 30 book covers in 30 days. Novelists who post a title and synopsis of their story are in the running for selection by the NaNoWriMo team. The plan is for one lucky novel to be transformed every day this month. As every past participant knows, November isn’t always kind to those who take on big projects.

Snap2Objects will conduct weekly interviews with Papasadero during November, to follow his progress and see how this ambitious venture fares. Read More for this week’s interview, and come back next week for part two!

First, could you recap what the 30 Covers, 30 Days project is and why you decided to take it on?

I’ve been a fan of NaNoWriMo for some time, and I often find myself appreciating volume over quality in some things, so this is a good chance to embarrass myself productively. I will be designing a cover for a NaNoWriMo writer for each day of the project.

A lot of NaNoWriMo participants have wondered, how will you select novels to be turned into cover art? Are you browsing at random, or making an effort to take a wide sampling of genres, locations, etc.?

The covers are being chosen by the NaNoWriMo head honchos; I have no idea how they’re going about it, but I have to assume they’re going for a broad variety of topics, demographics, segments, etc. to properly represent the broad range of writers participating in the project!

How did you first find out about NaNoWriMo?

I believe I heard about it four or five years ago, back when I lived in the lovely city of Portland, OR.

What is Fwis, and how long have you been involved with them?

Fwis is my design firm and we’ve been around for about seven years.

What is your background as a designer?

I’ve been working on Fwis for a long time now and have been involved primarily in the day-to-day operations of the firm and don’t do as much design as I’d like to, so this project will help me blow the dust off the ol’ visual part of my mind and maybe even sharpen it up a bit.

What sort of projects do you typically take on?

It really runs the gamut, from advertising and marketing campaigns for companies like Corbis, to package and environmental design for companies like Johnson & Johnson.

How would you characterize your work?

Conceptually relevant to the clients’ needs… humorous, ‘wonky’, colorful and optimistic. I think at the baseline the ideas are always good, truly unique and perhaps even a bit iconoclastic.

What tools do you use frequently? Do you prefer digital media, or traditional?

I definitely prefer getting away from the computer when I can, but it really speeds things up, which is appropriate for this project! I use a spiral-bound sketchpad, a Pilot Precise V5, and scotch on a daily basis.

You maintain a blog at http://covers.fwis.com/ dedicated to book cover art. What interests you about book covers?

The book cover is a perfect fusion of two creative minds; the wordsmith and the visual thinker.

I see you have a word count going at NaNoWriMo.org. Are you attempting to write a novel as well as design 30C30D? Do you think you have a better chance of finishing one or the other?

I was hoping you weren’t going to ask this question as I wanted it to be a surprise! But yes, I am also writing a novel this month as well. I clearly have no social life.

How do you plan to stretch yourself artistically with this project?

Speed, volume, experimentation. I’d like for all the covers to somehow feel a little serialized, but I’m not sure if that’s going to work out!

How does it feel to be on Day One (November 1)? Do you have any worries, or aspects you’re looking forward to?

I’m fiddling too much and need to use broader strokes, speed, and smart concept. I am so amazed at how nice the NaNoWriMo people are, they are optimistic and cheery and I hope that they all become famous, wealthy authors some day!

Follow the Project on the NaNoWriMo forums

Interview with the NaNoWriMo blog team

Do you have questions for Chris? Want to know more about NaNoWriMo? Tell us in the comments!

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Shoe Vectors Silhouettes

mao — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:11:45 +0000

Free vector silhouettes of shoes :) You never know when you are going to need boots or heels for your designs.

Preview

Download 323K .zip in [.ai.eps.svg]

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Free Swirls Compositions

mao — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:57:39 +0000

Two vector compositions with urban and organic elements: buildings, birds, foliage, and the good old swirls.

Attributions

Download 14.899K .zip in [.eps,svg,ai]

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Recommended Site: Gadget Advisor

mao — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:51:36 +0000

Gadget Advisor is a new growing site with a great angle where quality comes before quantity. Instead of finding endless minor posts you will find the cream of the crop resources for computer hardware, software, gadgets, and tech news. They put together handpicked articles and lists with the best from the tech world.

Just take a look to some of their most popular posts to have an idea of what I am talking about, here you have 3 perfect examples:

A colection of The best Firefox extensions
The best Windows software downloads
A review for Blaze Media Pro all-in-One Multimedia Software

Check that blog out, you will find very hard to resist bookmarking them.

Freebie: Design Free Logos Online

mao — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:50:49 +0000

When you are going to start a new business or revamp a company’s image, the first thing you need (after selecting a brand name) is a logo. And that could be a long quest, especially when you’re trying to find the right graphic designer at an affordable price. Fortunately you can design your own free logos online that may help you in that not-easy-at-all quest.

A nice option that’s worth a try is freelogoservices.com where you can create your own logo using their logo maker, using the one of the many logo templates they offer. To design your logo, register at the site. You can choose a logo design from a variety of logo templates, then personalize it with your brand name and colors. You’ll receive your logo via email in gif format.

These are some samples of the logos you can create with their logo maker.

Chris Coyier: The guy who showed us how Beautiful HTML Codes Looks like

mao — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:04:41 +0000

For those of you who don’t know him, he is the guy behind css-tricks.com, where he teaches us all the tricks he keeps under the sleeve. Today we have the opportunity to interview him and ask him some questions regarding his approach to the tricky world of CSS.

*Rec sign blinking*

mao: Chris thanks for accepting this interview, it is a pleasure to have you here.

Chris: Thanks for inviting me, mao.

mao: Please introduce yourself.

Chris: My name is Chris Coyier. I am from Madison, Wisconsin but I’m currently living out in the beautiful Portland, Oregon. I am a work-at-home web designer which I really love. I blog about CSS and web design at CSS-Tricks.com. I am fortunate enough to get to work on a large variety of sites and often work “from the ground up”, meaning I get lots of opportunities to start with a fresh slate and go through the design process from start to finish. Every time I do that, I usually end up saturated with ideas for CSS-Tricks, which is nice.

mao: From your css-guru perspective, tell us your can’t-live-without css-tricks?

Chris: The best CSS is semantic HTML. Ha! How’s that for a twist answer? But I am quite serious, if you write clean, semantically sound HTML, I find the CSS just falls into place. That being said, the CSS “tricks” I find myself using the most are simple image replacement and variations on the sprites technique. Also, utilizing other technologies in conjunction with CSS is pretty “tricky” and can have some awesome results. For example, I think there is going to be a post soon on how to change the look of your site when its raining outside, by pulling some weather information from RSS and conditionally changing class names. That kind of stuff amazes me.

mao: When and why did you start to make tableless layouts? How was your transition?

Chris: I did start my designing life designing with tables, but it didn’t last very long. I actually remember the very first design idea I had that frustrated me away from tables. I had this grungy looking frame that I wanted to use right in the middle of the browser window, and then put text inside of it. I knew how to make a table and put image slices into it, but I couldn’t figure out how to put text on top of those images. I ultimately figured out how I could make a div on the page, and then make it as big as I wanted and apply a background image with CSS, then then the text I put inside would appear on top of the frame. Very obvious now, of course, and I also now realize I could have done the same thing with the table. But oh well, I never looked back.

mao: For me, particularly, it’s still difficult to make tableless designs – it still takes me some time make them and a lot more debugging them (God I hate those IE hacks and stuff). What do you recommend for designers like me in order to speed up and optimize the process?

Chris: I think you might just need to force yourself into it. I am definitely at the point where I can’t imagine approaching a layout with tables. To me, tables are scary, especially in the updating cycle. As in, you need to add a table cell here, which squishes this weird, or pushes something else out of the way, or un-aligns some graphics… just not good. Even if you save time up front because you know tables better, I think it’s common to lose time later when updating. With a good CSS design, you get the chance to think right up front: “this area will need to be expandable vertically”, “these menu options may change at a moments notice”, “this color will change seasonally”.

I think if you start with the fundamentals of CSS, and really understand and digest them, it becomes the obvious choice for layout. Fundamentals meaning the box model and positioning, primarily. As far as IE hacks, yes, they are a pain in the butt and we all hate IE, but it’s usually nothing to freak out about. I usually just kinda “code around” them, but there are also ways to declare IE specific stylesheets if it comes to that.

mao: What do you think are the common mistakes when coding css?

Chris: The most common mistake I see is “divitus”. There are some people, especially in their early CSS coding days, that use div’s for EVERYTHING. This isn’t a mistake per say, but it is unclean code and contradictory to the spirit of CSS. This comes back to the semantic code thing. Other mistakes I see fairly often are setting static widths and heights when not necessary, getting too specific with their declarations, being too broad with their declarations, or declaring things that don’t need to be declared. Like setting your header tags to be bold, unnecessary.

mao: When there are complex grids, for tabbing data for example, I still use tables because it’s easier and more accurate imo. What do you do in those situations?

Chris: Tables. Tables are for tabular data, they are brilliant for that. Trying to force some CSS positioning thing around tabular data would be just as egregious as using tables for page layout.

mao: There are still lots of ppl that haven’t done the jump to css layouts yet. What would say to them? What would you recommend for them to do the jump? Where to start? How?

Chris: I would say to them, the time is now. Fortunately for them, I am working on starting to shoot some screencasts for CSS-Tricks covering this very subject. As far as where to start, I think where ever you can get your hands in the dirt is the best place. Download yourself a CSS template somewhere, open up the HTML file in your web browser and the CSS file in your text editor, make changes to the CSS, refresh the page in your browser and see what it does. I learned a lot by installing WordPress years and years ago and poked around trying to create a custom blog template.

mao: There are a lot of resources like the Yahoo! UI Library and naturally css-tricks out there; what other useful resources would you suggest?

Chris: Well, I probably read an unhealthy number of design-related RSS feeds so I can’t list them all. But one of my favorites recently has been Posh CSS, which really tastefully links to cool CSS techniques that I often times miss otherwise. A List Apart is a long time favorite for high quality articles. Of course snap2objects is a must-read =)

mao: How is your coding process? Any recommendations?

Chris: The coding process is just one step in the larger design process, which goes a little something like this:

Look at and read as much of the content you will be designing for. Look at and read content of related subjects. Think about who the content is for. Think about how the content will be used. Mix all that together in your mind and sleep on it.

Sketch and mockup ideas. Starting on paper is ideal because it frees you from thinking about tools and lets you focus on concept.

Convert the best of your mockups into a working site. This is the technical part I write about the most, which I really love but is only one of the steps in the design process.

Test the design as throughly as possible. Not only technical does-it-look-right-in-all-browsers testing, but have your friends tell you what they think. Watch your mom try to use the site. You will absolutely find things you can improve doing this.

Release the design upon the world and see how it goes. Ask for user feedback. Make changes. Tighten things up. In print design, once your design hit’s the press it’s all over. Web design isn’t like that. It’s fluid. Things can (and should) be constantly changing for the better.

mao: There are lots of css showcases with great sites beautifully crafted. What are the best sites you consider to sport not only beautiful design but also beautiful html (as you famous post say)?

Chris: Actually, I just recently created a roundup of lots and lots of different showcases. There are so many nice ones and I don’t wanna play favorites, but I can say that I tend to like the galleries that themselves have good design, that aren’t over the top with advertisements, and are with search that works well.

mao: Thanks, Chris, for giving this interview (^ ^)/~

Chris: Just to thank you very much for the opportunity to be interviewed! Also, if anyone has any questions about me or CSS or anything else, feel free to contact me through my contact form.

Feel free to ask any questions to Chris. He promised to keep track of the interview and do follow up questions :)

Next Thursday Interview with Chris Coyier: The guy who showed us how Beautiful HTML Codes Looks like

mao — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:09:38 +0000

Most of you must remember this great post from css-tricks.com where Chris Coyier showed “What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like”. For many of us that was how we first met Chris and his full-of-tricks blog.

Well next Thursday he will be here on an interview answering some questions and giving us a few recommendations on how to get not just a “pretty face” in ours designs but also how to be beautiful from the inside.

Elliot Jay Stocks, The guy who told us to “Destroy the web 2.0 look”

mao — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:32:28 +0000

After posting about “How to destroy the web2.0 look” I had the pleasure to speak Elliot Jay Stocks, the guy who told us about “Destroy the web2.o look” at the Future of Web Design event held in NY. Elliot answered some questions about the controversial topic. He also told us how he avoids clichés and where his inspiration comes from, among other interesting matters. One thing is for sure: a big part of his success comes from the fact he’s always in the quest for inspiration out of the monitor and has great attitude to learn and collaborate.

*Rec sign blinking*

mao: Hi Elliot it is quite an honor to have you here for the interview. I must say thanks for the opportunity. I am a big fan of your work :).

elliot: Thanks very much, Mao. It’s a pleasure to be here!

mao:Please introduce yourself

elliot:Well, I’m a 26 year old guy from just outside London, England. I work as the Senior Designer at Carsonified and I also do a fair bit of public speaking, as well as writing about web design for a few different publications. I live down by the River Thames in southwest London with my girlfriend, and when I get the time, I try my hand at writing and recording music under the name Sourhaze. I like having lots of projects!

mao: On last post on this blog, I presented your proposal “Destroy web2.0 Look” and tried to transmit your original idea, which I think is not anti the web2.0-look, just an invitation to avoid cliches and to try and adapt trends using your very own design view. This post caused lots of controversy and at some point the discussion lost the focus. What do you have to say about that?

elliot: First of all, thanks for drawing attention to it – your post went into great detail and got lots of people talking about the presentation. I think it’s inevitable that people wander off-topic; the only frustrating thing for me was that a lot of people missed the point. I mean, that’s inevitable too, because without my commentary to accompany the slides, I think the meaning was lost a bit. It was actually meant to be quite light-hearted! But anyway, your interpretation was correct: I’m not trying to say that gradients are bad, or curved corners are bad, or whatever; just that these things need to be used in moderation and that we should think twice before using the same old elements on every website we design.

mao: What do you recommend to avoid cliches? How do you avoid them?

elliot: Well, I’m still guilty of using the occasional cliche! In fact, I used to be pretty bad. At one stage in my first job (at EMI), I kept using 1 pixel diagonal lines on everything – it was horrible! These days I’d like to think I do more original stuff, but the main thing is just to think about why you’re using every single element. Like, should this corner be rounded? If so, why? What will it achieve, and does that fit into what I’m trying to achieve with this design as a whole?

mao: What do you mean when you say on your presentation “Misunderstanding arrives because of the removal from the ‘doing’ process”?

elliot: Basically I was referring to management-level employees who just manage projects without actually doing the work; specifically those who never did do the work and hence have a poor understanding of the creative process. I’m not criticising these people – because we have our job and they have theirs – I’m just suggesting that the distance between them and the actual nitty-gritty of a project’s design and / or development can mean they don’t understand what’s really going on. Hence the term “Web 2.0″ being banded about with little thought about its true meaning.

The same goes for marketers and the recruitment industry: people who love throwing these buzz words around without knowing what they mean; again, because they’re removed from the creative process itself.

mao: You know it is hard to educate our clients. What do you do if a client asks you for a “web 2.0 bold look site?

elliot: Slap them around the face with a cold fish! ;) Luckily I haven’t been asked for one recently, but what I would suggest as an answer to anybody who does get asked that question is to ask the client: why? Are they aware that the design they’re after is highly unoriginal and already showing the signs of old age? Fine, if that’s what they want, but wouldn’t they rather be more inventive?

mao: You encourage us to learn from the best. which guys do you recommend to learn from? And what point should we give more attention to?

elliot: There’s a group of people who always come up – Andy Clarke, Khoi Vinh, the Happy Cog guys – but I think there’s a good reason for that: you’ll rarely find these people conforming to cliches and they have their own personalities apparent in their designs. There’s not enough room to name everybody but I would urge designers to be influenced by those who create beautiful work that stands out from the thousands of clones. But I would also urge people to find inspiration away from web design.

mao: What are the biggest challenges you face as a designer and how do you do to overcome them? What do you recommend to the s2o readers?

elliot: I think avoiding cliches is actually one of the biggest challenges. Convincing clients to go with a certain direction is hard, but it’s even harder to convince yourself. The reason we use cliches is because they’re popular and therefore ‘proven’ to work, so the real challenge is forcing yourself to not always choose these easy options. How do I achieve that? Well, I’m not sure I always manage to! But when I do it’s when I’ve been asking myself “why?” the whole way through the process.

mao: Elliot you have quite an impressive portfolio. How did you achieve that?

elliot: Thanks very much! I owe a lot of it to being employed at EMI, where the project turnaround time was incredibly quick and I usually had 5 or 6 projects on the go at any one time. Also, because EMI have so many world famous artists, getting my work associated with them was also a big help.

Outside of work (and also before I started out ‘professionally’), I did a lot of freelancing, which kept my portfolio diverse. In fact, I’d recommend it to anyone who works in one particular market (like the music industry) who wants to keep their sanity! Even if I did music sites for freelance work, it was extremely refreshing to work with an unsigned Doom Metal band after slogging away all day on Joss Stone’s site!

mao: What is your design process? Any recommendations?

elliot: I guess it goes something along the lines of: make rough sketches in my notebook for layouts, create a few wireframes and layout grids in Photoshop for approval, move on to a more ‘finished’ mockup, refine the idea over a few stages until it’s approved, start writing the XHTML and CSS, and then continue to tweak… pretty much the same as most peoples, I’d imagine.

Something I’ve stopped doing is trying to plan every last detail in Photoshop. I just find there’s no point anymore, especially when it comes to typography, which is handled so differently by browsers to Photoshop. So I guess that’s my recommendation. Something I’m really bad at is not spending long enough on wireframes. I often jump right into a full mockup and the Carsonified guys try and reel me back to the wireframe stage!

mao: (this a typical question but I cant help doing it) How do you get inspired? and how do you overcome designers block?

elliot: Ooh, it’s a tough one, and I’m not sure I have a real answer. I spend a lot of time on ‘gallery’ sites like CSS Beauty, but I try not to focus too much on the web. These days I’m very interested in print design and I see so many great examples that could easily be translated to the web but rarely are. More than anything else, I’m a big fan of the countryside and the outdoors, and I think the ‘textural’ side of my work comes from that fascination. It’s ‘real world’ aesthetics that interest me, which is why a lot of my inspiration has nothing to do with the web.

mao: Any final thoughts?

elliot: I’m often guilty of using cliches at times so I don’t want people to think I see myself as exempt, but I’d still urge everyone to keep pushing the boundaries where possible. It’s often extremely tough in an industry where clients want projects turned around yesterday, but ultimately we – as designers – have the chance to influence trends. Why become a designer if you’re just going to use other people’s ideas?

One final thing: Check out this year’s 24ways.org – it’s the web design industry’s ‘advent calendar’ of tips and tricks, written by some of the biggest names in the business. And this year there’s an article by me! :)

mao: Thanks, Elliot, for giving this interview (^ ^)/~

elliot: You’re very welcome, Mao – thanks for having me! And thanks to everyone eslse for reading!

*Turn off the recorder*

Next Friday: Interview with Elliot Jay Stock

mao — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 01:33:08 +0000

Elliot Jay Stocks is a senior Designer at Carson Systems, a regular writer for industry-leading publications such as .net, a speaker at conferences and events (in his last one he told us to “destroy the Web 2.0 look”), and also a copious blogger at his own blog and at Carsonified.

He gave an interview to this blog that will be published next Friday Dec 7th, where he will answer questions like: how does he avoid cliches? How should we “educate” our clients? What is his design process like?

Meanwhile, I leave you with some of Elliot’s portfolio, which is very prolific and varied. You can see gorgeous works for big names like the Pet Shop Boys and Massive Attack on his portfolio. I find them very inspiring because of the richness in texture and detail. I hope you enjoy them and stay tuned for the interview next friday.

Massive Attack: Collected

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper

The Divine Comedy

Rhys Marsh