Ballookey

I’m the artist spotlight at go flying turtle!

It was very nice of Steve to ask me to be July’s spotlight since there are a lot more skilled people out there, but I think the nice takeaway from that article is that people shouldn’t feel too bad about their skill level as long as they enjoy what they do, and to keep at it anyway.

Now, stop bothering me. I’m trying to update this website, and the whole damn Internet’s added bells and whistles while I wasn’t paying attention. Font face? Text shadow? Box shadow? Yes please!

I have about a half-dozen things starred in my Google Reader to blog about, comment on, or create something inspired by, but I’m increasingly finding myself not wanting to put it here because this is the main page of my website.

I have a new website design ready to go, but I’ve been waiting to go live with it because I wasn’t sure how difficult it would be to keep this blog active, but shift it off the main page.  I’m going to find out in the next couple of days. So if everything disappears, that’s what happened. And if everything disappears, don’t count on me putting it all back like it was. I might just say, fine, start new with post number one!

Once things are changed, my homepage should feature my art and design work more prominently, along with a summary of where my prints and things can be bought. (because, oh yes, I’d like to totally and completely sell out. Eventually)

I know not posting is a terrible thing. I don’t mind if people post rarely or frequently, but I do think the good form is to find the rhythm and regularity that works for you and stick with it to give the whole blog thing an air of NOT being a total half-assed afterthought. I’m not even sure if I care if people read or follow me regularly, as long as I’m represented on the web. Ultimately, I guess I’m a bad, bad blogger – which is why I don’t want it to be the first thing people see, but I still want it to exist so I can yell ineffectually about the stuff that bothers me, and was psuedo-poetic about the things I love, and there. It’s documented.

I think a lot of bloggers go through the same thing. It’s not just about finding one’s voice, it’s also about finding exactly that room in which you feel comfortable speaking without having to think TOO much about how scandalized the Mormon friends will be if they stumble in, the poor dears.

I’m calling it done, originally uploaded by ballookey.

I think I’m finished with my first official iPad drawing. I’ve been playing around with the iPad for several weeks and I finally thought I ought to finish some things and call them done.

One drawback is the lack of resolution in the drawing apps I’ve tried so far. This image is full size at 768 x 1024—fine for an iPad wallpaper and looking at onscreen, and maybe small cards. But I expect apps to update this capacity eventually, at least somewhat. The iPad isn’t high-powered computing after all.

After reading this article by Joe Clark regarding the Wired magazine iPad app, I’ve come to realize that existing magazines aren’t going to bring us the first awesome iPad magazines.

I’ve downloaded and tried a few, and essentially they all have the same problem. They’re trying to show us, more or less, the same magazine in something resembling the original format on a totally new device.

The Wired app is literally pictures of the pages of the print magazine.

Many people have already pointed out the blinkard pig-headedness of this: You can’t copy/paste text. You can’t highlight a word to get a dictionary definition. You can’t change the size or contrast of the text to meet your readability issues. ALL OF WHICH are reasons to read on the iPad in the first place! (although, I think it doesn’t actually have a dictionary, but it could get one)

I got furious with a co-worker last week because he designed a billboard using his favorite font. Which was utterly unreadable.

We’re DESIGNERS. The implication of that word is that we apply intelligence and problem-solving skills to challenges and come up with something better than random chance.

And I realized Wired came up with this atrocity because to really make use of the strengths of the iPad, they’d have to ditch about 99% of structure, design, and organization of their magazine. Things that work in print, don’t necessarily work on a little touch pad. Little bullet-point boxes with super-short factoids in them might be fine as graphic relief in your printed page layout. But it’s bullshit on the iPad.

Wired doesn’t want to design their magazine twice every month. They want to do it once, and press a button. Monkey-like. No major publisher is going to want to create two versions of their issues each month – especially in the infancy of this new technology.

But someone with things to say and a resource of material to share, WILL want to make a digital ‘zine for the iPad. They’ll make it damn close to right. Articles laid out so as not to insult your attention span. Text that’s selectable. Images that are zoomable (and more than just a token, vestigal zoom!) They may not be anyone we’ve heard of yet, but they’re going to get the ball rolling. Then all the kids will be making their own iPad ‘zines.

Will major publishers ever figure it out and make it work?

I don’t even remember what this blog post by Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer, is about anymore. I just got livid with one of the first sentences:

I don’t agree with everything therein; you can’t judge a site by its ads, for one thing.

You better fucking believe I’m judging every site I visit by their ads. Just like the rest of the content, the site owner made a decision about what ad network or web advertising company they were going to work with to put things on their web pages.

I buy tons of magazines in all different categories for my job and rarely, RARELY, do ads cross over from fashion magazines to lifestyle, tattoo, music, art, etc… Each genre of magazine has it’s lineup of usual suspects, but I’ll never see the same ads found in urban hip-hop lifestyle magazines in automobile magazines. I’m never going to see the same ads in Vanity Fair and Inked.

And there’s a reason for that! The people reading one magazine have different interests from those reading another. Readers of certain magazines would be offended by some of the ads in magazines targeting different lifestyles. Even if the ad itself isn’t offensive, the very look and feel would make the readers pause and say “who do you think I AM?”

That’s why I’m entirely justified in judging a site by its ads. The site owner thinks I want to see this. Or they’ve hooked their cart up to an ad network that thinks I want to see this. If their judgment is poor in that regard, that taints my evaluation of their judgement as applied to any topic they’re covering.

THEY MADE A CHOICE. No one put a knife to their throat and said, run this ad or else! Sure, you don’t get fine-grained control over each individual ad in a network, but if it’s the wrong network for your site, then all the ads are going to stick out like a sore thumb and be annoying to your audience. If it’s the right network and one ad just happens to be a little off-topic for your audience, the worst that will happen is they don’t notice.

I wish people would take web advertising more seriously. The fact that site owners and chief contributors seem not to give a shit what appears under their masthead and alongside their name goes a long way in justifying potential advertisers’ perception of web advertising as not valuable.

A while back I saw a blog post about the prop money made for the TV show Firefly, and ever since then I’ve wanted to try making my own fanciful currency.

These were printed on 16 lb vellum with a color laser printer, so the front and back don’t line up as perfectly as I’d like. I think a slightly heavier vellum would make that less noticeable, but I like the way these feel.

Overall, I’m very happy with my first effort, but can’t wait to explore and experiment on other denominations.

One thing I’ll have to decide is how to size them. I made the Sagan 50 the same size as US currency for it’s familiar feel, but other countries have different sizes. In fact, the very clever thing done in many places is to make different denominations different sizes to aid blind people. I think that’s extremely important, and I’m dismayed we haven’t implemented that in the US. Imagine being blind and having to rely on someone else to sort your cash for you before you can hit the store? Ugh! So I think my challenge is to explore different sizes and proportions on my later editions. I just have to get over my life-long conditioning that all bills are the same size.

drunking-urine, originally uploaded by Aya Rosen.

One of my Moleskine Exchange mates Aya Rosen just posted several great pieces to Flickr. I love the theme—the quotations sound like sex ed questions from Cosmo—juxtaposed with her trademark female illustrations. The compositions are fantastic and I love her restrained use of color.

A subscription to the paper edition of Time magazine is $20 for 56 issues or .35/issue.

It’s $5.00 per issue on the iPad.

A subscription to GQ, on paper, sent through post office and delivered to your door is either $1.00/issue, or .83 each depending on whether you buy a one-year or two-year subscription.

It’s $2.99 per issue on the iPad.

Old media can’t fuck off fast enough, as far as I’m concerned.

I want magazines on my iPad. I want Scientific American, Discover, National Geographic, Computer Arts, Inked, Make etc… so that I can always have all the latest issues with me, the back issues I found handy, and hot links in all the articles so I can tap to read more relevant info in Safari. There are some art magazines where I still want the paper issue, but there are a lot more that I would subscribe to if I didn’t have to decide whether or not to keep the issue when I finished reading it.

I won’t pay MORE than it costs to buy the paper version however. It should be less, but if you say you’re going to include zoomable photos and occasional video, then the same price as a paper subscription is fair.

Idiots.

Rose-colored California Poppies, originally uploaded by ballookey.

I see these flowers every day when I take out the trash, and every day they’re a nice little treat. I’m glad I planted them.

I just came across the photography of Daniela Edburg and LOVE it. The knitted props and stuffed satin intestines really make her work extra special.