this house is haunted

i am in love with these illustrations by
Byron Eggenschwiler

This house is haunted
diesem Haus spukt es
Esta casa está embrujada

you can more of his work here

friends, birds, international mail, and other lovely matters

last week i got a wonderful package on the mail
it came all the way from England!!
courtesy of my eFriend nellyb from 23hqcom
the goodies she sent me where designed by
fishink, his designs are so lovely!
i got some notebooks, stickers, and a stamp
all very cool
it's so nice to find out artist still feel love
for our beloved feathered friends

and hey! i was even featured on the blog
http://fishinkblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/fishink-birds-flew-to-san-diego/

here the photos i took of the lovely goodies,
thank you Helen and Craig!

namaste: árbol de la vida

this is my newest little project!
el árbol de la vida/namaste
[tree of life] shirt, for my yoga practice

via zazzle, i will be printing this t-shirt
just like i did with the Gatos' t-shirts last year
from an original photo, i am creating this
shirt version graphic

i took the photo of my neighbor's tree back in 2006
during Christmas time, i love this tree 'cause
i see it every day! so it will be great to take it with me
and wear it close to my heart while practicing yoga

here the original photo i took



and here after a couple of Photoshop tweaks
ready to be printed on a comfortable tee
i only have to check that the Sanskrit spelling is correct!

Gatos tees

i guess some things never change &
after having designed t-shirts for living
i seem to still have fun at it

i made these t-shirts a couple of months ago
around the time when i started photographing los Gatos
and found out about Zazzle.com



Zazzle.com is a very cool online service
where you can customize pretty much everything
t-shirts, mugs, cards, calendars, mouse-pads, and even shoes!
at somehow reasonable prices

so in a jiffy, i designed these, based on some
of the photos i took, was eager to try the service!
the quality of the shirts it's pretty decent &
they have plenty of models and colors to select from

so if you are feeling creative
or want to design your own Christmas presents
take a look
http://www.zazzle.com/create




herr Gato's & frau Kitty's original design
i made these with Photoshop and chose for herr Gato's design
a 100% cotton long-sleeved ladies fitted shirt
and for frau Kitty's, a custom ladies ringer t-shirt
with red collar & sleeves to match


then uploaded them to the Zazzle.com inter phase
with a rather helpful flash application that
allows you control of scale, position, and other specs
of your design on your selected product model



http://www.zazzle.com/cr/design/pt-shirt
and well, you saw the finished products above
scroll up, & click on, to enlarge
they are cool and comfortable garments
& i wear them all the time on weekends,
Friday's at the office, or for walks
where i get nods from cat-crazy people
and grunts from the more normal kind...

Stone In

[click on the poster to see in detail the art]

i guess is a little late to promote
last night's gig in Vancouver of Stone In
but at least i can share the wonderful
powered on psychedelia poster that
mister Al aka Ground Control aka Beto
who writes the Moloko Vellocet blog
created here for his own band
as said before i feel
and not mistakenly, that Ground Control is the
best graphic designer i've ever met
and the best drummer too!!!

since i've met him back in Mexico city
many years ago when we both worked
for the Hard Rock Cafe Mexico
designing t-shirts and other merchandising goodies
i was amazed by his talent as a designer

i remember when we first met
i felt threatened by his talent
he was one of two graphic designers
that my newer boss hired to sort of replace me!
i hated the guy at first... and he was so nice and preppy looking too!
but little did i know about him, hidden behind that innocent
good-looking face was the true spirit of a hard rocker
a Zappa fan to the bones, and really into good hard rock music

after hating him for a couple of days, i saw on his desk
a copy of Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger
wow! that is one of my favorite grunge albums of all times
so i thought, well, he might get my job but at least he has
good musical taste, little did i know again...
we started chatting over Soundgarden, and next minute
he told me about him being a drummer, his musical taste
so similar to mine, and we talked over design and life
and about his beautiful girlfriend, now wife,
Gaby being an industrial designer like me, etc. and
i knew a friendship would be coming next...
regardless of annoying work threats...

we happily worked together for a couple of years!
and i OWE him MANY of the design and
photoshop tricks i know!
i remember very well, he was the one who
explained me about the Feather tool on the Selection
on Photoshop, a tool I use most days since then

now he lives in Vancouver with his beautiful wife
and works successfully as a graphic designer
(the poster is just a sample of his work)
and after alternating with bands over the years
is working in his newestestestestest project
Stone In! he's the drums and another guy the guitar
visit the site for some sample of their
(love the graphics of his site too! very suitable
with their heavy trippy drippy music)

i am so thankful for having such talented friends!

Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) Seminar

a couple of weeks ago i went to an
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Seminar

i was able to learn a little of a lot little tricks for
Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks (and others)

above my materials and below one of the 8 pages
of my only-by-myself-legible notes



one of the little implements of Photoshop on CS3
is the Photomerge
tool that allows you to select different photos
and merge them into a panorama

and visual sample of this feature here below
i took these 3 photos of a man running, in a row
so the same guy with 3 different backgrounds
of the same street

the initial 3 photos

the right


the center


the left


& here all together now
the auto merge Photoshop did
[click on it for full-size effect and look
for the same runner in 3 different places]



this tool existed before but the results were never that great
and lots of additional adjustments had to be made

and of course the Adobe CS4 is out now
but i don't think my company or many other users
will upgrade to it, at least for a while...

anyway, the seminar
was a very good day for the nerd in me

and sure! it is good to learn all together now
about everything, drawings, photography,
computers, or submarines
[...]

Helvetica

last night i watched this rather interesting documentary
about the typeface Helvetica



the films introduces a lot graphic design and typography talk
but also a lot of interesting points on global visual culture
and how we recycle the visuals presented to us every day

the documentary balances between beautiful photography
of New York City, Amsterdam, Berlin, Zürich, London
and Münchenstein, Switzerland, where Helvetica was born
and dynamic urban shots presenting the stellar Helvetica



all structured in between interviews
with an endless list of graphic designers, typographists,
and other graphic gurus

one thing that i think keeps this films so alive
is that is a little controversial
the filmmaker Gary Hustwit
interviews both
Helvetica advocates and Helvetica adversaries
Helvetica users and Helvetica haters

yes! a typography can have enemies
but then you'll have to watch the documentary
don't want to spoil it for you
just recommend it
ah! cool music too

& those elections coming so close...

the California general election
and gotta read all these propositions
i have brief ideas about some
but...



thankfully for presidential election
i have my mind fixed
i am with

Barack Obama





i think these Obama's poster
series by Obey Giant taste
dunno, transcendental?

funny thing this netscape

yes the version of netscape 8.0.4 (based on firefox)
has this little feature that is making my life way easier, since you can either display the same page as you'd see in either firefox or explorer, just by clicking on this little arrow

i am a silly designer dealing with CSS standards for an application, if i get my application displaying OK for firefox and explorer i am all set (albeit my boss' opinions -read barking) since those are the 2 browsers people are most used to

this function of netscape saves me couple of minutes per hour, since i don't have to open the damn URLs in both browsers, i can just check in Netscape and voilà! with the selection of a checkmark i am all done

now there's many little issues and tricks for optimal CSS-ing, some really stupid like that fact that explorer can't read "mid" numbers in some basic stuff like the height of an area, if you have 176 px it is going to round-it to 180 px, on the other hand, firefox is better with details like that, but, hey what am i going to do? kill all of the explorer users? or force them into changing to firefox? i don't even have myself a decent browser at home, i deal with a imac g3 with explorer 5.1 for mac and mozilla, i can barely check my bank account at home, and to post photos at 23 i have to do one by one, therefore i don't, oh and by the way my finder for mac os 9.1 doesn't not support my canon camera so i can't even download the damn photos

so i understand, even if i am a web designer, what is to be in the oldest of the techy's, if an application runs in my computer, believe me, then it means that a neandearthal man can gett it started with probably a few rocks and stickies...

ok but back to the style sheets...

i rather fix my graphics to display OK on both browsers even though we as designers know the big difference between 1 or 2 pixels but i guess that's the trick but standardization and globalization or while working at a non-profit (like the san diego blood bank) where with few resources you got make things pretty (like the blood bank newsletter printed in just 2 colors) or here, where i have to standardize a look that will display OK no matter how outdated or hyper-ultimate is your freaking browser

it is easy to design for all-tools-users but we gotta remember there's people without so much technological resources out there and they are still mean to enjoy of our applications

voilà, i am glad the weekend is over, not 'cause i love to work
but because at home i have that crippled computer that doesn't let me
"explayarme"

ha! monday intentions

a great resource for CSS in advanced styles and other tricky tricks please check this amazing website A List Apart http://www.alistapart.com/