We’ve shared our thoughts on the ampersand here before – so I’ll just leave this here for you to peruse. Click through for an even larger version.
image credit: Six Revisions
Setting aside personal political perspectives, I still felt it necessary to share the concept of Occupy Design.
As a couple with backgrounds in political science (him), international affairs and anthropology (me), the idea of going beyond hand-drawn signs to associate good design and effective infographics with political protestations is intriguing beyond partisan bounds.
For Friday, we leave you with this.
By way of brief explanation (for truly, in some things, less is more) – the title of the original assignment was “My. Touchy Face,” the object of which was to develop a character in flash whose features would animate into five emotions when a user hovered over a labelled button.
Jack took this assignment to the extreme.
Have a lovely weekend!
illustration credit: Brandon Bird
We’ve recently entered the early stages of a few big projects, but it’s been quite some time since we shared something we’ve finished.
The site for Design Make is one that we wrapped up earlier this summer. Michelle already had a mockup of her design; we stepped in to translate her work into a custom WordPress theme, and move the full site to its new home at design-make.net.
Perhaps empty isn’t quite the correct term; certainly we’ve been preoccupied, as the minimal posting here shows. It’s primarily my fault – I’m running the Boston Marathon for charity in April, and over the past few months training, fundraising and eating have become my primary concerns; Jack is a bit shy about blogging, so things have laid fallow here.
That doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy! We have several projects underway in the new year, and plenty going on. Coinciding with my marathon training, though, we’ve also received a handful of inquiries as to whether or not we design websites. (This has made us realize that perhaps we need to make our offerings more apparent.)
Pantone has released its Color of 2011, and I have to admit to being a bit off with my musings over fuchsia – but not by much, I promise.
Presenting: Honeysuckle.
Pantone of course offers an array of products in the new It Color, and I’ll be keeping my eye out for this lighter, brighter shade (as compared to my beloved fuchsia) in interiors and fashion as the year unfolds.
Officially, of course, Union Jack Creative is still pretty partial to purple. Just sayin…
We’ve been working on some substantial changes to the Union Jack Creative site, including a pretty drastic switch from dark to light and some added features to make our content easier to navigate.
This weekend, Jack installed Ubuntu for netbooks onto my Eee PC; it turns out, running Windows on 4GB of memory is not the most efficient option. I had been hesitant to make the change; I’m not the computer-savvy half of our team, after all, and “Linux” was one of those terms that had always been an indicator for me to leave a conversation when it came into play.
Jack found my trepidation comical; he made the change, showed me the ropes and let me play around for a few hours before checking in.
Jack: How are you liking Linux?
Kate: It’s fine, easy enough.
Jack: Much faster, right?
Kate: Sure…and, it’s purple!
[Silence.]
Of course, Linux itself is not purple, and I am well aware of that at least; but look at that home screen! It doesn’t hurt that the Ubuntu interface is incredibly intuitive and an easy transition. Thanks, Jack!
We did some wine tasting this weekend in the Finger Lakes region of New York with family, and made a stop at Bellwether Hard Cider in Trumansburg. We expected the cider to be on the sweeter side, and were pleasantly surprised to find much drier offerings. A bottle may have been purchased to allow for mimosas the following morning…
What struck me most, though, was the label designs at Bellwether. So often, labels on wines are an afterthought. Jack and I, like everyone, sometimes need to choose a last-minute, unfamiliar wine in the liquor store based solely on the appearance of the bottle – not ideal, but it happens. Of course, design costs money, and smaller vineyards have to prioritize somewhere; frequently, labels are not that priority. Some are just boring, and others are downright bad, with the worst offender this weekend being a vineyard featuring some rather excellent wines wearing a pixelated, low-quality graphic. For shame!