May 2009 be a great year for you! Cheers!

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The typeface used is Cloud, by Subtype. You can download it for free on their website!

You can keep up with what I'm doing by checking out my website or following me on Twitter.

This month's desktop is set in a dreamy Helvetica Neue. With all of the craziness going on these days I've tried to keep them simple and quiet. We hope you have a good month, and don't forget Valentine's Day!

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Here are a couple of my favorite concepts, but you've got to see them all.

I will be rooting for the Steeler's although I have not watched a game all season, and just realized the other day that the "big game" is approaching this weekend. I just know enough that next week will be much better around the office if the Steelers win, because someone really likes them...

Click on image to download. :)

Download below:

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Above is a video I made while working at home today. I touch on a few points that I'd like to stress here. One, video is easy. Two, video can be super cheap. You might even already have the tools needed to publish a similar video on your site! Three, it's not as scary as you might think. Just talk as if you were talking to one of your clients. If that means you need to have more of an "Oval Office" type of presentation than I do that's fine. I am sure it would be easy to arrange your backdrop to be a bit fancier than my breakfast nook.

Links:

• I mentioned Last.fm in the video. It's a great way to hear music. Add me as a friend if you use it!
• This month's newsletter, Video Just Got Easier
• Chris Butler's blog 
• The coffee I mentioned is Kuta, but Dolok Sanngul is my favorite
• The camera I use is a Nikon Coolpix P5100
• I use Vimeo to publish my videos, but if you are publishing videos for a commercial business, you will want to check out others. Vimeo is for personal use only. I also mentioned Viddler, which is great!

Download below:

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• 2GB upload per week
• No banner ads
• Unlimited HD uploading
• Embed your HD videos
• Higher quality video
• Priority uploading
• Player customization
• Advanced privacy options
• Unlimited Groups, Channels & Albums
  

I think I'd like to add a new section to this blog for brief posts that just point out trends as I see them. Chris and I usually talk about these things, and I think it'd be good to open up the conversation. First one to start the series: animated logos?

I am trying to think of companies that have an animated logo on their site. Sure, a lot of companies animate their logo in ads and commercials, but Mindshare might be one of the first to have theirs animated on every page of their site. This might become a new trend now that so many companies are completely web-based. Am I forgetting any animated logos? If so, please link to them in the comments!

If You Could be anything for day what would you be?

There are 33 posted replies. Below are a few that stood out to me. Oh, and of course, if you ask a child a question, you'll get your response in the form of a drawing!

Alien Rapper: This one kind of reminds me of Mark on our own office Bling Day:

Jay the Spy: Okay, he has "fire boots!" Something I am sure I would have overlooked as a spy.

A Gorilla: This description sounds somewhat like our resourcing department, only BIGGER. Maybe some one we know wrote in under a disguise?

Robot With a Pet Robot: This is definitely our own Chris Butler.

Purple Octopus: You may not know that one of our Project Managers, Jason Adams, has a fondness for these creatures. (And a blog about them!) I wonder what color he would be if he were an octopus?

Superman: But this Superman has an awesome new logo. Maybe Brand New will be posting an article soon?

Three sizes available this month:

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iPhone

My guess is some one thinks that Carrboro should be more like Southpoint, and they just don't understand what has continued to make Carrboro the unique and creative town it has become. I wonder if the architect even walked around Carrboro. Did they see the hoopers? The bluegrass bands? The hippies? The do-it-yourselfers? Have they ever been to Weaver Street Market?

I could go on and on with that list. Carrboro is a rag-tag group of people that, as far as I can gather, are not even from Carrboro. It is not homogenous, and it's surprising that it even works. Which brings me to my first statement: I like Carrboro. I hope I can do something to stop this proposal from going through.

Three sizes available this month:

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1280x1024

iPhone

Three sizes available this month:

1440x900

1280x1024

iPhone

Here's a preview:

Also, thanks to John at I Love Typography for posting the June desktop in his Sunday Type. (Maybe this one will make it, too!) If you have any interest in typography or design, his blog is a must-read! The site is climbing its way to 20,000 subscribers. Be one of them.

Right click and save the desktop below:

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UPDATE:

John did in fact post this desktop on I Love Typography. (Thanks John!) Be sure to check out the rest this week's Sunday Type.

The most obvious example, and they take it to the extreme, is www.dontclick.it. You are asked to click one last time before entering the site. After that, if you click...well, I won't spoil it.

Does anyone know if this would be possible without using Flash? 

Right click and save the desktop below:

1440x900 (most of you will probably want this one)

1243x969 (This is the dimensions of my external monitor)

A suite of web-based applications (RIAs) for people who create. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, we have a tool for artists of all genres.

It's no secret that I love birds so I am anxious to see if these products live up to their branding. Right now use of the products is by invitation only, and I have yet to receive access. I will let you know, once I get in there, exactly what we're looking at. As of now, they have these tools:

Phoenix: Image editor

Toucan: Color swatches and palettes creator

Peacock: Computer algorithm-based pattern generator

Raven: Vector editor

Hummingbird: 3D modeller and skinner

Myna: Audio editor

Roc: Music generator

Starling: Video editor

Owl: Desktop publishing layout editor

Penguin: Word processing software geared towards creative writers

Pigeon: Painting simulator

Tern: Terrain generator (minitool)

Horus: Font editor

Woodpecker: Smart image resizer using seam carving (minitool)

Rookery: A free, unlimited distributed file system network that anyone can connect to and store data in. It also powers Aviary's file search engine.

Hawk: Digital content marketplace

Crane: Custom image product creator

Eagle: A smart online application that can identify complex data about an image based on the pixel patterns (i.e. which specific camera an image originally came from)

Whew! That's a handful. We'll see if it lives up to our expectations. For now, I'll stand by picnik for image-editing. Here is a list of other free resources Aviary will have to compete with:

GoogleSketchup: 3D for everyone (not to be confused with Google's ketchup)

Fontstruct: Create geometric fonts. 

Chocoflop and The Gimp: These are more like Photoshop. Chocoflop for MAc, Gimp for PC. 

Inkscape: Create vector art without Illustrator! 

I Like Your Colors: Type in a url and get the hex colors. 

Stripe Generator: Need a striped background for part of a website you are designing?

Audacity: Cross-platform audio editing software 

Open Office: Replace Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat for free! 

Avidmux: Video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.

NVU: "A complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users."

Please keep in mind that I have not used all of these, but ahve bookmarked them over time. I link them here just to spread the word, and I hope they come in handy for some one. Please let me know either way, and feel free to leave some links in the comments. Maybe you have created your own software? Cheers! 

Download here (1243x969) 

Download color version here (1243x969) 

Download b&w version here (1243x969)

Please let me know your thoughts. I'd like to make more of these, and your feedback or requests will help me cater to your needs. Now get outside and enjoy the weather!

So let's get to the application!

 Although there are some extra things you can do with Picnik, I am just focusing on 3 things: resizing, cropping, and saturation. These are probably the most needed features for editing images for the web.

Resizing your image could be critical. Let's say you are uploading new headshots to your company bio page. You've taken the photos with a 12 megapixel camera, and the photos are huge. Resizing the photo is necessary so that the image will fit in the content area of your website. In this case, my photo was 4000x3000 pixels. Way too big! (It's a photo I took of some popcorn I left out for the squirrels in my yard. I figured that if they didn't know what popcorn was, I'd let them know it was theirs to eat.)

Resizing the photo in Picnik is actually easier than Photoshop. You can choose to scale proportions, which is almost always recommended, to avoid distorting your photos. You can edit the dimensions until you have it right, and each time, it gives you a preview of your photo. Once you have it where you want it simply click "OK." You can reset the size at this point if you feel you have made an error.

So you have resized your image, but it's not square like the other headshots on the company bio page. This is also easier in Picnik than it is in Photoshop. You can specify the desired dimensions and move the crop box around to frame the photo just as you would like it before actually cropping it. Again, you can go back a step if you feel it needs to be done differently. Also, they have some default settings for creating you user icon from your favorite social networking site. They even have preset dimensions for creating desktops for your computer! (Seriously, I am not getting paid to write this.)

Now you would like to make your headshot look better than the others in your company. Easy. Using the Colors section, you can make your cashmere sweater a deeper blue, and bring a little contrast to give yourself that "I just had 3 cups of coffee" look you desire.

Like I said earlier, there are other features, and I suggest trying it out to see if it would be something that you could benefit from. I am sure it is, and if you do, please let me know what you think of it. You might find something to tone down my enthusiasm about it. ;)

Music: M. Ward

How many of you went to The New York Times to get up-to-date on the news, and noticed that Apple bought up most of the homepage? Yes, there was a clever ad where some guy begins going around the whole internet to fix all the ads that say Leopard is faster than Vista. Once the little flash ad (that took up most of the homepage) was over, however, it turned to white space. We all know Apple banks on white space, but I was appalled that it had come to this. They even bought up the space that bookends the Times' logo at the top, and left it empty. I guess I am just surprised they didn't route nytimes.com to apple.com for the day!
Okay, I am stretching this a bit far, but I did find it over the top, and thought I'd share a couple of screenshots with you, too. The first is one that I had on hand from June 2006. the second one show's Apple's "white space."

Update: 

Here's an article by "A Thousand Times No" about the ad Apple ran last week. It's a clear rant on the punctuation in the WSJ quote. WARNING: True irritated geekiness ahead...

Watch tomorrow's match between Veerle Pieters vs Cindy Li! (The RSS feed helps to stay informed...) 

The above are 2 favorites from the animated gif battle between Matt Owens vs Jason Gnewikow.

(I even made a short video from my time there.)

I started the morning out playing guitar and singing in the space. I even had an idea for some lyrics to a chord progression I have been fooling around with so I grabbed the laptop to record it. I even ended up changing the song a bit more, and adding another section to it! Once I got to cutting paper and painting things were going well.
I took a time lapse movie of my progression to share with you, and as you can see, the sun was moving hot across my back!

Time Lapse: "Anticipation" (Day 3) from able parris on Vimeo.

My installation is called "Anticipation," and will be an ongoing even through the Advent season. I will be creating art on paper in the front window on the other side of the room from Julia's drawings. I will be working with paint and collage, and I am not sure how many pieces I will make in the given timeframe, but got pretty far on it this weekend. It feels great just to get my hands wet with paint and glue again. It had been a long time since I had worked with materials in that way, and I was a bit intimidated if the idea of creating a sort of studio in public space. While I was at work there on Saturday, the Durham Christmas Parade gathered a large crowd, and while waiting for the marching bands and fire engines, they stood just feet from me, watching.
I will continue working on the pieces until I think they are "finished," but here are a couple of the things I started this weekend. They have changed even since I snapped these pictures on Saturday afternoon, and I have started 3 others, one of which is twice the size of these.

]]> http://www.newfangled.com/visualizing_advent Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

If you pause it at about 2 seconds in, you'll see Mark proudly holding Spot, our office dog.

On our way around the corner of the building, walking from the car to 3 Cups, we pass by a little office (my guess is that it's about 500 square feet) full of maps, bikes, printers, stacks of papers, pine cones, shells from the beach, books, boxes of more things already mentioned, and peeking over all of it would be a man, working. We got so much gratification out of seeing him in there like that. By the look of the place, he probably never left. There was a small path to the back of the room where he sat, but not much other room to be in there without standing on one of the many piles. When he was in there working, we would kindly look away and head for coffee. We didn't want him to feel like he was in a fishbowl. If he wasn't in there, however, we would take a few seconds to peek in to try to make sense of it all. We were so inspired by all that had been made in there, and the many items collected and stored. We wanted our own place like it.

Two weeks ago, on a routine visit to 3 Cups, we steered around the corner only to find the office almost empty. We gasped! It was the one place around that reminded us of Providence, where we lived the first 4 years of our marriage. It was the one place we saw regularly that inspired us to keep being creative. It was one of the reasons this place was starting to feel more like "home."

You could imagine me sigh of relief this afternoon after I called Swanson and Associates, the landscape architecture company that was located there, in Chapel Hill, to find out that they were not closing their doors after all, but (not so simply) moving the office to Carrboro. Who knows how many calls they get from people not needing their services, but just making sure they aren't closing their doors. The lady on the other end of the phone was as sweet as I imagined she would be. She explained that they had been in that office for 18 years, and had finally grown out of it. I could not agree more, but that is what gave it most of its charm.

So now they are within a few blocks from the Newfangled office, and I think Chris and I will need to head over there soon to formally introduce ourselves. He and his wife, also having spent some years in Providence, were as sad as us to see the move. He snapped the picture months ago of the office in full swing. I got this one of them moving.

In somewhat related new (elephants), Brand New creates some controversy over the new Republican National Convention logo.

Next, I'd like to see an iPhone for every child. ;)

The article is part of a series, 15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography, by I Love Typography.

READ: Under the Bonnet  

Since I came to work at Newfangled, I have been trying to stock the place up with plants, but I refuse to purchase large plants that would ultimately look better around here. Instead, I make cuttings and propagate plants I have from home, the coffee shop, and other public places. I like to watch the plant grow and become comfortable to its new environment. As a result, We have some little plants that look even smaller in front of spanning brick walls.
Now there is a solution!

Was that a person that walked by a fence that a bird perched on and sang a little song? No, but it sure looks like it. Isn't it beautiful what hands can do?

Chris Jordan has combined math, art, and awareness to create beautiful imagery, with a message. I would love to see these in person!

The latest issue of Cabinet Magazine reached my mailbox this week, thanks to my brother-in-law and his wife who purchased a subscription for me as a Christmas gift. Insects is the theme this issue, and I am excited to crack it open. The cover image is from a book that I happen to have called, Heteroptera by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger. The book is over-sized, and has beautiful drawings of mutated insects. A good example of the arts and sciences coming together in a way that would make Wendell Berry proud.

One of my favorite pastimes is to sit on the floor cutting up old magazines, photos, books and paper, and assembling them together in a collage. As a freelancer, I was often hired to create collages for companies and individuals for their branding. They would see things I had done in my sketchbook and ask me to create something like it for them, usually giving me a lot of freedom to create something new rather than a copy of what they had seen. I even had the opportunity to create a couple of websites that were collage-based.

"ABLE!! PLEASE HEEEELP! I UPLOADED A PHOTO OF NEWEST EMPLOYEE TO OUR COMPANY BIO PAGE, AND NOW IT'S BROKEN!!! WHAT DO I DO?!?!"

As it is sometimes my duty to educate, I inform them, first, that all caps should be used sparingly as it suggests yelling, and no one wants to be yelled out. Right? Secondly, there are a few things that need to be done to a photo before putting it online.