Sep/090
FOWD ‘09
This is a post about the “Future of Web Design” conference I attended on the 16th September. The speakers were Paul Annett, Mike Tautly, Simon Collison, Dean Vipond and Brendan Dawes.
In this post I’ll just go over what really stood out for me starting with Paul Annett’s “Oooh, That’s Clever! (Un-natural Experiments in Web Design).”
Paul from Clearleft talked to us mainly about “Easter eggs” and why they are used. He discussed he parallax effect found on silverback and revealed a few other “Easter eggs” including the mighty mouse image. (I don’t care what Gez says it’s meant to be there and it’s cool!)
The point of it all was that “Easter eggs”, when used correctly are like secrets, designed to be spread. We all know how fun it is to know something, someone else doesn’t and we love to feel clever by telling people what they don’t know or haven’t noticed. Well that is the sole purpose of “Easter eggs” to hope people find it and want to tell it to the world. His presentation can be found on his website at http://paulannett.co.uk/
I think that Brendan Dawes’ presentation was just genius. I’ve seen some of his Magnetic North stuff before and was just blown away then. To be able to listen to him talk about the thought process and how he views his work was just great.
I think what really helps is that he is great at getting his message across to the audience and im sure that's really usefull when it comes to clients.
He told us how he thought that the best part of an iPhone was the ability to pull the screen down to reveal the grey space (a do nothing machine) and it makes me think of:
"We've invented most of the stuff that we need and now we're just messing about" - Karl Pilkington
I think sometimes it’s important to remember the play factor and less of the logical work part.
Dean Vipond was another speaker who stood out for me. His talk was about adding personality and a sense of identity to your work. I think this could be vital in near future because it is the personal touches which set works apart. I think we would all rather recieve emails saying howdy sam, instead of Dear mr luk.
Sep/090
“Surfing’s the source man… “
Mate of mine was watching Point Break last night hense the title but it was fitting becasue I came across these amazing surf images.
More of these at smashandpeas
Sep/090
Minimalists Photography
Here's a selection of minimalist photography which are nice.
Never really thought of minialist photography before, you get in it traditional art and digital art but just never come across minimalist photography much, or just not thought that's what it is. Theres more at smashandpeas
Sep/090
Cube Dudes
Pixar animator and BURN-E director Angus MacLane's most famous works may be computer-generated, but in his spare time he works in the more physical medium of plastic bricks, rendering his favorite characters in Lego. - i09
More ">cube dudes
Sep/090
Back to basics
Originally uploaded by sam_luk
Spotted this guy yesterday working on a old type writter!!! thought it was pretty cool till i realised he has to carry the thing everywhere AND the paper as well as the tip-ex for when he gets a spelling mistake!!! no wonder he looked a bit stressed!
Sep/090
Back to Leeds
Moved back to leeds yesterday and it all went ok.
Surprised the house is actually still standing with all the lads living here but it has with stood some battering. we have a ripped lamp shade, broken sink fitting and a shattered arm rest already, Andy's been banned from the Arc and this is only the first 2 months when only 1/2 of them were here!
Room's not sorted yet (doubt it ever will get sorted) but I did move my bed and table around only to find out that my laptop is now sitting in direct view from the fit girl next door, must try to remeber that.
The biggest fucking problem is can't get the xbox working through my laptop any more!!
It's well annoying because the internet worked fine and then I decided to try the xbox out so I plugged the eithernet cable in and it shut the connection down. So I have absolutly no idea how to fix and might just have to buy a 300meter either net wire and take it from the router to the xbox, Dreams 
Sep/090
Goodbye KMP
18092009215
Originally uploaded by sam_luk
Here's the card i got from KMP when I left yesterday and moved on to my last year at uni.
To be honest i didn't think i'd find myself this attached to a job just after one year but I definitly am going to miss everyone and working there. It's all the little things which made the year, from Dave's descriptive stories of what he did in the weekend to trying to worm my way ot off having to make tea for the creative team.
It has been a great year and Thanks everyone at KMP Digitata.
Sep/090
Kanyelicio.us
Here's a nice little java script based website thingy which takes the piss out of Kanye West's recent antic's at the MTV awards.
After putting in http://kanyelicio.us/ infront of any web address this happens:
Here's a post in the Daily mail full of similar pages.
Sep/092
Kmp last supper
Kmp last supper
Originally uploaded by sam_luk
Last free 'sandwich' from kmp. As far as i know no ones had this bad boy and seing as im leaving tomorrow i thought what the hell 
thanks kmp
Sep/091
wtf is going on with Fish!
In the last few days I have come across some disturbing images of fish and I am seriosuly reckonsidering if I ever want to eat one again.. or should i eat more of them so they don't mutate as quick 
First feaky fish 1 is this random shark who looks like its starting to grow legs!
If you read on you will see that male sharks are supposed to have these "legs" and are called clappers or somthing. Thats ok but isn't this just a sign of evolution? That these clappers are getting pretty damn big and give it a few years and im sure will will start to see these little critters hopping around beaches wearing peoples flip flops!!!!
Bet fish 1 made you re-think that dream of pulling a mermaid if you thought she could grow legs and find you after you do a runner, but imagine going to pull her and finding out her tongues been replaced by a fucking parasite becasue that's what fish 2's got.
I always imagined parasites as something, the size of a pin head but that fucker is clearly not the size of a pin head and actually lives in your head!!!!.
Sep/092
21 Guns
Couldn't go out this weekend, for numourous reasons.. but some time playing around with Illustrator and listening to music and after a weekend of it, the image you see below is the out come. This is my first attempt at a proper piece focused on typograpghy and i think it turned out ok.
It is an image with all the lyrics from the song 21 guns by Green day. I had a few idas for this piece and through out the two days the ideas just kept changing and evolving untill I decided that i'd started over too many times and this was the final one. I did set out trying to make 21 guns from the lyrics but after a while i realised that there just wasn't enought text to make a detailed looking 21 guns. So i settled for a gun for each verse and a gun for the chorus.
I don't think i'm done with this piece yet, I hope to add a bit more colour and probably try out some shading and a gradiants to bring the text out more, any one with any suggestions feel free to comment
Sep/090
Kenetic typograpghy
Found this video made by Jerry aka caracter2
Obviosuly a lot of time and effort was put into it and it really pays of. The work is smooth and flows really well with the music. I know with typograpgh your meant to make all text readable and I think that even with the fast pace music he has been able to do this really well.
Sep/090
OwaikeO
This is a blog post on Ahmed Alrefaie aka OwaikeO's work.
I came across his work when he was doing a tutorial for abduzeedo.com and i instantly thought WOW. He has a way of making his work look so simple and clean yet if you look closly it is riddles with details and little bits which could stand out as great work on its own.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity - Charles Mingus
I'd advise every one to go have a look at his tutorial on his site to fully appreciate how much work he puts into an image and to be able to just see the minor details you just over look when look at the image.
Sep/090
Creative Knitting
After speaking to a friend and realising she did a course in knitting I found myself wondering the web in search of creative knitting and came across a few really nice pieces of work in Sessionmagazine.com
It just goes to show that creativity can be any where.
Sep/092
Beer ads
A nice collection of beer ads by GisMullr on the Abduzeedo site
I've just picked a few which I thought were really creative or created really well.
Sep/090
Photoshop Fails!
These photoshop fails are everywhere this week, i think it's becasue of the whole Micrsoft thing so here's a link to the top 30, on creative nerds
Also note that the girl with no belly button... still hot and also the Digg blog seemed to miss a fail that the Fail blog picked up recently, first one to spot it and comments gets a pint of me
Sep/090
Northern Digitals
Had a great night out on Thrusday with @martinjagger in Manchester, it was meant to be my second out of two social networking nights, but we will just side step and forget the failiure that happened on Tuesday.
We went to @northerndigital which is:
A monthly meet up where digital creatives from in and around Manchester can get away from their screens and talk to other digital creatives over a pint. - northerndigital
It was held in a pub called "The Northern" down by the Northern Quarter and started around 7. I had felt a bit nervous about just walking up to a group of people professions who i respected and have only known thier names from referral to thier work or achievments, but them nervous soon died after a few beers and the organiser @mattbooth had come over with a few other people to offer us a warm welcome.
Everyone there was really friendly and seemed more than happy to give me advice on what I should do after univesity which is amazing becasue these people are at a level I wish to get to one day and so thier knowledge, like this year at KMP, was invaluable which also helped me make the decision of if i'm going back next month and the answer ofcouse is, definitly.Northern Digitals
Sep/090
Double Vision
It's been roumored that Gsreen are ready to launch thier dual screen laptop (Gscreen spacebook) on Amazon in December.
Spacebook planned Specs:
- 2 LED backlit display screens
- Windows VISTA/ WIN XP PRO (optional)
- Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26-GHz
- 4 GB of RAM (2GB DDR2 SO-DIMM x 2)
- 320GB 7200-rpm HD
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GT with 512MB dedicated memory (or)
- NVIDIA® Quadro FX 1700M Graphics with 512MB dedicated memory
- 9-cell battery
- IEEE 1394 1 Graphics Card Output (15-pin, D-Sub) X 1, HDMI X 1 Mic-in X 1, Line-in x 1, Headphone X 1 PCI Express Card X 1 AC Power Adaptor Output: 19V DC, 90W Input: 100~240V AC, 50/60Hz universal Battery Pack Li-ion 9 cells
What do people think? This is the first time I have come across the idea and i'm a bit un-sure on what to make of it. I have a HP DV7 at home with a 17.3" screen and I think, yeah I could do with a bigger screen but I wouldn't add on an extra inch if it meant putting on another milligram of wieght. im not sure how heavy the Gscreen is but im sure it wont be a feather.
I understand that it might be used in offices but wouldn't you just get a desktop?
Would it be best used for pitches and presentation?
Sep/090
Browser for the better
Recently it feels like all I do is talk about how bad Microft are and how IE 6 should be put down, so it does bring me pleasure to post about their new campaign which aims to provide people with an incentive to upgrade from IE 6 to IE8.
The campaign is called Browser for the better. and says:
For every download of Windows Internet Explorer 8 from this site, we will continue to donate 8 meals to Feeding America. And during Hunger Action month, we will double that donation for people upgrading from Windows Internet Explorer 6 - © 2009 Microsoft Corporation
So get upgrading people and maybe some day we will be able to build a design and know that it will work in all browsers with minimal changes
Sep/090
God’s eye view
I came across this article by Creative Review back in December and thought i'd post it on here
God's eye view is a project consisting of four images which depict four biblical scenes in a Google map style created by The Glue Society
Not to take anything away from the level of impressive detail but I think we are so used to looking at the world through images like Google maps that it makes the images even more belivable and it is this unique idea which makes the work even more impressive.
Sep/091
Bubbleologist
Some nice images of a bubbleologist 's bubble,whos attempted to break the current world record.
It's great to think that this guy went to a park, and seen a bubble and from that very moment he spent the majority of his life creating, playing and working with bubbles, its a good thing he didnt step in any dog shit.