Creative Hat » Chatter

The Render Dress-tease

Ferg — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:09:08 +0000

When I stated out working with 3D rendering, I thought that anti-aliasing was a lobby against monikers.

Little did I know about the mesmerising power of the render tool, and the tantalising anticipation of the smoothing bar. As anyone who works with powerful 3D applications will know, the rendering function is like a striptease in reverse, where the clothes are slowly going on rather than coming off. I use the word ‘Slow’, because when I first started to work with digital 3D, my hardware was pretty basic, and it struggled with the power of these applications.

After hours of modelling and texture editing, setting the scenes and lighting them, I would finally be ready to test render my work. I would click the render button, and the ‘dress-tease’ would begin. I would watch the smoothing bar gradually make its way down the image, seductively revealing more and more of my work, and I would become hypnotised by this process. I was eager to see the results of my labour, but equally keen to see how the application had translated my ideas.

Would that extra spotlight bring out the reflection I wanted? Would the diffuse on the ambient light get rid of that harsh shadow? I couldn’t wait to find out, and I would stare at the bar as it slowly ironed out the latest tweaks. How would that texture work on a sphere? In theory, it would look fantastic, but I had to wait and see, and the image render might take up to half an hour to complete (if I was lucky).

Would I go and do something productive while the rendering took place? Would I turn my attention to one of my neglected priorities while the dress-tease was on? Never me! I watched every count of the bar as if my will alone would keep it on it’s inexorable course to the end.

Fifteen minutes into the render, I spot an error. Damn, it looks good, but that extra spotlight has put an awful glare onto my sphere texture. I’ve wasted fifteen minutes watching the smoothing of a dud! Never mind. I come out of the render, tweak the settings in the wireframe, and start all over. I am exited to see the result, and I click the render button once more…here we go!

Ten minutes into the render, I see that the sphere texture is too dark now, but the changes I’ve made have put a beautiful glow around it, and I feel exited about that, so I return to the wirframe to play around some more. Each subtle change of light creates yet another problem, but opens up another option, and a texture needs editing to compensate. I am spending two minutes frantically editing the wireframe, and twenty minutes watching the render result with the intensity of a cat who has sighted prey.

I am transfixed by the smoothing bar. Each time it begins it’s methodical, relentless scrutiny of my work, I rub my hands in anticipation. Slowly and steadily the result unveils, gradually revealing all the power of the application in its glory, and as I watch it paint my instructions, I know that I will get the credit for so much that I didn’t actually intend.

*****************

Over time, the novelty wore off and I became accustomed to the tools that would ultimately save me time. The awe of the anti-alias was replaced with impatience, and ultimately, better hardware. Watching the smoothing bar had become tedious, and to avoid the frustration of impatience, I had learned to go and make a cup of tea, or compose an email. The joy of the dress-tease had all but vanished as I had grown up into a new world of maximising time and billable work.

Occasionally, I would revert to my old ways and watch the smoothing bar for a while, but feeling the waste of time pressing on me, I would turn away, considering that in ‘watched kettle’ hell where nothing ever boils, perhaps there might be such a thing as the corner of the infinite render. Here, there just might be some poor soul who has to tweak every error of his past for all eternity, and begin the render process each time forever on a deathly slow machine.

However, all of this was long ago. I don’t do as much 3D work as I used to, but when I do go back and play around, I can’t help reverting to my old ways. The whole fun for me is the exciting dress-tease, where I get to waste time watching the digital paint dry.

Crowdsourcing & Spec Work

Ferg — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:45:29 +0000

Crowdsourcing in the design industry is a the concept of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing the work to a group of people or community in the form of an open invitation. This means that a given community or the general public are invited by a company (or individual) to carry out a design task, (develop a website or logo concept etc), with the aim of awarding the contract to the winner. The crowdsourcing business model has attracted controversy and criticism from many sources.

Spec Work is the practice of getting designers to work “on spec” which is basically getting them to produce finished work with no guarantee of getting paid. This type of practise is widely considered unethical (immoral even) by the graphic design community, as it expects the designer to commit their time and resources to a project where they may get nothing in return.

“While a client may feel they don’t want to invest money until seeing some work, designers should not have to prove their worth to get a job. Instead, clients should choose a designer based on their portfolio and experience and commit to building a working relationship with him or her. Only then will both the client and designer see the best results.” Eric Miller from What is “Spec” Work?

Pamela Pfiffner, writer and founding editor of CreativePro.com states:

“Finding meaningful work that pays well has always been a challenge for designers. You hustle to attract prospective clients, produce thorough proposals highlighting your suitability for the assignment; pitch possible design solutions; submit a bid for a budget; and hopefully get the job. If you do, you work to develop a good relationship with the client that includes constant and thoughtful communication about objectives, goals, and branding. Based on feedback, designs evolve over time until the client is satisfied. Then you cash your well-deserved check.

But increasingly, this process is being undermined by two client initiatives, one old and one new: spec work and crowdsourcing…” Read more

In an attempt to stem the tide of the negative aspects of crowdsourcing, and bring awareness to this controversial method of business, several groups of designers have begun to post relevant & informative information through websites and blogs. One of these is an organization called No!Spec.

“A grassroots effort, No!Spec formed three years ago after companies began soliciting work through design contests at an alarming rate. Ground central for the movement is the No!Spec Web site, which spells out what spec work is, why it needs to be avoided, and what can be done to stem the tide. These seasoned designers believe that working on spec devalues design as a profession as well as the work and skills it to takes to produce quality work. Advocates of the No!Spec movement say that working on-spec turns design into a commodity.” Pamela Pfiffner

I would advise all professional designers in the industry to visit the No!Spec website and have a good read on the subject of crowdsourcing. On the site, you will find many informative and eye-opening articles and contributions from many peers in the industry.

The posters below bring awareness to the No!Spec movement. The designers are, from top to bottom, Von Glitschka, Rob Gough, and Chad Behnke. For higher-resolution versions of these, more poster designs, and for rules of usage, see No!Spec.com.

CorelDraw VS Illustrator

Ferg — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:36:05 +0000

It is not my intention to widen the rift between users of these noble applications, but simply to air my thoughts and possibly dispel one or two myths…

I was trained on a Mac in the good old days of Macromedia, around the time when Pentiums were first released. There was no compatibility between Macs & PCs back then, so serious designers and graphic artists invariably used the industry standard software, which was Illustrator, Photoshop, Quark & Freehand. CorelDraw was mainly used by printers back then, as it was the only PC application that came close to the functionality of Illustrator, without having to convert to Macintosh and this is where much of the stigma came from.

Macs were streets ahead with their sexy looking hardware and streamlined interface, and this meant that they were also considerably more expensive than PCs, and this ‘obtainability’ dynamic added to their kudos.

It is fair to say that Macs were better machines than PCs back then, and arguably still are for the main part, so the inevitable snobbery was bound to follow, and still exists today. For my part, I enjoyed a superficial sense of pride belonging to a privileged community as a Mac user, I have to admit. For any professional peer recognition is important, but this is magnified in certain sectors, and especially within the design industries.

At the time when I had completed my design training, many of us Mac trained designers were leaving college or university, and were faced with a more diverse and competetive job market than we had anticipated. Despite the Mac monopoly of the industry standard, PCs were more widely accessible due to price; therefore many smaller businesses were PC based. Whilst some of these small businesses had Macs for their design work, the vast majority used Pcs across the board, even in their art departments. Obviously, the higher brow design companies were Mac, but many companies that needed small art departments were PC. The stigma cold war had begun, and the casualties were largely mac trained innocents.

During the time of the emergence of PCs, many print businesses were converting to digital (or going bust), and resident artists were following suit. It is worth mentioning that the print industry were major patrons of artists at the time of the digital revolution, and many of these artists had to learn graphics software to remain in employment. It was these working artists who were cornering the smaller but more abundant piece-meal market with logo designs for printers, layout work, spreadsheets etc. The hordes of Mac trained designers leaving college at this time were faced with limited opportunities, as the high end jobs made up a relatively small percentage of the market.

This problem was compounded by the fact that PC based applications such as CorelDraw were relatively cheap to buy, and therefore retained by many print related businesses who did everything in-house. This meant that those freehand artists already working for printers when things started to go digital, had to know the relevant software. So, whether a person was Mac trained or not, it made sense to learn the PC software that was in common use by many (if not most) as well. In the end, the issue wasns’t about whether or not you were trained for the industry standard, it was whether or not you were equipped to handle the jobs that were available on the market at that time.

The advent of compatibility between Macs & PCS over subsequent years changed everything. Illustrator became available for PCs in 1989, and many CorelDraw users were able to obtain and learn the software (gaining maximum eligibility in the marketplace without having to buy a Mac). So, the artists concerned with achieving billable work in both camps wanted to know how to use both Illustrator and CorelDraw, though naturally all had a preference and would default to one or the other when the luxury of choice was available.

To have a preference for one or the other is perfectly legitimate, though in truth, the reasons range from the practical or subjective to the outright pretentious. I think that the most common and honest reason for preference, is that most of us prefer the application that we are most familiar with. This really makes sense, as the best artists from both camps are simply concerned with results , so it’s whatever gets them there that counts. When taking everything into account for comparison, price is no small consideration either. There is no doubt that Illustrator is value for money if you are an earning professional, but can it really justify the enormous price difference when compared to CorelDraw? Some say yes, and others no.

Another issue that arises when discussing the benefits of each application, is the advantage of Illustrator’s seamless compatibility with its big sister ‘Photoshop’ (and other Adobe applications). This is a major plus for Illustrator I have to say. CorelDraw has had major import / export problems with eps files, and Corel’s Photopaint is nowhere near as good as Photoshop. However, it is nonetheless widely accepted among professionals that the end results depend more largely on user capability than the application capability, which brings me to some of the pros and cons of Illustrator and CorelDraw.

Having primarily been an Illustrator user, when I first started to use CorelDraw (by necessity of work at the time), I found that it was actually really good at things like manual kerning and dynamic text manipulation, and the path manipulation was really simple to use and easier to master. However, working with transparencies and gradients seemed to be easier in Illustrator, until you get used to CorelDraw, where it has always been a matter of just assigning a tool to the object. If you needed to add colours or transparency depths along the object, you would just assign swatches from the palette. Illustrator only implemented that level of functionality eventually with CS4.

The blending and meshing functionality in Illustrator was definitely more advanced at that time, and combining or subtracting shapes from objects with the pathfinder tool was a great feature. Also, the pen seemed to be more fluid in Illustrator, there were far more brush options available, and creating customisable envelopes on text (converted to outlines) was a nice feature. However, creating an envelope with dynamic (active) text in Illustrator didn’t allow the user to access certain tool options, whereas with CorelDraw, you could extrude dynamic text fitted to a path etc. CorelDraw also allowed the user to edit raster images in Photopaint (its own version of Photoshop) and then save those changes back to the Coreldraw file, which was really useful. Another great feature in CorelDraw was the tabbed pages in a single file (long before CS4). Different shortcuts for tools have also been cited to gain dominion in the preference war, but both applications have advantages. For example; in Illustrator (CS3), you can use “p” key to access the pen tool, whereas in CorelDraw, this key will centre the selection to the page, which is really useful.

In my opinion, there is no winner for the coveted title of best vector software. You only have to look at what professonal artists can acheive with either application to come to this conclusion. No-one is able to determine what software was used when looking at the final result of a high-end multi-layered photo-real vector graphic, so it is simply preference in the end.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Trends & Sustainable Marketing

Ferg — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:41:31 +0000

Trying to work out who leads marketing trends, whilst rationalising the positive and negative effects, is a bit like asking which came first; ‘the chicken half empty’, or ‘the egg half full.’

Nonetheless, marketing trends must be ‘right’, regardless of whether they are dictating or following consumer demand, otherwise advertising would cease to be the biggest industry in the world behind the space programme. So, if these trends are ‘right’, is the customer always right? First of all, I need to make a distinction between ‘the customer’ and ‘the consumer’, since the former needs to consider the latter in many cases.

The statement that the customer is always right is not true at all. It would be more correct to say that the customer must get what they ask for, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. If the customer is also the consumer, they reserve the right to be wrong, so in that sense they are always right. If a customer enjoys the privilege of falsely being right whilst actually being in the wrong, then their money will buy this.

With regard to professional services, the customer generally doesn’t want to be right. Most will want help understanding what gets results, and what is the right way to achieve this. This means that they are (more often than not) willing to listen to the advice of the experts they employ to handle their project. When it comes to creating a marketing tool such as a website, the responsibility of delivering a successful product doesn’t depend on the client being right, it depends on the tool itself being the right one for the job; achieving the target objectives. Fortunately, most clients will understand that their own subjective ideals have to be subservient to proper, established systems of approach.

In short, this means that whilst the designer is subject to the client, the client is subject to the end user, or target audience. So, it is the end user / consumer who is always right, since ultimately they are the ones who pay. If packaging and trends dictate how people buy in a given market, then these perceptions must meet the target audience expectation, and it is this dynamic that must be ‘right’ to accommodate both.

This leaves us to define the context of the word ‘right’. If we are talking about a moral right, then that leads us into the murky waters of advertising ethics, though if we are using the word ‘right’ to define a successful formula for selling, then anyone subscribing to a successful system is ‘right’. This may be the designer, it may also be the client, but it is always the end user / target audience, as they are the ones who are subject to the governing trends.

This may sound cynical, but who is the real cynic in manipulative or patronising advertising? The bottom line is that if a service or product offers real value for money that is the core of real sustainable marketing. There is no moral excuse for cynical advertising, though conversely, there is no excuse for not taking advantage of trends to promote a product or service in this day and age. The key is to deliver value for money in the marketplace, regardless of how we promote our services or products, and whether we take advantage of governing trends or not.

Corporate Jargon Syndrome

Ferg — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:08:24 +0000

Now I’ve never been big on shoptalk of any kind, and I find that parlance can easily become a habit that is akin to swearing. Jargon is generally used by people who have a need or desire to fit in (a fine motive in itself), but like all habits, the use of jargon can spiral out of control and be detrimental to the user.

One example that springs to mind is the case of the disgruntled corporate web designer who returned home after a stressful day at the office. He was presented with a cooked meal that wasn’t to his liking, so in an attempt to make his protests sound objective (rather than personal) while complaining, he referred to the meal as ‘the product’, and to himself as ‘the end user’. This noble attempt to make his protest without giving offence was actually masking an unconscious cowardliness that was in fact all too evident, and a bitter row ensued.

Another case in point is the story of the line manager who was put in charge of a new employee (a newcomer to the country). Halfway through the morning, despite a thorough search of the premises, the line manager was unable to locate his charge. Eventually, one of the members of staff found the new employee standing outside, and he was brought before the line manager to account for his behaviour. It transpired that during the pep-talk, this new employee had been encouraged to ‘think outside of the box’, and he had been quite happily ruminating in the sunshine ever since.

Yet another instance of inappropriate jargon usage can be found in the story about the young businessman who was out on a date. Being a little unfamiliar outside of the corporate environment, and being none too familiar with regular dating criteria to begin with, the young man resorted to his native speak in an attempt to impress his date. During the corporate monologue that ensued, the young lady in question became alarmed on hearing such comments as “We need to be joined at the hip on this” & “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.” Needless to say, the young man’s attempts to win over his ‘target audience’, meant that he was ‘transitioning to a new role’ not too far into the evening.

Corporate Jargon is often employed as a tool to bamboozle and impress potential clients as it is believed among some to pass for acumen. However, for the truly uninitiated, the term ’stakeholders coming to the party’ will always be understood in connection with a barbeque, while the term ‘holistic cascading approach’ remains utter gibberish.

Disclaimer: This article is in no way meant to represent any persons living or dead, and the extensive use of artistic licence has been employed for effect only.

The Mighty PNG

Ferg — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:23:09 +0000

The PNG format has many advantages over the GIF and TIFF image formats for web designers. If you’ve been using GIF’s rather than PNGs, perhaps this article will be of some help to you.

The gradual phasing out of the GIF format in mainstream development is inevitable, and will ultimately enhance everyone’s web experience, especially with the inclusion of alpha transparency support in web pages. For detailed information on the PNG format, you can visit the Official PNG Home Page.

The PNG format was designed to replace the limited GIF and TIFF formats. It employs maximum integrity in compression (lossless compression), so that no image data is lost when saving or viewing the image. The PNG format does not have any patent restrictions and can be read and written freely by software developers and webmasters alike. GIF images can only be saved as an 8-bit colormapped image, which limits the user to 256 colors. PNGs on the other hand, can be saved not only as 8 bit, but also 24 bit and higher up to 64 bit. GIF images can only use one out of the 256 colors for full transparency, whereas PNGs have a much higher level of transparency support. PNG filesizes typically come out at around 20% smaller than the equivalent GIF image. The GIF format has patent restrictions with it’s use that the PNG doesnt, however the advantage that GIFs have over PNGs is the animation support. Problems with supporting just one image format for both static and animated capability, has lead to two seperate formats; PNG for static, and MNG for the animated version. Browser support for MNG is practically non existent, so it is not used for the web.

The TIFF Format:
The TIFF format was the cross-platform image format of choice until PNG was introduced. TIFF’s are hardly ever used in web development, as there are around 40 different types of TIFF image, and the compatability ratio for applications to read them is ridiculously low. The most popular TIFF is the 24-bit LZW compressed version, which until PNG, was the only standard lossless compressed format (the standard 24 Bit PNG functionally is very similar to a LZW compressed TIFF). The TIFF format is able to store multiple images in a single file such as are commonly used for FAX images, whereas PNG’s do not have this capability.

The JPEG Format:
Unlike PNG, JPEG employs a degrading compression routine (lossy compression). Loss of integrity in the compression happens each time the file is saved, which means that the filesize is almost always smaller then a PNG, especially for photographic images. Each time a JPEG is re-saved, further compression artifacts are introduced, and loss of integrity occurs. Since PNG uses lossless compression, it is a better format for editing images before saving a final version as a JPEG. JPEG is the most common image format used on the web, and photographic images should always be saved as JPEG as opposed to PNG for viewing on the web, as the filesize is considerably smaller.

The Alpha Channel:
One of the best features that a PNG has to offer is the alpha channel, which employs one byte of extra data per pixel (or palette entry for 8-bit images) that represents the transparency level of a pixel. A PNG image using alpha is capable of 256 levels of transparency. This means that text and images can be antialiased so that sharp curves look good against any background. This means that a true drop shadow can be applied which fades perfectly into the background without loss of integrity. There are many possibilities with alpha transparency, which I will discuss in another post.

Gamma:
Another useful feature employed by the PNG format, is the ability to adjust gamma based on monitor settings. Typically, the same image viewed on a Macintosh will appear lighter than when viewed on a Windows PC. By storing gamma information in an image, the ability to view the original as intended is possible providing that the application reading the PNG takes note of the gamma.

Interlacing:
PNG interlacing starts by reading a small percentage of all the data from a file and filling in the empty spaces with an interpolated color value. For every time step, more information is rendered, replacing the temporary interpolated colors with the actual colors until all of the data is loaded and rendered. The GIF format can also be interlaced, but the quality is not as good, or as fast as a PNG, because GIF interlacing is only one-dimensional.

Guitar Vector Tutorial

Ferg — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:46:32 +0000

I started to build a vector of a Gibson SG, and thought I might create an (adobe illustrator) tutorial to go with it. Obviously, I would go back to the beginning, and provide the .ai source files.

This would be my first in depth tutorial for vector illustration, so I am putting this out there to see what feedback I get. If you want me to do it, tweet the post. If it gets a hundred tweets, I will go ahead.

Thanks!

The Darwin Web Award

Ferg — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:47:22 +0000

The WDI has suffered much bad press on account of the discrediting behaviour that abounds among the disreputable. I am grateful to one of my peers in the industry for bringing yet another item to my attention, that being; the issue of awards and related practices. One of the most astounding cases, involves a company that claim to be ‘award winning web designers’ in their title tag, yet a thorough examination of their website reveals no visible mention of said award. All appearances suggest that they are making use of the statement merely to attract visitors, though I am at a loss to understand why they would do this. Further investigation reveals that there is a competitor site who also use that term in their title tag, though justifiably, as they actually have awards which are clearly displayed on their homepage.

So, ethics aside, why would a web designer claim to the world at large that they have an award, when they actually don’t? As the statement is only in the title tag, and not on their actual site (otherwise they would have to produce said award) it seems likely that they believe this to be helping their SEO efforts. This possibility seems even more likely when we consider that the competitor site is in first place on Google for that region. However, emulating a competitor’s title tag will have no SEO benefits whatever, but will certainly attract attention from peers in the region (and it has)! So, what’s going on? Another claim from the same company is that they have been voted ‘one of the best in businesses in their region’, which statement proudly adorns their email footer in the form of a link. Upon clicking the link, the recipient is ushered into a local directory which is furbished with client testimonials. However, there is no mention of anyone voting the company as ‘one of the best in businesses in their region’, unless you consider that a testimonial constitutes a vote. The inevitable conclusion of all this, is that the award in question is actually referring to the vote, which in turn refers to the client testimonial. This type of fantastical evolution might appeal to someone like Charles Darwin, but there’s more than one missing link in this particular award evolution theory.

I have come up with the DWDA (Darwin Web Design Award), which I hereby do not bestow on the company mentioned above (which shall remain nameless) for outstanding achievement in pursuit of unscrupulous self-promotion, though they thoroughly deserve it.

What is Twitter?

Ferg — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:01:06 +0000

Despite the consistant urging of friends, Facebook didn’t really catch my interest, and when I heard about Twitter I was equally indifferent. After all, who has the time? However, I did begin to realise that Twitter was a phenomenon of some decription and decided to look deeper, especially when I noticed that credible businesses were adding Twitter links to their sites. Naturally, this trend was more prominent in the web-tech sector than many others at the outset, but word was getting around fast. I decided to investigate, but my first actual encounter with Twitter was a confusing and somewhat surreal experience. All I could see was a bunch of random messages flying around like some bizarre verbal version of the Alfred Hitchcock movie; The birds. I got out of there fast before getting ‘virtually’ pecked to death in the banal tweet frenzy…

“I’m off to get a coffee after this tweet”, “I’m thinking about buying some new socks”, “My cat thinks she’s Davey Crocket’s hat”, “I’ve spilled my cornflakes all over my laptop!”…etc.

What could this all mean? Why were people doing this? Months later, I still don’t know the answer to these questions, though the dynamic appears to be similar to that of someone panicking and jumping onto a moving train without checking the destination; …“I’m damned if I’m going to miss this train, no matter where it’s going, after all it might be mine”…

I have since learned some of the the SEO advantages of twitter, and can see certain potential benefits for business. I can also see the obvious useful applications for TV and Radio stations etc. However, I am still not sure what twitter exactly is, or how it intends to capitalise on it’s phenomenal success. In the meantime, I’m damned if I’m going to get off this train, just in case it goes somewhere I might want to be…

“I’m off to tweet my post now, and then put on a Joe Bonamassa CD”

Brand Competition Winner

Ferg — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:15:11 +0000

Creative Hat are pleased to announce that we have won the competition to design Motley Health’s Brand. Part of the prize was a valuable back link from Webologist for life (or the life of Webologist), which will help us with our SEO. This is the kind of prize that money can’t buy (unless of course you can afford a big adwords campaign), and we are really pleased to be working with Webologist. The brief was to create a logo that showed a bench-presser and spot to convey weightlifting in the brand.