Currie Todd | Blog Worthy?

Strange Worlds indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:48:00 +0000

Paprika, cinnamon, thyme, chili powder, charcoal... That's the stuff Mars is made of.

Matthew Albanese made these awesome environments out of common materials and created this dramatic photography using scale, depth, and lighting to achieve these sudo-real worlds. Awesome, me thinks!

Check it out here: http://bit.ly/7KJEJO

Google Ads Pay off

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:43:00 +0000

Alec Brownstein took out Google Ads for five prominent advertising creative directors (Scott Viltrone, Ian Reichenthal, Gerry Graf, Tony Granger and David Droga). When [they] googled themselves they saw a personalized message from Alec asking for a job. The actual message linked to Alec's online portfolio.

Classic!

Saul Bass(ified) Tron

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:17:00 +0000

Dieter Steffman Fonts

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:16:00 +0000

Whilst searching for more information on the @font-face construct, I came across Dieter Steffmann's font collection. Enjoy.

Ten Principles for Good Design - Dieter Rams

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:39:00 +0000

Dieter Rams is one of most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century. His work is defined by elegance, simplicity and rigourous detail. His influence is evident amongst many designer's such as Jonathan Ive (Apple) or virtually any other designer who subscribes to the "Less and More" ethos.

As one of my favourite [industrial] Designers, Dieter Ram's principles of good design have be come common place for what I believe is the "right" approach. In fact, Rams' ten principles of good design have shape and inspired the design community for over 40 years.

Dieter Rams' Ten Principles of good design:
Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

For more about Dieter Rams, you can visit Vitsoe.com or head over the MoMA or Design Museum

Happy St. David's Day

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:22:00 +0000

"Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us."

Schools Kill Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:03:00 +0000

As children we are never frightened of creatively exploring at the risk of being wrong, but we grow older our education system and culture aid in the unlearning of creativity and help children minimize the risk of being wrong.

Don't let you your body be a vessel to transport your head from meeting to meeting.

World's First Full-size Lego House

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:04:00 +0000

Came across this article the other day... Pretty amazing. Of course, I'm pretty neurotic about having all the same colour pieces!

Happy Earth Day

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:38:00 +0000

In light of the all the doom and gloom of the economic down turn, it's refreshing to think that humans haven't lost sight of the things that are truly important in life. So put on some boots and go for a walk, get your hands in dirt, plant a tree or just in enjoy the outdoors. Make a conscious effort to be a part of the solution, not the problem.

Happy Earth Day.

I pitty da Fool

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:55:00 +0000

Cruise over to National Geographic and get a brief history lesson on the ever popular April Fool's Day.

October wallpaper calendar

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000

With my fascination with skulls (I doodle them on everything) its no wonder that Halloween is one of my favourite holidays. With that in mine, I made myself a new wallpaper calendar for the month of October. I drew it in Illustrator and set it up in Photoshop. I created multiple sizes to share with the peeps.

So if you would like one, you can download the zip file and select your desktop size.

Download Calendar

eco-geek

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:41:00 +0000

Found this over at Engadget…A USB flash drive made from recycled newspaper. Coolness for the eco-geeks.

USB Flash Drive (recycled newspaper)

Happy Birthday Bro

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Shout out to my bro Ben.
Have a good one!

And One for my Homie

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

R.I.P. DT.
We will always love you.

Transparent Gradient in Illustrator

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:19:00 +0000

I recently completed some vector illustrations for an up-coming project. Upon review, a friend asked me how I made transparent gradients in Illustrator. Now compared to Photoshop which has opacity is built, this may seem quite difficult to achieve in Illustrator... but using these four steps make it easy.

Step 1.
Create a solid filled object.

Step 2.
Copy and paste the object in front (Control/Cmd + C, then Control/Cmd + F).

Step 3.
Select the solid object on top and make it a gradient from the gradient palette. (Window > Gradient)

Step 4.
Select both objects, now go to your transparency palette. (Window > Transparency)
Open the fly-out menu and click Make Opacity Mask.
Voilà!

16 ÷ 10 = easier

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:48:00 +0000

I use mostly ems for my font sizes in web design. There are certain times when I use % or px, but mostly ems. I typically use a formula where I divide the font size I want in px by 16—which in most cases is the default browser size. Now I actually found this simple math and easy to implement. For example, if I wanted 13px for my font size I simply put 0.8125em.

However, as I was thinking about it, it would probably make more sense to start with 10s (tens) rather than 16s (sixteens). But I guess being American, and having most of my life revolving around 12s, 16s and yards and ounces I didn't think twice. However ~~struggling~~ having a respect for my new homeland in the UK, I figured there must be something behind all this metric stuff. And sure enough 10s are a lot easier!

So, back to the css. I figure if I declared a base font size in the body other than 16 or 1em based on 10 that life could be simpler. So using the same principles as above, I divided 10 by 16 and got 0.625. Which put in a percentage as my base size would allow me to simplify all other fonts sizes. So what use to be 0.8125em for 13px would now become 1.3em. Pretty handy eh!

example:


body {
 font-size: 62.5%;
 font-family: verdana;
}

Now thinking that I may have had a stroke of genius (which is unlikely), I thought I would further research this. Come to find out. . .most people new about this anyhow. So, if you are like me and sometimes slow to catch the bandwagon, I hope this helps.

wordle up!

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:45:00 +0000

Wordle is a java applet that is simply fantastic. Its basic idea is to create/generate a "word cloud." You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colours. Some of the fonts that have been contributed are from the like of Ray Larabie, and Barry Schwartz.

One thing to note is that the algorithm uses a system in which the more times a word appears the larger it will be. There is an example in the FAQ section that explain this further. With that in mind, I think this can lead to some some very inspiring work. Especially for an unsuspecting client.

Woah, My kid is turning 7

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:58:00 +0000

Yep...My son will be seven this month. I'm starting to feel old. I knew I looked old with the grey hair and all, but jeez.

Quick Look Plugins

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:47:00 +0000

I was searching the other day for quick look plugins. I found this site with some amazing plugins. In fact, there are some that I would have actually thought would have been included in the standard OS. . .but hey that me thinking huh!

Mactrickandtips.com

Happy 4th America

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:51:00 +0000

Happy Independence Day America! Now go blow something up in celebratory fashion

Quick keys for search bar

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:37:00 +0000

So, I may be the last person on the planet to discover this, but I thought I would share it anyway. (Incase I wasn't the last!). Anyhow, if you are like me you love to use key commands when you can. I tend to use Safari (Mac) for most of my browsing. And I have never put too much time into the shortcuts that I used for it, but there was one that I have used for years now that was... well just not right. It was how to get to the search bar quickly. My old method was CMD + L, then Tab. Simple enough, but as I said, not a right. Or at least not a "true" key command shortcut.

Well as a pure fluke, this morning I wanted to search a page for a particular keyword and accidently keyed CMD + Option + F. Voíla! Google search. It is quite obvious after the fact, but if you are like me, and didn't really put it together... now you know.

And knowing is half the battle. You can also find more at Apple

MarsEdit demo test

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:12:00 +0000

I downloaded MarsEdit demo to try for this blog. Seems simple enough (intuitive). Also it beats having to login and post. I can do that all at the comfort of my own tiny window in this app.

I'll post more comments about MarsEdit in the future, as I discover more about it and its use in my workflow.

In Plainview

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:01:00 +0000

There are few times that browsers or browser apps get me excited. Mainly because as a whole, they [browsers] aren't that exciting. Especially when you design and develop websites and apps for them on a daily basis and have to deal more with their short comings rather than their strengths.

Now that said, I have come across a few plug-ins worth mentioning, such as firebug or safaristand. However, recently I downloaded a full-screen web browser called Plainview. Though not that much different from the Safari plug-in saft, Plainview offers full-screen kiosk mode as default in a self-contained app.

This native Cocoa app (built on Webkit), is excellent for the proverbial "dog & pony" show for clients. It even works nicely with Quicktime and Flash. For me this is an awesome piece of software. Mainly because... well it's full-screen! And to be honest, I build things in Flash and XHTML, which is great to show interactivity to clients, but when ran in typical browser is a bit lack lustre with the default "chrome." Nor do I really want to mess with Powerpoint!

In my humble opinion this should definitely be in your application arsenal.

Thou Shalt Always Kill

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:35:00 +0000

Just started to think about this song. Its good but I'm not sure if Dan Le Sac isn't just pontificating. I feel like it doesn't matter what part of the song you hear, it seems somehow to be directed towards the listener in a negative way.

But then again, I buy Nestlé, and think that guns, bitches and bling are apart of the four basic elements.

Reboot in effect

noreply@blogger.com (Currie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:25:00 +0000

May1st Reboot is in effect. Voting is for one week, starting on—you guessed it, May 1st.

If you would like to vote for me you can visit my profile and click on the vote "thumb" at the top.

Thanks.