Blog: Secrets from the Chef
How we came up with and drew the mascot for 404 Festival
In the coming fall the next (third in a row) festival of web developers, Internet evangelists, designers and other supporters of the industry will be held in Samara. You are welcome to learn more about the event, its history, organizers and participants here and this article talks about the mascot we developed for the upcoming event.
The story of one illustration: 404 error page for Iconfinder
Every site has a 404 error page. Its purpose is to tell the user that he landed in the wrong place. It is unnecessary to scare the user by some alarming page, though the message should be clear to all. Some time ago we created a character for the icon search engine conveniently named Iconfinder, now it was the time to create an illustration for its 404 page.
The graphics style of the 1972 Munich Olympics
One day I spotted a rather unusual poster. It looked very special and I was won by the pleasant mix of colors and simplicity.
It turned out that this was one of the posters made for the Olympics of 1972 in Munich. I was surprised by how fresh and contemporary the work looked realizing that the poster was created almost 40 years ago. I decided to study the style of this event more carefully and started web surfing.
These could be the new LiveJournal’s icons
Long time ago three designers from Samara got acquainted with each other through LiveJournal. This led to talks and discussion over their own portfolios and works of others. And so Turbomilk was born. Clearly, when the competition for new icons for LiveJournal was unveiled, we got excited and went straight to work.
Quick review of Wacom Cintiq 21UX Intuos 4
One of the goals I had for the visit to the recent Creativefuture 2010 conference was a “conversation” with the outstanding new Wacom Cintiq pad. Each professional is very careful about his working tools, therefore I went straight to the Wacom’s stand. There was a thick crowd of curious people and I had very limited time for the test drive – others were lining up behind me. I waited diligently in the line and started the “tasting” process.
I picked Cintiq 21UX Intuos4. Why going cheap? :)
Wacom Bamboo Fun M Pen&Touch
Nearly every computer in our company has a graphics tablet connected to it. This fact is easy to explain, since we are all designers. Today yet another “pet” was adopted by our office: Wacom Bamboo Fun M Pen&Touch. I want to take this chance to share my personal impressions on this tablet.
Tutorial: drawing a 3D character from a plain logo
Turbomilkers dig Twitter and most of us are thrilled by their ability to share their deep thoughts though this web service. When we faced the need to share the twits with twitter users from other countries, we developed a convenient service that will be translating our twits from Russian into any other language (a whole selection of languages) and post them in Twitter automatically.
7 tricks for your corporate twitter
Our twitter @turbomilk is one of the most popular corporate twitters in Russia. The password to the twitter is available to all our staff but there is just a few of us posting. And, as it happens, most of the posts are coming from me. After more than a year of observations and experiments involving real people I came up with a range of plain tricks on how to make twitter more interesting and popular.
Looking for an alternative to Basecamp: review of PBworks Project Edition
Strictly speaking, Basecamp should not be regarded as a project management tool. Even its developers agree to this. “Basecamp is the leading web-based project collaboration tool”—says the official site of this highly respected program in large font. Basecamp is a communication tool. It is alternative to emails. Basecamp will not be able to measure the work load for the whole team nor for each member individually. Basecamp is also unable to evaluate the realism of set deadlines. Instead, it simply helps us at exchanging the required information inside a team and with our clients.
Hooking up two monitors to Macbook or turning an old iMac into a Firewire monitor
I do graphic design on a notebook. This is hustle-free if you hook up your notebook to a 24-inch screen. But once I realized that one big screen was not enough. I wanted yet another monitor. But my notebook is equipped with just one monitor extension port and external video cards for macs are rather rare. So it happens that I found a deserted iMac G5 with a 20-inch screen in our office. I have fiddled with the hardware a bit and came up with the following kind of desktop:
How to draw recolorable icons
What is a recolorable icon? It is a picture which is capable of changing its color, hence is the world recolorable. There are several ways of getting there. I will tell you about a simple technique that we used while developing Iconza. In essence it’s a web application that provides for changing colors of icons followed by generating the required files.
How we came up with the name for Iconza and later made its logo
We decided upon making a web application that would serve a collection of customizable icons. Any project needs a cool name and a logo. We started off with naming.
Five reasons for migrating to the new Illustrator CS4
All new stuff is extremely lucrative: it lures a feeling of novelty and freshness. I sincerely believe that a newer version is always better than the previous one. But there is one software package that undermines my life views. I am talking about Adobe Illustrator. It gained so many useless functions that operational mistakes have become too easy to see. It all lasted for six passed years. Here is an appropriate time for a short sermon.
Windows 7: clothes count for first impressions
Judging by the many online reviews, the brave souls who have downloaded and installed the beta version of Windows 7 are, in general, pleasantly surprised. Your humble servant likewise entered into the ranks of the brave souls. I confirm: it’s actually pleasant to work with No. 7. However, given the many new and different functionalities, and well-written reviews of other authors, allow me to throw in my two cents worth in our particular area of expertise: visual interface design.
10 Outstanding Metaphors in Icon Design
For each and every action or object, different icons can be drawn. These can have any variations: in style, color, perspective and even metaphor. In my view, the latter is the most valuable in the design of icons — the concentrated thought. And if the metaphor is original, and humorous, then it turns out to be not just an icon, but genuinely brilliant! I present for your review my personal selection of icons based upon unusual and shining metaphors.
Three top racing games for the iPhone
What do you use to keep your hands busy outside of home or work if you are already holding an iPhone? The answer is simple – download and play games. I like racing simulators. Honestly, I was rather skeptical about the first releases of racing games for the iPhone, since a good racing simulator requires buttons if not a steering wheel with pedals. “The iPhone is a steering wheel in itself”, – my hero – an attentive reader – might object. Now imagine that you don’t have to hold on to your steering wheel in your car because it is not attached to anything. You just have to swivel it in the air. Sounds odd? But the game developers together with Apple suggest that we do just that.
WorkSection Review
We have been using Basecamp (web-based project management and collaboration tool developed by 37signals) for many years. I will not be able to truly emphasize on how important this tool is for us since our clients are scattered around the Globe and all communication with them is handled online.
For small service IT companies like ours, Basecamp became a de-facto standard. On one hand it is very convenient: new users recently invited into our cozy Extranet have no problem getting around. On the other hand, we get the feeling that Basecamp is “too tight”. And it is not surprising: you cannot please everyone and the guys from 37signals are well aware of that and not even trying.
Silverlighter
Once upon a time Microsoft invented a cross-browser cross-platform technology for developing rich interactive web applications based on .NET called Silverlight. Later appeared the people who liked the technology and they created Silverlighter, a community of Silverlight supporters.
What icons are for
You would not believe it but in 1985 Apple asserted an idea in its developers’ guide to replace text messages with icons wherever possible. As though icons would be more clear to a novice user than words. Of course this is bollocks. It is much easier to express any idea in words.
Supermarket interface or Cart 2.0
When I visit a supermarket I sometimes engage in somewhat indecent activity amidst endless shelves with groceries. I like to peek into other people’s carts. I observe what other people buy. But it is not some useless habit. Sometimes I happen to like some buyers and I pick the same products from shelves. This way I have discovered for myself a range of tasty products and many extraordinary but useful things.
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articlesLooking for an alternative to Basecamp: review of PBworks Project Editiondeepika10: This is very informative article. But i want to suggest more alternative to basecamp that is http://www.proofhub.com/ It is easy to use and fast. It includes many tools like time tracking, Collaboration, Milestones, Online File Proofing, Real Time Chat and many more.
journalWe have moved into a new officetype8: can show some photo of the inside few ?
articlesThese could be the new LiveJournal’s icons type8: your logo is quite nice. simple and clean. maybe what they want is fresh look. easy to recognize the icon. some of your icon is hard to recognize the image, example "track this" icon. The winner icon is not as good as your icon, but what they got is fresh look, simple. that is what i can say
articlesThese could be the new LiveJournal’s icons Czerny: I think a lot website owners would prefer the icons with button because your icons look great but they need .png alpha transparency... And with the button it needs only 4 x 1px transparency on each of the rounded corners which can be made within .gif-files. Most big websites needs full IE6 support and it is too complicated to handle .png-files in some reasons. Damn IE6!!
articlesLooking for an alternative to Basecamp: review of PBworks Project EditionSydneyCoyle: This is information is very useful, thank you. But I am concerned with having to use multiple software to accomplish online CRM tasks while fulfilling management needs for my freelance projects. It’s good that I found one that came in handy for collaborative CRM and project management - http://www.worketc.com/CRM_Project_Management -- with the integration of business tools that meets multiple needs such as time-tracking, resource leads, and billing.