Cameron Moll's Blog, page 4

Download EIGHT.psd

Haven’t done this in years, and it feels totally oldschool. I’m okay with that.

In the spirit of fostering design learning, I’m offering a peek at how I pieced together the visual design for this year’s Authentic Jobs EIGHT campaign in Photoshop.

Download EIGHT.psd here.

Fonts have been rasterized to protect their use, even though you can’t alter the type without already having the fonts.

Additional details about the design:

The EIGHT word mark was designed by Sergey Shapiro . (It’s also been removed from this version.)
The looping video was licensed from iStock , and stills like the one above were made from the HD video.
Whitney, Knockout, and Numbers fonts were rendered as webfonts in the final design, using H&FJ’s Cloud.typography .
The charity: ball VIP ticket was comped in Illustrator, and then Adam Spooner masterfully rendered it as HTML & CSS in the final design.

Authentic Jobs 8th birthday giveaway and $100,000 charity: water campaign

Today I’m elated to announce the Authentic Jobs 8th birthday giveaway and $100,000 charity: water campaign. It’s been months in the working and incorporates the talent of several amazing people.

Most importantly, please considering donating generously to our campaign. We hope to surpass $100,000 in donations to charity: water over the years, and we’re confident we can do it with your help.

And of course, a birthday isn’t a birthday without presents, so we’ve got lots of great prizes to give away, including T-shirts designed by Sergey Shapiro:

Additionally, one of you (and a guest of your choice) will join me in New York City for charity: ball 2013 on Monday, December 16—all expenses paid. Apply for the chance to join us.

A special thanks to Sarah Parmenter for lending her voice to the video, and our sponsors for helping make this possible:

Campaign Monitor , whose terrific email marketing app I’ve trusted for years
Squarespace , which makes website building gloriously simple and beautiful
An Event Apart , whose conferences are unparalleled in our industry
InVision App , a masterful prototyping tool that we use all the time for Authentic Jobs

Lastly, 8 years… I honestly can’t believe it. What started out as a sidebar on my site eventually grew into what it’s become today. Please continue to post a job or find a job, and we’ll keep trying our best to make a difference in our industry and in the fight for clean water.

Adobe Generator for Photoshop CC

Yesterday Adobe unveiled Adobe Generator, an update for Creative Cloud subscribers who primarily use Photoshop for the web. The update is available immediately.

WebdesignerDepot has written a nice overview of Generator, which I’ll substitute for my own commentary on the matter.

I will, however, observe the following:

I’ve yet to install the update (that won’t happen until I’m at my main computer tomorrow), but the ability to export image assets without having to Save for Web seems incredibly useful.
Million dollar idea: 1) fork Photoshop, 2) call it simply Webshop, 3) iterate new web-specific features like Generator, 4) quell public outcry about PS falling short for web work.
Perhaps Generator will also quell complaints about the Creative Cloud subscription model. Immediate updates such as this are the perfect counter-argument. (I’ve been a subscriber nearly since day one, and I’m loving it.)

DIY Collapsible Sound Booth

So, my office echoes like you wouldn’t believe. Actually, just listen to the first 10 episodes of Hired and you’ll be a believer. Laminate flooring and sparse furniture doth not a recording studio make.

Hence, I needed a system for eliminating the echo, but without permanence as we record only once every one to two weeks. The solution? A collapsible sound booth, inspired by Josh Long (listen to this episode).

Here’s the finished product:

And here’s the finished product disassembled for storage:

Assembly and disassembly takes just 5 minutes each. Two panels are hinged together, while the third attaches with two brackets.

I fashioned the booth out of 1/4" plywood with reinforcements on the top and bottom of each panel. The soundproofing material is comprised of the Auralex Roominators kit and a three 2’x4’ Auralex panels, all purchased from our local Guitar Center.

I recommend you not use the glue that comes with the kit. Instead, use 3M spray adhesive or something like it, as it’s much faster. Just be sure to use an adhesive that’s safe with foam. The ‘90’ product from 3M didn’t have any warnings on the label that concerned me, and so far it seems to be adhering well.

As for recording quality? It’s not where I want it just yet. With an office as barren and ceilings as high as mine, I really need to lay down a large rug or somehow sound proof larger portions of the room. But it’s a significant improvement, and I have plans to sound proof additional areas around and inside the booth even further.

Total cost: ~$300. Construction time: ~4 hours.

Summer sale: 28% off any letterpress poster order

My summer sale begins now, with prices as low as they’ve ever been. Shipping starts at just $5.

For framing ideas, have a look at the curated Letterpress Type Posters pool on Flickr.

“A love letter to the fog of San Francisco.”

“Adrift" by Simon Christen is the most stunning thing you’ll watch today, guaranteed. In his words:

‘Adrift’ is a love letter to the fog of the San Francisco Bay Area. I chased it for over two years to capture the magical interaction between the soft mist, the ridges of the California coast and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. This is where ‘Adrift’ was born.

The weather conditions have to be just right for the fog to glide over the hills and under the bridge. I developed a system for trying to guess when to make the drive out to shoot, which involved checking the weather forecast, satellite images and webcams multiple times a day. For about 2 years, if the weather looked promising, I would set my alarm to 5am, recheck the webcams, and then set off on the 45-minute drive to the Marin Headlands.

Dedication. And it payed off in spades.

/via @evalottchen

Keynote video, and upcoming speaking events

Future Insights has posted the video from my keynote talk last month in Las Vegas. Please have a watch, as I’m particularly pleased with how this one turned out.

As for other events, my roster through the Fall is fairly stacked:

Front-End Design Conference , June 20–22, St. Petersburg, Florida
Breaking Development , July 22–24, San Diego, California
HybridConf , August 15–16, Cardiff, Wales, UK
BlendConf , September 5–7, Charlotte, North Carolina
ConvergeFL , September 12–13, Jacksonville, Florida
Circles Conference , September 19–20, Grapevine, Texas
…and a few top-secret ones in October (to be announced)

Hope to see you at one of these.

What Apple [Might] Announce Today

All speculation aside (and there’s no shortage of it), this observation from Sean Everett is pretty insightful:

Jon Ive did add a “breathing” indicator light on prior generation MacBooks when the lid was closed and the computer was still powered on. The light pulsed at the same rate humans breath when sleeping. Hence, the reason the light performed that way. The computer was “sleeping”.

I think the thing that Apple will announce today will be something like this. Buried deep into the OS. Something you might not even notice at first. Something that might not even get talked about during the presentation today.

/via Designer News

The Launch is Dead

Kelly Sutton:

Launches … are a poor representation of how great software today is built. It’s a holdover from the days of boxed software, where supply chains had to be managed and masters golded. The same that is true then is still true now: great software is the result of continuous refinement. The only thing different today are the release schedules.

Software today is developed on a continuum. The discrete measure of software progress is a commit.

Seth Godin: “Leading Up”

From Seth Godin’s Creative Mornings talk last week, expounding on a principle he calls “leading up”:

One of the things that I hear the most after I give a talk or someone reads one of my books is, ‘That’s great, but my boss won’t let me. I’d love to do something like that, but my boss won’t let me.’

Well of course she won’t! Because what you’re saying to her is, ‘I want do something really cool and really neat, and if it works I’ll get the credit, and if it doesn’t you’ll get the blame. Because you said that it was okay.’

Who would take that deal?

In fact, what we see is that the people who have jobs or who have clients who are making a dent in the universe, are doing it by leading the people who are ostensibly in charge to make better decisions; leading those people to have better taste; leading those people to have the guts to do the work that they’re capable of doing.

The remarks quoted above begin at 05:15, but of course, the entire talk is worth watching.