I’m really at a loss as to why this is happening. Everything is blurry when I use the Mac shortcut to take a screenshot. If I do the same thing with Skitch I don’t have any issues. I’m going to try and duplicate this on other Macs around the office. Has anyone else ever had this problem before?

Larger Comparison

I was trolling about the interwebs for some inspiration when I stumbled across an interesting contest over at Flockey. They are giving away some pretty nice packages as a means of promoting their business. If you need a little design help and are on a limited budget you should check it out. They are giving away everything from logo design to a full website design.

Overall I am very happy with it. I’ve also begun to put my portfolio back online. I developed a new Expression Engine backend driving all the thumbnails and imagery. It’s still a bit more manual than I’d like but I’m pretty happy for the most part. My next step is to get a few more sites up along with some of my print, illustration and identity work. After that I plan on moving on to my logo. The fleur-de-lis will stick around but I’ve got some ideas for some interesting twist on it.

Let me know if you find any bugs. I’m also very open to suggestions and criticism.

Sam and I have a thing for underwater creatures. First it was the Enterprise Octopus. Then it was Norman Naysayer. Now we unveil Mr. ROI himself, Ricky Revenue. Sam had this idea for a new character. Someone who’s eye is always on the numbers. He won’t approve something unless the ROI can be proven. To him it’s all about metrics and analytics. He loves Excel.

With that in mind and the undersea theme as my guide it wasn’t long before the good old angler fish came to mind. At first we we were thinking of someone with a sort of glazed, zombie like stare. All he can see is this glowing orb of money in front of his eyes. After some consideration it dawned on us that this person isn’t just a corporate zombie. He’s someone who legitimately has financial concerns about the business. You just have to get him on your side.

Drawing Ricky took about 2 hours in Photoshop once the initial sketch and direction had been decided on. This was my first time drawing at 300 dpi. The brushes are nowhere near as forgiving. You can see that it took me a while to get warmed up. Overall I’m pretty happy with how he turned out. I’m working on my line weights and smoothness. I like a bit of wave to my line but I’d like to be a lot smoother. I need to start forcing myself to use my whole arm for the movement rather than just my wrist.

Be sure to check the Vimeo page so you can see it in higher res, “HD”. Also be sure to check out Sam’s more in-depth explanation.

Tonight we had our first Refresh Portland event. It’s a monthly meetup and presentation where we bring designers and others interested in design together. We hope to teach them something they didn’t know and give them something to use in the real world. We packed the house with somewhere between 50-60 people. We just barely had enough chairs for the space that Jive graciously lended to us.

First off, Tyler’s presentation was awesome. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Tyler before and I was honestly a little nervous about someone I didn’t know doing the first presentation. Humongous props to Tyler for putting all my fears to ease and more. He kept things simple, relevant and to the point. The key message I brought home was to remember to, “Stop designing websites and start designing experiences.”

Of course we’re still working out the kinks. The elevator broke down. We almost didn’t get ustream working. I accidentally stole John’s Refresh introduction. In general I felt like we were running around like chickens with our heads cutoff. It was a great time and I look forward to improving it. Next time I hope to get free access to the elevator and side door for everyone during the Refresh time. I’ll also try and do a better job greeting people and making them feel welcome.

I’m really thankful for the support of everyone who came. I can’t wait to convert more visitors to presenters in the future. Someone in our audience has something really interesting to say that I know we’ll all want to hear.

You can catch the recording here. Ignore the first 4 minutes of my nervous rambling and just jump to Tyler being a badass.

I should also thank the team for helping set this all up. Thanks John, Carlos, Josh, and Bram!