• August 11th – The Yellow Sign, Once We Were Buried @ Transitions Art Gallery – Tampa, Florida [w/ Illithid, Legions, and Board The Windows]
• August 17th – Screamin’ For Vengeance Tour @ The Dungeon – Orlando, Florida [w/ American Me, Oceano, Borland, Devoured By Pestilence, Harvest The Deceased, and Along Side Oni]
• August 22nd – Deterrence @ The Mad Hatter – Lakeland, Florida [w/ Denounce The Betrayer, Alvira, Astraea, and more TBA]
• August 28th – Catalepsy Tour Kickoff @ The Dungeon – Orlando, Florida [w/ Rose Funeral, The Breathing Process, Years Spent Cold, Red I Flight, Devoured By Pestilence, and 42 Children]

More coming soon. Keep an eye out on http://myspace.com/iamaadesign for future updates.

Client: Life.Ended.Abruptly
Published Work: http://myspace.com/lifeendedabruptly
Date Completed: June 15th, 2008
Description: Full MySpace layout, including Masthead for Life.Ended.Abruptly., a Central Florida Death Metal band. Project took about 10 hours, spanning over a week’s time. Minor changes are still being made. The masthead is a series of manipulated photos, the mountain range and explosion being two separate images.

Client: Sparing No Lives
Published Work: http://myspace.com/sparingnolives
Date Completed: June 1st, 2008
Description: Photomanipulation layout for Sparing No Lives, and Orlando based Hardcore bands signed to Statik Factory Records. As a quick side note, the base image for the Life.Ended.Abruptly. layout was used to fill the inside of the main figure’s mouth. Once again, this layout is a photomanipulation, making use of two separate images (the meat racks and the main figure). To accompany the new layout, a new identity, including logotype, was created.

Client: From Ruins Of Treachery
Published Work: http://myspace.com/fromruinsoftreachery
Date Completed: May 29th, 2008
Description: MySpace layout for From Ruins Of Treachery, a lakeland deathcore band. Originally playing under the name All Shall Bow, this layout was created using various lighting techniques and a small collection of stock renders to represent that name. The concept was eventually kept for the new name as well. A new logotype was also created to accompany this layout.

Client: Personal Work
Published Work: http://myspace.com/iamaadesign
Date Completed: May 20th, 2008
Description: Full MySpace layout for promotional use. Simple layout, again playing around with some basic lighting and tiling techniques. The type used is VTKS Bandana. I will most likely revise this layout at a later date.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to let the word into my life. Or maybe I’m just lazy.

The Other Boleyn Girl hit theatres this past week, and as a major fan of European History i went out to see what all the fuss was about. For the most part, from what I’ve been told, the movie was mostly accurate. Scarlett Johansson did an amazing job as Mary Boleyn, though Natalie Portman’s character was very unconvincing. I personally think she did a horrible job in her performance, but the story made up for the quality.

But what was most dissapointing was the loss of limb, or lack thereof. As the story goes, Ann Boleyn, after supposedly cheating on her husband, King James, protests her own execution by raising her arm, declaring her innocence. The executioner, rustrated, slices off her arm before proceeding with the final blow.

But as always, many cinematic developments are not historically accurate, which is sad. Sure, you pay $8 to watch Natalie Portman have her head sliced off with a sword, but honestly, loss of limb preceding the execution would have made me enjoy the movie a bit more.

Also, no nudity. Really? Come on now.

Barack Obama, who’s now won at least 10 states in a row, is looking like their most likely candidate, but Hillary Clinton is definitely not out of the picture. It’s my general belief that whomever is selected will chose the opposite as their Vice. My main problem is the pros and cons that come along with each candidate. It’s no secret that I’m a Democrat, as the Republican party system is completely outrageous in their choice of candidates. Though if I had it my way I’d be voting for Ralph Nader this year.

My main problem with Hillary Clinton as a possible electoral candidate is her husband. I have no real problem with Bill Clinton, he was a great president, and did amazing things, but I believe that if elected, Hillary should be in charge, and with her husband in the back seat, I just don’t see that happening. She did it when he was in office, and I’m positive he’ll do the same should she be elected. On top of the entire backseat driver issue, Clinton’s past actions lead me to believe that her outside influence from larger corporations will greatly influence the way she runs this country. The $650,000 bribes she took from various pharmaceutical companies to keep her mouth shut during her National Health Care debacle has lost a great deal of trust in her ability to keep things in order.

Not once in my lifetime has there been a president who hasn’t been influenced by an outside source, whether it be oil, health care, nuclear power, or even automotive corporations. There’s really no winning in the situation. What it boils down to for myself is Barack Obama’s lack of support from Oil tycoons. He was raised poor, never born into any type of wealth, a character trait I find extremely attractive. I believe this lack of former wealth will keep his moral objectives in focus as President.

Here’s to 2009.

For one reason or another, I’ve taken a strong liking towards techno, electronica, and club/dance music in general. Im really loving Schizo Dancer (JUSTICE Remix) by Scenario Rock, which is featured in the upcoming promotion spot for Sony’s new MP3 Player (thanks to Eric for this one). It’s one of those really attractive, catchy songs that you cant hep but listen to over and over again.

I’ve also been enjoying various tunes from Pendulum, especially tracks of their newest album, Hold Your Colour. Underground artist DJ Caffeine has also been tearing up the MySpace community lately, and I’m so happy Mike directed me to his page, the energy is amazing. Finally, I’ve been listening to a lot of At All Cost and Sky Eats Airplane, the mixture of metal and electro is amazing, and both bands pull it off extremely well. Death to Distraction by the former, and Giants In The Ocean by the latter are definitely topping my list at the time.

I’m always on the lookout for good music, so I appreciate any suggestions. If you have something interesting, leave a comment, and as always, download links are amazing, dont make me have to search.

Pricing aside, the iPod Touch really is an attractive piece of hardware, and the WiFi enabled web browsing is what I’d really be purchasing it for. But with only 16GB of space, the Touch really isn’t an option if I plan on having all of my music accessible to me on the go. I know I’m not the only one wondering why Apple would roll out two high profile iPods, the Touch and Classic, but miss the bar on both. I suppose in the end I’ll be purchasing an iPod Classic, for the sake of storage, but the design and lack of web browsing capabilities will really make me regret this decision.

Why didn’t Apple combine the best of both into one ultimate iPod?

This baffles me.

I think so. While this may not seem like a big deal, I think advertisers need to be more careful with the way they produce their work. Letting small things like this go unnoticed can direct a viewers attention away from the products they’re trying to sell, and in this case, towards the latest music from Hellogoodbye. Just a thought.

Virb is a new, but long awaited product from Unborn Media, the people behind popular music networking service PureVolume. While they’re not really known as social networking giants like MySpace, they are known for their beautiful designs and the amazing features that come with them, thanks in part to the Neubix team. While Virb is overall an amazing feat both from a UI Design perspective and from a basic user experience perspective, there are a few features that really stand out to me.

Virb Music / VirbTunes

As far as music goes, Virb is definitely on the top of my list for networking services. While Unborn hasn’t fully linked Purevolume with Virb, a feature many expect to see, they have borrowed the popular PV Music Player for Band Pages, allowing users to add songs and even create their own playlists. Above I’d compiled a simple playlist of my favorite music, easily organizable with a drag and drop interface. The first three songs on your playlist are automatically displayed on your profile, something MySpace has failed to incorporate, even years after its inception.

Another nifty music feature is VirbTunes, an Audioscrobbler like iTunes plugin that pulls information like your most frequently played songs, artists, and more, and displays that information on your Virb profile for everyone to see. But what if you don’t want this to be shown? Well, Virb makes it easy to redesign and reorganize your profile, so that’s no problem at all.

Virb Design Builder

For those of you familiar with the MySpace setup, you know how difficult it is to edit the look of your already unnatractive profile. You’re forced to copy and paste jarbled CSS into sections you’ve never even heard of, bringing your profile to a browser-crashing, unreadable low. Fortunately for the Virb users, Unborn has integrated a profile editor that’s both attractive and easy to use.

The editor makes use of the ColourMod application for color selection, and that’s pretty much it. It’s as easy as that. Choose your colors, and maybe change your fonts around, and the live preview window will show you exactly what’s been changed. This is probably my favorite feature of all, and I know it will save a lot of the non design savvy users a ton of time.

The Virb Dashboard / Your Home

Again, MySpace has been beaten when it comes to good design. The MySpace dashboard is bloated and covered with ads, forcing you to scroll down just to see if you have new messages or comments. In Virb’s case, everything is presented towards the top of the page with virtually no need for scrolling. Recent updates fromy our friends are displayed in a neat box with some nice AJAX hover effects, with Announcements, the equivalent of bulletins, displayed below that. The difference, you can now leave comments on bulletins.

To the left of that is your basic information box, informing you of new messages, comments, or friend requests, with a small amount of unobtrusive AdSense Ads below that, and finally your profile stats appear below that. Everything is, once again, easy on the eyes.

Now, as a final note, Virb is still in Beta mode, so things may load slow, or not work at all. I was also planning on covering the excellent photo organizing features, but time has not permitted me to do so. Either way, enjoy and make sure to check out Virb as soon as you can.

There’s not much to say about this, except it’s purely amazing, a visual masterpiece devoid of any visual navigation whatsoever. The entire phone, save for the backside, is touch sensitive, with sensors to cancel out unwanted touches. The iPhone, which starts at a pricy $499 with a two year Cingular Contract, ships to the US this June. Along with the ability to play music for up to 16 hours the iPhone has two memory options, 4 and 8 gigabytes, like two of the prepackaged Nano options.

In music mode it has an excellent 16 hour battery life, and in calling mode it lasts for up to 6 hours. What’s even more amazing though is the ability for the iPhone to run OSx, including Safari, iTunes with Coverflow right out of the box, and even Widgets. For more information and a slew of photos from MacWorld head on over to Engadget.

The avoidance of any color shift, even in the form of gradients, makes the design feel flat, bland, and overall unwelcoming. On the other hand, when you finally make your way to an individual blog post a slight gradient in the masthead makes the design seem much more friendly and user oriented.

While colors may not be a major problem, one thing I noticed that really bothered me was colum alignment between different rows of the homepage. Time failed to align even a single column between the different rows, or sections, of the front page, something that messes with your eyesight after viewing the page for a little while. It disrupts your train of thouht and throws off your reading pattern making another uncomfortable situation.

Though certain elements may bother me I do like the overall design and salute Time on being able to redesign their entire website without any major downtime, if there was any at all.

For the past five years I’ve worked in the same digital space. 1024 by 768 screen resolution, Outlook and Thunderbird for email, and Internet Explorer and Firefox for browsing (with an occasional Opera fling). I’ve begun all design projects with a blank 800 by 1000 canvas, and quite frankly, it bores me. My creativity has been restricted and I’ve never been able to view the full scope of things.

Over the past few months I’ve been working hard to recreate my digital life, including my workspace and everything it involves. I’ve moved my blog, reinvented my online persona, and more importantly, switched to bigger and better things. I’ve finally decided to do freelance work full time and my career is finally starting to pick up speed. But before all of this I was in desperate need of a new life management system.

As you might recall, some months ago I experienced a number of computer and internet problems that left my career unstable. I had no working computer of my own, no money to purchase one, and when I did have the proper resources my internet access was spotty at best. Fast forward to the present. I have my own high performance PC running all the apps I could ever need, and I have a strong internet connection to boot.

With this new PC came more options and even more opportunities. With a new monitor at hand I decided to change my old ways and move up in the resolution charts, ditching the classic 1024 by 768 resolution for a more robust, detailed 1280 by 1024. And I’m sure once I upgrade monitors I’ll be once again ditching this for the dumbfounding 1600 by 1200. Adding to the screen upgrade I also took the time to upgrade each and every program installed and even made a few smart application purchases to help tidy up my workspace even more. Along with a few nifty, free, widgets, like GCal, for example, I invested a few dollars in StarDock’s ObjectDock, eliminating my need for the bulky Taskbar.

I also took this time to delete all of my email Apps and instead moved all of my email communication over to GMail, simply the best browser based email solution. I did the same with my RSS feeds and voila, a good percentage of my online communications are now available from one simple, customizable Google homepage. While moving all of my email and RSS feeds was an easy task the same couldn’t be said for my Instant Messaging. At the current time I have accounts with AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, IRC, and GTalk, though I only use a couple of them, but it’s still nice to have the others around just incase.

Meebo was my original choice to manage all of thee accounts, but after playing around with the wonderful service, and experiencing a few Firefox crashes I decided to once again give Trillian a try, and I fell in love with it all over again. Gaim was another choice, but it just didn’t satisfy my needs. Now if only there was a client in the style of Adium for Windows. One can only dream. The only downside to all this is Trillian has no support for any VoIP services like Skype, and so I was forced to download it as well.

Your Persona

While redesigning my digital workspace was a fairly easy, though time consuming, task, doing the same for my persona was pretty difficult. I had a hell of a time making the switch from my classic alias Zeerus to my actual name, and I’ve still yet to complete that transfer. And while I’ve switched most of my online pages over to display my real name Google’s yet to really pick up on it. Services like ClaimID are great in this sense, but otherwise a major waste of time.

Hosted Solutions

When you have no money for your own hosting, sites like WordPress.com and Blogger are great, but hosted solutions are so much better and allow you much more freedom. One major decision I made was the choice to switch to my own hosted solutions, a no-brainer. Thanks to Evan I now have a great deal using his servers to host my blog, forums, and whatever else I need a home for. I haven’t purchased a domain name yet, but that will all come in good time.

Offsite Services

They make my life a little easier, and the same can be said for the millions of other people that use services like Flickr and Carbonmade. While they don’t show the full range of your talent or creativity they make organizing your work extremely easy and present it all in an attractive fashion. Flickr is one of those great tools that you stumble upon every now and then and absolutely become addicted to.

Carbonmade, on the other hand, is a tool for designers, by designers. It makes portfolios a snap to manage, and it’s all free. Of course, both sites, along with many others, offer premium plans, but for the most part, as a freelancer, they’re not really necessary. There are a million and one web apps like these, so it’s important to settle on the right ones. I personally have settled with Carbonmade for my portfolio, and Flickr as a sharing outlet for my photography and design, and I’ve actually managed to land a few clients thanks to it.

Though it really needs to mention, 37signals is a creative powerhouse specializing in business management applications, and almost every designer should invest in at least one of their products, whether it be Basecamp, Backpack, or maybe even Campfire.

The Base

While all of these services are great separately every designer needs their own base, a place that brings all of these services together, like a blog, or maybe even a simple portal page. I’ve settled with WordPress for my blog, and the virtually unlimited number of plug-ins available for most of these services makes displaying my work all in one place as easy as making a batch of oven ready cookies. All that’s required is a tiny bit of design tweaking and you’re all set.

Tying It All Together

When you put everything I’ve talked about into perspective it really doesn’t seem all that important, but when it comes to unleashing your full potential these tiny changes really help. You’ll find you’re more organized and you’ll have a lot less on your mind at the end of the day. Even the small things matter.

Now that I think of it, I’d really love to do an entire series on this, maybe a physical workspace design article, and another on service comparisons for sites like WordPress.com and Blogger, or Flickr and Zoomr. Let me know what you think.

The Wii Lebowski