We released our album a couple of weeks ago and it has gone really great. Kexp has us in rotation and we”ll be doing a live set in March at the station. All 3 of us created the cd packaging and stuff. Jon was the Art Director, Paul the Photographer, and I did the Pixel Pushing.

Granted, the resolution is more than half of that which I would get using my camera, but for the purposes of online & mobile viewing, it doesn’t really matter.

Here are some that I took while snowed in on Mercer Island.

A while back Paul had shared that he wanted to make a laptop case for his 11″ Macbook Air out of his old Apple employee t-shirts. I told him I might be able to swing it, given that Abuela is a whiz on the sewing machine and is always happy to help. For a while the shirts just sat in a pile on my bedroom floor until the other day when I realized his birthday was around the corner.

I drew up a design and took it over to Abuela. She did an awesome job constructing it as well as coming up with a velcro seal at the top of the case.

Luckily Paul had his laptop with him when I gave him the present. It fit perfectly. Better yet, the Apple icon remained perfectly centered throughout the whole process.

I absolutely (and surprisingly) love “Big Boi” by Hair Vest. It’s choppy, distorted, synth-punk that my friend remarked sounded like a “more punk” Spurm. Then on the other end of the spectrum is Prisoners with “No Place Like Home”, which I swear has been stuck in my head these last two days. It has this innocent charm that reminds me of early Daniel Johnston recordings and I actually want to pay attention to the lyrics (I never listen to the lyrics). And of course, the two songs by Orca Team. I seriously think they’re my favorite local band at the moment. So, so, so good.

We chose to record a song that we had decided to keep off of our full length, which we will be mixing this Sunday! It’s called Fuck & Kill and actually has me on the drums, and Jon on the guitar. We wrote it one day by chance when I was going through my “I want to be a drummer” phase.

Jon has always played guitar, he’s kind of a whiz when it comes to music. However, I had only been playing drums for 2 months when we recorded this. I have since abandoned the drums as it didn’t really jive with our sound, but I’m glad we decided to do something out of our comfort zone for this project.

 Enjoy!

Some time earlier this week a project I had been working on last month was launched. It was headed up by Microsoft’s Branded Entertainment & Experiences Team over in the South Lake Union ‘hood. It’s a virtual house decorator/lightshow creator for the holidays.

I created over 30 illustrations for it ranging from MC Snowman to the scrawny Christmas tree. Some illustrations (specifically the animated ones) were provided by a 3D studio. It was a lot of fun to work on and super neat to see it all come together.

Lots of chatter lately about Google’s redesign. As an avid Google user, I first noticed the change on Blogger and most recently made the switch to the new look on Gmail. The changes are similar—cleaner/more simple layout, more icon links, lower contrast, and so on.

I actually really like the new look of Blogger. I adapted quickly to the change and have begun using certain features that I wasn’t even aware of before. It’s easier to manage posts and navigate blog entries. Overall, I like the change—and that’s coming from someone who hates change.

As for Gmail, I have been using the “new look” for at least a week and still hate it. This has gone beyond my usual dislike of change and into the realm of being a disoriented user. There are certain changes that are subtly annoying from a design standpoint, but the ones that really annoy me are the changes that have gotten in my way as a user.

I have pointed out the changes I have beef with in red and will go through them alphabetically. Here it goes…

STARS VS. TAGS (A)
Whereas previously the “starred” and “important” icons were separate, they are now located next to each other. I star messages that contain important information or require a response. Most messages I receive are marked with the “important” tag, which is inconveniently the same color as the starred icon. The process of visually sorting through my mail has changed. I can no longer rely on the color yellow to point me towards my more important messages—that is, unless I go through individually and “click it off”.

LACK OF CONTRAST (B)
The contrast between a messages’ subject line, text preview, and background color has gone down drastically. The horizontal line that separates messages has been inverted to white, which makes me feel like my inbox is a chaotic mess of text. The way the text is now displayed makes me feel like I’m staring at a pile of unorganized papers.

HIGHLINE (C)
This one is more on the nit-picky side. The horizontal line is riding way too high and suffocating the word OUT.

IT’S A LINK! (D)
Also on the nit-picky side, the new advertisement bar is chunkier and has that dated blue & underlined link look. I like how before, on the old Gmail, the ad bar was a part of the design. It held together your messages and stemmed from the inbox link. The design made sense and was functional.

ALL ABOUT ME (E)
Surprisingly enough, here’s a change for the better. I like that my “Sacha Maxim bar” at the very top has been given a darker, more contrasted treatment. Whereas before I was pretty unaware of it, I now use it to get to my other Google applications.

MORE ICONS (F)
Finally, I dislike the move made towards icons and away from text links. Some of the icons aren’t intuitive and are only displayed once a message has been selected. It’s oversimplifying actions that I want to be able to get to quickly. There’s nothing I hate more than having to hover over a link to figure out what it is.

Overall, the main problem I see with this redesign is that it’s too simplified. It looks washed out and pale in comparison to it’s earlier days. The goal of an inbox is to provide order and structure to one of the busiest channels of communication. Simplify the foundation of that structure too much and you lose that sense of order.

“[W]hen I sit down to write a recap…there will be no need to sort through pages of hand written, torn, coffee stained notes”

 I was smart enough to ditch paper notes after the first session, switching instead to Macbook Stickies & tweets. Still, all I have are shorthand notes and I really dislike writing. So, what I have decided to do is copy my notes directly onto this blog post.

Lazy? Sure. I’ll own up to that. However, I will go an extra step and flesh out the discussion points that are a little vague or could use a bit more meat. Here we go…

Beauty, Constraint, & the Atari 2600     Ed Fries
**Full disclosure: I was still taking notes old school, so they’re pretty skinny**

The following were all examples of ways in which constraint can turn out a beautiful outcome. Ed Fries concluded his talk by saying that he believed gaming was entering an impressionistic period.

• Origami—an elaborate creation from a single sheet of paper
• Poetry— it’s better when lyrics aren’t too specific
• The musical writings of Bach

 Meme & Miasma: Context Shifts in Social Media     Louis LoPresti
 This was one of my favorite talks at the conference.

• Conversion to Transaction
• Don’t invade their personal social space.
• Treat brands like relationship; no longer about making a “wow” ad
• Weak-Tie Connections 
• See link on fb page, and click/like (weak tie)
• Strong-Tie Connections
• Conversations—have an authentic voice
• Be dedicated to the brand, not the social media “marketing has to get over the fact that marketing is marketing”
• “Facebook is a place we go to to celebrate ourselves”
• Tweet what you know/are interested in. What do you want to talk to the world about?

 Mad Woman
There was a panel of speakers for this one. Most of the questions were in relation to clips shown from the tv show Mad Men.

• Woman should be the natural choice for the emotional sell
• Don’t sell what or how…sell the why
• Don’t stand up and burn your bra…figure out how to live in the mind of everybody else in the room and invite them into it.
• New is a relative term. The other extreme is something that’s nostalgic. Value Village=find a treasure

Making a Mess     Matthew Mulder

• “If you know what you’re doing you aren’t trying hard enough”
• Opt-in culture; experiences must be unique & meaningful in order to engage
• 4 Things to go by:
• Be artisans
• Be conversationalists—Speak w/ conviction then shut up and listen
• Think like entrepreneurs—Understand your goals, make your own opportunities
• Keep an open mind—Avoid mental traps: digital vs. analogue

There were other sessions I attended. Some ended up being something I wasn’t expecting. For example, the UX Design panel mostly talked about startups and how there is more creative freedom in that particular environment.

Then there was the one session that didn’t really cover anything new and was oddly sexist. Rather than take notes, I ended up sketching a pretty picture on Stickies.

Matt Shobe (Chief Design Officer at Big Door) discussed the benefits (and trend) of gamification when engaging consumers. It’s a topic which I have been aware of, however I have typically been more cognoscente of how social elements are integrated into gaming rather than using gaming elements to enhance social interactions.

It didn’t take too long before Shobe brought up the example of Zynga and, more specifically, Farmville. I’ve never played Farmville, however I did go through a brief period of playing Empires & Allies. The reason why I stopped playing was because I became increasingly frustrated with how easy it was to acquire achievement badges. Not only that, I found it incredibly annoying that I was continually prompted to share my success with my friends via Facebook and Twitter.

Smart gamification, according to Shobe, requires a balance between providing the right amount of challenge and social. To paraphrase, if it takes under half an hour to achieve level 32, then the gamer will lose interest. Similarly, make it too difficult—either by not providing easy acces to sharing your progress online or the game play itself—and the level of engagement suffers.

Now, it was the example of MLB Gameday (one of Shobe’s projects) that really got me thinking. He asked the audience (by show of hand) if they enjoyed baseball. Very few hands were raised. He then asked how many of us had ever collected baseball cards. Nearly every hand shot up. The action of collecting/ sharing/ showcasing is what kept us engaged in a sport we didn’t even enjoy watching. By including this type of interaction, baseball fans were afforded the opportunity to become engaged with the game in a whole new way.

This is where my imagination stepped in. Music has lost it’s way in the digital era. Everyone loves music, everyone collects music, yet music stores are shutting down, record labels are going under, and musicians and consumers alike have no way of navigating this.

I believe I have the best taste in music. My friend, Paul believes he has the best taste in music. Where can we boast about our respective amazing taste in music other than in our living rooms hunched over the record player? And, to take it a step further, when will we be rewarded for our dedication to music listening?