Problems and Solutions

Last night, I poked around the site a bit, making some changes here and there. Thought I’d share them with you, as well as the thought processes behind some of the updates. A great way to learn is simply to look at what someone else did and why they did it.

The biggest change is the new background. I’ve been achin’ for something to replace the pale beige tile I was using since this design, Sangria, launched last June. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the pattern I’d been using; quite the contrary, I liked it very much. It had a translucent, lace-like quality that I thought suited the other subtleties of the design quite well. However, I wanted something with more of a visual punch.

Over the past few months, I tried a lot of alternatives, but nothing ever looked or felt just right. Or, at least, nothing ever looked quite as right as the old pattern did. There’s no one, perfect answer to any design problem. There are simply solutions, and then solutions that are better. The tile pattern was the best solution I had found thus far. Still, I sought something better.

Last night, inspired by this post at Web Designer Wall, I went digging through Lightroom for some photographs that might work as a background image. I really like the texture and tonal variety that a giant, photographic background can bring to a website, so I looked for photos that were abstract and kind of simple: close-ups, long exposures, that sort of thing. I didn’t want images that were very representational because they would only distract from the website itself. After digging through thousands of photographs, this is the collection I had gathered.

Continue reading this entry →

10 Film Stills from the New Teaser Trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The teaser trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), which premiered tonight during the Super Bowl, did not disappoint. The amazing Peter Sciretta of /Film published a poll after the Super Bowl and 58% of voters thought that the Transformers trailer was the best movie ad during the game. Star Trek currently holds second place, with 18%, while GI Joe, Land of the Lost, and Pixar’s Up fight for the rest of the pie.

Of course, I headed straight to Apple’s movie trailer website where I could watch the entire thing over and over, frame by beautiful frame. Special effects porn has never looked so good.

I grabbed 10 screenshots and uploaded them to Flickr for everyone to enjoy. I tried to choose frames with as little motion blur as I could find, plus did a little sharpening in Photoshop to enhance the images. Here’s a few of my favorites. The rest are right over here: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” Stills. Make sure you check out the originals!

The movie comes out on June 26th, 2009.

Copyright © 2009 Dreamworks LLC and Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved. Hasbro, Transformers, and all related characters are trademarks of Hasbro © 2009.

The Alphabet, According to Safari

I’m a Safari user. I really can’t stand Firefox’s UI, and while its plugins supply a great deal of added functionality, I much prefer the simplicity of Safari’s Cupertino-bred interface.

Safari has gotten to know me quite well so that now, when I want to head to one of my favorite websites, I simply click inside the address bar, tap a letter, and hit “Return.” About 95% of the time it predicts exactly where I want to go.

Here, ladies and gents, is the alphabet according to Safari:

• A adampolselli.com
• B boston.com/bigpicture
• C cnn.com
• D digg.com
• E expressionengine.com
• F facebook.com
• G gmail.com
• H hulu.com
• I imdb.com
• J jasonsantamaria.com
• K kottke.org
• L login.facebook.com
• M mail.google.com
• N notcot.org
• O Nothing here that I visit often.
• P psfk.com
• Q questionablecharacters.com
• R rottentomatoes.com
• S search.twitter.com
• T thegarmentor.com
• U uncrate.com
• V veer.com
• W weather.com
• X xkcd.com
• Y youtube.com
• Z zshare.net

So what can you learn about me from this list? Probably not much that you don’t already know. I check Gmail and Facebook way too much. I enjoy streaming video and blogs about design, fashion, technology, and ideas. I seek out movie details and reviews, as well as leaked music downloads. I’m constantly debugging ExpressionEngine and wondering what kind of weather next week will bring. And, finally, I have an aversion to domain names that begin with the letter “O.”

So, what’s the alphabet according to your browser?

The Garmentor

Back in August, I blogged about a new project I was working on called The Garmentor. It took a little longer to launch than I had anticipated, but it is finally live for all to read and enjoy.

To quote the site:

The Garmentor is a weekly fashion magazine for guys that features buying guides, trend tracking, and style tips geared specifically towards today’s busy, tech-savvy men who need to get advice and make a purchase, all in one stop.

I’m a fashion buff, always interested in the latest trends and the coolest new designers, and I figured that it was about time someone created a sleek, online fashion manual for men. I love what they do over at Uncrate, but because they cover such a wide range of topics, men’s fashion never receives the attention I think it deserves.

My goal for The Garmentor is simple: to find and share the greatest men’s fashion products in a way that is accessible and fun to consume. I wanted the clothes to be the star of the magazine, so I ultimately went with a very clean design that features a white background, black text, and lots of Helvetica. I’m a perfectionist and, therefore, never quite satisfied with my work, but I think that the design will serve its purpose as The Garmentor grows into the mature publication that I hope it will become.

One of the greatest lessons I learned while creating The Garmentor is the importance of having a specific objective and never losing sight of it along the way. It is very easy to forget your original intentions when you spend weeks working on a project like The Garmentor. Oftentimes, I had to take a break and remind myself exactly what I was trying to achieve. It’s probably a good idea to write down your objective and tape it to the wall so you never lose focus and try to do too much or accomplish more than you realistically can.

Perhaps in the future I will share some of the scrapped designs for The Garmentor, but for now I fear that some will look better than the finished product. I had to throw out a great deal of ideas because they simply didn’t work for a commercial website that was going to need specific ad placements. This brings me to another lesson I learned: know your design restrictions before you start working. This is an obvious one, but it’s easy to get excited and start working on a design before you establish its requirements. I’ve also had to accept that advertisements will uglify a design, no matter how hard I try to counter it. And so it is.

I’d really appreciate it if you guys could pass The Garmentor along to your friends, family, and anyone else that you think might like it. A great deal of time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears (yes, really, tears) went into launching The Garmentor and it’d be really gratifying to reach the large audience that I think is out there for a publication like this one. Thanks, and enjoy. :)