break the beat

Photoshop slices (or how to turn them off)

Every now and then you're going to get a web site from a designer, nicely packaged layers inside a Photoshop file. And every now and then this file will be pre-sliced for you, so that when you want to export it with the "Save for Web & Devices" it will always save it to a folder of images.

So damn irritating.

The solution? Simple, once you discover it: View -> Clear slices.

Ahh, much better.

Wheat fields of Murska Sobota

Skyscraper powered by wind turbines

Just finished, the London's Strata SE1 building sores 154m into the sky. On the first glance it looks just like any other tall building, until you see three huge holes at the top. These are wind turbines, that in turn generate almost 8% of the buildings total electricity.

The building marks the beginning of a huge redevelopment plan to revive this London's borough, that has been staggering for years.

Engineering awesomeness, ladies and gentlemen. More info.

Give us minimal software

Made for all the Adobe AIR apps and other nasty memory hogs out there.

Type is different weights of Avenir Next LT Pro. Photoshop + Illustrator.

Testing Apple's Magic mouse

I just got my hands on the new Apple's Magic mouse, featuring a multitouch surface with gestures support.

Sleekness is apparent:

Canon 40D, Canon EF85mm 1.8 USM, 1/200s, f/1.8, ISO 160

So far it's behaving good and I'm not feeling it being slow, like some people have mentioned. People with bigger hands might feel that it doesn't have the proper ergonomics, but it fits in my palms very smoothly. It takes some time, though, to get used to it's low height.

I was expecting that because it's actually a trackpad on "wheels", the clicking is gone, and that you just tap to click. Well, I was wrong. The clicking is still here, loud and crisp, just that the whole surface moves down to click, sort of like on the new unibody MacBooks.

Scrolling provides a really good experience, and it's performed with just one finger moving on the surface. It works like on the multitouch trackpads, where you can seamlessly scroll in any direction (including diagonally).

I'm thinking of getting one mainly because it works over Bluetooth, so I'm left with one unused USB port. The fact that it looks awesome doesn't hurt either.

Gesture support currently falls a little short, as currently only back/forward navigation is supported via two-finger swipes. It would be useful, to at least offer all of the gestures supported on trackpad. I'm missing the pinch-zoom the most.

Luckily this issue is easily fixed via a software upgrade, so no worries there also.

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi, Canon EF85mm 1.8 USM, 1/250s, f/1.8, ISO 320

New semester in college and typography

We started a new semester in college, and it brought with it a new season of our only design class. Our first assignment was to create a typographic poster. No special rules except of using just type and the theme "Maribor, European capital of culture".

I first wanted to take a look around the interwebs, for some examples of great uses of type and stumbled upon an abundance of neat stuff. There is a really cool collection over at Smashing mag, so it might be worth taking a look if you like design and typography.

After coming home, I went looking for additional typefaces, since I'm regularly finding out, that I have a pretty limited choice on my Mac. One of the first I installed was Avenir Next and then AvantGarde, which I'm familiar from working with Corel Draw, which had it bundled I think. Both sans-serif and both slick as hell. I'm sure i'll find good use for them in future work.

Here's a sample of AvantGarde

Here's Avenir Next

Below you have my minimalistic take on the poster, using Futura Medium and Condensed, for "Maribor" and "Evropska prestolnica kulture" respectively. The EPK is courtesy of massive Helvetica Neue Condensed Black.

   

Click here to download:

New_semester_in_college_and_ty.zip (182 KB)

Where did all the people from collapsed financial institutions go?

Excellent post on the official LinkedIn blog, about how they are actively seeking on getting new intelligence by analysing their increasing pile of data. Here they show a graphical dissection of the migration in the financial sector, after the investment bank had the struggle.

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