I was walking home and these were just laying out on the street. I think they were slats in a bed, maybe? Anyway, they’re nice clean pine with no knots or fasteners. I need a new cutting board, so I think I’ll use some of them for that.
* update: here.
A couple weeks ago, I lost my cufflinks. They were nothing special, but about half of the shirts I own have a French cuff, so I took a quick spin through what was available online to buy some replacements. And here is what I have learned about cufflinks: Continue reading “New Cufflinks from Etched Zinc Plates” »
My Friday nights are 23% more awesome by molarity than yours.
You win some, You lose some. This is actually a post about a failure to achieve what I was trying to do, but it’s an interesting failure. I was making some zinc etchings (see my earlier post about that) and I thought it would be great if I could then plate the exposed parts of the etching not covered by the resist with copper, which, when the resist was removed, would give me a two-tone metallic effect. Continue reading “Copper Plating onto Zinc” »
Story Time. So, in Los Angeles I lived in this comically tiny studio apartment. There, I did all my projects on this 3′ x 3′ table, which was also pre-landfill staging for junk mail and whatever else I was holding when I walked through my apartment door. Here is it in action:
15% of surface area unusable due to feline possession.
Over time this table, which was never exactly heirloom quality to begin with, became so covered with assorted solder/glue/paint, burn marks (thermal and chemical), and power tool ‘oops’ Events, as to be only an article of furniture by virtue of its horizontality.
When I moved into my spacious Portland apartment, I decided that I wanted a proper workbench, with room for cat storage and a soldering iron. Specifically, I wanted to be able to work with a 4′ wide sheet of material, and something sturdy enough that it wouldn’t jump around when I used power tools, with storage for all the little necessaries like sharpies… Continue reading “A New Workbench” »
Today is 12 July. There are 21 days left to study. I’ve decided to go up for my LEED GA accreditation exam on my own dime, to try an make myself a more competitive candidate if and when there are jobs again, anywhere, ever. If you’re not familiar with it, LEED is a sustainable building program developed by the US Green Building Council. I think it’s pretty great, because it addresses two problems I have with sustainable development as practiced today:
I bought this gamma ray counter for $15 from Surplus Gizmos, intending to use it as an enclosure for another project. Any ideas? It appears to be from the late sixties, and has a tube inside to amplify the signal from the particle chamber.
Thing is, it still works. As near as I can tell anyway, not having a source of gamma rays to test it against. And the quality of design and construction is so nice, now I feel bad about Frankensteining it. In the coming zombie apocalypse, I’m sure it’ll come in useful.
brainsss....
If You’re Like Me, you don’t own a blender, but you sure as hell own an electric drill. It’s strawberry season, and Safeway had two large cartons of strawberries for $4. Fresh strawberries and cream are really one of the better things in this universe, but whipping the cream without a blender is a real chore.
So, a slight modification to my egg whisk:
Alrighty, good to go!
Apparently, taking appealing photographs of food is harder than it looks. It doesn’t help when you’re rushing so you can stop clicking and start eating, fwiw:
A Little While Ago, I produced a film with some friends of mine called The Long Apology. We’re nearing the end of post-production, and it’s time to start thinking about the DVD slipcase of the finished product. I’ve been tasked with designing it, because I’m currently an unemployed layabout, whereas my friend and business partner Ryan, who actually designs these things for a living, has distractions like a job, dog, social life, &c.
We have some artwork I did as part of the marketing package for the film, and if we used that the front cover would look something like the above. I put it together in about a day, so it’ll need some work, but it’s nice to have something to start from.
I wanted to see what the current state of the Art was, so I went down to Blockbuster with my digital camera, and took pictures of all the DVD slipcase backs I liked. Which seemed to make the sales clerks nervous for some reason, but they left me alone. One of the advantages of living in a city like Portland, with its abundance of weirdos that are only to willing to share their theories about Transcendental Meditation or whatever.
Strangely, it seems like the people that design these things are just phoning it in by the time they get to the back. There’s a very consistent format, and very few of them show even a modicum of design intent. The big budget movies actually had the least interesting backs, strangely. I probably looked at over a hundred of them, and there were only a few that were worthwhile. Here’s a pretty typical example:
We have the following elements:
Here are some examples that were interesting in one way or another:
I like that they picked a color palette and lived in it. Also, using a portrait for your primary design element is always a good choice, since we're hardwired to want to look at faces.
The diagonal slash dividing the top and bottom is a strong design element. Not so much the gigantic fucking barcode in the middle of prime design real estate.
Again, nice color palette work. Here, however, they've chose certain highlights that aren't in palette, which makes for a stronger design than a completely monochromatic palette.
Using a series of portraits like this is sort of hackish, but it was successful in getting me to pick the DVD up off the shelf, which is half the battle. Doesn't tell you much about the film, though.
I don’t know who does the promo artwork for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but it’s riveting. Maybe not so useful for a DVD back, though, because it relies so much on simplicity.
From a design standpoint, they made some good choices: good layout, strong color choices. The overall effect is a little underwhelming, not sure why.
I’m going to watch the film again, and then fire up Photoshop and see what I come up with.
Chemicals and Electricity, What Fun! One Christmas, I made custom bookplates for myself and a few friends by etching zinc plates. They came out great, and the process, while taking much longer than I would have liked, is a great technique for customizing copper, brass, or zinc metalwork. Here’s the artwork I did for the whole set:
You Will Need:
The process of getting all of these from Illustrator into Zinc is somewhat involved, and here I should probably say we will be working with toxic chemicals and electricity, together, and this process releases hydrogen gas, which is highly flammable. It’s not for the faint of heart. But it doesn’t require any special equipment, and if you work safely you should be okay.
Continue reading “Making Bookplates with Electrolytic Etching” »
