Month: January 2016

Graphic Design from Outer Space

Happy new year everyone! I’m just getting back into things after a nice break for the Holidays. Lots of visiting friends and family. Now it’s lots of catching up on random tasks. And, after a really mild December we had our first brace of truly cold weather. Eight degrees this morning, brrr. But still no snow.

It’s been a while since I posted anything about origami and my new book, so I bet you’re wondering what’s up with that. Well, I’ve been continuing to chip away at designing and diagramming new models, and I finally came to an agreement with my publisher about the kind of paper to use in the new book for folding. Next step was to come up with some sample graphic designs to use on the sheets. This task was hanging out there for a while, because I didn’t really have a concept for how to proceed. Mostly I knew the kind of designs I didn’t want.

I finally found a source of inspiration in a geeky cookbook that Michelle got for Christmas, which included some space-themed cakes and cookies. And then today I finally had the time to sit down and work out the designs, print them out, fold the models, refine and repeat. Hopefully my publisher is on board with the direction and we can get this show on the road. Meanwhile go ahead and enjoy these pics.

Graphic Design from Outer Space

Happy new year everyone! I’m just getting back into things after a nice break for the Holidays. Lots of visiting friends and family. Now it’s lots of catching up on random tasks. And, after a really mild December we had our first brace of truly cold weather. Eight degrees this morning, brrr. But still no snow.

It’s been a while since I posted anything about origami and my new book, so I bet you’re wondering what’s up with that. Well, I’ve been continuing to chip away at designing and diagramming new models, and I finally came to an agreement with my publisher about the kind of paper to use in the new book for folding. Next step was to come up with some sample graphic designs to use on the sheets. This task was hanging out there for a while, because I didn’t really have a concept for how to proceed. Mostly I knew the kind of designs I didn’t want.

I finally found a source of inspiration in a geeky cookbook that Michelle got for Christmas, which included some space-themed cakes and cookies. And then today I finally had the time to sit down and work out the designs, print them out, fold the models, refine and repeat. Hopefully my publisher is on board with the direction and we can get this show on the road. Meanwhile go ahead and enjoy these pics.

Mo’ Better Responsive

I’ve pretty much completed a first pass at making all the pages on my web site mobile-first responsive. Along the way I made a hit-list of items that were too much trouble for the first pass, so now I’m circling back to them. They mostly fall into one of a few categories. First is tweaking the existing styles and fleshing out new ones so the page layouts look good under all resizing and formats. Things like font size, padding and spacing. There’s also a few pages with unusual formats that still have to get converted. Some of this gets pretty subtle and I didn’t want to let it slow me down, but it’ll be worth it. Second is adding new content to the existing sections, and I’ve been doing this on an ongoing basis. It’s getting easier now, as the templates are all largely complete. You’ll notice an expanded roster in the music section, for example. Third will be some all-new presentation formats for the audio and visual elements of the site, but that’s still a little ways off. So for now, go click around and see what you can see.