Daily Brad, the blog

I check my lists of Utah Graphic Designers, Utah Graphic Design Firms, etc. on a regular basis to make sure that all the folks listed there are active links and still doing great design, and tonight I ran across something cool.

Though I don’t remember what EyeFX had on their page previously, what they have now is a lot of fun on a boring afternoon. The page loads up grey, and your mouse curser becomes a pen tool that allows you to create webs of designs that looks somewhat like a Jackson Pollock painting. Hovering the pen longer makes a thicker stroke, and moving quick keeps it light and thin. You’ll notice that the canvas area fits any size browser whether full screen, half screen or made tiney.

Give it a try at http://www.eyefx.com

After being an in-house Creative Director for two tech companies, I went independent (freelance) in late November 2006. Since then, three potential full-time job descriptions have been sent to me by former co-workers or friends in attempts to lure me back into the “official” working world. But what was curious to me, and prompted me to want to write this post, is that every single job was looking for a graphic designer who was well-versed in design AND who had was proficient in various programming languages.

Do these people exist?

I’ve always been under the notion that there is some basis for the whole right brain vs. left-brain thing. The theory states that left-brain dominant people are more logical and analytic, while those who are right brained dominant were more artistic, creative and spontaneous. It seems that most people are born with a hemisphere dominance that may or may not have anything to do with what hand they choose to write with. While I write primarily with my left hand (corresponding to the right brain), I am ambidextrous in many tasks perhaps if only by necessity.

When it comes to design, I consider myself a Graphic Design General Practitioner (to use a comparison to medicine). I’ve not specialized in anything in particular, but my skill-set crosses many different realms of design including those that move into the technical (ie. UI design) and the creative (ie. logo design). I make every effort to read and study about the latest trends in graphic design and further my skills as a graphic designer. I enhance this knowledge by picking up tid-bits from other professionals such as engineers, marketers and public relations professionals. I’m always scanning magazines, the web, television and pretty much everything for good ideas and ingenious methods of presenting messaging through pictures, colors and text. But somewhere along the way, it seems that most employers expected me to be proficient in PHP, ASP, MySQL, CSS controls and have experience in HTML, XML, Javascript and ActiveX. (Not to mention the extensive Flash knowledge that most job requirements seem to have.)

So what happened to being a really talented graphic designer?

Perhaps budgets are crunched, times are tight, and companies are seeking just “average” design from a do-it-all graphic designer. The “just get it done” approach has seemed to be pervasive in most web-based environments I’ve been a party to lately. But how much programming knowledge should a designer be expected to have? Can we get by in just understanding how to design for these mediums (programming languages) or do we need to know how to engineer them ourselves as well?

I’ve had several people over the years ask me if I did illustration. Most often I’ll say “I’m not an illustrator, but what do you need?” And several times I’ve been able to pitch in and contribute few illustrations to the cause on some projects. Since most of these never end up in my official portfolio, I thought I’d throw a few in my blog post.

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As this is the first day of the new year, I wanted to use it as a chance to send out a big thank-you to those who read my blog on a regular basis and take the time to comment. I also wanted to list the top 5 most read blog posts that I wrote in 2006 and a little snippet from the post:

Top 5 Posts of 2006 by Traffic

1. Website Pirates Strike Again - Park City Group
   I was looking at a list of public companies in Utah a couple days ago. One intrigued me, so I accessed their website. The Park City Group was founded by Randy Fields, the co-founder and former chairman of Mrs. Fields Cookies. Their customers include such well-known names as The Home Depot, Foot Locker, Inc., The Limited, Albertson’s, Schnuck Markets, Pacific Sunwear of California, Wawa, Busch Entertainment and Tesco Lotus. And guess what? Their website design is pirated.
2. Design Your Own Snowboard with Revolution
   The last time Jon and I were on the slopes (last month, can you believe it? With all the new snow, we’re planning on going this month as well) I looked around to get a sense for some of the snowboard designs that were out there. And you know what I realized? Most snowboard designs suck.
3. Utah Creatives - Designers, Agencies, Firms and More
   So there use to be this great site called ampUTate.org that would contain links to all the local Utah advertising agencies, graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, etc.
4. Pixel Patterns Wallpaper - New Graphic Design Trend?
   Here’s something I’ve been noticing a lot lately, haven’t you? I call it Pixel Wallpaper, while I think most of the web calls it “Pixel Patterns” (or even “Atari Style Wallpaper”). Forget that wallpaper of the past, you know those nasty repeated gifs cut out from a photo or grabbed from a 3D texture makers. These babies are cool. Use a pixel pattern for your blog background or website - here’s where to find some.
5. Is Social Bookmarking the Search Engine of the Future?
   So it wasn’t until a couple months ago, that I began to hear about the whole concept of “Social Bookmarking”. I’ve even mentioned it to a couple of my friends, and they always pose the question “what ARE you talking about?”

Good things are going to happen in 2007, so stay tuned to The Daily Brad for more changes.