Daily Brad, the blog

After collecting interesting links in my Yahoo Notes, on 3 or 4 different computers (home and work) and emailing myself dozen of things “to read”, I finally decided to give Delicious a try. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to tag all of the things I’m interested in, but have already begun to make it a necessary part of my daily process to save links and refer back to frequently accessed searches. Here’s the tag cloud for Brad McCall’s bookmarked links thus far. Hopefully I’ll be able to incorporate this tag cloud into my future “About” page on bradmccall.com as I’ve seen some other designers do.

I recently posted several of my new logos (a couple that you’ve seen on my outdated website) on Logospire. Their rating system and comments make it easy to find out which ones people tend to like the best.

I’d recommend visiting the site if you enjoy logos, or just need inspiration for your next design.

My dad was a Contractor by trade, and owner of his own business called “McCall Building Company”. Jokingly he asked me one time if I wanted to take over the family business and I can only imagine my face looking back. Though I love architecture and have considered it as an alternative profession, building is hard work. I have much respect for those folks.

My Dad was and is a great builder, a talented craftsman who’s built many beautiful homes and structures. And yet, he’s never built a home for himself.

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So I had a brain fart just now (a “brain fart” is a rather crude phrase for a random idea, but you get the point) and thought I’d put it in my blog. Goodness, unprofessional moment. I digress.

So I’ve been of a big fan of Twitter of late for many reasons. Though I do have my off days where I get tired of everyone talking and no one listening (remember Mr. McCall, no expectations). And as the Twittering keeps going and going, I see all my little witty posts disappearing below hundreds of others and then I catch myself saying to myself (Wow, that felt just like a Austin Powers moment there) that ‘hey, I’d like to remember some of these’.

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I’ve not been active on my blog of late, but I have been active on twitter. I’m still putting together my personal opinion on twitter and formulating a blog post in my head, but it’s not ready to commit.

I’ve also been working on a total overhaul to my portfolio website. I’ve been neglecting it for much too long. (10 years to be exact!) I’m excited to get some of the work that I’ve done over the past few years out there and hear what you think. I’ve started and stopped the redesign of my portfolio site several times, and this time I’m going to make it happen.

A special thanks to those of you who regularly follow me. If you’re on twitter, I’d love to connect. (@bradmccall)

I just finished writing a post called My Best Tweets as Rated by Me, January 2009 that included some of my favorite tweets from that month. I found a few I liked from December, so I thought I’d go back and create a post for that day. (The theme from “Back to the Future” starts playing in my head - “Gonna go BACK in time”.)

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It seems that my post about IKEA, including the Okland construction logo was quite popular with the search engines, and many of you come across it by typing “IKEA Utah” into Google. So I just wanted to share in the excitement about being the first state in the Mountain West to get one, by linking to their press release on it’s opening date (less than a month away). Here’s a snippit:

DRAPER, UT, March 6, 2007 – IKEA, the world’s leading home furnishings retailer, today announced that its future Draper, UT store will open at 9:00 AM on Wednesday, May 23, 2007. IKEA Draper will be the Swedish company’s first store and restaurant destination in the Mountain West and 30th in the U.S. (In the meantime, customers can shop online at www.IKEA-USA.com, or at stores in Tempe, AZ; Covina, CA and West Sacramento, CA.)
“Due to the progress made during the fall and the snowy winter, we are confident the remaining construction milestones and interior build-up process will be complete by late May,” noted Paul Janzen, store manager of the future IKEA Draper. Janzen added, “now our primary objective is to continue hiring and training the nearly 350 Utahns who will be joining the IKEA coworker family before we open.”

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?

My thought today: Can you tell what’s on someone’s mind by what they’ve been bookmarking? See if you can figure out what I’ve been thinking about by looking at a dozen of my most recent bookmarks:

1. Flipper Nation
   I’m a huge fan of anything HGTV, and recently I’ve also been watching a lot of shows about Filpping Houses. I ran across this link, a parody of couple of guys who flip houses. Not only did I get a good laugh, but I also thought they did an excellent job of integrating Web 2.0 concepts into the promotion of their website. I thought if I had a chance, I might blog about some of their comical “rules to real estate” in my some-what always-neglected Utah Real Estate Blog
2. Graphic Design USA Logo Trends 2005
   Since I’ve been getting quite a few clicks on my graphic design trends category, I thought I’d do some more research and found this link. I thought it halarious what they called some types of logos such as “wicker balls”, “weaves”, and “puffies”. I’ve been noticing a lot of “transparencies” in recent design annuals and wanted to blog about it being a trend.
3. Does chocolate really give you pimples?
   No, I’m not really worried about pimples, but ran across this article in looking for interesting items for my Tweet Sweet blog about misconceptions of chocolate. I ended up blogging about Does Chocolate Spoil instead.
4. Icon Advertising Museum
   I’ve had several posts bouncing around in my head about Advertising icons or “company mascots” as I call them. I also wanted to refer Jeff Fisher to this link when I posted a response to his Michelin Man post (since he mentioned he was a fan of advertising characters), but I forgot.
5. Logo Lounge
   For $100 annually you can have access to over 41,740 logos that have been uploaded and cataloged by Logo Lounge members. Members can also upload their own logo designs and they’ll be entered in their logo competition where winners are published. It’s always nice to have logo books around when brainstorming for a new brand, but it’s even more nice to have a logo book with my logo inside. (Jeff Fisher is my hero when it comes to getting published)
6. doba.com - Education Page
   After running across their co-founder’s blog, AND seeing a couple billboards saying “need products to sell”, AND finding a product that was on their website that would work great for Therty Brand, I decided I should probably learn more. Doba provides product sourcing services for small businesses and entrepreneurs, in case you were wondering.
7. The Gardo House: A History of the Mansion and Its Occupants
   In a random search for historical houses of Salt Lake City, I found one who’s appearance intreaged me, and I wanted to know more about it. Starting with my search of “Amelia’s Palace”, I ended up finding this link. I was sad to find out that this amazing piece of architecture originally built for Brigham Young was torn down in 1921. But what an amazing history - well worth the read.
8. The Portland Business Journal - The Oscar goes to…
   After visiting a Moonstruck Cafe in Portland Oregon and blogging about their amazing chocolates, I tried to figure out if their familiar logo had won awards. I learned that it was purchased by Sally and Dave Bany, former executives for Columbia Sportsware company, in 2001. They took their experience and applied it to chocolate with the intentions of positioning it to grow into a national, premium chocolate brand.
9. Feedburner
   What in the world is Feedburner and why have I been running across it so much lately? It looks like something I should learn more about, so I bookmarked it. Do you use it? Perhaps you could fill me in.
10. is this your name?
    A bit of a goofy site that allows you to enter your name and see various stats about it. Since I recently discovered that I’m an egosurfer, this site really appealed to me.
11. seomoz.org - Long List of Link Searches
    I scanned this article about SEO inside information, and bookmarked it to come back for later. As a website designer, I’m always interested in expanding my arsenal of information about SEO.
12. Ironic Sans - Idea: Pre-pixelated clothes for Reality TV shows
    Have you ever watched reality television and saw someone that was wearing a t-shirt with a pixelated logo? Here’s the idea for David’s pre-pixelated line of clothing. I found some of the comments prett comical.

Since this is my last post before the Christmas Holidays, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Christmas!

Dock Porn

Originally uploaded by The Iconfactory.

So I was browsing the blog of my favorite icon geniuses, the iconfactory, and ran across a posting that read

Our Chief Typist, quite by accident, discovered that the icons in his dock spelled out ”$eXy” and wondered what other words he could make from all the various app icons on his HD.

so I went over and checked out the flickr page they created to add more of these little jewels. There’s only 20 there right now, but you’re welcome to add your own.