I started on the paleo diet last Thursday. It lasted all of 9 hours or so before a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios jumped into my mouth. The following three days were a blur of drinking and eating gluten dipped in spinach dip.

I got back on the paleo wagon on Monday. I felt great and was really happy with the decision. Yesterday was good as well. I picked up some nuts and apples and ate a lot of chicken (pre and post hatch).

Today I feel terrible. My stomach has been aching all day long. I thought I would chalk it up to my body adjusting to a lack of wheat and gluten and all that crap, but surely that wouldn’t happen so quickly. I bought some almond milk and made a fruit smoothy with it, which helped for a little while. I then had a bowl of watermelon around 9 or so. Still feeling like crap now.

I really want to stick to this thing. I’m pretty concerned about my overall health and want to make this change for the sake of my future. I have a doctor’s appointment lined up for Tuesday—my first in several years—to see about having my thyroid checked. Thyroid issues run in my family, so it would be good go know if there’s something I need to address.

Sorry for getting all personal there, Internet.

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Striking out on my own last year, one of my key motivations was to have the freedom to travel. I wanted to be able to hop in my car and go anywhere, anytime.

Well, that plan hasn’t exactly panned out. Sure, I’ve gone on a few trips—the trip to Palo Alto for a job interview that didn’t work out, a trip to Montréal to see my brother, and numerous trips to Toronto to hang with my friend Avery—but nothing like the cross-continent exploring I had envisioned as I left my old office that wonderful May afternoon.

All that is about to change as I have a number of trips lined up for the coming months, the first of which is to the wonderful city of New York, New York to attend this year’s Brooklyn Beta.

I, like thousands of other designers and developers, blinked at exactly 12 noon the day the Brooklyn Beta tickets went on sale and therefore missed my opportunity to purchase a ticket. Undeterred, I began making plans with my designer friend Mike Precious to head to Brooklyn anyway to hob nob and rub shoulders with those who would be attending the conference.

Then, last week I got a surprising email from one Christian Ross—yes, that Christian Ross—offering me his ticket to the event. To say I was blown away by his generosity is an understatement. To say he should be expecting a year’s subscription to a certain colourful notebook brand pretty soon is a factual statement.¹

So, now I’m going to Brooklyn Beta, my first ever web design/development conference. Ever. And man, I’m nervous.

You see, some of the people listed as attendees are people I’ve always believed to be no larger than a 48×48px. But before me they will stand, some of the greats of our industry. Andy McMillan, organizer of Build and publisher of The Manual; Brian Hoff, writer at The Design Cubicle; Cameron Moll, whose job titles would take a post of its own; Dan Cederholm, creator of Dribbble after he basically invented CSS, right?; Dan Mall, brilliant designer at Big Spaceship; Dave Rupert and Trent Walton of Paravel, one of my favourite web shops today; I’m not even half way through the list and I’m going nuts wrapping my head around the people attending this event, not to mention other friends who are planning to make the trek to meet up.

Needless to say, there are a ton of people I have admired for a long time, people who have taught me the knowledge and skills I now make a living with, who for a few short days will be within glancing distance.

I’m excited. I’m nervous. I really need to go buy some more oxford shirts and chinos or something. Damnit, I wish I had more time to buy some Threadless tees.

See you in October, New York.

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It was about 3 months ago when I was on the look out for a simple, fast way to add events to my iCal calendar. I wanted a simple app that would open with a keyboard shortcut, would let me enter the event using natural language, and would quickly get out of my way when the job was done.

I did some searching but came up short. I was beginning to wonder how I would find time to learn Objective C so I could create the app myself when my good friend Patrick Rhone pointed me to QuickCal.

QuickCal was everything I wanted. It was fast, it was simple, it used natural language to create events.

But damn, it was ugly.

I posted a tweet that same day to the effect of “I wish I could get in touch with the QuickCal app devs to discuss redesigning their app for them.” I figured the tweet, like most of my tweets, would go unanswered. But, minutes later I was contacted by Jim Boutcher, the app’s creator, and by the end of the day I was invited to join the QuickCal team as the new UI designer.

I began working on the app’s design immediately, churning out mockup after mockup in Photoshop. I knew I wanted something simple, something that fit in with the OS X UI but didn’t just use standard UI elements. I wanted colour.

After a few rounds of revisions, and even more rounds of refinements and changes, we finally settled on a UI that would become QuickCal 3.0.

I’m very proud to announce today that QuickCal 3.0 is available on the Mac App store. I’m also proud to announce the launch of the new QuickCal site, which I also had the pleasure of designing.

This was the first Mac application I’ve designed and I’ve learned a ton. We’re already working on improvements for QuickCal 3.1 and I’m really excited about what’s coming down the pipe.

If you’d like to stay updated with what we’re working on, be sure to check out our new Tumblr blog, or follow us on Twitter. We’ll be happy to have you along for the journey.

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That’s exactly how I feel in this moment. It’s not easy to put yourself out there, to do something you’ve never done before and then show it to the world. But that’s how we grow. That’s how we become artists.

This past summer my friend Edward approached me with a script he had written for a short film. He had written a part specifically with me in mind. The movie—a dramatic story of three friends grasping at one last chance to live—was full of intense dialogue and dealt with a very serious theme: death.

We shot the film over the past four weeks, and today are proud to release the trailer for our short film, “Imprint.”

Details for the movie’s release are still pending, but I will be sure to let you know as soon as I have more information.

Thank you so much for watching, for sharing, and for your incredible support.

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This past weekend marked the launch of a site I have been working on for some time now. On Stage Dance Studio—the top dance studio in Stratford, Ontario—hired me to redesign their site and build it so they could update the content themselves.

I’ve been reading a lot about responsive web design lately, having launched the responsive version of my own site back in July. I’ve learned a lot since then. For this particular project, I made sure to design for “mobile first,” to ensure that mobile browsers wouldn’t load unnecessary images and other media.

This project was a lot of fun and I’m really proud of how it turned out. Thanks to Meghan and the amazing people at On Stage Dance for everything.

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This past weekend, I was on the receiving end of two acts of incredible kindness from two incredibly talented people.

Edward Platero—who shot and produced both Boss Rebel music videos as well as the video I did for John Siracusa’s Lion review—lent me thousands of dollars worth of video recording equipment, including his Canon 5D Mark II which I have since fallen madly in love with. His generosity led to some of the most memorable moments I’ve had in the past few months, which I am happy to say will be shared once the project I’m working on is fully baked.

Today I took my Macbook Pro into the Apple Store to see about fixing an unresponsive key and replacing an old battery. I had gone in expecting to wait a couple of hours for the repairs to be completed, only to have my expectations crushed into the ground when I discovered it would be nearly a week and a half before I could have my precious computer back. My Macbook Pro is my work machine, which means I make my living off of it and it alone. I was dumbstruck. I did not know what I would do.

My friend Avery Edison—whom I had borrowed the camera from Ed to film—offered to lend me her Macbook Pro until mine had been returned. Quite frankly, I was blown away by the offer and at first declined it. She made the offer again, this time forcing me to accept. I couldn’t and still can’t believe that she would sacrifice her work and productivity for my own.

Thank you, Edward and Avery, for once again showing me kindness. I’ll never forget it.

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In July of 2009 I designed my first Fusion ad. I had 13,000 pixels to catch the attention of hundreds of thousands of tech and design geeks across the world. It was a real challenge. That first ad (which turned into 3 variations for testing purposes) was the beginning of my nearly-two year run as a designer for Fusion. In that time I’ve designed nearly 80 ads for Fusion and I have to say, I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Constraint

The biggest lesson I’ve learned designing these ads is that constraint is your friend. There is absolutely no extra room in 13,000 pixels for unnecessary copy or graphics, so you are forced to pair down your message to the essentials.

The saying “Keep it simple, stupid” comes to mind, but the balance you have to strike is between keeping it simple while still being eye-catching for readers. Usually this means placing heavy emphasis on communicating the brand you are advertising.

For instance, a lot of the designs I have created are for iPhone apps which already have an icon designed for them. I will often base the design of the ad on the icon, creating a graphic that introduces the brand to the audience without over-communicating and causing confusion.

With the constraints imposed with a Fusion ad it is simply impossible to communicate everything about a product or service in one graphic. This isn’t an elevator pitch, it’s the initial handshake. Because an ad can’t delve into the features or selling points in an in-depth manner, I often try to create intrigue or mystery so the audience becomes curious about what the ad is selling.

Humour is another great way to introduce some brands. With the target market Fusion is aimed at, an inside joke is often appropriate; poking fun at a frustration many in the creative industry face creates a camaraderie between advertiser and audience.

Strategy

Occasionally, advertisers introduce their product or service to me so I can design an ad for them, but rarely mention their strategy for converting the resulting ad clicks into sales. I believe Fusion is an incredible way of getting your product’s name in front of a very targeted audience, but if you are depending solely on the strength of a single ad to sell your product, you will be disappointed.

Though I was not involved with the campaign, I was thoroughly impressed with Campaign Monitor’s ad campaign that they ran back in 2009. Not only did they design beautiful, targeted ads, they also designed campaign-specific landing pages which allowed them to carry on the conversation started by the ad impression.

Not every campaign requires this exact strategy, but thought must be given to where that ad impression is going to lead your target audience. If the conversation you start with your ad impression suddenly drops off by taking the user to a completely foreign-looking homepage, you risk confusing or frustrating the people you are hoping to sell to. Respecting people’s time and attention is of utmost importance for Fusion, as it should be for anyone hoping to advertise on the web.

1,040,000

I’ve produced over a million pixels for Fusion and I am excited to produce a million more. If you have a product or service that someone in design, software development, or another creative industry might find interesting, get in touch with Chris at Fusion.

I think you’ll be surprised with what you can do with 13,000 pixels.

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The Rule of Thirds. All of us have either used it or heard our designer/photographer/artist friends mention it when discussing the compositions of their creations. Placing the subject on one of the four intersections created by dividing the canvas into nine equal parts increases tension, energy, and interest in the composition.

Sometimes, though, rules are meant to be broken. As I was walking around downtown Barrie yesterday afternoon, I decided to break the rule of thirds. I wanted to show the contrast between people and the space surrounding them. We live in a big world, and I wanted to communicate that.

Hope you enjoy.

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I love Twitter. I use it daily for establishing and maintaining both personal and professional connections with people, promoting the work I do as a freelance designer, trying (and failing) to be funny, and both praising and ranting about people, places and things. Yet, in just over 17,000 tweets I feel like for how much I’ve said, I haven’t really said much at all.

I think of my Twitter feed as flow, defined by Robin Sloan as “the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.” While I try not to clutter it with mindless meandering, it’s also not my most thoughtful work either.

A couple of days ago Merlin Mann made a comment that, at the time, I disagreed with:

Here’s the thing: If you value what’s said on Twitter, archiving is essential. If you don’t value what’s said on Twitter…why are you here?

A very good question, which I answered by comparing Twitter to a passing face-to-face conversation: you don’t have a record of every conversation you’ve had, but that does not mean those conversations are invaluable. A single conversation can lift my spirits for an entire week; some have changed my entire life.

A Different Perspective

Earlier today I read Craig Mod’s recent piece on his experience with Twitter during the earthquakes in Japan, which gave me a new perspective on the topic. Mod, a designer who has lived in Japan and maintains a very intimate connection with the country, happened to land in there just hours after the earthquakes hit.

In the article and in his talk from two months ago at San Francisco’s Creative Mornings, Mod speaks of his experience of catching up with what was happening by using Twitter as a sort of time machine. As he was preparing for his talk to discuss his experience, however, he came across a great challenge posed by Twitter’s current design:

I found it nearly impossible to scrobble back in time and capture — with granularity — these first-person narratives that so uniquely and spectacularly defined the experience of being in Tokyo during the quake.

When I first considered Merlin’s comment about the value of archiving tweets, I had mostly considered the recent tweets found in my personal stream. I’ve shared some interesting things, promoted work I have done, and connected with some great people. However, I’ve also recently shared my feelings surrounding one of the worst experiences of my life—the realization that the cancer that was found in my mother cannot be removed. The thought of archiving this time of my life makes me want to scream; these moments I would much rather forget.

Contrasting this experience with Craig Mod’s experience, though, has made me see the value in the archival (and ability to access) the types of tweets Mod is referencing. The world has shared and responded to some incredible events through Twitter. In a lot of ways, Twitter has redefined what it means for the world to experience an event.

Looking forward to a time when historians will begin to sift through the data about our time now, an archive of the world’s immediate reactions to an event could prove to be incredibly valuable. What did we really think about the election of Barack Obama? How did our immediate response to the earthquake in Haiti compare to the eventual outcome months and years later? What political revolutions were sparked by the meeting of minds found on social networks of today?

So, Merlin, you are right. There is incredible value in the archival and retrieval of the things we share on Twitter. In fact, the idea of archiving these things could cause us to spend a little more time crafting the things we say in 140 characters. Though, in the meantime I am glad for the ephemeral nature of Twitter, as I have no problem letting the stupid things I’ve said in the past 17,000 tweets be forgotten.

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Timing is everything, they say. Come up with something too early, and you’re ahead of your time. Delay too long and you’re late to the party. Those who know me know I’m rarely too early and tend to aim for “fashionably late.”

A couple months ago, I began a project that depended on timing. It was born out of a desire to help those who were affected by earthquake that hit off the coast of Japan. I also wanted to create something that represented the connectedness of our world, going beyond the visible connections created by social media and showing the invisible connection of our hearts.

And so I started the Love for Japan project. The plan was to create a community-created letterpress poster, with proceeds from the sale going directly to the Japanese Red Cross fund for the relief effort.

Unfortunately, around the same time I was going through my own personal disaster. Those who follow me on Twitter are aware of the situation surrounding my mom’s recent fight with cancer, so I won’t rehash all of that here. As hard as I tried, unfortunately it did cause me to delay the completion of the Love for Japan project much more than I had hoped.

There is still great need in Japan. As I wrote before, Japan is one of the most well-prepared nations in the world to face such a tragedy, however there is still a great need out there. People are still hurting, and the Japanese Red Cross is still accepting donations for the relief effort.

And so, it is my hope that even though the mainstream media has moved on to more recent news about celebrities having secret children and yet another missed apocalypse that those of us connected by the internet will still remember the people of Japan.

I need to apologize for the wait. To those who pre-ordered posters and to those who had waited for the design to be completed before ordering, I am sorry. It’s late, I know, but I believe it’s beautiful:

I want to especially thank Mike Precious, who designed the Love for Japan site. It is truly beautiful, and I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing partner in this project. He has been incredibly patient and gracious.

I truly don’t know what the response will be at this point. I was blown away when over 160 heart drawings were submitted. I have great hope that I will be blown away again by what I know to be the amazing support and love from the internet community. I leave it in your hands now.

※ Permalink for “Love for Japan: The Update” published on date_to_rfc822