benwatts.ca

Dots

Ben — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:30:30 +0000

Hey, this might resemble something …

Only 1024×768. Oops.

Regarding Mad Men

Ben — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:25:09 +0000

I don’t have cable, but I’ve recently taken to watching Mad Men (entering season 3) and I’m loving it! Some of my favourite bits of the show centre around client interaction. I realize it’s a rather insignificant aspect of the show’s plot, but some of the client situations are so relatable that it makes my knees buckle. Working in an industry where meeting client needs are paramount I’m aware that from time-to-time a crazy is going to come along. However, when going through a bout of client-hell it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the industry having the same problem. That’s when those scenes in Mad Men come along and let me know that I’m not alone out there.

In the words of the wise George Bluth Senior: Never promise crazy a baby.

Subpixels

Ben — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:17:55 +0000

I’d like to point out that I loathe that when creating a line shape layer (or path) using Photoshop’s line tool, there is no option to snap to whole pixels. Curse you, subpixels. Curse you. If I explicitly set the weight of a line to be 1px then I damn well expect my line to be 1px wide!

Come on!

If I wore a pocket protector¹, I’d be adjusting it for optimal pocket protection right now.

¹ I felt linking to that ad was necessary, since there’s some Futura all up in there.

Good God, It’s Almost September

Ben — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:04:39 +0000

In what feels like an incredibly long time ago (middle school) there was someone in my class who threw a ham sandwich in a drawer in the wall at the back of our homeroom. That sandwich was left in that dark space for months. People at the back of the class started creeping forward, getting as far away from the developing smell as possible (without alerting anyone to the situation). I feel like that sandwich is this site at the moment. How is that for a compelling analogy?

Anyway, in spite of the overwhelming feeling that pressing the publish button is going to somehow take down the server, I’m going to post.

Right, so: this year has gone by much too quickly, particularly since moving downtown (Ottawa). Things have been great downtown so far, though I have to admit: for someone who considers himself a designer, my walls are pretty barren. I’ll get on that… one day.

I was far more proactive about procuring an iPhone 4 on its launch day in Canada at the start of August, though. 7 hours and 24 minutes I waited in a horrible line at the Rideau Centre. I’ll just say it’s a magical device; THERE ARE SO MANY GEEBEES! I decided to make up some wallpapers for that giant-ass 640×960 screen. I was a bit sneaky with one of them, which is obviously the 76design logo — for those familiar with it. It’s posted to a few Flickr iPhone wallpaper groups, so if anyone out there ends up using it I’ll get some kind of perverse sense of satisfaction.

The other one is not so PG. It was after a long day and sometimes it feels great to throw “Fuck” around a canvas.

And here’s something that ended up coming out of a client project. It’s a simple and literal representation of a network in a cloudy space. More might come from this one day, but until then it’s a 2560×1600 image available for download from Flickr.

Time to dust my hands for completing my second intellectually stimulating post of 2010.

An Embarrassing “Speech”

Ben — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:27:46 +0000

I just stumbled across something horrifying in my closet …

When I was in grade 6 — which was exactly 10 years ago (’99-’00) I wrote a ‘speech’ on what I then called ‘Web Building’. I’m going to have to ponder whether or not I post scans of it or transcribe it, because after reading it I feel like ENDING IT ALL. I’m glad we weren’t marked on the factual content of this speech, because I would have failed, had the teacher decided to go to “geocity.com”.

“H.T.M.L. is everything! Literally everything! Its the whole website!”

Perhaps more rich than the atrocious written speech (which I probably read, word for word) is the peer feedback forms that are attached to it. One surprising highlight:

Would you like to learn more about this subject? If so, what?
“Yes I would like to learn more about how you advertise your site.” – Kevin

I wonder if he does anything with Marketing now …

There was also an anti-drug poem in the binder containing grade six stuff. This thing will never see the light of day again. “Do you think smoking’s rad? / To think that you’ve got to be mad!”.

New Fav Book: The Visual Miscellaneum

Ben — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:03:12 +0000

If you are a fan of infographics, graphic design, or need a fun book for a coffee table — this is the book for you. Frankly if I saw this in the store and flipped through it I probably would have bought it right then and there based solely on the bright and fun colours inside.

There are a few instances where gutters appear to have been ignored, so you end up with illegible text or a graphic might be harder to read. This is a fairly minor issue in an otherwise fantastic book.

I give it five arbitrary stars!

More at http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/