Life moves fast, right?
Into the new year and a very productive one it’s been so far. The portfolio continues to grow and evolve, and is just a very small representation of the work we do.
If you have a project you would like to discuss with us, please do feel free contact us. We’re very eager to work to bring your ideas and endeavours to fruition.
Way Over There.
Time sure ticks along. I'm happy to say it's been a very productive year so far, and I am keeping extraordinarily busy. The weather's really trying to stave off the worst of the winter, and although my planting of spring bulbs may have been a tad premature - it's still freezing at night - I'm sure a nice early West Coast spring is just around the corner. Preparing for early sakura, warmer nights and pretty flowers.
++Up+Date++
Busy busy busy. Working on some new graphics for guitar effects pedals, which is a side project I've been involved with for quite some time. I really like having a small canvas to work with, and it's a great challenge to use metal alongside graphics - it's tactile, and has its own qualities that can be integrated into the look. I'm testing out laser etching and acid etching onto aluminum, and it's yielding very interesting results.
There's also the sonic [circuit] design aspect which I regard as integral to the graphics; I like seeing the totality of the effort; sound, sight, touch all combined to create a unified entity. Or something like that.
Spring Forward.
The weather here on the West Coast (it's deserving of the upper case) is pretty great. The gardens around Saanich are blooming with colour and growth, and I think everyone has a little extra spring in their step. It's hard no to feel uplifted by Springtime, doubly so as the winter here was unusually long/cold.
I've been very busy updating my skill set; it's important to stay relevant but also to maintain an understanding of how everything currently works. The digital age really makes life easier by it's immediacy, but you sure can fall out of sync really quick, such is the speed that (digital) life comes at you. It's all good!
Small Steps, Big Ideas.
I realize that I don't write often to this blog. In truth, it's not the most obvious and relevant side to maintaining a web presence, especially as changes tend to be ongoing and live. Having said that, I know an update has been long overdue.
Things are picking up after the normally quiet year's end. The weather here on the west coast has been quite different from most years in that we have had a lot of snow spread over a few weeks, and quite frankly we aren't entirely used to dealing with it.
Things have settled back down and I noticed this week that bulbs are starting to poke out of the soil, the grass is growing after hibernating, and the snowdrops and daffodils are in bloom. Spring is so lovely here, and the world seems to be waking from its winter slumbers.
Busy.
Accompanying the glorious sunshine and ushering in of spring here on the West coast are some commissions for web work. We are particularly pleased to welcome back Saltspring Cabinets, with whom we have had a long and fruitful association.
We've decided to take advantage of the many amazing design platforms that are now available which make designing sites such a fun and comparatively easy process. Bringing client's online presences into mobile computing is something we have found quite a demand for, and it's especially challenging to distill the essence of each client's unique product and/or service into a smaller and yet sufficiently comprehensive digital representation.
The new work will be live very shortly. In the meantime there are some final drafts appearing on our Web Design pages.
A Slight Deviation.
I'm going to alter the content slightly as I've had some requests for samples of written work to go along with the imagery and design. So, the next stage is to do away with the Theater & Film section and insert written work, both published and unpublished.
The usual caveat; it's a work in progress, but should you require specific work please feel free to email me at any time.
Work. Work. Work.
There's definitely such a thing as being spoiled for choice. I'm working my way through the rather vast back history of images from my portfolio. If that's a problem it's a good one, i.e., I'm having a hard time deciding which pictures are in and which aren't going to make the cut as I am spoiled for choice. I've also discovered some pleasant surprises from images I had totally forgotten about.
I'm also rethinking leaving in the Theater & Film section b/c most of the originals are in the hands of the individuals and organizations that commissioned them in the first place.
I also need to have some sort of information accompanying many of the images, but I think right now the priority is to upload the body of work, then complete this stage of the site update with relevant captions and information.
Developments.
I still have to scan and upload whole swathes of print and magazine published works. I had forgotten just how much work I have, and I'm rather enjoying looking at many of the images. It's fascinating looking at one's younger efforts, seeing how one might do things a little differently now, or not.
Twenty seconds to comply.
I'm pleased with the progress of the site redesign. The only speedbump I've encountered is corrupted data from digital backups; the images are at least a decade old and both the original backup and the backup of the backup have failed. I still have the original transparencies, so the process will be longer than anticipated as I have to sort through the images, scan and digitize them.
At this point I'm going to say that much of the initial redesign is complete, there's just the Theater & Film section that's coming up short.
Developing.
The redesign is going well. Lots and lots of images to look through. So far I'm loosely updating images, and plan on resizing them all when each category is more developed. I still have a ways to go, but I'm happy with the way themes are emerging. Again; it's a work in progress.
I'm sure they are around here somewhere...
The next page(s) I'll be working on are the theater and film images. There are a lot, and I'm working through the folders trying to winnow the numbers down. The point of this online portfolio is, after all, to offer a taste of my work, not the entirety.
Updating.
It's high time the site was updated, and so I decided to completely redesign the site. In the time since the last real work I'd undertaken the technology changed significantly, and I decided that it would be useful (and fun) to step away from the older software and go with the new crop of web creativity suites. I also want the mobile experience of visitors to be better than it was, and this way everything gets updated simultaneously.
The site was never intended to be a final, complete entity; I think it's useful to regard it as an ongoing, organic process which will always remain fluid and changing.