Sunday, December 31, 2006

What Barry says

Just see an amazing animation for criticising the American politics. I like the way, how they used easy understanding models (pistols, oil pumps) to illustrate. The background of the animation is simple, so we can focus on the models and the spoken words, what Barry says...

exposure time

As we were sitting on the beach on Phu Quoc at night, I thought I could experiment with the exposure time of my camera. It is amazing, how much you can influence the exposure of your image even if the original setting is pretty dark.

exposure time: 15 Sec:




exposure time: 7 sec




exposure time: 1.5 sec (nearly the real lightning conditions)




exposure time: 1 sec

Friday, December 22, 2006

blurry memory of a wished future

A few days ago, I wrote down the following words in a kind of a short-story:
"For a long week, her smile is only in my mind... A blurry memory of a wished future..."

I don´t know, why I like this expression so much, because it sounds a little bit ridiculous. Nobody can remember something, that will happen in the future. But if you believe sometimes in this things, you want really become true and you dream about it and think about it all the time, it can give you the feeling, that it already became true. You are remembering things, which are not true, but due to your strong belief, your memory is getting a mixture of your fantasy and real experiences happened to you.

You know this feeling?

portfolio exhibition

Our portfolio for the course "Web Page Construction" is growing and growing. My research let me see some portfolios of other persons. Here are some flash-examples:

nice animations, a cute design and a very good example how to design a portfolio with plenty of information, if you don´t have enough space for non-necessarey things.
http://eendar.com/

The strength of the next design are the animation. Really nice to look at them and to find out something with clicks on other links. I love the way, how the navigation will be re-structured after a click.
http://www.attilahartwig.com/ (click on the book)

A very beautiful preloader, which is showing the percentage of the loaded page in a beautiful serif-font. The port folio itslef is clear and not so playful and much clearer than the others. I like the used fonts in this example and the big whitespace around the portfolio.
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/ (Click the first link)

so far...

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Color Code Combination Chooser

Just in case that you have a lovely color, but you don´t know, how to combine it with others:
Color Code Combination Chooser

I like to choose one of the different schemes just to see how the different schemes effect my chosen color.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Brown Eyes Travelling

There was a time in the past I regularly wrote short-stories like this one:

Brown Eyes Travelling

Talking with her is not difficult, but once more, I want to see her smile. Only once more a smile – that is all I need.
But that wish won´t be fullfilled, won´t become true, but it has to be. And then I stand in front of her, looking straightly in her eyes and missing that, what I always missed. I even don´t have to notice it.
Drinking beer alone doesn´t taste, I experienced for a while. Liqueur never tastes, I experienced today. And so I am standing here – "All" is staring at me, as I would be the attraction on carnival. It would be smile, this "All", if it would know, what the motivation of my thoughts is. But the "All" is also lonely, nearly as lonely as me, and it is bored. And thats why it is staring at me.
What I am thinking about, it is asking.
„Brown Eyes never travel alone,“ I am answering. "All" is leaving, shaking its head.
„But the smile“, I am continuing, noticed by nobody. „But the smile, which is following, hides.“
If the "All" would have understood me, it would be better, but in this case, it is kidding me. I don´t care, because the next beer is drunk quickly, the fifth beer ordered quicklier. Well-Known are passing by and leaving. Hands are getting shaked, hugs are given. I realize the time foggy – half past twelve. Already so late? And I couldn´t notice the smile so far. Sweaty masses are passing by – sweaty by dancing and the heat in the hall. But I don´t meet brown eyes travelling.
I´m not getting beer anymore, the bar is closing, the masses are cooling down in snow outside, the music is stopping, the hall is enlightened. And me? Standing here without a word – thirsty, helpless and searching. Observing in fast motion the half-life period of masses is getting quarter an hour, the half-life period of beer is getting irrelevant and the half-life period of a smile is the eternity, when you are waiting for it. Give it to me once more, give it to me and I am satisfied. But how could you give, if brown eyes are travelling and I can´t find them?
Loneliness could be a curse, when you don´t want it. Mainly loneliness is a curse, if Conor Oberst is crying for her love and promising to follow her everywhere.
Love? What is Love? This warm, happy, amazing feeling, you get beside a person, who is important to you? Or is it only the glibbering, warm mass, pasting all of your body and aching, if you try to rip it off?
If brown eyes are travelling, they never travel alone. But the smile, which is following, hides. The brown eyes aren´t alone, but they are feeling like. Because the smiles doesn´t unhide, even, if it´s ordered.

It´s night, when the door is closing. I´m seeing blurrily the door to my room. Too much of the yellow-brown fluid, in which mostly I took more than comfort. I´m feeling the smoky taste on my tongue, feeling the taste of beer in my mouth and hope, that tomorrow I will wake up and realize, that everythig is a dream.
Thinking, Amplifying, Sleeping, Dreaming – thats all left. I´m dreaming of a slimy mass, which is holding me and won´t let me go. I´m drowning, waking up and looking for brown eyes travelling. But, why here? Have to look in the world, because only they could conquer the world, even if they won´t tell. They don´t know, that they conquered me.
Without thoughts, I´m filling up my bottle of water, recognizing that the sun rise. Even, if you don´t see the sun, it´s enlighting.
You miss sleep only, when you are tired and cannot sleep. You hate beer, if you drank too much the day before. But a smile always will be missed. One more time, please. Give it to me, and you won´t be disturbed by me again. Only a small sign and I am conquered.
Conquering, didn´t we talk about and I couldn´t answer? That´s still true. But the brown eyes are travelling and trying to rule the world. And they decide, which fortress will be rised down next.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Cineclassix Redesign

Cineclassix is my own german movie-portal, at which I discuss new and old movies, provide links and feeds and will later provide articles describing movie-history as well.
It is based on the free content-management-system Joomla! and has at the time a provided standard design.

But I want to change the design as soon as possible - that is a screenshot, how it should look like:


As you can see, I tried to play with the different contrasts between orange, grey, black and a kind of red.
The girl in the banner is Alexis Bledel as Becky in the movie Sin City from director Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. I like this movie because of its visual design in black and white (to illustrate the comics) and some coloured parts (her blue eyes). To focus on her eyes I tried to keep the rest of the banner simple. Besides that, I can focus on the content as well...

Business Cards

We had to create two business cards in our class.
At least I finished them:



For the first version, I chose a traditional business-like design with only a single line seperating the name from the contact-dates.
The second try was a draft to play with colours appearing in the logo. So I seperated the card in two different-coloured parts.
In both drafts I did not want to use other shapes and forms in order to give the logo the ability to breath.