My design studio, ERA404 Creative Group, was pleased to launch our 2011 Creative Reel this week. Information about the reel can be found in the supplementary ERA404 newsletter (Season X, Issue II), the Press Release (ERA404: Commemorating10 Years) as well as the [d]online blog post about the rebranding effort.
LASIK Surgery, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Laser
EPHEMERA404
The New era404 Stationery Goes to Press
This afternoon, I had the pleasure of taking a press run to PermaGraphics to watch the production of the new era404 stationery. Mike Caloni, the founder of the 13-year-old printing firm, led me on a tour through the facility, starting with the 70-year-old duplicator his mother bought to print wedding paperie at their kitchen table, and ending with the incredible Komori 6-Color press (you can see one in action here). Our business cards are a #130lb Cover, far too thick for the in-house Heidelberg presses. Operators Pete and Frank even let me nit-pick to get the spectrometer below .03 difference between the letterhead and buisness card stock (in fact, they seemed eerily content with my perfectionism).
PermaGraphics obviously has a passion for their craft—an increasingly rare trait in an industry squeezed financially by the eVendors—and provides more than competitive rates for the New York City metro area. I highly recommend the quality and professionalism of their services. And Mike is genuinely a great guy. More photos after the jump.
Caren Alpert’s Food Photos
Photographer Caren Alpert took pictures of food under a microscope, producing amazing textures perfect for desktop wallpapers.
Read about the project on Caren Alpert’s site.
The do’s and don’ts of Flash
This article was originally published on the Firstborn site on July 1, 2011, and is written by my buddy and Flash guru, Zeh Fernando:
The do’s and don’ts of Flash
Zeh Fernando, senior developer at Firstborn, rounds up the ultimate do’s and don’ts of Flash to explain how we can improve our workflow to create powerful, rich online experiences more efficiently.
Developing fully interactive websites is an amazing experience whose technology is in a current state of change. We’re not only seeing big changes in terms of platforms used for that purpose – HTML5 anyone? – but also in the workflow employed when developing those (so called) rich websites.I think that Flash is a particularly acute example of the latter. The platform has evolved a lot through the years, not only in regards to what it can do, but in how one should do it. In that sense, the rich online experiences we create can now be more powerful than ever, so here’s a few pointers on how to get it done a little more efficiently.
Read more…
Google+ and +1
Plus One
The +1 thing has been a part of the internet for as long as I can remember. Stemming back from my early days on shockfusion.com, the best way for someone to give propz where propz were due, with a system that didn’t allow for it, was to simply post a reply with “+1” in it. QBN.com (formerly NewsToday.com) added that mechanism to their home page for visitors to promote admin- and user-added content. And now Google has wholly embraced he meme with their version of Facebook’s erroneously-named “Like” button. So what’s the main difference between Facebook’s “Like” button and Google’s “+1” button? The answer is simple: Google has a search, Facebook does not. +1ing, though not guaranteed, will help improve your pages’ rank and elevate its placement among Google search results. It’s pretty much the Digg.com model, but for all teH InterWebz, not just news.
You may also notice the shiny, new +1 button on [d]online’s header, by the search bar. G’head and click it if the spirit moves you.
Google+
Now, Google has taken their war against Facebook domination to the next level. How? They’ve launched their own Facebook with Google+. According to them, they did it because “People Hate Facebook.” And within days of the launch, all my friends, coworkers and family members seem to be scrambling into their “circles” (Google’s version of Facebook’s “lists”) and posting up a storm. Facebook says that they knew about circles last year and beat Google to market by launching their rehashed version of Facebook Groups (though, I believe, they’re are as pointless as Google Groups – which I still use and manage). But Google is really banking on Google+’s success. And they need to, as well. According to Silicon Alley Insider’s Chart-of-the-Day, people spend a lot more time on Facebook than Google. And in an online world driven by ad revenue, time translates into dollars:
What does this all mean?
It means that people that left Facebook because it was too addictive now have two different sites to avoid. And people who are tired of receiving dozens of email responses to Facebook group conversations that someone else added them to, will now have dozens more. We have twice as many privacy issues as before and potentially double the: online stalkers, farmville invitations, pointless events, embarrassing photos, etc. I don’t think we really need a world with two Facebooks so I’m hoping that the battle royale between Facebook and Google will produce a clear, definitive winner so I can go back to being monogamously addicted to one.