gus torres: illustration - animation - design

When Ryan Snyder approached me back in January about a project he, Mark Wallaert and Sam Keen had begun development on a few months before I quickly said, “Sure!”. I had previously worked with these talented developers and was thrilled to have the opportunity just to be involved with whatever they were producing.

I had no idea what a “Shizzow” was and as Ryan (in his ever-so-calm demeanor) explained it (and I’m kind of paraphrasing here)…

“It’s called location-based social-networking. But more importantly with Shizzow, it’s using technology to actually get us off our computers and connect in person with our friends and loved ones. We think it’s more important to develop and maintain our real relationships instead of gathering and collecting ‘friends’.

If I’m having some beers with friends and you’re in a coffee shop down the street working on a project, wouldn’t it be great to be able to find out we’re nearby and pop in for a pint and have some great conversation?”

I had a great time creating the branding, developing the look and feel and producing the overall web template design. But watching the passion, hard work and incredible talents of Sam, Mark and Ryan from the sidelines was awe-inspiring. Kudos to you, guys!

Keeping quiet about this great new web service has been driving me nuts. But I’m pleased to finally announce that Shizzow is now in private beta (with limited invitations available). Unfortunately for all my friends and family outside the great Northwest, Shizzow is just for Portland, Oregon alone. Kind of like Stumptown or Voodoo Doughnuts.

Check out some other great write-ups here and here or learn more about Shizzow here.

Martin Ringlein for DigitalWeb writes:

There is an emerging desire to want to be sexy.

When did we become so afraid of maintaining, updating, and manipulating HTML? And when did the use of CSS become tied to the idea of never having to touch our markup? Fundamentally even those leading this movement towards having “sexy” stylesheets don’t always practice what they preach; most of the markup created by the ‘best of the best’ is a combination of presentational and structural.

When it comes to our CSS, we all agree that being bloated, slow, and messy are less than attractive traits—but the CSS used in enterprise-wide and mass-adopted web applications, or those with significant daily unique visitors or websites that demand extreme extensibility and flexibility, being smart isn’t always being sexy.

As both a designer and a developer, my left and right brain struggle with this constantly.

Find out more here… (courtesy of Digital Web)

I just found out that June 7th, 2008 is officially “Drawing Day 08″ and it will be the first Saturday of every June from this day forth. According to their site…

“Drawing Day is a worldwide drawing event encouraging everyone to drop everything and draw for the sake of art. The internet is an open canvas. Help us create 1 million drawings online this day and boost online art communities.”

I don’t generally need an excuse to draw, but I’ll definitely be getting in on this action.

Hope you do too!

An excellent article that clearly identifies not just the building of a portfolio, but the need to treat it as an important piece of a self-promotional marketing tool. This is something I preach to my students as much as possible.

Of course, I must admit my portfolio is getting a little long in the tooth…

Find out more here… (courtesy of Digital Web Magazine)