vs…

I’m sure there are a ton more… this is a pretty common iconic element. What others do you know about?

Logo look-alikes: Opscode and Clipartof.com is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

Google often talks about its wonderful innovations, its lofty ideals and its “do no evil” motto. But how often is that stuff true? How often are they innovating? Doing no evil? And are they benevolent, or just neutral? Most of all, does it matter?

This is a simple rhetorical question I’ve asked myself. I find that when the topic of Google’s innovation comes up, those knowledgeable on the subject are of two divided camps: Google is not an innovator, they are a humdrum company who is overly praised and under criticized, or conversely, they are in fact, underly praised and overly criticized.

I answer this with one simple idiom: “necessity is the mother of invention”. This phrase rings true in our species, and for living organisms as a whole, because evolution is a cruel mistress, and our clever brains must devise more clever methods to survive her blows.

If in fact, necessity is the mother of invention, why would you expect a very large, very profitable company to commonly be at the forefront of innovation? Invention and innovation are synonymous in most cases, so my reason-meter tells me that wealthy companies are not going to be the nexus of the new. They instead, will invest in what they think WILL be the new, and continue reaping the benefits of what they know.

I think there is no problem in this.

If an individual, or a small group are fighting to make their mark, cash out big, or otherwise do something inventive, then it is up to the Google’s of the world to fund their endeavors if they consider them noteworthy. They are merely using their leverage to drive the momentum of this one idea forward into the market.

This symbiotic relationship is necessary, but that is not to say it can’t evolve. It is becoming more commonplace for companies to invest in “labs” or any sort of R&D playground that is isolated by design, in hopes of cultivating these same external innovations, internally, and under the watchful eye of a company.

I just hope that people stop fussing over the melodrama of who’s who, and instead focus on what’s actually happening and what it means for all of us.

Google innovation: true to form or irrelevant anyway? is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

There’s no doubt that the web landscape has shifted dramatically in the last few years. Specs for existing technology have finally been implemented in much higher frequency, leading to major trends in web design, driven particularly by the exponential growth of data and the ever-connected social networks that create more disruptive applications. One of the biggest trends of web design in this span of time is the convergence of print design methods being translated onto the web. Grid systems, robust font families and more emphasis on readability are very important trends nowadays.

This post focuses on fonts in particular, because there is some awesome technology out there that has potential to revolutionize not only the way we look at fonts on the web, but the way we perceive them as a commodity on the whole.

In a nutshell, this line of thinking can be translated thusly: Fonts = assets, Font ubiquity = high quality, low (or no) price.

Font = Assets

Fonts are most often seen as commodities that aid in creative production. Just like stock photography, PANTONE swatches, paper stock and illustrations, fonts constitute a means to an end, and they are priced accordingly. A lot of money is generated by licensing of fonts, but web applications have circumvented the traditional practices in favor of more intelligent models for the web.

Pricing online is based on two models: The price per domain model and the website Tiered model. The first charges a flat fee per URL. The latter charges a flat monthly fee based on a tier of assumed behavior (monthly pageviews, type of site, etc…). Sometimes these two are combined into a hybrid. These models have worked pretty well, especially because they are usually built on top of the Freemium model — make something free, then offer an upgradeable version with more features, better support… or whatever else.

Font Ubiquity

What has opening fonts up on the web done? It has exploded the market, that’s what. Font foundries, individuals and web applications have all capitalized on this niche of design and provided countless variations to existing font families, as well as bred a new generation of beautiful, industrious and economical fonts of all glyphs and sizes.

This ubiquity has made font pricing go down in major ways. Where once only big companies had access to fonts, the masses can make and use them with ease. Whole fields have been uprooted, making way for type designers with big ideas and little overhead to take on the challenge of recreating the fonts of old for the technology of new. Even Google is getting in on the action by both promoting and funding the creation of Open-Source fonts for its API on Kickstarter.

Font metadata

One thing that is still a bit lacking from web that is commonplace in print, are the details. With CSS and JavaScript, we can take the reigns and control the way our fonts look pretty well, but there is still something lacking.

• Kerning and Tracking behaviors are not standardized in browsers
• Line-height, em and pixel behaviors are not consistent in browsers
• Font metadata is not readable in the way you might expect from a desktop environment
• Font metadata is still not entirely encapsulated in the font or is lacking some useful components

These chief complaints are the basis for big font endeavors, particular the WOFF file format. This format was introduced by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and addresses these needs in an elegant manner.

Currently, implementation of WOFF is quite simple, but since it is not standardized there is some work involved to get it working in all browsers. FontSquirrel has a handy tool that I often use, but it still falls into the realm of hacks because of its lack of unilateral support from the browser community.

Another great font idea is the UFO project. The Unified Font Object project aims to make a font object that stores its own internal directory of metadata which can be interpreted by just about anything on the web. This would store information about type foundry, creation time, font metrics and much more, in one single encapsulated format. There is already a lot of press around this concept and I see it gaining ground as time passes on.

This post, from Ilovetypography, explains UFO from the Iceland conference of ATypI, an organization dedicated to typography and its many components. For the creation of fonts in UFO format, an awesome Python-programmed tool called RobotFont has been created for editing and creating UFOs.

Metadata = more semantic power

There is inherent creative power in data manipulation. This truism is surfacing often where we see innovation on the web. If we employ more data into our fonts, we give ourselves a lot more freedom in usage and usability. Font search engines will be useful as well as ubiquitous and design will be more streamlined as data informs designs and allows for more semantic thinking. Just imagine how useful it would be to filter fonts of certain types, styles, aesthetics and personalities based on their internal data structures. Automation based on more programmatic thinking will likely invade the territory of font-selection — it has in every other design front, and is not a a trend whose apex has been reached.

Font Metadata + Search Engines is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

Mixed Collages and abstract designs for FreeStockFor.Us is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

2012: Happy New Year from Digital Defiant Studios is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

Now, do your part and visit http://americancensorship.org/

Where I stand on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

Use Pandora to filter out some cool new bands you’ve never heard of. This is the “discovery phase”. You might even consider upgrading to Pandora one. I have it and am a huge fan and it’s super cheap!

Step 2. Visit Grooveshark once you’ve honed it down to that “perfect” artist.

Now that you’ve got the artist(s) figured out, go listen to all your new stuff! Grooveshark lets you get the music in bulk, control it and create awesome playlists. Pandora lets you find stuff you didn’t even know existed, or that you forgot about.

Step 3. Enjoy!

Grab a drink, or maybe a taco. Enjoy. Or consider upgrading cause supporting useful apps that are lean and efficient is a great way to keep innovation going.

monkey photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1269242

Tips for finding and enjoying the perfect music is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

To define, Zero Hour is:

ze·ro hour
Noun: The time at which a planned operation, typically a military one, is set to begin.

Digital Defiant Studios: Zero Hour graphics is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

Vector dumb objects is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor

I’m sure you’ve seen something like it, or versions of it, but how do we create it in Illustrator? Well friend, it is really quite simple, and this technique will probably come in handy in many other ways, partly because it’s so damn easy and so damn cool.

First and foremost, you’ll need to locate the blend tool. This is important to know about ;). It’s about halfway down on the side toolbar (see screenshot.)

Once you’ve found that tool, you’ll want to double-click it to edit it’s settings (another cool secret!). You’ll want to change it from the default to “specified steps”. Now, enter whatever number you like, I try to for 20+ (mine used 30 for this tutorial) and hit OK.

Below is an example of the settings dialog.

Alright! Let’s get started. You can see below the three shapes I’ve created. You can do as many as you like, minimum of two. Make sure they are overlapping to get this particular effect. As seen in the illustration, I created three circles, then clicked them from left to right. You can do a different order, but I recommend keeping it RTL or LTR, and not jumping around as this will give you some rather warped looking designs.

Voila! Simple eh? Illustrator is doing all the heavy lifting for us. Here are some finished versions I made. 

I took it a step further and applied some of the Illustrator distortion effects, which really makes for some cool designs. The design possibilities for this kind of stuff is amazing!

Pucker, my personal favorite. Each one is like a little landscape of geometry.

This one strayed a lot from the aesthetic, as it doesn’t create as much of a 3d effect because of all the distortion. This has some amazing design potential in its own right though.

And of course when you’re done, you can always mash them together into one big orgy of lines.It’s really that simple, which is why it’s so fun and awesome! I encourage you to play around and make something cool!

How to make faux mobius strips in Illustrator with blend tool is a post from: | Digital Defiant Studios | Seattle Graphic & Web Design by Chris Tabor