So, yes­ter­day Liz and I met some­one who was sell­ing some exer­cise equip­ment on craigslist. While review­ing the equip­ment, we began some small talk. He said he went to our web­site, dcpos​i​tive​.com, and asked if we were mainly print-​​based. When I said “yes,” he said, “Yeah, I could tell.”

I’m not 100% how I feel about that but I feel the burn. I’ve known that my web­site isn’t up to par for a long time. Fur­ther­more, I haven’t made efforts to learn the web design field. As more and more projects go to the web, and clients want them­selves rep­re­sented online. I want to design and code for the web. (Sigh) It seems impos­si­ble to start now but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe not.

It’s strange to think my iPhone, with it’s mul­ti­ple alerts and chimes, may be inhibit­ing my abil­ity to con­cen­trate, think deeply and be cre­ative. At least, that’s what the New York Times recently reported.

In route to Ten­nessee we stopped at a Star­bucks. No sur­prise. What was sur­pris­ing was the New York Time’s front page arti­cle enti­tled, “Hooked on Gad­gets and Pay­ing a Men­tal Price: Con­stant Use Takes Toll on Con­cen­tra­tion and Fam­ily Life.” The photo showed this cou­ple, both on their iPads at the kitchen table enthralled in their own activ­i­ties. Of course, I added this to the bill and while Liz drove, I read aloud.

While this may bore some of you, hang on. It get’s inter­est­ing. Accord­ing to sev­eral stud­ies from respected aca­d­e­mic and medial insti­tu­tions, our gad­gets are frac­tur­ing our minds abil­ity to pri­or­i­tize infor­ma­tion, con­cen­trate and be cre­ative. The var­ied, infor­ma­tion bar­rage gives your brain a dose of dopamine, the stim­u­la­tion that pro­vokes excite­ment, which encour­ages impul­sive­ness. In this case, impul­sive­ness leads to drop­ping the cur­rent item for the imme­di­ate. As such, you never stay on one thing for very long. The New York Times explains it more in depth here.

So what does this look like? You’re play­ing catch with your kids and your iPhone chimes. Now, you have this thought in your head, “I won­der who that was. Was that work? Did he answer my ques­tions from this morn­ing?” And you tell your kids to hold on while you check your phone. What may start as a sim­ple glance turns into a “quick response” leav­ing your kids stand­ing there. Sev­eral more emails to check and your kids have started pass­ing the ball among themselves.

While I don’t have kids ( yet ), the con­stant dis­trac­tions do com­mand frac­tured atten­tion away from my work. I’ve even dubbed some Friday’s as “cre­ative day”, which is really a time for me to leave my dis­trac­tions and try to think and cre­ate in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment. But for all my efforts, I can tell my once-​​a-​​month excur­sion isn’t enough. I need more delib­er­ate separation.

Recently, my the­ory was put into prac­tice. Dur­ing a strong thun­der­storm, we lost power in the stu­dio. I made my way to the com­puter back-​​ups, saved every­thing and shut down the com­put­ers /​ server. The storm thun­dered and I had enough day­light to work at the con­fer­ence table in another part of the stu­dio. Time for cre­ative devel­op­ment. For the next two hours I came up with sev­eral design ideas for music projects, thought through type solu­tions and font choices and made head­way into a sec­ond job before the power flipped back on.

What if the power didn’t go off? Would I have had the time to sit and think? Would I have been dis­tracted by email, Twit­ter, Face­book or iPhone noti­fi­ca­tions? Prob­a­bly. I doubt I would have made as much progress, but like any exper­i­ment, I’ll have to try it again and again to see the results. We’ll see…

This week­end, Josh Petrillo intro­duced me to the music video, “Jesus is my friend.” David Crow­der cov­ered this song in a video at the end of some mes­sage. Click the link and tell me what you think. Is this a spoof?

One evening, Liz and I caught a pre­sen­ta­tion of 60 min­utes high­light­ing a group of guys known as Bird­men. J.T. Holmes, the inven­tor of these spe­cial wind suits, has devel­oped a way to con­trol their decent in a free-​​fall dive from the moun­tain tops. Dur­ing their descent, the wing­suits fill with air which enables them to fly through the air. For every one foot down they can move two feet for­ward. The thrill of this expe­ri­ence really comes into play when they fly by moun­tain sides with jagged rock. The closer they get to the sides, the faster they feel — as if 140 mph isn’t fast already. In this video clip, Steve Kroft inter­views J.T. and his friends dur­ing their trip in the Nether­lands. If you want to read the inter­view in depth, here you go. It’s amaz­ing to see.

Today was an inter­est­ing day. While I made progress with work, I took not of sev­eral things that caught my eye. Once I had the chance to write it down, I’d pass it along. Well, here we are. It’s post-​​dinner and before I begin the nights design work, let me tell you about some things.

New Desk­top Design

As tra­di­tion, I devel­oped a new desk­top image as a result of two things: desk­top image bore­dom and serendip­i­tous inspi­ra­tion. I was work­ing on a project with tex­tures and scenery try­ing to achieve a cer­tain look. While this was not my orig­i­nal intent, I really liked the over­print effect and took it as far as the evening per­mit­ted. (Late night inspi­ra­tion) If you want a copy your­self, you can get it here or here with­out the type. For the typophiles out there, Claren­don Con­densed and Claren­don Bold were the type faces of choice — but you already knew that didn’t you?

Retro Desk­tops

The other day I came across these retro desk­top images from smash​ing​magazine​.com. I didn’t cre­ate them but for any­one who wants to, feel free to down­load them as I did before. When I went back to find the post, I couldn’t find it so I hope the artists won’t mind. Enjoy! Apple Retro, All Things in Posi­tion, and Hel­vetica.

Milk Desk

This may not appeal to any­one out there in the read­er­ship, but the Milk desk is a beau­ti­ful piece of work. Built by Søren Rose Stu­dio, it is a per­fect min­i­mal­ist desk com­plete with fish tank. For us graphic design­ers who use tow­ers, it doesn’t seem like a great desk to have espe­cially since it would stand out like a sore thumb. And next to this desk, the Mac Pro tower would look like a sore thumb. But whether or not it would fit every­one, it’s very cool. Check it out.

When I was a kid, back in 1982, TRON hit the the­aters star­ring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, the arcade owner and com­puter hacker in the story. Flynn, as he is bet­ter known, gets mol­e­c­u­lar­ized into the com­puter and is held hostage by Mas­ter Con­trol, the dic­ta­tor of the inter­nal com­puter world. I was five years old at the time but saw it at home much later when it came to VHS tapes. This glad­i­a­to­r­ial under­world is so archaic when you look back on it but has so much inspi­ra­tion for graphic design­ers.

Now they have just released the pre­views for Tron, Legacy, com­ing out in Novem­ber or Decem­ber 2010. The home­page for the movie is fly​nnlives​.com. Here’s the syn­op­sis so far: Sam Flynn (Gar­rett Hed­lund), the tech-​​savvy 27-​​year-​​old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his father’s dis­ap­pear­ance and finds him­self pulled into the same world of fierce pro­grams and glad­i­a­to­r­ial games where his father has been liv­ing for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal con­fi­dant (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-​​and-​​death jour­ney across a visually-​​stunning cyber uni­verse that has become far more advanced and exceed­ingly dangerous.

Seems pretty cool, huh? As a side note, TRON was one of the first full-​​featured movies to really employ 3D art in such a heavy fash­ion. It’s amaz­ing to see how far film have come in the last 27 years (1982−2009). Amaz­ing. Click here for the trail­ers for both films. Enjoy.