Bitten By Design

Semipermanent Sydney 2012

Nicholas Turner — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:35:16 +0000

Look at this! Semipermanent has rolled around again for Sydney in 2012. You better be quick to pick up your tickets, don’t forget that AGDA members get treated to a discount, meaning you really have no excuse to attend.

Today saw the arrival of my tickets and my pack card. Unlike last years and the other times I have attended I have gone for the VIP ticket option (justifying to myself that with early bird and AGDA discount it is roughly the same price as a general entry ticket after the early bird pricing ends) so you can expect to see a write up of the extra stuff you get once I have my hands on it at the conference.

Hope to see you all there, as it really is one of the best* design conferences to go to. This year is sizing up to be just as good as any with a few speakers I am really looking forward to seeing.

Tickets can be purchased through the Semipermanent website.

* my opinion may not reflect that of Semi-Permanent, AGDA, graphic designers in general or the cool kids that sit up the back of the bus.

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The dirty rooster print now available

Nicholas Turner — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:35:29 +0000

Buy the poster at our store

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Something’s different…

Nicholas Turner — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:51:27 +0000

The more observant of you will have spotted the new header image. Yes it is true, we are about to undergo a major site renovation! Keep tuned for the change, hopefully it will be done to coincide with this years May Reboot!

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Freebies? Everyone loves a freebie!

Nicholas Turner — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:35:35 +0000

Some additional iPhone wallpapers that have come about as part of my self directed design work. More for fun that anything else.

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Viral Products? The self directed design experience

Nicholas Turner — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:31:03 +0000

Now I have been pushing myself to hit the next level in my design, the self directed (or is that self indulgent?) work I am doing is certainly giving me the opportunity to not only push my creativity and design skills further, but to have some fun in creating totally silly products!

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Types of tan.

Nicholas Turner — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:31:27 +0000

Just in time for the wrap up of the summer holiday season, we have the common names for the types of tan and skin conditions we see.

Oompa loompa: bright orange skin from a bad spray tan. Totally unnatural in colour.

Tequila sunrise: oompa loompa with a sunburn

Jar jar binks: sunburn on your back and shoulders but not your front

Sheeting: big pieces of burnt skin peeling off.

Skin fail: huge areas of skin that has just started to peel and come off leaving little gaps and a trail of dead skin over their clothes. The fallen bits are sometimes called ‘skin dandruff’.

Deep fried: sunburn so bad it leaves welts and boils, as well as scarring on the skin.

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Flash versus Jobs. Flash is dead. Jobs is dead. Jobs wins.

Nicholas Turner — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:47:20 +0000

The news of Adobe deciding to drop Flash, means that the war between Jobs and Flash is over with Jobs winning after his passing.

Below is an iPhone wallpaper that you can use to celebrate the death of Flash.

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Redbubble Rocks! Part 2

Nicholas Turner — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:43:44 +0000

After developing designs for several years and putting them up on sites like Cafepress and Zazzle, I found the way they display products to be a bit bland. Discovering Redbubble thanks to a friend, I was really impressed with just how awesome your products look. I can certainly use the product images as is, to help promote them elsewhere online. Check out some examples from my product range below.

The added bonus of Redbubble is it ends up looking more like an artists portfolio than its competitors. Now I have somewhere that not only presents my work in a very professional way, but I can get all manner of different sized prints.

Yes, this is the christmas card I am intending on sending out to a couple of friends. As they check out my work for sale, I am in no doubt that I may end up with one of my designs coming in the mail the coming festive season.

I find that developing designs of things that you think are cool or that your friends have said they want is a great way to get started with these websites, creating topical and interesting designs can help you build up a passive income. Lets face it, you aren’t going to be rolling in money from it, but if it gives you beer money or pays a phone bill each month, that is one less thing you have to be working to pay each month. And if you are like me, those payments will sit in PayPal until it builds up to a nice chunk of money and you can go splurge on something cool. Then there is always putting the credit you have earned back into the site by purchasing copies of your own designs to give as gifts or to use as promotional pieces for yourself.

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Redbubble Rocks!

Nicholas Turner — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:49:31 +0000

After speaking to another designer about online providers of tees and stickers, he put me onto Redbubble.

Why am I so impressed? Check out how cool the product images look when you drop your designs in!

I will be posting up more designs shortly along with the links so you can check them all out for yourself.

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How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer! Book Review

Nicholas Turner — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:20:46 +0000

As seen in desktop magazine here

Most designers will at some point be asked to develop a design for a particular content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or any number of a hundred others. Your client has asked you to design a theme for WordPress. Where do you start? Before you get your pens and paper madly working away, you need to know if you CAN do the theme.

Getting stuck at the last minute with a looming deadline trying to learn .PHP programming code is not something anyone wants to go through.

One of the best e-books I have found for WordPress development is How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer. Not only does the name sound pretty cool, but the book is a straight forward practical process of the things you need to do, with lots of explanation as to why each process was done. You will need to know a bit of HTML and CSS otherwise it may be a bit over your head. These days, most designers have to know a bit of code.

This is a great reference and one that will help ease you into making your own themes. The satisfaction of having built everything and not having to rely on a programmer cutting it up for you is quite substantial.

It also means you know what does and does not work with the CMS and the scope of things you can actually do with it.

Recently the book has been updated for 2010 with the new WordPress functionality covered, but if you have already bought a copy, you can get the new updated version for free. Pop over to their website to find out more.

Can anyone recommend other good books like this one?