Headless Hollow posts, categorised for your convenience and enjoyment. On this page you’ll find all the posts vaguely related to Design.
Sweating Mac
[click image to enlarge]
This is the ‘Sweating Mac’, an illustration I did way back in 1989, and one of the first illustrations I did just after learning how to use Adobe Illustrator 88 (as it was called back then). As primitive as it looks today, this got me a lecture spot on a big Desktop Publishing Conference at the time, which was pretty exciting for a designer fresh out of college. Not many people were doing illustration work with computers yet, so this was pretty revolutionary stuff.
Here’s to the next 14 years! If you’re interested, the Universal Head site is here.
I’ve got nothing against business wanting to do business. We live in a capitalist society after all. But some businesses seem to think that any method of deception is justifiable in their quest for profit. And to me, this kind of thing is pretty much on the same level as the endless spam emails that fill your Inbox every day trying to convice you that a patch will make your penis bigger.
Take for example, the letter I received yesterday, shown above, from our friends at Reader’s Digest. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was actually an important document of some kind, covered as it is with a despatch code, a ‘deadline compliant’ tracking reference number, a security reference number; not to mention the big red bar with DO NOT DESTROY on it, and the official-looking brown paper the envelope is made of. There’s even a printed ‘hand-written’ touch—’information protected’.
What does all this mean? I’m special! It’s for me, and me only! If you tear open this tissue of lies the crap continues inside— the letter repeats the ‘deadline compliant’ graphic, but this time to look like a green sticker; the endless reference numbers continue, the letter is personalised throughout. Someone didn’t return their Sweepstakes entry—and that mistake cost them $50,000! I’ve passed two of the three stages necessary to win up to FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS! There are lots of CAPITALS and bolded words! My neighbours—apparently—are looking in their letterboxes in vain!
Deception, outright lies, pre-meditated, cold-hearted fakery. Everything about this piece of communication and design is intended to fool the recipient, whether they be someone who can immediately spot the deception a mile off and immediately throw it in the recycling bin where it belongs, or a geriatric pensioner with no money to spare living with the false belief that Reader’s Digest is still an organisation of integrity.
If they came to me to design this letter—I’d tell them to bugger off.
Updated my Photos page with a few still life images I created some years back.
January is a-wastin’, but happy new year to you all out there. I’ve been putting off my first entry of the year as I wanted to start with a bang—I’ve finally got around to totally revamping my design business website: Universal Head. If you’re at all interested in graphic design, I do invite you to go and have a look around.
I’ve been in business for myself for nigh on twelve years now, and it was high time I made a site as clear and easy to use as this one. My last one was good for its time, but it relied too heavily on the bells and whistles of Flash animation. So for a while now I’ve been a little embarrassed to preach to my clients about ‘fast-loading’ and ‘easy-to-navigate’ and ‘standards-compatible’ websites, and then direct them to a business site that was anything but. That’s all been fixed. And I must admit, now that I get all of that work out in such a coherent format, I’m quite chuffed with the variety and quality of work on display (and this is only a small selection of many, many jobs over more than the past decade).
The object of this site is to present some of the best of that body of work in a clear, fast and easy to navigate format, and I think I’ve succeeded.
So anyway, let’s kick off this 2006 business shall we?
If you’ll permit me a bit of shameless self-promotion, let me present the latest site rolled out by Universal Head, my design company. Since I still haven’t had the time to redo and update my company site—it’s long overdue for the full CSS treatment—I might as well give new work a plug here.
Company dee is a corporate communications, event management and documentary production company. Universal Head designed (taking cues from the company’s existing corporate identity) and coded the site.
A good friend of mine, Peter Miller, when not doing sound design for movies such as The Ring or composing his own music, somehow also finds the time to create stunning digital artworks. He first exhibition biologika opens in June and features thirteen large format prints of his creations, which mysteriously straddle the line between mathematical inevitability and organic happenstance (he describes them far more effectively). If you’ve ever been frustrated with the efforts so far of artists trying to create beauty with computers, you’ll be amazed and delighted with these images.
To celebrate, I’ve created a new website for him, which I invite you to view at perpetualocean.com. While you’re there be sure to check out his acclaimed music catalogue. Or to go straight to the beautiful biologika images.
Update: Check out the opening night pics.
It started so innocently. I needed a way to record the software and hardware I’d bought for work, to keep track of serial numbers and warranties. And then—insanely—I caught the databasing bug. First my books, then CDs, then games, then DVDs, all fell like dominoes into a neatly organised set of records. In response to the jeers of friends and family I vainly tried to justify the whole exercise as being incredibly handy should the house burn down or everything I own being stolen. But the truth is—and I think I can admit it now—it just gives me a warm little feeling inside.
If you know what I’m talking about, and you happen to own a copy of Filemaker Pro version 6 or above, today’s your lucky day, because to celebrate the new look site (and as a little Xmas present) I’m giving away to my Headless Hollow readers the lovingly-crafted templates for my Hardware, Software, Book, Music, Game and DVD databases. Use them individually or download the Head control panel that gives easy access to all. Just click Freebies in the nav bar and get databasing you crazy geek you!
A reader asked me what font I used for the Headless Hollow masthead and the section titles. Inspired by an old edition of Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (George G. Harrap & Company, 1922) I found in a second hand bookstore in Sydney, I scanned in a hand-drawn title page from the book, then made up the titles in Photoshop from the letters, purposely keeping the size differences. So unfortunately it’s not available as a font … it’s a one-off! The book is also beautifully illustrated in a somewhat Aubrey Beardsley-esque style. The red fabric texture also comes from this book, though the parchment background is from another.
petergifford.com
My personal site features travel diaries from trips all over the globe. The most recent is Turkey but there are writings and photos from North and South America, Egypt and India as well.
Tékumel: The World of the Petal Throne
The huge official site for Tékumel, an imaginary world that is the life’s work of an American linguistics Professor, M.A.R. Barker - and easily the match for Tolkein’s Middle-Earth in detail.
The Telltales
Site for independent Sydney band The Telltales features pics, music and movies. A successful debut CD is out there and the second is close to completion.
This site was built on a template provided by one of my favourite online designers, Todd Dominey. As the site expands I’ll be personalising and changing the design—already the only things remaining from the original template are the basic layout, the typography, and of course the overall inspiration of an old book.
The latest update for www.universalhead.com has recently been completed. The redesign features a new colour scheme, along with Latest Work and Latest News features. Read what David Mulholland, manager of Jands (Australia’s audio, lighting and staging specialists), had to say about working with Universal Head on his company’s new site design at jands.com.au.
Announcing a new Cinema4D website: www.cinema4duser.com !
Cinema4DUser is a new site that exists to provide you with only the best quality material and information about your favourite 3D software. That’s why you’ll only find professional-level resources: high resolution textures, high-quality models, images, animations, articles, tips and tutorials from 3D professionals.
Cinema4duser.com is now open and soliciting submissions and feedback from 3D professionals like you who use C4D. Have a look through the site and see what you can contribute. With the help of the global C4D community we can make this site one of the premiere C4D sites on the web.
