[art] Gakyō Rōjin Manji Microsoft Excel

2943.… or, The Old Man Mad About Art with Microsoft Excel.

Seriously? He did this:

With MS Excel?

Yep. As quoted, the 73-year old artist, Tatsuo Horiuchi, remarked "Graphics software is expensive but Excel comes pre-installed in most computers. And it has more functions and is easier to use than [Microsoft] Paint."

I didn't even know Excel had drawing tools!

A more complete gallery is viewable at Spoon & Tamago: http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2013/05/28/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-spreadsheet-artist/

Hat tip to Carla Axtman at the Book of Face.

[design] Why FontLab Is My Friend

2927.In a previous post, I wrote about how I was viewing eventually upgrading to OS X Lion with some trepidation because FontLab Studio 5, where I play glyph games, is PowerPC and requires Rosetta to run.

FontLab is good to its users. The company has a free upgrade that transmogrifies FLS5 from a PPC application to a Universal application.

Problem solved. Ta muchly, FontLab!

[design] Multiple Tools? The More, The Abler

2786This graphic I found interesting because it reinforces some things I've conceptualized about the practice of graphic design and digital tools:

1. Photoshop is teh awesum:
2. Adobe is massive:
3. QuarkXPress is the minority platform.

I don't think a designer should be necessarily counted out because he or she doesn't have skills in, say, Illustrator as well as Photoshop as well as InDesign. But the skills required to use all three at a basic level of proficiency are pretty transferrable from one to the other: the Beziér-based Path tool works the same basic way, and the difference between how a vector and a pixel conspire to make your .ai file different from your .ps file are quick to learn and become intuitive soon enough.

An enlightened teacher or mentor in the art and practice are essential, of course. 

But if one's going to learn one, one should get into the others. Being a triple-threat Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesigner says more than you know how to use three important tools – I think it also shows that you're willing to rise to a certain challenge.

The biggest surprise? QuarkXPress isn't mentioned at all.

(via Pariah Burke's repin of Calvin Lee's pin at Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/pin/124974958379513909/)

Show off your graphic design skills with business cards from UPrinting!

[design] When You're Tired of Mother&@!*ing Lorem on a Mother&@!*ing Ipsum!

2699.All credit goeth to Darrel Troxel for stumbling on this one.

Placeholder text. To the experienced designer, even your regular Lorem Ipsum becomes a bit tiresome. Sometimes you're just Puckish enough to want to imbue a certain sense of style, and Klingon Ipsum and Hipster Ipsum have become dreary, and nobody cares you know Etaoin Shrdlu and all the little Shrdlu kids anymore.

What to do, what to do.

How about a little Pulp Fiction, instead?

Do you see any Teletubbies in here? Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped to my shirt with my name printed on it? Do you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put quarters in it? No? Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb.

That was the "Slipsum Lite" version. Attitude without the salty language. Slipsum comes in "classic" Ipsum … no Samuel L. or attitude, and full-on NSFW Samuel L. Ipsum, mutherf&@#$er.

Just go to http://www.slipsum.com. The proper choices are on the upper right of the screen. And fill that placeholder text with some pulp ipsum.

[digital_tools] Bean: More Than TextEdit, Less Than MSWord, Free-As-In-Beer

2688.I like little tools that do a lot. When it comes to creating digital text documents, I like programs that are just enough - not too much, and definitely not too little.

And I know from too little. I used EDLIN.

Bean is a nifty, extremely lightweight, free (as in beer) word processor for OS X. Well, not really a word processor, actually more of a rich-text editor, but it's got more and finer (and more intuitive) controls on text formatting than TextEdit does. It's a hell of a lot lighter than MSWord or NeoOffice - nothing against NeoOffice, but it's a behemoth when all you want to do is quickly throw together text files or edit an RTF. And while I heartily approve of TextWrangler, it always was a bit abstruse for me … more a programmers' text editor than a writers'.

It's got all the useitude and slickitiude and good looks that you expect from an OS X application, and it was done by someone who came at it from a UI direction. It's not meant to replace Word or your favorite full-service wp,  but why go out for a big plate of greasy food when all you wanted was soup and half-a-sandwich?

It requires a PPC or Intel Mac, OS X 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6. It has not been tested on but may well run on 10.7.

Download Bean here: http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html.


(Via Cult Of Mac at Facebook)

Speed Drawing: The Iceman Cometh

2131.Via Twitterer @chadwelch (website) here's a speed drawing done in Alias Sketchbook Pro, of the X-Men character Iceman. Video time is about 7 and a half minutes, actual time is about 30. Nice work!

Amazing what a little discipline can accomplish.

Technorati Tags: speed drawing, Chad Welch, X-Men, Iceman

Photoshop: How Far We've Come Since Version One

2125.A bunch of people are happy using Photoshop CS3/CS4 and all. Some I know still tool along just fine using Photoshop 7 and are totally happy campers.

Ever wonder how far we've come since the first commercial version of Adobe Photoshop?

David Nuon found an old PS1 disk, fired up the Mini vMac vitualizer, and found out. Read his comparison here. Very interesting indeed.

(Image by David Nuon. See it largely at the blog entry I linked to)

Technorati Tags: Photoshop

22 Links To Free Seamless Vector Pattern Downloads

2120.As a follow up to the previous free goodie, let's be fair to the vector side of the equation; here is a link to twenty-two free resources for getting vector backgrounds for web design. I've not downloaded any of them myself (yet), but they seem to come from a range of reputable design sites and are at least worth a look.

Find them at 22 Free Seamless Vector Pattern Resources Perfect For Web Design on the 1stWebDesigner site: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/resources/22-free-seamless-vector-pattern-resources-perfect-for-web-design/

A nota bene: this and the last posting were inspired by Twitter users; I have misplaced exactly whose tweets I got them from. If you stumble by here and think I got them from you, just shoot me an email and I'll give credit. Mea culpa.

Technorati Tags: vector design, web design, free vector resources

Free Photoshop Patterns From Emma Alvarez

2119.Following the dictum issued back in the 80s by the philosopher Tom Peterson of SE 82nd and Foster ("Free is a Very Good Price!") I present a coolness I have found: free summer-themed repeating seamless patterns for Photoshop.

Made by designer Emma Alvarez, they are warm and friendly, using earth tones reminiscent of adobe, umbers, and cut brown summer grass. The patterns are free for non-commercial and commercial use, and it behooves to completely read the licensing terms before downloading and using.

They are .PAT files, meaning you use them as fill with tools such as the paint bucket tool. To use, unzip the file and move the .PAT file to (if you're on a MAC) /Applications/PhotoshopCS3/Presets/Patterns (for PCs reverse thes slashes and say "Program Files" where I said "Applications", and for the Photoshop version it's whatever you're running, of course). To use, select "pattern" in the fill tool you're using, open the pattern chooser, and from the flyout menu choose "Load Pattern … ", then navigate to the Pattern folder and select the file.

Download them via the Emma Alvarez site: Summer Seamless Patters V.1, http://www.emmaalvarez.com/2009/06/summer-seamless-patterns-vol1.html, which also has complete installation instructions.

Technorati Tags: Photoshop, free design goodies, Emma Alvarez, photoshop patterns