But occasionally TCG will send me on an assignment that’s just pure, unabashed fun. Last time it was to a balloon factory to familiarize myself with the product so I could do some renderings. This time, it was to Colle+McVoy, a Minneapolis marketing agency that just won a Webby award for their development of the Yearbook Yourself website.

I had seen these yearbook photos around on Facebook and such and did wonder where people were getting them. Now I know! And I’m working with some very nice folks at C+M to create new templates for the 2009 version of the site. These are the templates based on old yearbook pics into which people will insert their photos to create the retro looks. It’s super fun, especially when you take friends’ and family’s pics and retro-ize them. I often end up chuckling to myself throughout the day as I’m working on this.

I don’t have a date for the 2009 site launch, but you can sign up here to be notified when it happens.

Update: I’ve finished my work on this project, and they are wrapping things up at Colle+McVoy the latter part of this week. The site launches the week of the 20th! Check it out! There are some great new images, and some nice additions this year that make the end result even more convincing and fun.

But I put my nose to the grindstone recently and got the redesign of it well underway. I have all sorts of ideas — too many, really — but it’s starting to gel. Here’s a sneak preview:

Having fun with Japanese stencils [also in use here on current site], type-as-art and lots and lots of color! [Hrumph, you’ll have to trust me on that one, seeing as the screengrab is fairly monochromatic.]

The Hazelden 2008 Annual Report was on press last week, all went extremely well and I’m excited to see the final piece. It was printed by Ideal Printers in Saint Paul and they did a fantastic job.

I will post a .pdf here once it’s officially gone public.

The Rhythmic Circus site is now done!

Hope everyone’s Monday is going well!

The latest read is an old (2006! ancient!) article by Oliver Reichenstein making the case for always using web page body type set at 100% — that is adhering to the browser standard for average type size.

This tends to look a little yoooge to most of us — a little huge, is that an oxymoron or what? — but he makes a good point. Most of my web dev work tends to run at about 90% of standard type size, but I think they might be convincing me to try to go bigger. Especially as I get older, I noticed more and more how I just automatically bump up the type size on most sites I visit.

I cannot decide which my favorite quote is, this one:

Let your text breathe. Using white space is not a designer’s nerdy issue. It’s not about taste.

or this one:

If you can’t make your website look nice without text in images, I am afraid that you will have to start again from scratch.

Probably my only problem with that article is when I — by force of sheer habit — go to scale up the type on that page as I always do, it hangs up my computer for quite a while. It’s funny, it’s almost like they’re punishing me for trying, seeing as they put so much thought into the type size.

A friend sent me a heads up* about the website GeekGirlsGuide.com. I haven’t had a ton of time to check it out, and the site looks somewhat new-ish, but very promising.

First of all, it’s a gorgeous site. I love design that is unabashedly and adroitly feminine. We have — as in many things in our world — a little too much of the masculine represented in design, generally. So it’s always a nice change, especially when executed well, as this is.

Also, what a great concept! Two women web developers who are blogging about their work, and also taking questions, which they then answer in a friendly and accessible manner. Hooray! I plan to make the site part of my regular reading.

Regular reading which I haven’t been able to do as of late — way too busy. It’s all part of the ebb and flow, and it’ll all be waiting for me when the tide goes out again.

* The same friend who sent me the “colours” link a while back. Dang, she’s good!

I just had time to skim the article, and still came away with some great new open-source sw recs: an invoicing program called Bamboo, and GIMP, an image manipulation program, among others. Now I am practically joined at the hip with Adobe Photoshop, so I’m not really looking for new image manipulation sw. But I’m thinking I can recommend GIMP to my friends and familly who want to remove red eye and straighten horizon lines.

Finished my Christmas shopping and picked up a maneki-neko piggy bank for my nephew Lucas, who adores kitties. I originally wanted to get him a copy of Wabi Sabi, a book about a cat by that name who is searching for the meaning behind it. But the book is sold out simply everywhere. No mind, I will pick it up for his birthday in a few months. And good for the author and illustrator of Wabi Sabi — it’s a beautiful book and they deserve to have that success heaped upon them, for sure. I am including an image of a maneki-neko here for the uninitiated, but I want to make sure to give full credit to the artist Mikoto over at Red Bubble, where you can buy a print or a t-shirt with this image. I liked how the ¥ and $ symbols are helping to spell out “YES.” Clevah.

Today I’m …

• Keeping up with the advent calendar from 24ways.org
• Reading mashable.com’s list of 10 key web events in 2008
• Checking out the latest in WordPress plugins, including Let It Snow [!]

Oh, that reminds me, if you’re looking for something new for Christmas music, make sure to check out SOMAFM’s Christmas Lounge.

Friend and colleague Marti sent me a nifty link today, a site out of the UK which shows all manner of color breakdowns for web use.

What I particularly like about it is that it allows the user to decide: do I want to adhere to Web-safe colors only? Or does my audience tend to be more technologically suited for an expanded palette? Then it lays it all out for you. Pretty sweet.