This week at the office we were happy to discover that our order of Sticker Robot Energy-X branded vinyl stickers had arrived. Having never done business with Sticker Robot, I was intrigued as to what the quality of the stickers would be. The silkscreen stickers, cut and printed to order, far exceeded any of my expectations. The silkscreen printing process lends many benefits to the final product over digital printing, such as weather proofing, and the use of thicker inks, and it shows. Having been printed with a four color (CMYK) process, the stickers almost feel embossed due to how the thick layers of ink build upon one another. This is a beautiful motif that is impossible to reproduce digitally. Three passes of clear UV protection add an additional level of depth, and makes the colors really pop. (more…)

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, not a day has gone by that I don’t spend time pondering the grandeur of this amazing city. This is especially true as I drive through the myriad of freeways through the hills at night. Colin Rich, over the course of six months, has captured much of the inspiration that this city has to offer in a short and elegant time-lapse film titled LA Light. If you have the opportunity, it is worth a watch; be sure to enable HD and set the viewing mode to full screen for the full effect.
 
Via: Gizmodo

I think that it would be fair to say that I’m addicted to Tiny Tower, a relatively new freemium (read free and premium, i.e. in-app purchases) iPhone game.  Tiny Tower is a tower-simulation game, in which the player attempts to build as many floors as s/he can in order to appease the residents of the tower.  One of the largest draws, other than the seemingly-endless nature of the game, is it retro art direction.  Tiny Tower embraces a pixilated 8-bit inspired style, with the additional use of fine gradients, and a 24 bit color gamut.  This is arguably, at least in this application, the best of both worlds as it harkens to the past while still utilizing the display technologies of today.  (more…)

Having long been a Lightroom devotee, I have historically adjusted exposure and brightness primarily by look and feel. It is not uncommon however, for me to wonder what characteristics truly classify and define one effect from the other. From previous experience with Photoshop I was aware that exposure is calibrated in stops, and affects the highlights in an image to a much higher degree than the present shadows. I generally considered brightness to be somewhat similar to Photoshop’s gamma adjustment in the Exposure adjustment panel, in that it primarily adjusted the midtones and produced a more muted effect. (more…)

Prior to Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, Macromedia Freehand was one of the two sole serious competitors in the vector graphics landscape (the other being Adobe’s own Illustrator). Currently the entire market is dominated by Adobe, which has some of Freehand’s loyal users up in arms. Post acquisition, Adobe discontinued Freehand in attempts to produce a forced migration to Illustrator so as to bolster its user-base, and cease any further development. The Free Freehand organization was created in response to this action by Adobe, and has since filed a civil antitrust complaint in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California against Adobe Systems Inc. (more…)