I asked on the Girl Geek Brighton Dinner website if they were going to have an event while I was visiting Matt in England. Niqui and Rosie invited me to speak instead, last friday. They mentioned it was more about geeks meeting up not segregated by gender so the event was renamed “geek social”. It reminded me of the Refresh DC meet ups. Thank you it was great fun!

I got to speak about illustrations and how I went about incorporating illustration into a project. The problem with using photographs for people sitting behind a computer is that we’ve seen it sooo many times. Thanks to stock photography companies we’re sick of them. Using illustration as in Joyent’s (Illustrator: Paige Pooler) website is a great twist and so this sparked a discussion about how to use illustration in a project.

Questions about illustrators, and illustrations

My talk was about how illustration was being used and the questions that came up were:

• QUESTION: How to find illustrators?
  ANSWER: Find websites that have interviews of illustrators, example Veerle’s Art Elsewhere section is one good example. I know they contact many more illustrators than they get responses from. Is it that the world is just doing so well (so man projects going on) that no one feels it necessary to answer back from possible client requests or that spam filters are that good? ;)
  
• QUESTION: What is my process for illustrating?
  ANSWER: It depends on what it is. For the most part, the ma.gnolia logos I’ve been illustrating lately I have been researching the topic/concept. I surround myself with the idea example: Crocus flower and then sketch on paper then onto the computer. 
  I was asked to pull up examples of my work. So I dug up the fish in a fish bowl for Thmbnl.com. To create the fish on the right, I scanned in what I had sketched out on the left and brought it into illustrator and did a vector trace. Half the time it’s just knowing what the terminology is to look up if you get stuck and need the tutorial for help.
  

  

• QUESTION: How do you create illustrations if you can’t draw?
  ANSWER: How did you learn code/web design/even to read? You looked at examples and did tutorials. You might even have gotten a tutor. Even if you can’t draw the way you want to it takes practice. Just like everything if you want it bad enough and work hard you can achieve it. It just depends on what you are willing to give up to get it. Sometimes it is just easier to find someone else and pay them, that works too. I like to draw. ;)

I had a discussion with Geert Leyseele & Veerle Pieters over at Duoh! that keeps coming up again and again. They get lots of emails and I have started getting some too from people asking to promote their projects and websites. We all like to help but we’re short on time for things we want to do. So here goes my humble opinion....

Focus

If you are launching a new project remember to focus on what your project is.

Example: If your product is a shiny new red ball. Your focus should follow this train of thought. Why your red ball is different than others? Does it bounce better? Does it make a sound? Does it have a texture that sticks to the wall?  Is it the color or texture different? Why do I want to spend my hard earned money on the red ball you are pitching to me when I have a perfectly good red ball that I have had for a while? If you can explain that well in the 1 minute I have to scan and check out your site then you’ve won a major battle.

Possible pitfall #1: Staring at the product for too long, you are too close to it and know it too well to step back.
Solution:Getting feedback from people who haven’t been staring at the same page over and over for the last week. Getting fresh eyes helps in the case we were discussing.

For me: Even if it is a great product and is better than the rest and If I can’t figure out what it is in a minute (I read/scan/click) then it’s not better.

Possible pitfall #2: What you created turned into something else.
Solution: make the message for the product relate to the new product. Don’t market it as a red ball if it was supposed to be blue.

Critiques

Being on both sides on this it’s been a learning experience. For both the person giving feedback and receiving it you need to treat the person with respect. Chemistry for teams is very important and if you loose that because of the lack of respect it is hard to regain.

Giving the critique:
Give feedback that is about the focus of the project. Explain why you do not like the color red, more than I hate red. It doesn’t give the designer anything but “avoid using red and all shades of red” for the next version of the project. Now if your feed back is that red means “hot” and it is a label for cold, then that makes sense. Make sure it is in the right context.
If you are unsure about what your product is then think about what it was you wanted and articulate it.

Receiving the critique:
Listen to what they are trying to say. Try your best to not take it personally. Remember to stand your ground on why you were making the decision. The person giving the feedback was asking for your help because it is your expertise but remember to listen without attitude. Being assertive but not rude.

Promoting

Thank you for sending me your project/product/website. I hope it does well. I hope that Boing Bong, or a Tech Crunch or a style gallery shows off your website. I am a consultant and at least for now not a marketing machine. My blog posts have been about my design, conferences, and things I feel are relevant to me and I write about it. I do like writing things I like a lot but if your site lacks focus then I’m going to do my best in trying to help with what little time I have at the end of the day.

Example: I was asked to promote their website.
My response: Thank you and I will check it out! I only add people I know (it was about my cool sites section on my main page aka blog roll).
Response from person: I can send you a photo
My response: No, Thank you. What you have done is great and I hope you continued success so one day the rest of us can ask you for help :)

Hopefully inspiring them to make the best website/product/blog for fame and glory via the internet and they wouldn’t need me or anyone else to add them.

Inspire others! Crossing fingers and toes that this helps.

the guys and I at Nclud decided to volunteer our services to organize the bowling event at SXSW interactive at the end of January. Everyone wanted to bowl so that part was the easy puzzle. The rest got kind of crazy we needed to organize the date, the buses, sponsors, volunteers, signs, wristbands, and the venue. I wanted to start off by thanking everyone for helping Geeks Love Bowling and apologize for not doing it sooner (due to me slammed with post sxsw deadlines). It was a crazy two months organizing it. We ended up with 51 teams participating (6 people per team) and additional 100 or so attending to watch and hang out!

Thank you

This event could not have happened without everyone in the geek community helping out! Roll call commence! I cannot begin to thank you guys enough and I’m sure everyone that was at the event would agree.

Roll call

• Angela Baxley, (who was a major factor in getting the second half of the bowling alley and the remaining buses we needed once we sold out) Josh Russell and Pete LePage for convincing the Microsoft family (Mac Office 2008, Microsoft Silverlight, Internet Explorer, Expression Studio, to donate prizes (Xbox games, Microsoft Office, Bowling Shirts, M&Ms, and sponsoring the majority of the event).
• Craig Cook for coming up with the idea for the diskette medals, the money he donated to create them and the time
• Marianne Masculino for donating time, giggle factor to make the medals, and being part of the day of the event team.
• Stephanie Troeth, Chris Moeller, Christopher Schmitt, John Croston, III for walking around and checking on whatever we needed during the event
• Matt Harris for helping me keep my head together before/during the event and tabulating the scores of the winners once we realized the computers at the bowling alley weren’t able to do it.
• Mike Cummins from the Developer’s group at AOL for donating the 80g Ipod for a prize when he walked through the door at the bowling venue.
• Kevin Tamura and Jason Beiard for being our registration welcoming crew
• Ngenworks my hometown, Jacksonville crew that created “Happy Webbies” , one of our top level sponsors, and brought t-shirts to give away
• Larry from Ma.gnolia for sponsoring the event
• The guys at Electric Pulp for contacting us to sponsor the event
• Sidebar for getting us to the part where we could afford the 2nd bus and the lanes (when we only had 20 lanes)
• Viget Labs for being one of the first sponsors
• Jeremy Keith for helping us with finding sponsors and helping setup.
• Opera for donating to the event
• Kelsey Ruger for giving us a lift to the event to help setup
• 200ok for working on the live stream twitter page
• and I’m sure I’m missing someone else but I hope not :)

The crew: Alex Giron designed the website for geekslovebowling.com. Dan Drinkard newly adopted into the Nclud family assisted with the website while Martin Ringlein and I split off the behind the scenes work like registration for the website, organizing the day of to make sure everyone had a great time.

Guidelines on How to get Sponsors for an event

We got an email while trying to organize the event inquiring how to acquire sponsors. I figured this would be helpful and the right way to go about it. Guidelines if you will :)

1. Get involved with the community without asking for something in return, build up a reputation first. Don’t be “that guy” always asking for something and never adding back into the community.
2. Write an email and explain why you need the money for your event. (Place yourself in the other person’s shoes and think what you would want if someone came to your door asking for money).
3. If you are asking for sponsorship of a product you need to explain even more so what the benefit is to the other person.
4. Thank them regardless of whether or not they are going to donate this time. (Even if they don’t donate to the event thank them. Remember that manners and grace will leave a lasting impression).
5. Remember that if you abuse sponsors they will not return to help again and then you are going to be poisoning the sponsorship pool for everyone else.
6. Check before your event to see if there is anything else they will need (if they wanted to have any promotional items to setup).
7. Thank then for their help no matter what “level” of sponsorship they ended up contributing.
8. Blog about the sponsors to give them attribution in the format of email/website/blogs to return the traffic back to them in a way that makes sense for your event (don’t spam the attendees).
9. Create signs/banners for the event.
10. Create facebook group for the event so advertise the event and create interest/buzz for attendees up.
11. Create a twitter account for updates that people can subscribe to for the event for things like where the buses were, who was winning.
12. Create a flickr pool for the event so that the photos can be pooled into the website and on blogs as another way to promote the sponsors/event.
13. Create an upcoming page for the event and then people have a “machine tag” to put into the photos on flickr (another way to tag photos).
14. Send a thank you always via blogs or websites or email.
15. Only take as much as you actually need for the event. These companies are donating to the EVENT, not to your profit margin.

This goes for event planning and for life. Remember to do more than is expected of you, treat people the way you would want to be treated and in doing so you and the event will go far.

I got an invite from Josh Russell to go to his channel at Y! Live. What is it? ::Cue Y! Live’s blog quote::: We’re excited to share with you Yahoo! Live, a new experiment in live video from the Advanced Products team at Yahoo!. Y! Live was dreamed up as a way to make it possible for anyone to create their own live video experience. Broadcast the concert you’re at. Webcast your own live DJ set. Lifecast. Build your own live video speed dating application. We’ve created a website and an API that lets you do all these things and many more.  :::end of Y! Live blog quote:: :P

Web Video Chat room?

So the idea is really cool, a chat room with friends, strangers and whoever wants to join in your chat room. You could have a meeting. You could broadcast a concert. Tons of options and ideas. Sounds cool. I liked listening and seeing friends try this out. Everyone was super nice welcoming people into the chat. The main page on the Y!live broadcasts a channel so that anyone can join into a room. You get your own “channel” with your screen name. You can only view a total of 4 people in your “tray” at the bottom of the page. Again all pretty cool. Plus, I am always checking to see if there is a privacy setting to not be searched, they do offer that too. Phewww. :)

So getting online was pretty easy (I have a Macbook Pro so it had a web cam built in already). I clicked on the “Go Live” button and I was broadcasting.
The Audio was a bit of a pain. My friends couldn’t hear me so I had to go to “Edit Settings” and select the sound. It should be automatic shouldn’t it?

Matthew Oliphant was online and it was fun. I hooked up my TV to and mirrored the screen so it was like a TV station. I even pulled up the weather as a joke to do the weather channel behind me.

Con

I know you were waiting for the BUT....
its cool to be on video but the negative is that people who choose not to be on video can hide. The web is great at allowing anonymity.  The night I was chatting with Matthew Oliphant, it was getting a bit too late (east coast vs pacific time zone) so I went to my own channel.

The later it got the weirder it got. Some guy decided to show us Tarot cards and for some reason he only wanted to show us the death cards. The guy was playing Final Fantasy and was from Pennsylvania. That’s all the info we got from talking to him.

A person logged on while Marianne Masculino and I were on my channel wrote, “How can you see with those slants?” I gave them a moment of .. no they didn’t just write what I think they wrote. I said on video, “that’s not very nice.” The person then proceeded in saying, “what do Chinese name their kids?” I looked at Marianne and hit the ban button. Thank god for that.
Stupid people disappoint me immensely.

Pro

• I got to meet some guy that was in Taiwan teaching English there for the past two years so that was cool.
• I met Matthew Oliphant in real time vs via Twitter or flickr.
• try out a new app
• giggled a lot
• played weather girl

Overall

Pretty cool. Tips, have something to talk about or you end up putting silly costumes like a Queen Amidala headdress, Darth Vader Mask or go through a collection of sunglass options on the camera.. or even just become two giggly girls (if you drag Marianne into it of course :P ).

Just watch out for stupid people.

I picked designrabbit.com because it was two real words for an url, this was back in 2001 (I think). Cindyli.com was taken by squatters wanting to charge money for the url and I wasn’t ready to pay their fees. Why Design Rabbit? I’m a designer born in the year of the Chinese zodiac of Rabbit. I’ve been working on a new logo design. Logos aren’t created in a day, well not all and not all of them are great if they are. Great design takes time and thought. Here’s my process....or rather what I was thinking. :::Cue scary movie music::::

Approaches to logo design

There are many approaches to how a logo comes about. Here are the ones off the top of my head. :)

• 1. Word association
• 2. What do you want to convey?
• 3. Who your audience is?
• 4. What does the word/company name mean?
• 5. How is the logo going to be viewed?
• 6. Typography



I chose to go the route of making a rabbit since it was in the name of the logo I wanted to create.

Sketching

Most of the time when I start a logo I write down what words, doodle, and get whatever pops into my mind on paper as quickly as possible. Here are two sketches I used the Apple program photo booth to take a picture, hence the grain on the image.





Typography

Typography plays a lot into a brand. Different typefaces convey different meanings. This part of developing a logo is a lot like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This logo is too bold, this logo is too soft, this logo is just right? :)
Start with just black and white so that it is basic. It’s easier to play with color when you have the form down. Another reason to create a logo in one color is for application on other websites for branding of events, or whatever. It’s like having that basic little black dress. It can always be accessorized later :).

This just added: No Comic Sans was harmed(laughing while I’m writing this) in the creation of this logo. :P

The approaches you can try are:


• Combining different fonts, weights, uppercase, lowercase. Think about the message of the brand.  Uppercase=formal, possibly yelling, strength. Lowercase=casual, relaxed
• Subtraction of the typeface to create tension between the letters

I tried a curvy font to create ears of the bunny from the rear view. “Bunny got back?” -this one was not going to make it. :) The bunny created here was from parts of that font.
The idea behind choosing this font was casual, and light hearted.





This next one I wanted to create ears using the typography. I tried all caps and bold for strength. I wanted simplicity in the lines without any descenders in the mix. The ears were going to be the main focal point for this. The stacking was awkward and needed to be worked out. I didn’t like the negative space it was creating it wasn’t balanced.





This one I was thinking that maybe playing with different weights of the words would help but it was unbalanced and the word design was too heavy for my tastes.





Then I tried another font where it was all connected and then created the rabbit this time by putting it as a stopping point between the two words. The ears are created for that exaggerated length to offset the length of the word. It was still strange because the G in it was uppercase and everything else was lowercase. I used the uppercase G so it wouldn’t have a descender.






This weight was lighter but it was too circular, the ears weren’t pronounced enough.The ears weren’t created from this font either.






Here I was playing around with the spacing of the words to see if that worked. I changed the uppercase D to a lowercase one and then started connecting the letters.






This font was a lot heavier and I liked creating the ears by cutting out the uppercase D. I wasn’t thrilled by the weight though.






This font was lighter but it didn’t have the right balance either. I used all uppercase letters for “DESIGN” to help separate the words.






This font was in the right weight level and all uppercase still for “DESIGN”. I liked the N for this font because it was simpler and I liked the rhythm of the word was getting there too.




I liked this one because it separated the two words plus the descender balanced out the two rabbit ears coming out of the b’s.




Put it away for a bit

So far all that was done in a week or so and I wanted time to think about it. The logo was where I wanted it to be but it still lacked the “ah-ha!” I stopped by the ma.gnolia office, where Larry Halff and Chris Messina were having a meeting. I wanted to show off the brand. Chris suggested I play with the bunny ears, so I did that some more and ended up with a much stronger rabbit, playful logo than I had before. :)

So here is the final one :)




Color

I wanted to keep with the playful nature of my “DesignRabbit” brand. The message was to keep it cheerful and playful.
So I started combining two bright, cheerful colors, to separate the words.




I liked this one best. :)




]]> Design 2008-02-25T09:31:00-05:00 http://www.cindyli.com/site/mixx_your_blend_of_the_web_badges/ http://www.cindyli.com/site/mixx_your_blend_of_the_web_badges/#When:01:35:00Z Once upon a time...

I joined the guys at Nclud and one of their clients is Mixx. Mixx is
Mixx is a website that creates web content based on your choices and you “mixx it up.”

Alex Giron, created the Mixx logo. It’s really fun because its an aerial view of a spoon stirring the bowl.




My job was to create badges for the website.


The project requirements

The direction I received for this project was to create badges and I could come up with tag lines for it, so I did. :) The two tag lines for these designs were “mixx it up”, “add to the mixx.” The name of the website lend itself to having a fun tag line. I wanted to create badges that could be used on as many websites as possible. I wanted to create a few fun ones for those that would go on personal blogs in addition to commercial websites.

The badges and why I did what I did

For the first one I used the logo as designed by Alex and put it in a one pixel stroke button. I wanted to stay in within the simple style of the website.






The next one was created by taking the logo apart removing the bowl and adding in the simple one pixel stroke button from the one above.






This one I drew a spoon in the same style, and palette from the original logo since one didn’t exist.






I wanted to continue playing off of the logo and the bowl so I created another view of the stirring. Plus put a talk bubble so the mixing bowl was speaking (Yes, mixing bowls do speak or rather their content does. ;) )






I went back to the aerial view of the logo and added a table runner if you were to see a bowl on the table. I abstracted it a bit so it looked like a ribbon.






The changes for this one is the text and the change in the ribbon.






I wanted to give some motion for a couple of them so I used the existing logo and tied on a cloth that you would use in the kitchen since it was already using the cooking concept it wasn’t a big stretch.






The last one I did was to use the spoon I made earlier and combine it with the cloth






I submitted the designs and what do you know. They used all of them. :)
Check them out Mixx badges for public use. :)

]]> Design 2008-02-19T01:35:00-05:00 http://www.cindyli.com/site/its_magnolias_second_birthday/ http://www.cindyli.com/site/its_magnolias_second_birthday/#When:23:18:00Z Once upon a time

I met Larry Halff at SXSW in 2007, although we were both at Web Directions North a month earlier in Vacouver, Canada; our paths did not cross. Larry has been a welcome wagon to me this past year upon my arrival to San Francisco. I actually ran into him the second day in town. While working with Larry I’ve met another person on his team, Todd Sieling who is great to work with too (he’s a User Interface guy and is super talented and funny to boot!)



Larry started ma.gnolia two years ago and today is its second birthday or second anniversary. It is a social bookmarking site where you can check out what your friends like and share sites you like. I’ve had the honor to illustrate the holidays for ma.gnolia’s logo that was created by Jason Santa Maria at Happy Cog.

Just in case you have missed the ones on the site. I wanted to showcase them and the process behind them.

The process

Larry says, “Can you create a ma.gnolia logo for Halloween?.” Me replying, “Of course!.” The one restriction is to leave the ma.gnolia logo intact but I am able to remove the flower portion from the logo.

Here’s the original logo:






Then I remove the magnolia flower from the logo.






From that image I start thinking about how to work with the circle of the logo. I start researching what things represent Halloween.  I start by googling all the things that represent Halloween, pumpkin, candy, cat, spider, witch.The circle has been a bit tricky because it limits what angle I can make the illustrations. So to start this I went down the pumpkin route. I had some photos of pumpkins and I even walked down the street to stare at some in the grocery store. The side view I thought worked out rather well but the circle of the ma.gnolia logo wasn’t perfectly integrated. So I tried other styles and views of pumpkins.






and another pumpkin. This one was a top view of a pumpkin. It looked like a flower but it wasn’t right because it was supposed to be a pumpkin.






and yet another pumpkin. I tried another side view of the pumpkin but gave it a gradient. This one looked more like an orange to me than anything else, plus the gradient didn’t match the established style.






and then a Jack-O-lantern, this was my least favorite because it wasn’t simple enough. It didn’t match the subtle nature of the established branding.






Halloween

I liked this one the best because it kept it fun and it went out of the box a bit. Craig Cook suggested the spider and web. (It never hurts to talk to friends when you get stuck.






Here’s the final spider with web on the ma.gnolia background. There was no need to adjust the colors






Thanksgiving

I drew a turkey for the Thanksgiving version of the ma.gnolia.com logo






The final one was adjusted so the stripe of the turkey that was in its tail feather didn’t distract against the background.






Happy New Year’s

The circle of the logo was the perfect label for a champagne bottle so it became one in this holiday.






I wanted to add some details like shading to make the confetti pop and the bottle appear 3-d.






Valentine’s Day

This one I wanted to create a flower that was whimsical. The petals were created out of hearts and one floating away while someone said, “he loves me.. he loves me not..” I should have counted them because it ended on, “not!” Oops :) In our case I think he does. ;)






When I put it against the ma.gnolia background it was perfect and didn’t need any adjusting in color or shading.






Ma.gnolia’s 2nd birthday!

This was a bit trickier because I tried cupcakes and the view wasn’t working. I already used the champagne bottle for celebration and then I started researching 2nd birthdays and 2nd anniversaries. The 2nd anniversary flower was the “Cosmo.” Cosmo, means everything which was perfect for ma.gnolia because it holds everything for its users! So I was thrilled with this idea of the flower. In addition to the flower I wanted to work in the number two. I added the stem to the bottom left of the flower an incorporated a leaf to hide that it was a number. Another reason I did that was so it was integrated even more into the overall design.



The final application to the background was perfect so there was no adjustment for this one either.






]]> Design 2008-02-15T23:18:00-05:00 http://www.cindyli.com/site/sxsw_interactive_is_just_around_the_corner/ http://www.cindyli.com/site/sxsw_interactive_is_just_around_the_corner/#When:00:54:00Z Once upon a time

Ficlets was the brain child of Kevin Lawver. Kevin asked Jason Garber and I to be added to his dream team (as Kevin called it). Then Jenna Marino (here’s her blog post about the branding of ficlet’s ) and Ari Kushimoto. :) This magical team created something wonderful for AOL in the startup fashion that usually gets lost in a big company.  It was launched the week before SXSWi 2007. It was my final project for AOL so it holds even more meaning for me than you guys will ever know.

The cool thing about Ficlets, it is a short story writing website where you can write prequels and sequels as many times as you can dream up and others can add to your stories if they so wish to. It’s great and it’s even better that it recently became a finalist for the SXSWi Web Awards 2008 in the CSS and Community categories.

Another local DC homegrown project is by Chris Bucchere, who’s feedhaus.com became a finalist in the technical achievement arena and Samantha Warren’s website in the Blog category.  :)

So check these sites out if you have a second and don’t forget to vote for the People’s Choice Award!

]]> SXSWi 2008-02-14T00:54:00-05:00 http://www.cindyli.com/site/layer_tennis_match_recap/ http://www.cindyli.com/site/layer_tennis_match_recap/#When:02:06:01Z Once upon a time

on Friday, Jan 12th at “high noon” in San Francisco. I competed in Layer Tennis against Veerle Pieter’s at Larry Halff’s ma.gnolia office. I sat there with my iPhone alarm to go off every 15 minutes, Coke Zero, and Heath miniature toffee bars. Veerle won the coin toss to start the match.

The entire experience kept me on my toes and it kept me laughing especially Kevin Guilfoile’s commentary. He definitely has the gift of the written word. Thank you to the Coudal team and Jim for allowing me to participate. :)

Volley 1



Veerle’s sense of humor came via this graphic. Her volley was based on a conversation we had earlier in the week when I mentioned that I’d been watching the television series, Alias. I’ve been traveling a lot on planes but I got addicted to the show because of Matt Harris and watched all five seasons within a couple of months. My dreams have been filled with being a spy. The rest .. is her teasing me :P

Volley 2

“

My volley was created from things such as my Statue of Liberty photo I took in Nov below. I put it into Adobe Illustrator and used Live Trace.




The rest of the elements were from previous projects I got permission to use. The belt was the Geeky Chix logo that Veerle and I created in 2006. I thought I’d reference “Heroes” too by using the beginning of the following quote from the show “Save the World… Save the cheerleader” and create the text in the comic style font to tell a story. The origami boat was to make it dream like (since dreams are kind of odd like that). :) In all good comics there is an attacker, so that’s why the Evil bunnies are coming in droves. :)

Volley 3



Veerle threw me off with this one. I don’t like gore.

Volley 4



Since this entire series was starting to get a bit dreamlike I decided to change it to floating Geeky Chix into an angel. I recently saw the movie, I Am Legend starring Will Smith, in the movie a butterfly showed up when the character was dying.

Volley 5



Veerle went psychedelic here.

Volley 6



I went the Matrix route here. The red pill in the Matrix is what Neo took. The red pill is to help you find truth. Truth + “It will not save you..” = truth hurts

Volley 7



Veerle’s image made me think it was going the dream sequence.

Volley 8



I stayed on my comic idea and created a separate universe pane. I used her dog with glasses wearing the scarf and added a pair of skis behind him. Since the other story line with me in it ended I decided to use the halfway around the world to tie it into the overall strange dream sequence we created. When the “dog” is on vacation it gets ruined by attacking rabbits.

Volley 9



Veerle cracked me up on this one with the dog and the computer screen old school restart error message.

Volley 10



My last volley was zooming out of her frame and for comic bonus adding in her video chat window (which I did a screenshot during my last 15 minutes) to incorporate her as she did with me in the first pane. I incorporated the rainbow stripe pattern she created in the first image and enlarged it for a colorful wallpaper.
I thought the desk with flowers, and all the little touches would be a good addition.

After it ended (and boy did it fly by fast) I went and got a celebratory cream puff from Bearded Papa’s. What a way to end a Friday. :) :::hugs:: It was great!

]]> Design 2008-01-15T02:06:01-05:00 http://www.cindyli.com/site/layer_tennis_veerle_pieters_vs_me/ http://www.cindyli.com/site/layer_tennis_veerle_pieters_vs_me/#When:16:29:00Z Once upon a time

Veerle Pieters asked me if I wanted to be her opponent for Coudal Partners’ Layer Tennis. It’s a game between two designers. They have 15 mins each on a graphic and then they send it over to the other designer. The rule is to use at least one element from the previous file. This goes on for 2 hours then the web audience gets to vote who wins. I’ll be in the ma.gnolia’s office for moral support ;). 

The game is scheduled for Friday, Jan 11th and High Noon (since I’m in San Francisco, CA).
::gulp::

Girl fight! :P Meow!

]]> Design 2008-01-09T16:29:00-05:00