Christian MacMillan is a young and VERY talented digital designer based in Barcelona, Spain. He’s 25 and already has won an impressive set of awards on web design and development.
Draw a better 2016 is a project tailored with the intention of feeding hungry mouths, where you can contribute to UNICEF by just getting any of the items he has for sale on the website. The project launched on December the 1st, 2015, and the goal was to allow you to draw a famous person or character (yes, you can do Chewbacca) with a very clever scroll/SGV animation. A character a day, until the 31st.
After finishing your “draw” you can reveal a quote spoken by said character, and then share it on your social media or get a printed copy of it. You can also get a poster with all of the characters in it. If you’re a designer/developer you can even purchase a set of SVGs. More info here.
100% of the profits will go to UNICEF, an organization that cares about improving the health of children worldwide
– Christian MacMillan
Although the goal finished, items are still for sale (hopefully the’ll be for long time) and is never too late to help.
So, start drawing, choose your favorite… and help. I’ll get mine soon.
PD: You got my favorite for the day of my birthday: December the 14th, Mr. Spock. Thank you for that!
As always, thanks for reading.
Francisco
The people at “On The Grid” (when I say people, I mean hundreds of designers from all over the world) are dedicated to curate lists of –in their own words– exceptional places from their neighborhoods in cities all over the world.
There are designated ambassadors in cities, then, those ambassadors’ job, is to appoint other designers (curators) who want to create curated lists of the best places of their neighborhoods.
Striking a healthy balance between grit and renewal, Downtown Miami still maintains its character despite being in the midst of a construction boom boasting several mega projects.
– A fragment of Lemon Yellow’s review
Lemon Yellow is a branding agency based in Miami. They are also Miami’s Ambassadors, and curators for the Downtown Miami area. This means they are the ones in charge of appointing curators for other neighborhoods in this city.
On The Grid, a project by Hyperact, a design agency in Brooklyn, NY.
What kind of places are featured on the site? Well, any really, the categories are: Bars, Sweets, Foods, Creative & Tech, Shops, Arts & Culture, Coffee & Tea, Fitness & Health, Parks, Cemeteries and Lodging.
The only condition, is that it has to be an “spectacular” place… and who is better equipped than us designers to choose these places? There lie the relevance of On The Grid.
I also wanted to get to talk a bit about the website. The execution is rather exceptional. It was –of course– featured in Awwwards as site of the day. They created a page for each major city, and each has a very sharp representative illustration of it. Look at Melbourne’s…
Aren’t you at least a bit curious about the places they chose on your city? If not, at least take a look at their site, it really is worth it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Francisco
Behance –I dare say– is the graphic designer’s (and many other creative fields) most important medium. It has let us show our work to the world since 2006 (it was then acquired by Adobe in 2012), connecting us to potential clients and letting us express our work freely. I have yet to find a more reliable source for inspiration (not even Dribbble).
NOTE: This article will be better appreciated if read on bigger screens (laptop and desktop computers).
As you could read on the excerpt though, this article is a bit more of a critique on Behance. Maybe you can’t see a difference between the two icons from the article’s cover, that’s simply because the one on the left, isn’t optimized for HD screen (Retina display), the other one is, and if your device does not have an HD/Retina display, you shouldn’t see any.
What’s a Retina Display
Retina Display (marketed by Apple with a lowercase ‘D’ as Retina display) is a brand name used by Apple for screens that have a higher pixel density than their previous models.
– From Wikipedia
What happens very commonly in some social networks, is that some assets aren’t shown on a sharp resolution, mainly because images such as profile or avatar pictures are low resolution versions of the original ones you uploaded, and sometimes, this auto-generated images don’t reach the pixel density needed to look sharp on HD screens.
On Behance
My particular problem with Behance is that this issue doesn’t happen only on avatars and profile pictures, but in our project slides as well (even when you upload them twice the size required, which is the solution in most cases), in a much lower scale of course.
This is made on account of load speed, and as a developer, I know how vital this is. I also get, that being a site full of creative, detail obsessed, OCDish freaks –like myself–, heavy images are an issue. But I would have imagined that Behance (again, our most important medium) would have sacrificed a bit of load time over quality now that our devices let us reach such an incredible level of sharpness, and since they’re already generating images automatically, wouldn’t it be awesome if they just pumped those pixels up a bit?.
Here’s an example, look at my logo on the comment form and then look at it on the comment itself, can you see the difference?.
Here too. Check these illustrations from Mr. Das’ Behance project, do you see the difference? Look closer…
The one on the left (top in mobile) was downloaded from Behance, the other one is the actual artwork.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is meant to be constructive criticism. As I said before, this is the best source of inspiration a graphic designer can use. I just think the people at Behance should reach a more appropriate balance between load times and resolution, keeping in mind their network is about visual communication. It would just be SO MUCH BETTER to live in a crystal clear Behance world.
As always, thank you for reading.
Raya is a paper artist located in Barcelona, Spain. She creates really amazing stuff with paper, and with these athletes, she went to a whole new level.
I was browsing Awwwards and stumbled upon this beautiful site; Jetlag.
I was throwing some lines on Illustrator the other day, and suddenly, a thought crossed my mind; how many times do I use undo (command+z on Mac, ctrl+z on a PC) on a project… a hundred times? A thousand??
The “science” in Interstellar blew my mind. I’m not a scientist, or work in a field remotely related to science. I’ve seen a lot of “Sci-Fi” though, and for me, what Nolan did in this movie, was mix stuff from some of my favorite shows: Star Trek (interstellar travel), Stargate (wormholes), and Farscape (gravitational slingshot) in a single movie, with that touch of deep realism he accomplishes in such a successful way.
Our lives are flooded with technology. Surrounded by electronics, we reach information -any information- at a moment’s notice and we seem somehow hypnotized by the endless interactions with our devices and gadgets.