zacharyc

San Francisco Beach

zacharyc — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:08:29 +0000

This is a photo taken with Aaron on a photo shoot in San Francisco. This is my first time playing with my new Filter kit.

97% Human, 3% Beer

zacharyc — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:30:27 +0000

This is an older project I never posted anything about. I met some people from a web company called Uxebu. On their website they had a line “97% Human”. I once asked them, what’s the other 3%? Is it Beer? Hence the slogan 97% Human, 3% Beer. I made a mock of a tshirt design for it. Here it is:

Fav Icon Continued

zacharyc — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:22:38 +0000

I was working on setting up a favicon for this site. You can see it here:

The process was simple. I created a mock in Sketch using the Futura Font for the “Z”. I then brought the image into Icon Composer, and exported it as an ICO. I modified the functions.php for the theme to include a function for rendering the link tag in the wp_head, and that should be it. It’s not appearing for me yet, but I assuming it’s a cache issue for now.

Wildflower Triathlon

zacharyc — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:56:13 +0000

On Christmas Eve last year I made a new close friend. She asked me if I wanted to train and do a Triathlon in May. This past weekend was that Triathlon. On Friday, my creative drive was very focused on the triathlon. Here was a sketch I made:

Dr. McHotPants

zacharyc — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:31:38 +0000

One of my very good friends successfully defended her PhD yesterday in mechanical engineering (really astrophysics, but they called it mechanical engineering). The only think I could think of all day was a logo. She made the mistake of saying that I could call her Dr. anything once she graduated. Her new nickname from me is Dr. McHotPants. Here was the logo I drew for her:

New Footer, Phase 1

zacharyc — Wed, 02 May 2012 17:46:56 +0000

I’ve been working on a new footer for this site. For a while I’ve wanted a fat footer with more information. Today, you’ll see, I have one. It still needs a lot of work, but at least it’s there.

Areas for improvement:

Remove the stupid 1px border
Put in some social media icons

Cheerleader CSV Parser

zacharyc — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:29:09 +0000

The other week we decided to send out a mass email to our cheerleading team in order to get information from each cheerleader. The problem was that we didn’t want to send sizing data about other cheerleaders. This meant a custom written emails for each cheerleader. We had an excel spreadsheet, I exported it to CSV and then wrote a ruby parser to generate custom email files for each cheerleader.

There is some room for improvement:

Parameterize the inputs. Pass in the CSV, destination folder, a template file
Use a template file for emails. Instead of manually including the message

The Actual Manifesto

zacharyc — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:32:15 +0000

I’ve explained what I’m doing, but here is why:

We live in a world dominated by consumption. The fundamental model of our world is capitalism. Consumption of products created by others. Even now as I’m typing this, I’m a consumer. This machine was not built by me. The software I’m using I didn’t write. The keys I’m bombarding with my fingers have a cost associated with them. The coffee that I’m sipping on was purchased just down the street. All of these are things that were made by others and delivered to my hands usually at the cost of some currency.

I’m tired of just being a consumer. It’s simple, perhaps a bit arrogant, but I’m too smart to spend all of my time consuming others’ products. What I produce to world is created through my day job, these products have are the general design of others. As such, they lack both my personal mark and label.

As someone capable of creation, I demand more from myself.

Mock Logo

zacharyc — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:46:10 +0000

This deserves a little bit of explanation. I found out that one of my friends started working for Duarte. I fell in love with their logo:

One of the creative projects I have coming up is designing a new favicon for this site. This seems like as good a start as any. I have a couple of ideas going forward, but this sketch was the start. It was made with Paper for the iPad.

The Make Something Manifesto

zacharyc — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:48:49 +0000

Four months into my new years resolution and I’d grade myself at a C- for my creativity. I have started doing a lot of new things. I’ve moved to a new home. Cleaned it more. Started working on my cooking. Traveled to South America. Taken a few more pictures (bought a new camera). The problem is that I’m not sharing any of this creativity, and I’m not held to any deadlines. I’ll have days of creative juices flowing and days where I’m as boring as a broomstick.

The other day I was watching this video of Kate Bingaman at Creative Mornings Portland, and was inspired to start creating projects with rules. Rules, or constraints, help us focus on our work. No constraints means no work. I’d never finish a design or piece of code if I didn’t have time constraints. This lead me to the Make Something Manifesto idea.

Make Something Manifesto

Constraints

Create something new everyday
Share it with world by posting it online

That’s it. Nice and simple. The only requirement of making something is that it is postable. I could make a new batch of chocolate cookies, and as long as I post a few pictures and a review (maybe a recipe if it was a success), it would count as item towards the manifesto.

Of course there will be days without internet, or creative urge. These days will need to be made up for on the next available connected day. I should end up with no less than 365 new items a year.

Today, I’m making this blog post, tomorrow who knows.