General ranting
A major storm this past weekend dumped upwards of 20 inches of snow on Philadelphia for the second time this winter, causing major disruptions and cancellations for everyone. Despite this, the timing and absolutely gorgeous weather that followed the storm urged my wife and I to take a little walk around the neighborhood to take [...]
Ok, I’ve been critical in this blog and on Twitter for a while now about what I perceive as Ford’s missed opportunity with the Fiesta Movement. I’ve said that they dragged their feet too long with the US-spec car and lost their momentum. I’ve said they put too much chrome on the US-spec car (I [...]
Ok, so this is really just a repeat of my Jalopnik comments from last week, but I wanted a chance to reiterate in public what I see as the clear vision for where FIAT and Sergio Marchionne are planning on taking Chrysler in Wednesday’s announcement. I may be completely wrong, but that’s what blogs nobody [...]
I’ve been watching Apple’s design for a long time. Besides being the products that I personally choose to interact with the world on (desktop/laptop/phone), they have obviously been trend-setters in industrial and consumer electronics design since possibly the launch of the original transparent iMac in 1998. And although I love their products for many reasons, [...]
I’ve been following Ford’s Fiesta Movement from the beginning. In fact, not only did I consider putting my name in the hat to participate, I was already directly or indirectly following several of the final 100 chosen via blogs or Twitter. For me, Fiesta Movement was not about raising awareness of the car, but rather [...]
I’ve been playing with it for months on my iPhone, but now it’s gone public – Autodesk’s Sketchbook Mobile is coming to the app store. A fantastic addition to the digital designer’s workflow, this is the drawing app you’ve been waiting for if you’re a professional designer or digital artist. Check out Carl Alviani’s article [...]
Autodesk sent out a press release yesterday about all the love it’s getting in the Mac community, and guess what? They quoted me. As “a creator of iconic technical illustrations” Nice. Thanks Autodesk.
With everything that’s been happening in Abruzzo recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Teramo. I have lots of friends I made when I lived there that I still keep in touch with through Facebook, and I spoke to my cousins after the earthquake to make sure everyone was ok (they are, even the ones [...]
Ok, these aren’t really coming in order, but I thought I’d post my favorite recent sketch next. This is a morning sketch of my office after a night on the sofa. Still just getting back into the groove of sketching with a rollerball in a sketchbook. It’s been so long. Sketch is done with a [...]
Just jealous. One of my former classmates at Art Center, Karim Habib, just jumped ship from BMW to Mercedes to “oversee” their Advanced Studio in Stuttgart. Karim’s a great guy (or was anyway, might be a d-bag after years with Chris Bangle), but it hurts me every time I see someone I was in class [...]
I’ve been a beta-testing Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro for years now (since version 2), so I’m really excited to see the new version (2010) is getting released soon. Sketchbook is a lightweight, fast, digital sketching software that I use every day in my workflow. If you’ve never tried it, you owe it to yourself to download [...]
Does anyone know if Adobe fixed the “outline stroke” tool in Ai CS4? That alone woul dbe worth the upgrade. Grrr.
…so I might as well say what I’m really thinking, right? I’m changing this blog from a design critique to a more generalized rant about what bugs me – in design and the world in general. So, first things first. I’m sick of things being done faster, cheaper and “good enough”. I got into this [...]