This spot illustration was completed for EnergyBiz magazine, March/April 2010.
This year is bringing a new face to my work.
I’m pushing hard into Drupal and WordPress, seeing what can be done with a robust content management system (CMS) and how to take a website, particularly that following the magazine editorial model, into the 21st Century.
I’ve recently reconnected with a company I worked for from 1996 to 1997: Bush & Associates. They’re great people, Jeff and Kathleen Bush, and have served the Telluride, Colorado and Western Slope of Colorado with a great ad agency and local publications for 25 years. I served them for one of those years.
I look back at what I was doing in 1997 and am almost ashamed. The folks who hired me back then, the year I proposed to my wife in church in Telluride, had incredible patience for my methods of composing editorial design, which were monumentally inefficient. The learning and experience I have built upon that rookie job are exponential, and I feel I am about seven times more efficient. Talk about getting a poor return on investment. If I worked for them today, I could complete the work of seven me’s in less time.
Still, we all need to start somewhere, and my web design skills are in their infancy at perhaps the same stage, I believe. However, my web design is supported by many years of print design experience and how to be more efficient. Also, web design and print design overlap with applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.
I am really excited about the upcoming Apple iPad. I think this will offer some amazing development opportunities for a one-man shop like me. I’ve already got many ideas for applications which carry editorial and rich user experiences into the iPhone and also the iPad. Let’s not forget the Blackberry and Android.
I have also reconnected with a talented photographer, Don Cudney. He’s done very well with his Facebook fan page and setting up a great photo weblog.
Also, I’m beginning a creative alliance with Caleb Seeling of Samizdat Creative. The electronic editorial frontier is where we’ll build our new empire.
My daily Twitter posts continue to gain a following. Just surpassed a humble 100 followers, and growing. Perhaps I have something meaningful to contribute to the conversation.
I’m also posting new illustrations frequently to my account at the iSpot. Hoping to generate some leads for new business there.