What I have done:

Facebook Ads: I spent about $15 in Facebook ads and got about 11 clicks.  No sales.  This was pretty worthless at the moment, but in the future, I want to try some different text to see if I can improve this. One of the main things I want to do is change the text from movie-tees to movie-tees.com.

StumbleUpon: I added the main page to Stumbleupon.  This has resulted in about a visit or two per day.  Not much, but for like a minute of work, I’ll take it.

Reddit /r/harrypotter: I found a pretty cool Harry Potter shirt and posted it to the subreddit of harrypotter.  This resulted in about 120 visits over time.  This is probably the way I am going to try and do more advertising. This worked out quite well and brought in a decent amount of people

Reddit /r/geek: I also posted movie-tees.com in /r/geek.  This gave me the biggest boost of visitors with near 300 visits.  I think if I can get more content and more obscure content, I can post elsewhere and increase traffic.

That is until I stumbled upon the great site www.thisiswhyimbroke.com

This site is a great place to just find random and nerdy crap on the internet. They have everything from pet hoodies to jet water packs. The cool thing about the place is the idea is so simple.  The dude is already surfing the web, stumbling around these novelty items, why not post them for other people to find.  It is basically a link aggregator of random products. And thats what I decided to turn movie-tees.com into. I like to find cool movie t-shirts that pay homage to a specific movie without overtly saying it.  For example, take this “Games, games, games” shirt.  Anyone that has seen and enjoyed Adventureland knows exactly what this is from.  You are walking down the street in some of these shirts and every once and a while you get that glint of recognition in random people’s eyes.  The, “Hey, thats from…” look.  Its like you are in your own little nerdy club.  Its cool, maybe a bit hipster, but whatever. That is the idea behind what movie-tees.com is.  Its a place to find some random shirts that half the people won’t know what they are looking at.  But you’ll know exactly when you’ve found it.

Now, there was an actual reason I decided to build this into a site besides just this basic idea.  Usually a random project like this, I try to do something new or brush up on some design theories I’m thinking about.  This site is no different. I’ve been working on a proposal for a new client and wanted to brush up on responsive design before I moved forward.  So the first goal of this site was to be totally responsive.  The site is designed to work great on mobile phones, iPads, laptops, and desktop tops.  Depending on the viewing screen, the site changes slightly to accommodate the screen.  Another goal of this site was to be as simple as possible.  The site uses a wordpress platform for ease of adding new items, but I have to say it is as trim as possible.  Besides the multiple css style sheets to handle the various screen widths, the site is like one php file and two images.  I wanted to try just building stuff in straight CSS. I haven’t really tested its backwards compatibility with older browsers yet, but I wasn’t really designing for them.  I realize this is bad practice, but this was a personal project completed in a night.

For those interested, I can kind of give a rundown on how everything is made:

Each “polaroid” on the site is comprised of a div container that has a CSS gradient background, drop shadow, and rotation applied to it. Every polaroid uses a 256px x 256px image of the t-shirt that has a border applied to it with the top and left being one color and the bottom and right being another.  This is to help provide a bit of depth to the image area. Each polaroid is floated in a container that changes width depending on the screen size. I use an image of a small glare on each polaroid to again give it a bit of depth. The image is a semi transparent png that is absolutely positioned in the top left corner of the box. The handwritten text is easily done using typekit and just adding the class to it. That is basically the entire website.  Like I said before, simple. Anyways, check out the site, I completed it in about a day and so there is probably a bit of tweaking I could do.  Other then that, I hope you enjoy it: http://www.movie-tees.com

I believe this might be the first person who has become a walk-in client to my website.  I say client, because I have gotten a lot of emails asking for help or suggestions about different things.  I am usually more then happy to help those people out.  But this is the first time I think someone has sought out my design services based on my website alone. Most of my freelance business I would say is word of mouth.  And I usually prefer it that way, I like to meet my clients and sort of have a trusting relationship with them.  It usually helps me weed out the clients from hell that most designers talk about.  But I have to say, Jinx was really cool to work with. He seemed to enjoy what I was doing and gave suggestions on what he liked so we went from there.  I am glad he contacted me, as this project turned out pretty cool.

I started with this design that tried to capture the protoss look and feel.  Jinx was a protoss player, like myself, and so I thought this would be pretty cool. I looked at their buildings and the yellow shades that are so familiar to anyone thats played the game. I went about creating this horrid piece of trash.  I mean it was bad. It just didn’t make any sense and looked ridiculous.  I was about to email him and say, “Hey man, sorry this isn’t going to work out.” But, I ended up going back to the drawing board and thinking more about what would be good for the client.

From there, I based the entire design on his favorite colors: black, blue, and purple.  This was an interesting combination of colors to work with.  The black and blue sort of worked, they are kind of spacey.  The purple was a bit of an oddball.  That is until I started relating it to Starcraft. For the entire design, I was kind of picturing this floating space platform.  Almost like a satellite broadcasting Jinx’s stream from another galaxy.  So in order to do this, I would need a backdrop or environment to float this thing in.  I was able to find a beautiful picture from Starcraft (I believe I remember seeing this on the end credits of the campaign).

That basically took care of the blue and black right off the bat. For the purple, I thought about the units within Starcraft and how your team is determined by your personal color.  Each unit has pieces of their body that is your personal color. And I thought, “What if this space satellite has accents of purple as if it’s Jinx’s player color in the game.”  So as I built this flying space contraption, I highlighted pieces with glowing purple to contour and accentuate each shape of my design.

From there, it was just a matter of laying pieces of metal platforms together to create my vision of a futuristic space platform that streams Starcraft games.  I had some existing metal textures that I used to give the metal depth.  On the glowing pieces and his name, I added a bit of smoke – homage to the protoss dark templars in the game.  This was my way of adding our Starcraft race back into this piece.

I feel in the end, it turned out pretty well.  I am happy with the piece and especially like how his name turned out.  Jinx is happy, so thats always good too. Check it out, support him, and watch his stream over at twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/Jinxsc

It was definitely a fun extra project that I think turned out pretty good. Before I even started creating the poster, I sort of always had the idea of this top down view of the gun. But when searching for pictures of it, the field was scarce.  I had to piece together what I felt the gun looked like and I am proud of the result. So, instead of this thing just sitting around on my computer, I took some of the assets have allowed people to download them. Perhaps make the field of portal gun images a little less scare.  So here you go, download, and use as you wish. If you make something cool, I’d love to check it out.

Download the vector image of the Portal Gun and Aperture Science Logo (.ai format)

I think this Christmas decorating thing started about three years ago.  I created a small christmas card of Chelsea and I that we sent out to friends.  It was so well received, its now become a yearly tradition (and I have had multiple requests to do other’s Christmas cards). Like I said before, I try to do something new or out of my comfort zone with this stuff.  The first year was all illustration.  The second year, it was photography.  This year however, I struggled.  That is until a trip to a local antique store sparked an idea.  There in an old printer’s case was a whole bunch of lead type. Interested in wood block printing, and recently purchasing the supplies to do it (I bought the Speedball Deluxe Block Printing Kit), I thought why the hell not? So I bought the letters to spell out, “Happy Christmas.”

Having never done any block printing before, I sort of had to rig up a way to print these things. Keeping the letters together was a bit troublesome.  I tried using a vise to hold them together, but the one I bought was huge and too cumbersome.  Frustrated I came up with a different way. What I ended up doing was carving out the space for the letters in a linoleum block that came with my block printing supplies.  It was easy to carve out and actually held the letters in place perfectly.  After inking the letters and trying outt a test print, I noticed something strange…

I accidentally used a g for an a.  Considering its even backwards, I am not sure how I got this confused at all.  The antique store was definitely short on ‘A’s so maybe my mind just saw what it wanted to see.  But whatever, it kind of gave it a bit of quirkiness to it.

All and all, the whole printing experience was kind of fun.  It was also one of the fastest cards I’ve ever made.  Once I had everything set up, it took less then an hour to complete them all. Its really cool how each one is unique.  Using old letters like this, they are definitely worn. Grooves and chips make each card look completely different. Using the Brayer from the kit and the red ink, I inked the letters then set the piece of paper gently on top. The paper I used for the cards was Mr French’s Pop-Tone Sweet Tooth White. It was actually some extra paper from our wedding invitations (my next project). Then using a baren, I pressed down strongly to transfer the ink to the paper.  The baren has a smooth surface so it easily slides on the paper without moving it.  I use the Speedball Baren if you’re interested. As you pull up the paper, it sticks just a little bit due to the ink and the lead type biting into the paper.  It was such a simple card to make and I think it turned out rather well. The inside of the card was printed on my inkjet printer using the free font League Script Thin and says, “Wishing You and Yours a Wonderful Holiday Season.”

If you’re at an old antique store, check out these old woodblocks or metal type.  They are fun to play around with and look amazing.

My buddy Robert is the one that got me into the whole streaming world of gaming.  He started watching a few Day 9 streams around the office to improve his own Starcraft 2 game. After a couple, I started watching and following people like Huk or WhiteRa (I am a Protoss player and fan). So Starcraft is sort of a game we talk about and play together. Robert has recently really gotten into streaming his games and decided it was time to get a bit more serious about his stream quality. He upgraded his computer and now streams at a full 1080.  To help him out, I decided to create him a Starcraft 2 stream overlay. This is basically a screen that appears between his games that gives his viewers something to look at. This also allows him to arrange his webcam and screens in a more structured form.  Basically, it makes his stream look more legit.

There isn’t much to say about the design here, I was sort of just messing around.  Starcraft 2 is set in space so I tried to make everything either look techie or metal.  I wanted all the text to have a bit of texture, make it look like he just came out of battle. Pieces of the paint have been scratched off or beaten up. When he is actually using it in a stream, this is what you would see:

As you can see he has the focus on his webcam, this allows him to talk to his viewers and they can see his face. It also gives people links to either his youtube page and his channel in case they find it some other way.  Its just a fun little extra thing to make his stream more enjoyable.

I also created a intro splash screen for him, since it usually takes a bit of time to set everything up.  This screen allows him to get ready and prepare his computer without having it look weird.

Well that was just a fun little project I did. If you are interested, check out his live channel on Twitch.tv at: http://www.twitch.tv/ghoknhar or check out his old games at: http://www.youtube.com/robrocker7

I have been enjoying this design quite bit while messing around with this very modern and clean design aesthetic. I dare say it might even be minimalistic. That is a word that tends to lead web design down a somewhat bad path. Things that are minimalistic have to walk a very fine line that provides just enough information to make sure the user can navigate and use the design. As you start ripping out things, its easy to remove something that is a catalyst in making a design work. What I have been really focusing on is trying to remove the extra crap from the page while still making sure its simple to understand. Take for example the sign up page I have been working on.

One of the things I hate with sign up pages is when you have to fill out a whole bunch of information just to do anything on the site.  The idea here is to try and remove as many barriers for entry.  We need a registered user for the site, but it shouldn’t have to be rocket science to become a user. So I looked at exactly what we need from our users which were: username, email, and password.  Seems simple, right? There was no need for address, phone number, first born child’s middle name.  Long forms are ridiculous, look at the one over at the McDonald’s Monopoly Game. I feel like I am applying for a loan or something. Down the line if you need a billing address cause they ordered something, collect that information at that time. Get people involved and onto using your site quickly. When creating a sign up page, make it as easy and quick as possible.

Making it easy is precisely why I added the Login with Facebook button. This is just another way to remove a barrier of entry.  Most people in the world already have a Facebook account, they use it, it is a trusted source. With something like Facebook Login, you already have millions of people registered for your site. They just enter their Facebook info and you can create a user with their information. And since all account activity is done through secure Facebook servers, they don’t have to give their credentials to another third party (me) and I don’t have to worry about storing that info.

I think the whole design for this thing was about these layers sort of popping off the screen. It was a way for me to get depth and contrast on basically a white on white design. To compliment the clean design, I used the font Josefin Sans. Its sleek characters have its own modern look while the various weights allow me to use emphasis in multiple areas. I have been using Typekit pretty extensively now to allow for custom fonts and have found a whole new world of web font options.  It is amazing how a simple font switch on the web really makes a site stand out and be noticed.

Anyway, that is just some of the work in progress I have going on.  Basically,like a sketchbook really. There is still a few things missing in some of the screenshots but you can see where its headed.

Buttons are an integral part to the web experience.  People naturally have an urge to press a button and they expect a reaction when they press it.

That is why important links designed in the contract system are enclosed in this button form. More importantly, each button uses color coding to anticipate the reaction the user will receive. When using this system, the customer learns the system quickly based on previous experience and without confusion.

The Blue Button

Blue buttons are linking buttons. Since the beginning of the web, blue has always been known as a link.  This idea has been hard-coded into our minds, so when we see blue on a webpage, we automatically think it goes somewhere else. This idea of a linking button is further explained by the use of a small arrow inside the button. This is meant to show that when you click this button, you will be going somewhere else. Each button is created with CSS and dynamic.  Rather then a static image that says “Click Here”, the button tells you exactly where the link is going like, “The Copper Package”. This not only helps the user as it preempts where the button will go, but it also helps with SEO keyword targeting of each page.

The Green Button

Green buttons are action buttons.  These are buttons that appear when the customer must interact with us in some way.  For example, the first button in the external site, the login button, is an action button. While this leads you to other parts of site, you first must authenticate to verify your identity.

The Red Button

Throughout the site, there are times when the customer has the chance to decline or stop an action.  For this, I created a red button.  It is meant to kill any action right then and there. Everyone knows red means stop so its only natural to use this color choice.  It is commonly known as a negative choice and often the button size for these action are smaller or away from normal navigation to avoid accidental clicks.

The Gray Button

Gray buttons are used for everything else.  Usually a gray button is something that is unimportant or extra content such as options for filtering a report.  They do not lead you to another page, they do not interact with us.  A gray button’s actions are contained within the page you are viewing.

Being 4th of July, I felt it was only natural to theme the card as such.  I have had this idea for a way I wanted to draw fireworks for the past year, but I never got around to doing it.  This card was the perfect chance to try out those ideas.

My last few personal project have all emulated the ideas, texture, and simplicity of letterpress or woodblock printing. This card is no exception. I have been so fascinated with this style for the past year or two. Hell, even a book about the poster company, Hatch Show Print, sits on my desk for inspiration everyday. But when I showed the Aperture Science poster off, someone commented, “Hope you are not a one trick pony.” I was taken back a bit, thinking about my style as of late.  Have I been relying too much on these specific textures and styles? Is this my style and accept my fate? I suppose I have always illustrated in this simplified style, its only recently that I have started adding texture to achieve a vintaged textured look. So maybe the textured look is just a fad I am going through and the the simplified look of the illustration, my style as it were, remains for the future.  But for now, I am enjoying what I am doing and therefore will keep doing it as such.