• How to use Illustrator’s Color Guide

    Jan 21 2013

    Developing a color palette from scratch can be intimidating. Illustrator’s Color Guide panel can make the task less daunting by making some objective suggestions. Here’s the least you need to know to get a lot of value from this often overlooked tool.

    Since I’m describing a method for creating a color palette, it really doesn’t matter which color we start out with. There are no bad colors only bad color palettes. I’ll just pick one of the default colors to start with. It’s a good idea to delete all of the other colors in the palette to keep things tidy.

  • Solving a problem with code

    Jan 2 2013

    I was looking for a good excuse to learn CoffeeScript so I came up with a project that takes a note and returns the blues scale in that key. It’s not a completely contrived example, I currently work this out manually using the matrix that I posted on my music blog. I thought it would be interesting to list out the process by which I solve this moderately complex problem.

  • Drawn to profit

    Dec 30 2012

    I’ve been doing more self motivated illustrations lately and decided to submit some as stock images. I figured that since I have a bit of inventory, I should put it to work for me. I definitely underestimated the amount of work that goes into creating stock illustrations.

  • More content, less system

    Dec 12 2012

    Since I moved back to Ohio, I’ve been playing guitar more and even built a cigar box guitar with my dad. There is more of a community around cigar box guitars than I would have guessed, but not as many educational resources as I would like. Naturally, I made my own.

  • Illustrator for web layouts

    Dec 7 2012

    Illustrator has some fantastic layout tools that are often overlooked by web designers. Here is a screencast overviewing some of the reasons Illustrator is in my workflow.