I just want to say that I got lots of great feedback from friends and strangers regarding the redesign of my portfolio site. And thanks to all of you for it.

The two biggest issues (and I whole-heartedly agree):

1. The logo was weak and didn’t fit in.
2. The italic typeface didn’t read well in longer chunks.

So, instead of spending days on a logo treatment, I just put my name up in big, simple VAG Rounded Bold. And I used it for any type that was living on a white ground. I think things got balanced out with the change. Feeling better about it now, at least from the side of legibility.

Ta-da!

Well, that took long enough. Last night I launched the new version of mikecreighton.com. This morning, I polished up a couple things, so technically this post is a “YESTERDAY, CREATED.” update.

There’s still some work to do, like hooking the content up to ExpressionEngine, implementing this “Faust” technique, and sticking some Google Analytics events in there.

But for now, I’ve got something fresh online representing some of my work.

Still moving along on this. Here’s a little effect for transitioning between a project’s images. Feels a little too random right now…probably because it is, in fact, just random. I think I’ll move to something a little more organic that “sweeps” the grid mask across the image.

Now to figure out how to do that…

I needed to get this prototype out ASAP since some of the strength of the design direction I’ve chosen has to do with this uber-zoomed image pixel grid thingy. When I was designing it, I wanted to take advantage of Flash’s ability to smooth a scaled Bitmap. So, that’s what you’re seeing in this prototype.

I still have to figure out what to do with the motion, but the overall effect is achieved in the prototype. In the end, I’ll be sampling a 35×35 pixel rect of a loaded image and blowing it up to fill the stage. This is a little smaller than that, but the performance remains fast at either size.

I’ve started the redesign of my portfolio site. I created a lot of crappy looking stuff in the last two days, and I’ve finally reached a design direction I’m happy with.

I’m trying to get something up by the end of the weekend, so we’ll see how that goes.

Did I mention that designing is f’ing hard? Here’s another screen:

I spent the last couple days making a desktop wallpaper-generating web app out of the previous experiment. Click the image above to check it out.

I tried to add a majority of the common 4:3 and widescreen desktop screen sizes. Make sure you’ve got Flash Player 10. The app will generate a slightly-compressed JPG for you.

Now that I’ve created this, I’m going to apply for a Kuler developer API key so that I can add a “randomize” button for the color palette that pulls in a color scheme from Kuler.

UPDATE (11-29-2008): Added a size for the iPhone.

I’m just looking for things to sink my teeth into and explore.