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About Me
Philip is a Graphics Designer who lives within the vast county of Los Angeles in California. Being apart of the art world was an aspiration he sought to achieve as far back as middle school be it in the medium of fine art, motion graphics, film, typography, sketch, photography or design. Since 1999, Philip has become a more serious aficionado of graphic design, inspired by the many facets of art, music and publication. His primary artistic influences include the schools of Bauhaus and the propagandists of post-war Russian and Germany, Dada and Expressionism. All of these movements in cooperation with current and modern design trends can be seen diffused throughout his work.
Services
Hand-crafted web sites, pixels and text. Here's what the studio is focused on:
- Web & Interface Design — Designing and building web interfaces and templates utilizing web standards.
- Web Site Redesign — If you're looking to move your existing site to a CSS-based layout.
- Identity Design — Unique insignias for a professional representation of your business or art project.
- Photography — Surrealism, traditional, concept, portrait, concert events/shows.
It's Blogging Timeô
Flektor | Sunday, 4/29/07
For the past month I have been working with the Flektor team. I have been in charge of implementing valid HTML and CSS on the site, working with multi-platform browsers and operating systems.
Flektor is a new Flash-based content mashup tool. Users can pull in photos from several hosting services like flickr, MySpace, and Photobucket to make slick-looking, embeddable media slide shows for blogs, Web sites or social networks. It's a lot like Mixercast, and other media mashup services like RockYou and SplashCast.
Flektor's interface is drag-and-drop, and has a very short learning curve. To add media to your show, just drag imported media files down to a timeline at the bottom of the screen, where they can be rearranged or removed at any time. There are also "Flidgets" which can be inserted into your show to add live chat, a live broadcast from your Webcam, or cliched film effects like color bars or static. What's really neat is the ability to edit any picture with some easy-to-use sliders that let you do simple, on-the-fly alterations to your photographs--something you'd find on a Web-based photo editing tool like Picnik.
To add a little flair to your show, there are nearly 100 transitions, effects, and filters that can be put on top of or in between your media. You can also edit each effect and change its appearance. Out of the many transitions I've seen on some of these Flash editors (Photobucket's Remix in particular), Flektor has some really snappy and good-looking effects.
More space for more spam | Thursday, 2/1/07
Oh
Yahoo! sigh, when will you learn? More space for more crap? A dream for the
spammers. It seems that 65,532 emails topped this old poor account.
It's so bad that I cannot even log on to check the type of annoying spam waiting
for me. I wonder what kind of email awaits? Could it be the old *Get
Rich Quick Schemes?*,
or perhaps the sly and mysterious email subject: *Hey long time no
see?*
One thing that I do find as odd, yet not surprised at all about spam is how
they manage to email certain subjects that are relative to previous google/yahoo
web searches. i.e. I am looking for a 1,000 sq. foot loft in the downtown area
of Los Angeles. So then I visit sites of relation to my subject interest. I
find good information here and there, hours of searching until finally I decide
to take a break. Then next I find spam emails with subjects: *Looking
for a loft in Los Angeles*, *Get a pre-qualified*,
and *Looking
for to move*? ect...
not only on my spam email account, but on my personal account too but not as
much as the spam account. What gives? When I search, I don't give away my information
so it's rather interesting how spammers get a hold of this information specially
it seems that they know what I am interested in. It feels like someone is looking
at my computer and writing down my interests. Creepy.
Before-n-after!| Sunday, 1/14/07
Anne and I were driving up the hill towards the peninsula in Palos Verdes, California. We stopped at a regional park that had a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean. The view spans from the Catalina Islands to Malibu. Luckly I had my camera and started shootin' away. All the images seemed to come out great in my 2" display but I know that is always not the case. However though, afterwards we took the images back home and I loaded them unto Photoshop and did a little photo-doctoring.
The left image is before and the right image is after. Click on each image to see better detail.
The image on the left is the original taken by my Canon at Aperture f/2.8, Exposure 1/1600, ISO 100 with a focal length of 85mm. The problem with that image is the EXIF Color Space was uncalibrated. And because of that, it certainly made a difference in what the real color was when we were there.
The image on the right was touched with Photoshop CS2 using LAB Color Space correction. It was smart-sharpened and I also added some clouds above the mountains to fill the ambience of that day. You can clearly see the differences in color where the blues and greens are richer. And that's what it's all about. Making one normal image pop out! Exactly what you see when you page popular magazines.
Introducing ArtaMedicare Healthplan | Sunday, 12/16/06
Introducing the new ArtaMedicare Healthplan web site built specifically seniors interested in Medicare. Seniors that log onto the site have the ability to instantly find a doctor, hospital and a pharmacy. If a senior then becomes interested in enrolling the medicare program he/she can find information on Arta pre-enrollment events in order to attain more knowledge.
As the Creative Director for ArtaMedicare Healthplan, Man Metropolis along with Traffik, designed Arta from top to bottom, including its logo/full-branding, interfaced design as well as the XHTML/CSS development. The web team at Traffik also utilized .ASPX to integrate database connections.
The main idea and goal of this design was to clear the clutter of irrelevant data and make it easier to obtain. By this notion we made use of large buttons, large fonts, vivid colors, and an easy-to-read environment that had to be approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, (CMS) in order for the web site to go live.
CD BABY | Tuesday, 10/10/06
Dear Philip:
Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of
50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best
possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle
and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box
that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole
party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland
waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby
jet on this day, Sunday, November 12th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping
at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'.
We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!
It's the small things I like. Details, details, details!
FLASH VS XHTML | Sunday, 9/2/06
When a client approaches
me for web design the first question I ask is "business or entertainment?" because
right away I can tell if Flash or XHTML is going to be the best tool to use.
These days I find using CSS + XHTML as a more logical way to create web content.
I stopped doing all-flash web sites when realizing that it made web content
less user-friendly, among other problems, I found it true. Printing, book marking,
or even using the back button on a flash web site rendered it useless. It is
a nightmare when trying utilize meta-tags (key words used to search your site
on search engines) on certain parts of your web site so google could locate
them.
Don't get me wrong, I love flash web sites. Great flash designers can create
amazing graphics for relevant themes such as: movies/film, video games, photography,
and/or anything that is relevant to the entertainment industry. YouTube.com would
not be successful without Flash Video, MySpace.com uses flash for bands to display
their music. Flash has been a very critical tool for today's internet society
and it has really changed the way we view information. However, you have to really
distinguish and know when to use it. It would be really silly to utilize an all-flash
site for YAHOO or GOOGLE although it would completely be commonplace with Paramount
Picture's new Film Release. The way I see XHMTL VS FLASH is XHTML is like a DVD
player and Flash is the DVD. Simple as that.
In conclusion however, when it comes to certain jobs designers first must ask the question "business or entertainment?". The answer will tell if it's going to be a flash or xhtml.
