President Barack Obama

After 8 years, I am finally proud of my country. Thank you and congratulations, Mr. Obama.

Happy Halloween

I'm a sucker for cool logos and pumpkins. It only makes sense that Obama is my guy this election with his awesomely designed website and kick ass logo. Oh yeah, and his policies. Remember to vote, regardless of who it's for!

Noir Stationary Set

I posted my business card on the last post so this post adds the letterhead and envelope to the stationary set.

Noir Business Cards

I just created new business cards for myself sporting the new name and logo for Noir and to advertise my new online portfolio. It's difficult to create a unique or memorable card without paying extravagant amounts of money for spot colors, UV coatings, die cutting and the like. Although I was fortunate enough to be turned on to a website called 4colorprint.com that produces a very unique silk business card. It's pretty much a matte, silk laminate over the card that has a very smooth feel to the touch. It's not a cheesy gloss laminate that you would see on cards thrown all over the floor outside some club advertising some horrible rock band or DJ playing some embarrassing college theme night. The card looks normal but when you hand it off to someone, the response you get is usually, "Oooh, that feels interesting." And for $49 for 500 2-sided cards, it's a steal. A subtle way to make an important impression.

4colorprint.com

The Decline of Western Televisation

I'm the first to admit that I never would have thought I would be a weekly watcher of One Tree Hill but, hey, it kind of just happened. My girlfriend, Ana, bought the first season awhile ago and the next thing you know I'm Tivo-ing season 6. It's not the best show on TV but it's entertaining. I've invested so much time in it already that I can't just walk away. I'm going down with the ship. Although recently a new character emerged on the show who looked mighty familiar. Why yes, it's John Doe from one of my favorite bands, X! Apparently he's also an actor on top of a musical genius. So if John Doe, the LA punk icon of the 80's, is on the show I feel a little less ashamed watching the show. Crisis averted. Masculinity in tact, although pay no mind to John Doe's mesh shirt above. Here's a clip of X from the punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization.

Fata1ity USB Headphones Review

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I built a gaming system for my friend Chris because he fell head over heels for BF2142. So now that he's getting into PC gaming I now have (finally!) a teammate to play online with. So I bought the Fatality headphones/mic combo so we can discuss politics and gush online whilst we hoopeth thy ass. I've been playing the Battlefield series since BF1942 and it always been fun, obviously, but never as fun as teaming up with a friend. It changes the dynamics and strategy of the battlefield. You become more effective when you can just say to your team mate, "Hey! Come pick me up. I'm stranded," or awesome cliche lines like "I need backup! I'm surrounded. Watch your back, he's coming around the left side. Did you see him!? Where did he go?" Fun times for all.

On to the headphones. They're comfortable and they work--sort of. Ever since I installed the drivers and updated my X-fi sound card, which by the way the headphones are considered X-fi as well, my computer started acting like an asshole. BF froze with graphical glitches and it even locked up my entire system on a few occasions leading me to believe that something in my tower was overheating. After a lot of frustration, I nailed down the problem. Without the headphones plugged in, my X-fi soundcard enables me to set the audio quality in the game to Extreme High Quality Uber Awesome settings when running off the hardware (card). When the headphones are plugged in, the settings downgrade to medium running off software only. If you try to put the settings any higher the game and even your computer will freeze or shutdown. That seems pretty harsh for a set of headphones. The Uber setting is called "X-Fi" so why doesn't it work with "X-fi" headphones? Oh, and the mic doesn't work in game with BF's mic settings. It does work however with X-Fire, a third party app. But that is a BF/Vista problem. The only reason I'm not extremely pissed is because I can't really notice a drop in audio quality with the headphones on. In fact, I actually hear alot of sound effects I've never heard before. Audio quality is great, the mic works, and they are comfortable. Minus 1 star for pissing me off for 2 days straight though. It shouldn't require so much effort to plug in headphones.

We Were A Bunch Of Saps Back Then

I was looking through some of my projects to decide which one I should post for today when I came across some photos and flyers from my old band days in high school. Above is a picture of us hooligans back in the day. That's me, Jess, Sean, Matthew and Brian. We went through 3 band names, a few lineup changes, put out 3 E.P.s, a live album, numerous demos, wrote dozens of songs, played probably 100 covers and was the best memory I had of high school. I think we could have gone somewhere with it. I moved to college, our drummer joined the Air Force, and we all pretty much got "real" jobs. We played punk rock and were heavily influenced by 70's and 80's bands such as Stiff Little Fingers, The Adolescents, The Ramones, The Clash, The Misfits and X. We didn't write aggressive punk rock, it was more musically inclined.

I love music and I love graphic design so as long as I'm doing one of those, I'm made in the shade. Once I figure a way to post some songs on the blog, I will. Below is a flyer I made back when I was 17 before I discovered Photoshop. We were going by The Saps back then.

Anywhere Ad

I figured that I would start posting random pieces of work that I have done personally and professionally. This ad is the first in a series (that have yet to be created) that showcases the new visual branding of LKQ. What was once very corporate and safe in regards to color and design has changed with a splash of green, a new tagline and a bit of an edgier look.

I've also incorporated this new visual identity to the tradeshow booth that will be on display at the International Autobody Congress and Exposition (NACE) in Las Vegas. It's the biggest collision repair autoshow of the year. I'll be there for a few days just after election day taking pictures and will post images of how the booth turned out. Above is a floor plan but we'll see how it looks in real life.

You can see my official online portfolio at noirgraphicdesign.com

Abit AB9 Pro MotherF*****board

Over the weekend I built a computer for my friend and future brother-in-law Chris, A.K.A. Ultimate Photon System (see post below), and man, what a pain in the ass and awesome joy it was! I built my tower and have upgraded it here and there over the past few years so this was my second complete build. I got him hooked on PC gaming via Battlefield 2142 so now I have a gaming buddy! So we shopped on Newegg.com for all the components and ordered them about a week and half ago for just over $700. It’s not a water cooled quad core triple SLI sonuvabitch but it gets the job done. The beauty of building it yourself is that you can always upgrade down the line, the reason I convinced him not to buy say a proprietary HP or Dell system. His specs are:

Cooler Master Case

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200

2gb GSkill RAM

500gb hard drive

550 watt PSU

Vista Home Premium 64-bit

NVIDIA 7800GT (a hand-me-down from yours truly. His first upgrade will be the GPU but it plays BF2142 smooth as silk so he’s happy for the time being)

ABIT Ab9 Pro Motherboard <----POS

The motherboard. This picky piece of shit caused so much frustration that we ordered new RAM thinking that it was the reason it wasn’t booting up. Investigation into the matter from the hundreds of other people who had issues with this board indicated that it needs certain RAM from certain vendors with a particular voltage and specific timings. The new RAM didn’t work so I thought it was the video card. I swapped it out with my 8800GTX and still no dice. I then discovered online that the E7200 was troublesome on this board too. So F that, it wasn’t worth anymore time or frustration. We ordered the a board from Gigabyte and boom bam it’s up and running. So watch out for HawlendRion and...em...JellyBean2142... to frag yo ass! See you online.

Tivo: The HawlendRion Chronicles

Oh how I love Monday nights ever since the fall TV season started up recently. I get my triple dose of action via idiot box in the form of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Prison Break, Heroes and One Tree Hill. TV on DVD has certainly spoiled me but the new seasons are great so far. I think Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are the only nights Tivo isn't overloading. Tomorrow night is Fringe, an awesome sci-fi show from my favorite creator/producer JJ Abrams. Wednesday is a night to spend time with my loved ones, my computer... Thursday is The Office, Grey's Anatomy, and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Sunday stars my favorite superhero- Dexter. All the while I'm still trying to find time to watch The X-Files. 30 Rock starts up soon enough, so let's throw that in there somewhere while we're at it. Lest we forget the classics that are always lighting up Tivo red, Seinfeld, King of Queens, The Colbert Report, Everybody Loves Raymond and probably a few others. I heart Tivo. I believe Tivo will eventually become Skynet. You heard it here first folks. Beware.

It's Always Hilarious In Philadelphia

A new show I just got in to recently is It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Holy jeez, it's effin brilliant. It's like Seinfeld on crack after shooting up some Family Guy then smoking a bowl of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's quite a party. The plot and subject matter of each episode is so far out there for a live action show it's hard to believe. For example, the gang finds a baby in the dumpster and instead of calling the cops they decide to profit from it by making it into a Gerber Baby only to find out that white babies are no longer selling, that in fact, Latin and black babies are the current trend. So they decide to take it to a tanning salon only to be turned away but in the end they try to paint the baby's skin with shoe polish before child services shows up. I think my heart almost stopped beating on a few episodes from laughing so hard. I bought the first 3 seasons on DVD and cranked those out in a few days. Season 4 just started last week on FX. I give it 3 thumbs up.

UPS Really Stands For Ultimate Photon System

Today's Photoshop fun. As you can see, my friend Chris and I get a lot done at work. He makes the corrugated robot suit and I make him all powerful in Photoshop. Slow day at work equals awesome picture. I decided to post the "before" (slightly grunged up in Lightroom) and the "after."

Noir Graphic Design Studios Site Launched

As of yesterday, my new online portfolio is now available to view online at http://www.noirgraphicdesign.com/. It contains samples of my work from various fields of design including print advertisements, logo design, packaging, and photography.

In college I learned web design but have long since forgotten most of it. Well that's not entirely true. I can design the hell out of a website but I cannot program it. I've forgotten about HTML and CSS style sheets which is the boring parts of the whole process which is why I've never truly dedicated myself to that aspect of design. It really turned me off to the whole thing. That is until...wait for it...I've discovered a badass photoshop plugin called Site Grinder 2. It allows designers like myself to be just that- a designer. Not a programmer. I can focus on building a website entirely in Photoshop. By simply naming layers with certain tags, Site Grinder builds your site with minimal to no knowlege of web design. It takes care of all the HTML coding and even implements CSS to your site without ever looking at code. It's a no brainer and a life saver. Check out the site and let me know what you think.

Noir Graphic Design Studios

A recent project of mine. Feel free to contact me for your graphic design needs. Thanks!

Tutorial: Vintage Grunge Effect

This is the first of hopefully many tutorials to come. This recipe of Lightroom adjustments is a cool way of making a photograph look a little more darker and edgy. I shot this photo recently and while it looks cool I think it can look a little cooler.

Programs used: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and Adobe Photoshop CS3

The first step of editing any photograph is to crop it accordingly. Using the crop tool in Lightroom I've isolated the car slightly to the left in this horizontal fashion.

This series of tweaks are what it's all about. Crank up the Recovery, Fill, Blacks, Brightness, Contrast, and Vibrance all the way up and adjust slightly if necessary. To combat the crazy colors you'll end up seeing, turn the saturation almost all the way down. This will give it the faded, vintage look.

Next, I've adjusted the color temperature slightly to color correct the ground since it was looking rather blue.

Bring up the color sliders and make adjustments as necessary. In this instance I brought up the saturation in the greens to make the plants pop a little more since they got lost with the previous adjustments.

Now, to make the sky pop. Open the photo in Photoshop and create a new layer. Make sure black is selected as your foreground color and open the gradient tool and pick the black to transparency option. On the new layer, hold SHIFT and drag downward from the top of the photo to the middle. Select Overlay as the blending option in the layers palette.

For a final touch I'll be adding glints to the highlighted areas of the car. The key is to not over do it. Create a new a layer and select the brush tool. Under the brush palette options choose Assorted brushes and use brush number 48 which looks like an X. Increase the brush size by using the bracket keys and click once on the area needed. In this case I chose one on the rear view mirror and a few on the chrome bumper. Reduce the opacity of this layer down to 45%.

Boom Bam. You're done.

Dare To Be Like The iPhone

I've recently upgraded my phone to the new LG Dare from Verizon. My contract has been up for a little while now but no phone really caught my eye. I knew I wanted one with a QWERTY (hey, that's fun to type. Try typing it like ending a piano recital) keyboard so I was checking out the Alias and the Glyde but it wasn't mindblowing enough for me to drop $100 when my current phone is just fine. Of course I want the iPhone. A friend of mine has one and it's pretty damn sweet but I am not going to switch carriers because everyone and my mother (literally) is on Verizon and the only thing I use my phone for is text messaging and maybe an hour of talk time per month. I'm also not very keen on paying over $100 a month on a damn cell phone bill. F that. The Dare is an obvious competitor for the iPhone for Verizon customers. It's not a smart phone. It's a "feature heavy" phone as I like to call it. All touch screen with with a 3.2 megapixel camera. 3.2 I say! The photo editing features are insane with options to change, brightness, contrast, sharpness with custom cropping. You can change the ISO settings, has a flash and it autofocuses like a point and shoot. It's quite amazing for a camera phone. Another useful tool that it has that I never thought I would have any use for is the drawing pad. I can draw with my finger and change the brush size and color as well as erase areas like a pencil. Fun for drawing obscene pictures and sending them to my friends and loved ones. Always makes me laugh. It's super sleek and small enough for men like myself to carry it around comfortably in my pocket. MicroSD card compatible for music, videos, and photos. The touch screen takes getting used to but I find that you must use the tip of your nail instead of the finger tip for best results. There is no need for me to tack on an additional 50% to my bill for data usage, but this phone also sports an HTML web browser. A perfect iPhone substitute until Apple drops it's contract with AT&T.

A touch of the screen will bring up a shortcut list of your most frequently used tools. Customizable of course.

QWERTY keypad for text messaging and any other text input. Turn the phone 90 degrees and the screen will orient itself as shown.

Photoshop World Conference & Expo

Coming up September 4-6 is Photoshop World Conference & Expo in Las Vegas and I will be there! Hotel is booked and registration is paid for. I just need to buy my plane ticket. 3 days of Photoshop and design classes taught by industry greats such as Scott Kelby, Dave Cross, and Matt Kloskowski. In between classes there will be a tech expo with exhibitors such as Canon, Nikon, and Adobe where I can see all the latest gadgets and software. (image above taken from the Photoshop World website. Check it out)

In preparation for my trip I recently purchased a new camera/laptop backpack- the Kata DR-467. A friend of mine has the model below this one, the only difference being that the one I bought holds up to a 17" laptop. It looks bad ass and is ergonomically comfortable. When not carrying your camera, the dividers can be taken out and the entire bag can be used as a simple backpack. It also has a built in rain cover in case the worst happens. I should be getting it this week. It will make things easier in the airport and trekking through the expo keeping my laptop, camera and other digital devices with me in one bag instead of bringing a separate bag for my laptop and camera. Most bags I was checking out were well over $100 to get the laptop option but I got this baby for an even $66 from Amazon. B&H and Adorama lists it $79.95 but if you buy it from Amazon who goes through Adorama (don't ask me why it's cheaper) it's only $66 bucks. No tax. Free shipping. Boom bam.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe In This Movie

Since I am captivated in the X-Files world at the moment, watching disc after disc of Mulder and Scully sexual tension and alien chasing, the new movie didn't entirely disappoint me but I can see how fans who have been away from the series the past 7 or 8 years could be. SPOILER ALERT: The story is a stand alone case involving a psychic pedophile Catholic preacher who is the only link to find a series of missing women, one of whom is an FBI agent. At this point in time, Mulder and Scully are no longer working for the FBI but are called in to assist finding the missing women because of their successful history with the X-Files and pyschic phenomenon. The movie is a long monster of the week episode but Mulder and Scully don't even have their FBI credentials or guns to get things done. The second story arch involves Mulder and Scully's personal relationship and whether they should call it off or not because Mulder's heart and time is still very much into exposing the truth and Scully is over the whole thing. I enjoyed the movie because it's just more X-Files to watch but I believe they could have and should have focused on the mythology storyline and given some closure and pay off to long time fans of the series.

Why So Serious? Because That's What It Takes.

It's been awhile since my last post but I've been eerily occupied watching the highly addictive X-Files. See previous post. So I must apologize to myself and my fiance (the only people who read this blog) for not giving us gripping journalistic endeavors to embark on. So let's see if I can catch us up shall we? I've heard something about some movie called The Dark Knight that has been doing reasonably well at the box office. I guess I should check that one out sometime... Obviously I am being a douchebag because I have seen it twice already with a third time on my schedule of things to do. I was there for the midnight screening with 500 other people playing board games and ordering pizza in the lobby waiting to be let in. The movie was unbelievable. I'm hesitant to call it a movie- The film was unbelievable. I don't even want to call it a comic book movie. It's really just a film making masterpiece. The storyline moved along like a freight train fleshing out these characters that make you believe in a world where a man dressed as a bat and a psycho dressed as a clown really exist. Heath's performance was spectacular as everyone already knows. I can't wait to watch it again, but next time it will be in IMAX. I'm sure I will be scared shitless to see Harvey Dent's grotesque face revealed on a 6 story screen.




The joker poster above now graces the wall of my room framed behind glass. It's quite creepy because it looks as though he is writing on the frame. Below are some shots from that studio shoot. I love seeing how graphic artists turn raw studio/photography into awesome works of art. I hope to be doing projects like this someday.