www.urbandirty.com is a website featuring free natural stock photo textures. All the photography Paul Burgess requires is a photo credit. not bad.

As I am planning to buy a new iPod once the new widescreen iPod I have been anxiously anticipating is unveiled. I have been looking for a way to convert my existing DVD collection so that I can take my movies with me on my new iPod. I have also been thinking about a way to back-up my DVD collection once I get my external hard-drive. MacWorld has two recommendations; Handbrake and VisualHub. I have downloaded Handbrake and am looking forward to giving it a try. It is Open Source Software and is available at no cost so I decided to start there. VisualHub is a scant $23. According to Macworld (April, 07 p. 90) the only real advantage to VisualHub is it’s fine DVD ripping softward.

These are a couple campaign concept billboards I have been developing for a local used car dealership. They were presented last week. I have not heard any concrete feedback – yet.

Friday I was on Press for the cover of a brochure I have designed for a new development at Wolf Creek Resort called Powder Canyon. I am blogging about it because it was quite a unique press check. The cover I designed is a simple one color print on one of my favorite brands of paper Reich Shine. Shine is a very expensive, luminouse, metallic sheet that also has a cool feel to it. My idea was to print a sort of corroded texture over top of the metallic copper paper to give it almost a rusted copper look. When I got there things were not at all as I had hoped. I had specified a pretty dark pantone brown for the single color print but the way the ink was going down and drying on the paper after a couple minutes the sheet looked very faded and washed out. As an artist my original inclination was to start adding black to darken up the color. This seemed to work but after a couple of press pulls we were noticing that despite our efforts the color continued to fade tremendously. Finally the printer suggested we start adding opaque white to the ink base to offset the natural transperancy that is part of most offset inks. This was the key and after a couple more pulls the color began to hold. I was worried after all the time it took to get to a color that was within my range of acceptability that maybe I had not gone dark enough, but I am looking at my sample sheet here on Saturday night and am pretty pleased with the overall color and effect.

My suggestion and bit of wisdom from the experience is that should a similar project ever occur to remember to switch from a tint base or transperant white to an opaque white as the Shine paper has a real tendancy to suck up color.

I have always wondered why I could not have a variety of page sizes in Adobe InDesign. There have been times I would love to have completed an entire stationery system in one document; letterhead, envelope and business card to help insure consistency and avoid having to open and manage multiple files. Today I stumbled onto a company that has created the solution to all my page size problems in a plug-in entitled Page Controls ($59). From what I have read this feature is still not available in the new release of CS3 although I have not personally had a chance to try it out myself.

An old friend of mine, a longtime client that has been ressurecting and rebranding the same company over and over for the past couple of years showed up again a few weeks back and asked me to help him again reinvent his company’s identity. The new company ‘Get out of the House’ formerly ‘Doghouse Outdoor Gear’ formerly ‘ ToolBox’ is a company that hopes to bring state of the art outdoor merchandise to market. They are a group of mountainclimbing entusiasts who hope to use the profists from their endevors to fund extreme climbing adventures. To be honest I was not thrilled with the new company name or the creative direction they pitched to me but after trying to give them the heave-ho I realized that their commitment level to my company was extremely high from an execution level and despite my best efforts I concented to execute their idea. The idea for the stenciled brand and the spraypaint was theirs. I put the elements together and created this ad comp to kind of show them a way that they could possibly apply the bradining in print. It was one of those small projects that ended up being more enjoyable than I first anticipated. We’ll see how the client responds.

I bought my first Logo Lounge book for myself for Christmas about three years ago. I had seen Logo Lounge I in hardback and salivated over it until it finally came out in paperback and I broke down and bought it. Logo Lounge 2 is now out in paperback and it is definitely on my shopping list. Logo Lounge 3 is available in hardback and they are now accepting submissions for Logo Lounge 4. I found my way back to their website today and was refreshed that it is still a valuable resource for passionate logo designers. Check out their article on current logo design trends

Halamigo over at mygeeknotes.com blogged about a certain online viral game that I spent a good portion of my sunday afternoon playing. Desktop Tower Defense is a quirky little strategy game where you try to keep the enemy from reaching his objective by setting up a strategic series of military weaopnry. I must admit I was pretty bad at it the first couple times but once I fiqured it out it became a pretty simple thrill which is good, otherwise I might still be playing. Anyway, Check it out.

In the May 2007 issue of MacWorld magazine they recommend NeoOffice as the poor man’s replacement for Microsoft Office . While I am yet to try it the review is favorable with only limited drawbacks and the fact that it is Open Source Software and comes free of charge is nothing to complain about.

Anyone who knows me, knows I am a listmaker. It is what I do. I would not go so far as to say I am an expert at time management or anything. Really, I just like to come up with ways to make lists and usually I end up spending so much time making the list that I’ve wasted more time than I’ve gained. I wanted to make note of a pretty cool mac application I am going to try this week. Ghost Action 1.1 It looks pretty cool and interfaces with iCal. an application I tried to use for managing my daily ToDos but found it lacking from a time management standpoint. It comes with a 14 day free trial and is only $20 to purchase. It is Mac Only software.