I thought it would be interesting to see how hard it would be to achieve in Illustrator. With one small, free Illustrator script, it turns out it is quite easy.

The script we’ll need is “vary_hues” from wundes.com. Save the .js file on to your computer somewhere. It’s well worth checking out the other scripts too.

Step 1

Create a new document, choose the Rectangular Grid Tool and click on your canvas to open the options for the Grid Tool.

I chose the same width and height to keep the grid as a bunch of squares and have set the rows and columns to 10×10. Unless you’re going for a Mondrian style effect, leave the skew at 0% on each.

Step 2

You may notice at this point that the grid is just a rectangle with lines through it, rather than a bunch of individual squares.

To fix this, select the grid and open the Pathfinder palette. All you need to do now is click “Divide” and this will cut the grid up in to a bunch of squares for you.

To make it easier to see, fill the squares with a colour.

Step 3

Now we have a grid of squares, but it’s still all in a block. Ungroup the grid so you can select individual blocks – right click > ungroup or CTRL + SHIFT + G.

Now we can get some colour in to them.

Step 4

This is where the vary_hues script comes in to its own. Select all the squares and go to File > Scripts > Other Script, then browse to where ever you saved the vary_hues script.

When the dialog box comes up, enter 100 and click OK. 100 will ensure that there’s a wide variety of colours.

Step 5

The random colours will, most likely, look fairly ugly at the moment. The secret to the Gerhard Richter and “Yes” examples is that the colours aren’t completely random. So to get some order and harmony to the colours we’ll use the Live Color tool.

With the squares still selected, choose the Recolor Artwork button to open Live Color.

Step 6

This is where you can have some fun choosing colours. Click on the little grid button to open the swatches menu. This will give you a large selection of colour swatches to choose from. Art History > Pop Art works well, but experiment with others to see how it works.

The Pop Art colours will be applied to the squares, replacing the random colours with more harmonious and hopefully attractive colours.

The default Pop Art colours are a little dull, so let’s jump over to the Edit panel.

This will give you more control over the individual colours. The slider at the bottom (under the little sun icon) adjusts the brightness of the colour, so we’ll turn that up to make it a bit more vibrant. You can also grab and adjust individual colours on the palette to adjust them.

Click OK and you’re done!

That’s the basic idea covered, so hopefully it’s a useful starting point for some interesting designs. If you use it, I’d love to see what you come up with.

My web browsers in order of usage. I was just noticing how good they all look now, so I thought I get them all together.

1. Opera for general, long sessions of browsing. Opera 10.50 pictured above.
2. Chrome + AdThwart for looking up something quickly, or if something doesn’t work quite correctly in Opera.
3. Firefox mostly for web development. Firefox theme pictured above is TwentyTen with Fission + Locationbar2 + Adblock Plus + Firebug.

Wallpaper is from here.

If you’ve decided to participate in Project 365 this year, you might start to find it difficult to keep track of which number day it is in the year once you get out of January – I know I did when I did my Project 365 last year.

Last year I made a special Project 365 Calendar with all the days of the year on it and after a few requests, I’ve updated it for 2010.

Details

The PDF contains three A4 pages (all vector graphics, so it’s no problem to larger or at a different size). Page one is the full colour calendar. Page two is a black and white version. Page three is a simplified version – just black text on a white background.

Download

Also

I’ve also updated Tagr for 2010 to help you tag your Project 365 photos with the correct date, number, etc.

The project is complete! I took one photo every day in 2009 and the above mosaic is the result. Definitely a worthwhile experience and it’s very satisfying to complete such a long running project.

What is Freelensing?

Photos taken with the lens detached from the camera but held in place and moved around to focus. This also lets extra light in sometimes causing light leaks and giving a vintage look and feel.

Freelensing can also:

• Give extra bokeh by shrinking the area in focus (aperture is 0)
• Allow for super macro shots
• Produce ethereal lighting by allowing stray light to get in to the sensor
• Make delicious light leaks
• Create tilt-shift effects

How do I do it?

If you just want the tilt-shift effect, you can detach the lens, but hold it in place against the camera. Slightly move the lens left, right, up or down.

It’s easier if your camera has a “live view” so you can see what it looks like, but it’s not too much harder with the view finder.

You only need to move the lens a few millimetres (fractions of an inch), and doing it this way, there’s not much risk of dust getting in to the sensor.

If you want lightleaks or the super-macro kind of effect, you will need to hold the lens a little bit further away (probably no more than a finger width, though). This is a bit more risky if you’re worried about dust, so try not to hold the lens away from the camera for too long and only do it in a dust-free environment.

For light leaks, I’ve found it’s best to be in a fairly dark room, with a big window in front of you. This lets the outside light get in to the camera (i.e. not through the lens, but just going straight in to the gap between the lens and the camera) but limits the ambient light getting in (which makes the photos less defined).

Will it work with my (SLR) camera?

Canon – Yes

Nikon – Yes – You have to put the camera into manual mode (thanks Eddie Barksdale)

Sony – Yes – In your camera’s menus, look for the “Release w/o Lens” option, and make sure it is enabled. You might also need to make something that will hold the aperture lever on the back of the lens in the open position (thanks ted @ndes)

If you’ve had success with your camera and it’s not on the list, let us know in the comments here or on the freelensing forum on Flickr.

Examples

See more on the Flickr Freelensing pool.

Edit: Oops – there’s actually a much simpler way. Right click on the tab area > Customize > Enable thumbnails in tabs

The Opera 10 beta has introduced a new tab feature that lets you resize tabs and expand them to show a full thumbnail. You can either click and drag it down, or middle click on it to expand the thumbnails.

While it’s an attractive feature and some people might find it useful, I’m not one of them. Since I use the middle mouse button click to open and close tabs, it actually gets in the way. I’ve been accidentally middle clicking a bit to low and opening the tab view quite often.

Follow these settings

Luckily, there’s an easy way to disable it. Just type “opera:config” into the address bar. Then type Tab into the search box. You should see “Use Thumbnails Inside Tabs” – untick this, click save, then restart Opera. Fixed.

I love the layers of colour in this poster for 'Motoring in Germany'

If you’re looking for some inspiration, the Bostom Public Library has a fantastic Flickr account with lots of classic posters. They’re all licensed under Creative Commons and for available at a reasonable size (unlike many similar resources).

I really love the style of these old travel posters. The colours they’ve used and the hand-painted texture gives them a lot of character that is often difficult to reproduce digitally. The scans, with their subtle paper texture, creases and folds, only add to that. I particularly like the layers of colour in the poster for ‘Motoring in Germany‘.

As well as the travel posters, there are WWI and WWII propaganda posters, old manuscripts, postcards and photos. The whole account is a great resource for colour, texture and general design inspiration.

MSN Live Messenger drawn-conversation in progress

The problem with these drawn-conversations is that it can be difficult to keep a record of what has been drawn. Sometimes whole comics or detailed pictures are drawn with no way to save the images… unless you have Adobe Illustrator. Here’s how.

Next time you have a drawing in MSN that you want to save, open up Illustrator and simply drag and drop the drawing into the Illustrator workspace.

Drag and drop the drawing into Illustrator

The beauty of using Illustrator (rather than just taking a screen shot) is that it saves the drawing in full vector detail.

So whether it’s a comic that you’ve been able to get just the right expression on or just a funny picture you want to save, you’ll be able to retain all the detail and enlarge or refine the image further in Illustrator. Or even  export it to Flash and animate it, or print it out and give it to the friend you were talking to (things seem funnier in print).

Right: Vector outlines in Illustrator. Left: A custom brush applied to the strokes.

Illustrator is the only program that seems to be able to capture the vector data properly. If you know of any other programs that work, let me know!

January

February

March

April

I decided to participate in Project 365 this year. Only 5 days in and I can already see it’s going to be difficult to keep track of which number day it is in the year. You can see my Project 365 photos here.

I meant to get myself a calendar today but forgot, so I decided to make one myself, which shows on each day what day of the year it is.
 

Details

1. There are two versions: one with a “notes” section on the right and one with the “scavenger hunt” items for Project 365.
2. Each version has 3 pages in the PDF: Full colour, Black and Economy. This is to let you choose which you want to print depending on the capabilities of your printer.
3. Made in InDesign in a surprisingly short amount of time.
4. Formatted for A4 paper.

Download

Project 365 Calendar 2009 – Notes version (PDF ~38kb)

Project 365 Calendar 2009 – Scavenger hunt version (PDF ~53kb)

 

Preview