Tag: graphic design

This is not how business is conducted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There is this guy at my office that doesn’t like me.  Now I’m not saying that in that teenage kind of way in which I’m just speculating, because I have every reason to believe that this guy just does not like me.  He’s significantly older than I am, and kind of symbolizes the old world.  He was once in a position of managerial power, but was demoted at some point.  My peers here who remember his regime of management cite that he was the utmost of micro-managers, and describe the kind of authority that would have made me quit, had I been present during that time.

But anyway, it’s very obvious he doesn’t care much for me.  On the hierarchy of the office, he and I are essentially on the same plateau, and that has to bother him a great deal.  He has his own office solely based on tenure, but the truth of the matter is that doesn’t really do much different work than I do; if anything at all, he gets more shit work than I do.  But if that’s not enough justification, the fact that he won’t ever look me in the eye, and on several instances, in the office and at the one out-of-town work conference I attended, he flat out refused to get on the same elevator as I was on.  As in, he is waiting for an elevator, but when he sees me show up, he will not board the elevator if it means having to share it with me alone, and will blatantly stand put and wait for the next one.

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Adobe software is a lot like cars

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When Adobe released the CS6 Suite, maybe one entire year after they had just released CS5, I didn’t have high expectations for it, the moment I saw that they had redesigned the software down from the splash graphics to the software’s workspaces.

Recently, I ran into a problem in InDesign CS6, where I couldn’t get a particular file to print, or export to PDF.  Upon attempting to initiate either task, the program would crash.  It was related to a problem in the file itself, as troubleshooting with blank new documents or other projects did not replicate the problem.  After about 20 minutes of frustrating unsuccessful troubleshooting, I realized that I had still not uninstalled CS5.  I saved my problematic file out as an IDML legacy file, and opened it up in InDesign CS5.

It printed without any complications.
It PDF’d without any hesitation.

In conclusion, it didn’t work in CS6, because CS6 is fucking retarded.  I thought about it for a second and chastised myself, because honestly, this was, and shouldn’t ever have been, much of a surprise.

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First impressions of Adobe CS6 splash graphics

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Earlier this week, my office upgraded to CS6. Honestly, I didn’t even realize that CS6 was already here. Nowadays, Adobe doesn’t even wait for the paint to dry on their prior product before shoving the newest one out the door, often times leading to debacles like how awful CS3 was. But the more I think about it, I realize that I first used CS5 products in the tail end of 2010, so for all intents and purposes, CS5 probably had a good, albeit less than two year run, which only makes it feel like time has really flown.

I have a theory that Adobe products are a lot like cars. When a new generation is released, the very first year of it is often the ones where flaws are discovered, recalls are prompted, and for all intents and purposes, are the worst of the eventual generation. When Adobe went from the artistic noir generation of CS1 and CS2, into the periodic table styling introduced in CS3 through CS5, without question CS3 was utter garbage. InDesign being the worst of them all with its endless parade of inexplicable crashes and errors making me rethink my career more than a few times. But by the time CS5 rolled around, most everything was fairly stable, and crossing between software was a fairly harmless process, and business could move as usual.

So far, CS6 hasn’t been too terrible, other than the fact that all of my projects take a few extra moments to open as [Converted] files, but it’s only been three days. This is a first year of a new generation, so I’m sure there are bound to be some inexplicable flaws that will make me want to jump out of a window eventually.

However, with the changing of the generation comes some graphic changes as well, namely the splash screens while the software loads. For some reason, Adobe is trying to go back to the days of when they had fancy, artsy splash screens, but they’re afraid to commit completely, and still have their rectangles and base colors. Regardless, they’re all different, and it’s up to me, to judge them.

Lightroom (shown above) is the most nondescript one of them all. It’s a square, and it’s nothing special at all. For the record as a program, I love Lightroom, and would love to have it on my personal machine too.

But Lightroom is probably the only normal one of them. Snap judgment time.

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This, is not a Mass Effect 3 spoiler

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

To my count, at least seven different characters in the Mass Effect universe promise to buy Shepard drinks once “this is all over.” As you can see, the thought of free booze pleases Commander Shepard, greatly. All he has to do is rid the galaxy of the Reaper Invasion threat, and it’s party time!

This however, is a massive Mass Effect 3 spoiler

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Georgia’s new licenses suck

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Can we say, overdesigned?

Recently, I had to renew my driver’s license.  Having seen a few people with the new format already, I dreaded doing such, and I had hoped that mine would be sort of grandfathered in some clause stating that I would get the old format, since that’s how my first Georgia license was like.  Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case, and just the other night, I got in the mail, my new state-issued Georgia driver’s license.

As hard as it is for some people to believe, I am a graphic designer, and therefore I do feel that I have a modicum of authority when it comes to judging the way things look.  That being said, I really, really dislike the direction the state of Georgia has gone in their drivers’ licenses.  It’s like there was a list of security features they wanted to incorporate which is fine and all, since security is very important when it comes to state-issued identification.  But when it came to executing the design of the new licenses, they simply fell, face first onto a steaming pile of failure.

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Why slack today when you can also slack tomorrow?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really mean to vent so much about my job so much lately, but lately, there really hasn’t been that much going on otherwise in my life, other than eating, LoL-ing or going to the gym.  Routine is good, sometimes.

But today, I don’t really have much else to do.  Long story short, I have a project that’s been going on since November, which is a prime example of what happens when a project manager lets the client walk all over them, and subsequently the creative departments that actually makes the tangible shit happen.  If this were a real creative agency or company, the project would be complete by now because in those types of business models, revisions cost money.  The more revisions, the more money.  The more money involved, the less the client wants to spend, meaning more efficiency on their end, and less tedious work on our end.

I guess it’s not really a shortened story, but to cut to the chase, I’m efficient, and ready for this project to be out the door, and I have literally done all of my part in order to put this project on the doorstep of the printing process.  Literally, this project is all but done aside from the printing.  But the project manager feels that there has been a disconnect in the process, which there was, which I rectified the issues that came up as a result of it, and wants to have a discussion with all the cooks in the kitchen.  But one of the cooks isn’t in the office today, so this discussion is scheduled for when this cook returns.  I explain that there really isn’t a need for any discussion, and I’m essentially dismissively told that yes, there is.  O-kay.

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