I stumbled on this video by Aaron Irizarry, in which he featured my site redesign. Thanks, Aaron! This is Aaron’s Life Friday Vidcast 09–04-09
September 2009
Split Ring Key Blank
This is a pretty cool product that lets you carry your keys… on your… key! It’s a blank key that also serves as your key ring. It’s great for people like me who like to keep keys minimal. However, at $7 a pop, I suppose you just have to hope the locksmith carving the key for you doesn’t mess up!
The Cat Piano
D. Keith Robinson tweeted this awesome video, The Cat Piano from PRA. It’s really cool.
Featured Artist: Jim Mahfood
My first featured artist is Jim Mahfood, AKA Food One. Jim is “a muralist, comic book artist, painter, live art show rocker and drunken freestyler extraordinaire”.
I met Jim on September 11, 2001 (yes, that day) when he was a visiting artist lecturer at my school. He’s a very talented and generous guy (he’s sent me some cool stuff over the last few years, like comic books, a tank top, buttons, and other cool swag with his art on it), and I am very excited to have his artwork on my website. I decided to do a small interview with Jim. Enjoy!
What are five words you would use to describe your style?
“Pure funk, pure rock, free jazz, death metal, Gonzo”
What, or who are your influences for your illustration style?
“Jack Kirby and James Brown, with a twist of Ziggy Stardust.”
What are your thoughts on the merging of web design and illustration?
“It’s all beautiful to me, man.”
Do you have any insight you’d like to share about your process of creating the artwork you did for Sushi & Robots?
“I tried to make it sleek and sexy, just like Jina.”
If you like sushi, what’s your favorite?
“Probably that sushi burrito that is now available at Los Tacos.”
If you owned an army of robots, would they be good or evil?
“They would be disco robots. They would get down tonight and every other night after that.”
Jim will be doing an art show called H.A.N.D.S. on September 10th with his buddy Jeff Shagawat at the 72 and Sunny Gallery in Los Angeles, California. You can check out his blog, Food One/Jim Mahfood Art, for all his latest stuff. His main website is at 40oz Comics.
Revamp
Okay. So I’ve been busy. With what? Well, there’s this:
Job change
For those who don’t follow me on Twitter or talk to me regularly, I no longer work at Apple. I am now working at Crush + Lovely, a creative studio located in both New York City and San Francisco. I do interaction design primarily, but I also have my hands in visual design, front end web development, information architecture, etc. So far, I’ve worked on fun projects like Fifty People One Question, By/Association, Crush + Lovely’s own website, among other exciting projects.
Not available for projects
I am no longer taking on any freelance work. Between going to grad school half time and working full time, I just don’t have time to take on side projects. However, I am still accepting speaking engagements and occasional small writing projects.
Book coming soon
I just finished coauthoring a book for SitePoint. That should be released fairly soon.
New Tumblrs
I just really got into Tumblr. I started a couple fun ones:
- Art in My Coffee, a blog that showcases coffee art, which I curate alongside Meagan Fisher
- OMG True Blood, a chaotic True Blood-related Tumblr, which I post to, along with several friends. (Sometimes it’s not safe for work, but that’s to be expected with an HBO show about vampires, right?)
New apartment
I just moved to a sweet apartment in SoMa! I’m stoked. Photos and more information later!
New diet
I gradually moved toward becoming somewhat pescetarian, which means I do not eat meat unless it’s seafood. However, I do eat dairy and eggs. I’m not doing this for any particular ethical reason. It’s an experiment to see if this new chosen diet feels better. I’ve already noticed that I have fewer stomach problems.
New site design
Okay, so as you can see, I have a new site design. I’ve been working on this design for a very long time, and at late hours after long days of work or school or both. It’s still not 100% complete, but I’m happy with where it is at the moment and decided to go ahead and make it live. I hope you guys like it.
You may have noticed that my home page has the same artwork by Jim Mahfood as I had on the previous design for Sushi & Robots. They now rotate randomly (refresh the page to see). I plan to feature more artists in the coming months, and I already have some amazing artwork by some amazing artists queued up. If you’re interested in Jim Mahfood’s work, look for my next post which will showcase his work and include a small interview with Jim.
I’ve temporarily moved my site back over to WordPress, but this isn’t a permanent change. I’ve also disabled comments on my blog as an experiment. I don’t know yet how long this will last, but I want to see if I like it this way.
Since comments are disabled, if you want to share your thoughts on my design, you can either send me an email, write up your own blog post and ping back here, or post your feedback on Twitter (@jina). I look forward to receiving feedback because I’ve been staring at this design for far too long.
