Children’s Illustration: Barbara McClintock
As an young twenty-something illustration student I completely overlooked the value of children’s book illustration as an art form. One, I didn’t consider children an interesting audience for illustration work. Two, I didn’t consider a powerful secondary audience: the parents. As a father of three small kids, I see I was wrong on both counts.
Barbara McClintock is the latest discovery Molly made at our local library, and her work is phenomenal. The first we brought home was (aptly named) Molly and the Magic Wishbone. Molly then picked up Adèle & Simon and Dahlia, both good. Molly and the Magic Wishbone has remained my favorite. In it McClintock creates a world of realistic looking animals who nevertheless wear Dickensesque period outfits and poignant, believable human expressions in each scene.
First Mac OSX application Icon
This is for the (beta) Mac version of a tool my brother and I produced that will tell you which of a set of keyword phrases will display local results when searched in Google’s web search. A great tool for local SEO.
Full disclosure: The magnifying glass is an edited iStockPhoto.com illustration. The rest is mine.
My 2nd Generation iPod Touch
When Apple came out with the iPhone, I was wowed like (nearly) everyone else, but I’m a cell phone luddite. In a precog moment I actually thought to myself, “If only it weren’t a phone…” Enter the iPod Touch.
I loved the idea of this device but still wasn’t willing to jump on the technology bandwagon. I have enough pieces of hardware and software calling for constant updates (read: $). I can keep buying $9 packs of field notes, and no one will tell me I have to buy the latest and greatest update.
Cut to the chase, right? As the title implies, I’ve taken the plunge, thanks in large part to an Apple gift card I got from my brother and fellow web marketer, Chad. It’s too early to tell whether it’s as useful as I hoped it would be (contacts, todo lists, calendars — I already have an iPod for music), but I certainly like it. A lot.
And one unforeseen effect: the interface is so interesting, I want to produce content for it. At the very least, I have some fun ideas for wallpapers. We’ll see if I actually manage to crack open the iPhone developer tools.