White House Wednesdays

I love these photos on Flickr, especially the fact that the US National Archives are on Twitter. THis particular photo set is of the interior of the White House when it was completely gutted: “The decision was made to move the Trumans across the street into the Blair House for three years while the White House underwent a complete reconstruction within its original exterior walls.”

Equator Beer

You don't often see a blind-printed label on food or drink, but this is special beer. It was brewed by the design company Equator Design, in their Sydney offices (!) for their clients. The wooden cases that house them, also built by members of the company, are a beautiful complement to them.

BGP Arquitectura: MTY House, Mexico

A gigantic monolith of a home, that sits amongst the trees on the side of a Mexican mountain. I'd say the masses of concrete keep it cool in summer and warm in winter.

Minnesota United FC on Brand New

I really like this rebrand of a football crest. It keeps the 'feel' of a crest, but is contemporary and so much slicker than the previous crest.

The Eco Fan requires no power

This fan that sits on top of a wood-burning stove, uses the heat generated from the stove to create an electrical circuit and spin the fan, distributing the rising heat from the stove throughout the room. I really love this idea, but shudder at the thought of a child putting their hands near it when in full flight...

Whilst I have some free time between jobs (yes I am looking for interesting opportunities- let me know!) I decided to redesign the local business/organisation directory I made about four years, the Athy Directory.

I had built it to scratch my own itch- a lot of small local businesses had no web presence, which makes it very difficult to Google them. Things have changed now and there are many more of them online, but I think my directory still stands up.

There are plenty of little bits and pieces that I still need to do, which I will get 'round to doing soon, but at the moment, these are the elements I've been working on.

Design

As with any project that is your own, I spent too much time going back and forward with different designs. Mobile devices are important but I didn't really want to end up creating a heap of media queries (I wanted to Keep It Simple, See?) In the end I decided to take the Zeldman route and design a site that essentially looks the same regardless of device (although I still used a few media queries but not many.) The Athy colours are red and white, so I wanted to use them (previously blue and orange for some reason.)

Autocomplete

I really wanted an autocomplete function, it's almost ubiquitous with search, so I set about it. I thought I could do it easily enough, but in the end I used an Autocomplete JQuery plugin, which worked great. As I developed the backend system, it was easy for me to output a JSON file with all businesses, organisation and categories that people may be searching for. This feature ended up being much easier than I expected.

Homepage furniture

With the previous version, I had pulled the Yahoo weather feed in, via RSS, for Athy. I wanted to continue this providing useful information, so I linked to the Wikipedia page and location on Google Maps.

I had worked on an analog clock mechanism (because I'm a wannabe horologist) in a previous project, and as it wasn't being used anymore, I decided to put one on this homepage. It's an adapted version of this clock code. It's pretty simple, my contribution to it, was having it independent of the clock on the visitor's computer.
I think I'll have to explain this in a separate blog post.

Necessary Evil

Initially I tried a sponsorship program with local businesses to cover hosting costs etcetera, but more time was spent chasing payment. Google Adsense allows me to cover costs with no work. Pity the ads are always so bloody ugly.

I have both a Facebook account and page for the Directory, so I felt I needed to put a Like button on the page. Yes, that's it, the goofy element that always looks out of place. I'm beginning to accept the role FB has to play online. I accept it but I don't 'like' it.

Miscellaneous

I built the backend using PHP, which has held up fine. I used the Sphider indexing system to create a fast search. It's ok and does the job. Athy is a small town so there's never a heavy load on traffic or visitors, and as I manually put in new businesses, it's secure from bad people.

Please visit the site and let me know what you think.

DKNG Fun’s Seattle Ice Cream Truck

I love the work of DKNG, I could watch their process videos over and over. This behind-the-scenes blog post details their recent Ice Cream Truck poster. Really great, love those display Ice Cream signs.

Minimalism And Playfulness Defining Residence Made of Shipping Containers

Everybody loves the reuse of shipping containers, it's fun to see what people do with the constraint of the shipping container shape. This house doesn't look like it, but it's made of shipping containers.

Rich Kelly Django Unchained

I linked to the one example of this guy's work, but you should check out his whole portfolio. Stellar work.

Solid Concrete House With a Staggering Zen Lounge Area

This is one behemoth of a concrete home, but the interiors are really nice. I especially like the open lounge area that almost is part of the garden. Too much concrete for my tastes, but I'd live in it regardless (a lick of paint would be need though...)

Le Chat

This beer label is more like a car 'wrap'. Really nice colour palette, nice textures, very interesting design overall.

I studied Shakespeare's Julius Caeser in school and, to this day, I still enjoy it. I think this mostly has to do with how a large number of quotes and references from it, have made their way into popular culture.

Case in point, you may see references to the Ides of March online today, March 15th. This was the day (according to Julius Caeser) that Caeser was assassinated. He was warned by a soothsayer to “Beware the Ides of March”.

I've listed some more memorable quotations below, I'm sure you've come across them at some point.

“Et tu, Brute?”

“It is the bright day that brings forth the adder
And that craves wary walking.”

“Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar”

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

“As he was valiant, I honor him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.”

Shakespeare references are always fun, especially when used in a modern context. I particularly like the Macbeth reference in Collateral.

The Making of John Mayer's 'Born & Raised' Artwork

I've watched this video a couple of times- the skill and talent of this traditional signwriter is amazing. He draws the album artwork by hand and then vectorises, and then as a present to Mayer, creates two framed glass signs for Mayer, using a wide range of techniques.

Do yourself a favour, put twenty minutes aside and watch this.

Ghostbusters HQ in Lego

How could I not relink this piece? I like these Lego models based on well known buildings and places from movies and tv shows. The Ghostbusters HQ seems to work really well in this case and this is not the first model of this particular building I've seen. However I think this is the best I've seen.

ade architecture

I live in the end house of a four house terrace and I dream of adding a huge extension to the back of our house. I think if I could afford to do it, I'd be stealing ideas from this home. It's an amazing extension, really beautiful.

Michael Bierut at Creative Mornings

This was a really good talk, given by Michael Bierut of Pentagram fame. He shows a real acute understanding of the business side to design, as well as the design side of design. Worth a watch.

Moving Brands: Augusta Ventures

I relinked to this because I just really like this branding. Simple and smart, represents the business really well. Also, nice write-up by Moving Brands.