Move Along Nothing to See Here

I entered 2010 in a depressed cocoon. I wasn’t happy with my life or surroundings. I hid in my apartment for 3 months listening to weird music and drawing scary posters, trying to avoid the snow. I finally decided it was time to do all the things I’d been putting off. I got some of the posters screen printed and sold them, they turned out beautifully. I got an awesome new job and moved to San Francisco, embarking on a harrowing 5 day road trip with my best friend, full of the worst weather the United States has to offer in every time zone. After a 2 hour, white knuckle ride down Donner Mountain in a freak blizzard (don’t worry we didn’t have to eat anyone) I found myself in a place I can finally call home.

I’ve met the most amazing and positive people, who are a constant source of inspiration and creativity. I spend my days working with some of the smartest and most talented people, in an office with a view that never gets old. I spend my nights and weekends playing with my dogs, bumming around the park, reading on the beach, playing guitar, drawing, drawing and drawing, and with my friends. I live in a beautiful painted lady. Everything I could ever want in the universe is just a 15 minute walk or train ride away.

A new chapter in my life calls for a new site, where I’ll be posting all the comics I’ve been drawing. If 2011 is anything like 2010, I’m in for an awesome time. It doesn’t make much sense to keep up a design portfolio when I can’t really post case studies from my last few jobs due to NDAs. Someday I might post here again, but consider this an official leave of absence. Thanks for reading Resist all these years, and I hope you’ll enjoy my comics on the new site.

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So Long Cleveland

I was offered an awesome gig at Hotwire.com. Pure user experience, and no code. (I love code, when I don’t have to bastardize it.) Suck it IE6, you can tangle with someone else now. The job comes with awesome travel perks, and just so happens to be in one of the most beautiful cities in the country. I’d even speculate it is THE most beautiful, but there are a lot of places I haven’t been. So in just a few weeks I’ll be dragging all my remaining belongings and two wiggly dogs cross country to San Francisco.

I feel a little bit like a hypocrite for leaving, but I have my reasons. Cleveland has a lot of great things other cities do. When the weather is nice, parts of it are beautiful. I even find some of the industrial decay charming. There really is nothing quite like fall in Ohio. The lake can be pretty. We have tons of awesome restaurants, there are some good record stores, and some good bands come to town. I have no idea where I will find awesome kraut and pierogies after I leave. But what I’ve realized is everything cool Cleveland has, bigger cities have times ten. I guess if I had a spouse and kids I’d be more inclined to stay, there are some good schools, the cost of living is very cheap so you can afford a big house on a pretty street without having to make a lot of money. It can be quiet. But I’ve had it with snow, I don’t like 3 months of oppressive weather that keep you from going anywhere. Did you know most people in Ohio have a vitamin D deficiency? Yeah thanks crappy weather. In the summer time it’s incredibly hot and humid. I’ll be grateful for a moderate climate.

Dealing with the overwhelming local “mistake by the lake” attitude is pretty daunting. It’s hard to like where you live when so many other people here hate it. Parts of Cleveland are pretty suburban, I’m definitely interested in a more urban lifestyle. No more strip malls, no more ladies in puffy paint holiday sweaters with mall bangs, no more Kmarts, no Applebees, no offended old people staring at my tattoos as though I might rob them, no more soccer moms with double wide strollers trying to mow me down at the grocery store.

I got to be part of a wonderful organization, the Cleveland Web Standards Association, which definitely kept me around here a lot longer than I ever planned. These folks showed me what having a community was all about. We had great and informative presentations every month but the best parts have always been geeking out over a couple beers afterward, and swapping war stories about clients, bizarre RFPs, and IE6 induced grey hairs. More than professional colleagues, these folks have been awesome friends, and I don’t think I could be doing the things I am now without them.

It’s hard to leave family and friends, but I’m hoping living in a great city will entice everyone to visit. My grandma lives in the bay area, so I’m very excited to make up for lost time with her.

Professionally I realized I needed to grow in ways I wasn’t anymore. I started turning to personal projects and illustration to fulfill my creative needs, and realized that wasn’t why I put myself in student loan debt for life. I’m paying too much money to not be psyched about work every day. I felt I owed it to myself to try something new, something has been not quite right for a long time and I made a lot of excuses for why I wasn’t changing it. I guess I finally ran out.

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Spicy Orange Marmalade Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 lb clementines
• 2 lemons
• 1 lb sugar
• 3 dried thai chilis
• 1 tsp. thai chili flakes
• 12 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp chinese 5 spice powder

Instructions

1. Peel clementines, removing as much pith as possible. (A sharp paring knife makes this a lot easier.)
2. Take 1-2 clementine’s worth of peel (rinsed) and slice into long thin strips.
3. Peel and seed lemons.
4. Puree clementines and lemon in a food processor or blender until slightly chunky.
5. Puree garlic.
6. Pour all ingredients in sauce pan with affixed candy thermometer, and bring to a boil.
7. Reduce heat, stir frequently and simmer until mixture reaches 220 degrees Fahrenheit.
8. Skim any foam off the top, and pour mixture into a preheated (so it doesn’t crack) glass container.

You really could use any combination of fruit you have lying around the house. Most jam / marmalade recipes recommend a 1 / 1 ratio of fruit to sugar. (A kitchen scale is a tremendous help.) This didn’t turn out really spicy, I tried to keep the heat down in case I use it to cook for friends who don’t like hot food. I figured I could easily add more pepper flakes on a dish by dish basis. This could also be canned if you sterilize jars first. Some excellent uses are stir fry, spread on grilled cheese, or a glaze for any kind of roast. It finishes pretty thick, so if you want to use it in a stir fry you will want to add some liquid as well.

The Asian ingredients can easily be obtained at your local Asian grocer. If you don’t have one you could substitute other pepper flakes / dried peppers, just keep in mind the Thai variety is much hotter than typical red pepper flakes. The five spice powder can be substituted with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and a tiny bit of cumin.

If took about an hour on low heat for my marmalade to reach 220, if you don’t have a candy thermometer, when the mixture starts to become thick put a glob on a chilled plate and run a knife through it. If it runs together, it’s not done.

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Food Projects I’d Like to Tackle This Year

Making my own:

• Bread
• Cheese
• Jams (canning in general)
• Butter (and subsequently, herb butter)
• Prosciutto
• Sausage
• Pickled peppers or veggies
• Soda or root beer

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On Designing in the Browser

The bottom line is you should use whatever is most effective for you, but for me starting in the browser is working backwards.

I learned a design is done in layers, and I believe markup is just one of the outer layers. When I draw a figure I begin with a gesture, then a skeleton, then muscle, skin and clothing. If I start with the clothes I don’t understand what’s under them and how they should fall, where the light and shadows belong.

When I build a website I start with a list of the content it requires, then a doodle, a wireframe or a combination of the two, a comp, and finally markup and style. There are a variety of tools for any of these steps, but the browser is only a tool for one. Skipping any of those steps seems lazy and like a missed opportunity to think a design completely through.

Yes, you certainly need to be aware of browser limitations when creating a design, but those shouldn’t dictate your design. (People who have zero fluency in markup have no business calling themselves web designers.)Creativity in code can come from trying to make a good, usable design do everything it can and should. This is how we push new browser standards, or end up with tools that help fill the gaps, like jQuery.

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Web Designers Please Stop Doing This

Everywhere you look these days sites using some variation of the above template are getting accolades. What is wrong with us?

I have been kicking around my general gripes about the state of “design” in web design for a while now but wasn’t inspired to write an article until I saw Paul Scrivens’ Smashing Magazine Killed the Community, and was in almost complete agreement.

Where is the value in compiling other people’s content or screenshots of their sites offering no additional input other than to regurgitate it as your own for the sake of a few Diggs? And where is the credibility in these Top 10 Crazy Ass Things to Do With Type sites anyway? Have you ever seen a truly reputable designer you know writing for them? And now they’re selling you a book. All these sites do is glorify trends and cliches.

This got me to thinking, whatever happened to the CSS galleries of yore? Now there are scores of them, all the featured sites with the same cookie cutter layout. I don’t think the problem is as Paul said, that CSS galleries were something easy to replicate. I think the problem is one of content. These sites aren’t scouring for anything pushing boundaries, they passively accept suggestions and post accordingly. Now that people with dollar signs in their eyes are flocking to the industry in droves, an appetite for this garbage has been cultivated.

I can understand how sites like this might be good reference for someone just beginning their career, a starting point to see what’s been done before, but they become dangerous when they preach trends as gospel and all of a sudden every new site on the internet looks the same. Remember Web 2.0? Where did all those designers go? Gradients, drop shadows and rounded corners gave way to Photoshop effects, mismatched social media icons and poorly executed grunge type. Do we really want to be the David Carsons of the web industry, slowly becoming caricatures of ourselves? Once upon a time we had wonderful places to go for web inspiration, like Stylegala.

Now it’s time to stop looking at the web for inspiration. So many people in this industry do not come from a design background, we need to get back to design basics. Design school 101. Real typography, not just “picking out a cool font”. Grids, and not out of the box solutions, but thinking about a real working grid for our sites. Using an out of the box grid is equivalent to using an out of the box Wordpress template with no regard to how it fits your content at all. Color. Strip away Photoshop techniques. Software is just a tool, designs should be able to survive without effects and shadows. Stop designing your content for your CMS and work the other way around. Want to learn about storytelling? Take a comic book illustration class, even if you can’t draw.

You’re not going to find a quick solution for good design in a top ten list. Real design is hard, that’s why we expect to be paid well for it. Stop listening to people spend a lot of time talking about web design but doing very little design themselves, and instead go back to real designers. Start at the beginning. Start at Bauhaus. Start at De Stijl. Start at military propaganda art. Start anywhere but with freaking web design.

P.S. Can we please stop doing this also? This is like lens flare part two.

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All I Need Now is a Cherry

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Why Did I Not Find This Before It Sold Out?

From Rockett.

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Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks

The best part of this really is at the end: Love is the answer. He talks about how doing what you love with other people who love what they do will ensure happiness, and probably success too.

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Alternate Occupations I Would Consider Should the Web Industry Tank

1. Occult book editor
2. Master of espionage
3. Belligerent, temperamental chef
4. One of those people that lives with wolves / tigers / alligators (insert large wild beast here) for purposes of *ahem* “science.”
5. Whisky distiller

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Cassoulet Recipe

The recipes I based this off of include Michael Ruhlman’s and Anthony Bourdain’s cassoulet from No Reservations Cleveland, a Martha Stewart recipe that’s bizarrely edited, and therefore incomplete and lastly a Michael Lewis (Gourmet) recipe adapted from Julia Child’s recipe.

While cassoulet sounds intimidating it’s a very basic country dish. Literally, this is just meat and beans in a pot people. I mention this because with any very simple food, quality ingredients are key. So get the best and freshest you can find with what you’re willing to spend. This is not a place to skimp. It’s also worth noting that there is a lot of flexibility in regards to the meat, if you Google around you’ll find people also use pork shoulder, lamb or duck breast instead of any of what’s listed below. The important thing is to make sure there’s still a fatty pork to flavor the beans and flavor the dish as it cooks.

My recipe was designed for my 5qt dutch oven, if you have a larger roaster you could add a half pound of beans and another pound of a different meat. Because I used bacon and prosciutto I didn’t need to add any salt to the dish, but if you are using pork belly you will probably want a teaspoon to season the beans as they cook.

I recommend making your own confit at least a week in advance (though you could do it two days before if pressed for time.) I use Michael Ruhlman’s confit recipe. Confit is actually very simple, it just requires you have some time on your hands. You’ll need to allow the confit to sit at room temperature for a few hours before making the cassoulet so the fat liquifies and you can get the legs out.

If you are wondering where on earth to get pork belly or duck legs for confit, call around to some local butchers if you don’t have a good farmer’s market nearby. If the butcher’s don’t already have it they can likely get it for you in a few days. If you’re going that route you may want to inquire about getting some duck fat too to use for the confit instead of olive oil. (The duck fat will preserve better.)

Ingredients

• 3-4 legs of duck confit
• 1lb garlic sausage (preferably a mild French sausage)
• 1lb pork belly (can substitute with uncured bacon or prosciutto)
• 1 ham hock
• 2lbs dry white beans such as navy or great northern, soaked overnight in cold water
• 1 large onion
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 2 carrots (peeled)
• 1 bay leaf
• A handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley
• A few sprigs of fresh thyme
• A few stems of fresh rosemary
• 5 pieces of fresh white bread
• 4 tbsp of butter
• 1tsp pepper
• Butcher’s twine and rinsed cheesecloth

Instructions

1. Take cheesecloth, and create a bundle of 6 or 7 stems parsley, half the thyme and all of the garlic, rosemary and bay leaf. A few whole cloves could also be added. Tie bundle with butcher’s twine.
2. In a large cast iron enameled pot cover beans, ham hock, carrots, onion and bundle created in previous step with 1-2 inches of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 45 minutes or until beans are tender but not falling apart.
3. When beans are finished, skim top of liquid then transfer to a large bowl, reserve cooking liquid in another. Discard garlic, onion, carrots, ham hock and herb bundle.
4. Roast confit in a 425 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, then remove meat from bones and shred. See confit photo.
5. In the enameled pot render the fat from 2-3 pieces of bacon.
6. Remove bacon, brown sausages in bacon fat, but do not cook completely. Slice finished sausages into 1/4 rounds.
7. Line the bottom of the pan with uncooked bacon, as if making a crust.
8. Cover layer of bacon with layer of beans, then sausage, then another layer of beans, then duck confit, then final layer of beans, sprinkling thyme, chopped parsley and a pinch of pepper between each layer.
9. Add cooking liquid from the beans until there is an inch or two covering the dish. If the cooking liquid is not enough just add cold water.
10. Place assembled cassoulet in 350 degree oven for two hours.
11. In a food processor add bread, remaining parsley and butter and combine to the consistency of a breadcrumb mixture.
12. Cover top of cassoulet with breadcrumb mixture and cook for another hour at 425 degrees, until golden brown and bubbling.
13. Let dish stand for 5-10 minutes to absord liquid.

Cassoulet can be served on it’s own, or with a small salad and some crusty white french bread. An alternate serving suggestion is to roast a few cloves of garlic, rub them on slices of crusty bread, place bread in the bottom of a bowl and serve cassoulet over top.

See the finished product on Flickr.

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