Filed under: Graphic Design

So, you're tired of your Twitter avatar, the photo of your face that you took in Photo Booth. Maybe a nice portrait would be in order...

David Lanham, who is probably best known for his work with Iconfactory (he designed Ollie, the Twitteriffic bluebird), is an accomplished artist whose body of work using electronic media and traditional art media is whimsical, thought-provoking, and beautiful. I've used one of his vector drawings (Game Hunter) as my desktop wallpaper on my iMac, and it never ceases to make me smile when I look at it.

Lanham recently broke his foot, which forced him to hang around his house. A friend of his volunteered for a portrait, with the traditional "sitting" being done over a FaceTime call. He decided to make a few bucks while immobile, so he's been picking up FaceTime portrait work at $50 a pop. Once the portrait is complete, you can use it as your online avatar, and perhaps even order a giclée print for your study.

According to a developer who is currently working with Lanham, the artist's inbox is now jam-packed with requests for these cool drawings, so don't expect him to respond immediately if you're in the market for a FaceTime portrait.

Thanks to Jack (second from the right) for the tip!

Recent versions of Webkit, the browser engine that Safari and Chrome are based on, have allowed for extensive use of CSS3, as well as some proprietary CSS tricks. The result has been some very innovative art created entirely using CSS. Take, for example, Louis Harboe's set of iOS icons created using some CSS3 properties such as rounded corners, shadows and gradients (among others). The finished set is stunning. Of course, the demo will only display properly in a compatible browser, so if you're using something other than an up-to-date version of Safari or Chrome (or Webkit, of course), you won't see much.

If you're not a web designer, this might not look like a big deal. What you're seeing, though, are images created entirely without images; they're built using nothing but code that defines shapes, gradients, colors, etc. You can hit View Source on the page to see the code that defines these things -- it's nothing but divs and the CSS to color and shape them.

If you are using a browser that can render these designs, you'll also want to check out Jeff Batterton's iPhone world clock, rendered in pure CSS3. Considering the rectangles that CSS has left designers stuck in for years, this is some pretty exciting stuff. I can still recall the first wave of people doing really innovative tricks with CSS2, and the push that they provided to the general web design community. I hope to see web design taking great strides forward as these new standards become accessible to an increasingly wider range of the web-surfing public. Modern browsers are pushing new limits ... we just have to wait for certain other browsers to finally be put to rest.

This is the kind of thing that's just clever enough to work once. Artist Andrew Fulton really wants an iPad (as do most of us), but he doesn't have the money to get one (likewise). So he's decided to try and sell some iPad-related art to raise money for his iPad. For as little as US$20 (just a duotone drawing) or as high as $125 (a full-color strip), you can commission and get an original piece of iPad-related artwork, drawn just for you. He's got a sample page of drawings, and while taste is always subjective, I have no doubt that he'll be able to get the iPad he wants.

Funny little idea, and maybe if you're willing to subsidize another iPad purchase and like his style, you can pick up a nice piece of original art for yourself. In the meantime, if anyone needs any iPad-related fiction, I'd be happy to put down a few thousand words for, say, $499 ...

[via Super Punch]

Got a desire to mess with some pictures you have by controlling blur or making full-sized objects look like miniatures? I've just played with some software called Tilt-Shift-Focus that mimics the way tilt shift lenses work. By artfully applying selective blur, you can make objects look they are part of a train set. There is another effect that duplicates the look of zoom movement in a still photo.

There are several modes that let you define where the blur and sharpness is positioned in your image. You can also use a paintbrush tool to draw sharpness onto an image that is pre-blurred.

To use the software, you manipulate control points. At first it seems very counter-intuitive, but with a little practice it starts to make sense. Of course, this software is not going to duplicate what an expensive lens can do, but I found it fun to manipulate some photos from my archives and 'miniaturize' parts of the photos.

One thing I noticed was that at times loading and saving JPEG images was very slow. I also wish there was some built-in help to get you started, but the developer does have some good tutorials and a helpful videos on his website.

If you are looking to do this on an iPhone check out our review here. You can also simulate this effect in Photoshop, and we have you covered there too.

The software sells for US$14.99 and requires OS X 10.5 or later. It's worth a spin if you are interested in doing these kinds of effects.

Here are some examples I created:

Transparent House, a San Fransisco-based 3D design and visualization studio, has created this stunning video that showcases some of Apple's best designs over its 34-year history. Ground-breaking products from the Apple I in 1976 to the iPad in 2010 are shown.

What makes this video so impressive is that everything in it is entirely 3D generated. The animation was done using 3Ds Max and V-Ray render and only took about 10 days to complete. Check out the video below to see if your favorite Apple product made the list.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Photoshop, Adobe recently recreated Photoshop 1.0 -- on the iPhone. Porting the venerable application over to the iPhone reportedly took Adobe a mere two weeks of development. The application is not available on the iTunes Store; Adobe only created the app as a promo for their 20th anniversary Photoshop celebration. The app is really only valuable as a bit of nostalgia anyway, as Adobe's free iPhone app, Photoshop.com Mobile, has far more features than the Photoshop 1.0 app demoed above, which only seems to perform global level and RGB channel adjustments.

Even though the app isn't available to the public and is of limited utility compared to more modern offerings, it was still pretty cool to see UI elements from Classic Mac OS running on the iPhone. Using the Mac startup chime when Photoshop 1.0 launches on the iPhone was a particularly inspired touch, even if they did use the modern chime rather than any of the three 1990-era chimes. Now, if someone ever ports HyperCard over to the iPhone, I think my geek-meter might go right into overload.

On the last day of Macworld, I caught up with the guys from TypeDNA to take a look at what I soon realized was going to be a revolutionary bit of software magic for designers of any ilk. TypeDNA is a series of plugins for Adobe CS4 applications (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) which makes finding the right font a simple matter.

It has several methods for navigating font collections, starting with a search by name, which is handy on its own. The functionality expands from there, doing such things as automatically offering suggestions for similar fonts and font harmonies. The harmonies feature is especially interesting, and the suggestions it offered while they were demoing it were very good. You can pick a font from the suggestions and search for similar fonts to find exactly the right typeface for your project. TypeDNA always offers a variety of suggestions, and recognizes that font choice is entirely subjective ... you make all the decisions, it just helps you navigate a large font collection quickly and intuitively.

I'll be doing a more in-depth review as soon as the demo version comes out (soon). The full version will be available in March, and will run $59US per plugin, or $89US for a full set (3 plugins) and two licenses so you can use them on two separate machines.

Here at TUAW, we've been treated to so many concept drawings and fake photoshopped tablets over the past several months that we've become somewhat jaded about them. However, Polish designer Patrycjucz Brzezinski's concept for an Apple tablet, named the MacView, is so well done that it deserves mention. The MacView was developed as a diploma project for Brzezinski, and if the work shown on various Web sites is any indication, he may go far in his career as a designer.

The concept of the MacView is different: rather than a single slab of aluminum and glass that looks like a large iPhone, Brzezinski has a "slider" design made out of carbon fiber materials. The MacView can be used as simply a tablet, or the slider section -- which is also a display -- can turn into a nook-like sub-display showing a Cover Flow view of files or songs, or into a full-sized virtual keyboard when pulled out a bit further.

Brzezinski's vision doesn't stop at the design of the device. He's also created an iMac-like dock for the MacView into which the device can be placed to turn it into a full desktop machine. He even designed packaging for the MacView.

The Pineapple Blog has many of the concept drawings with English translations, and you can see the full portfolio over at The Behance Network.

Thanks to Wojtek for the tip!

Now here's a fascinating app -- Inklet is a new Mac app by Ten One Design that purports to turn your Macbook's trackpad into a tablet-style input. The program uses the multitouch trackpad interface to sense where and when you're touching the pad, and then translates that into "drawing" marks just like a Wacom pen tablet. Unfortunately, the trackpad doesn't have sensitivity built-in (it can only tell when you're touching, not how hard you're pushing), but with Ten One's Pogo Sketch stylus, which I presume sends pressure information back to your Macbook somehow, you can get that "line thickness" functionality -- press harder for a thicker line, or less for a thinner line. Pretty awesome. It's not as big or probably as sensitive as a commercial Wacom tablet, but just for doodling and messing around, it's a much cheaper solution.

Inklet requires Snow Leopard to work, so if you're running anything pre-10.6, you're out of luck. The software is $24.95, and their website has been brought to its knees by recent press, so you can download it from Apple's site if you can't reach it the official way. The Pogo Sketch stylus is only required for pressure sensitivity, but it's a very reasonable $15. Like I said, if you're like me and want a Wacom but haven't had the cash or inclination to spend on it, Inklet could be the stepping stone you're looking for.

We'll have a full TUAW review of Inkjet within the next few days.

Our friends at LateNiteSoft sent word that they've updated Sketches, one of the first iPhone apps I ever picked up, to version 2.0. The app has been released [iTunes link] as an entirely new download, so even upgraders from version 1 will have to pay the current price of $1.99. LateNiteSoft tells us that upgrade price is temporary -- they plan to keep the original app on the store as "Sketches Classic" for 99 cents, and eventually the price of the new version will go up a few more bucks. If you want to upgrade, go grab Sketches 2 as soon as you can.

Tthe new app offers a number of improvements, including a completely revamped UI designed to quickly run through large collections. The new UI also keeps tools handy, but out of the way, as you use them. As you can see in the screen shots above, all the tools are stashed at the bottom of the screen instead of covering up your picture while you're working on it. Sketches 2 now lets you paint using brushes, which makes for some nice choices in terms of marking pictures, canvas, maps, or whatever else you choose as a background in the app. The zoom functionality has been updated, with new gestures and a smoother shape adjustment interface. As with the original Sketches app, you can share and export your work however you like. You can use the app to create a masterpiece and then tweet about it, or just mark some notes on a map and send it off to a friend.

Sketches 1 was a bargain back when I picked it up for $7 in the earliest days of the App Store, and this new version adds even more features at less than half the price. If you have any inkling about making some art on your iPhone, it's a solid buy.

Some Mac users just don't want to be limited to one monitor, but would like two... or three... or more.

Having only one display port on your Mac can put a real crimp in your plans to be the master of the monitor universe, so NewerTech has launched the USB 2.0 Display Adapter. The adapter, with a suggested retail price of US$96.00, lets users add an extra HDMI, DVI, or VGA display to their Mac. Up to four of the bus-powered adapters can be hosted on each Mac, and each adapter can support a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1152. The device also supports Windows, and can be used with Boot Camp.

Cloning and extended desktop modes are supported by the USB 2.0 Display Adapter. A secondary adapter (VGA and HDMI adapters are supplied) must be attached to connect VGA or HDMI displays. Unfortunately, the adapter doesn't allow OpenGL acceleration, so applications that use Quartz Extreme, Quartz Composer, and other related frameworks are not full supported. This means that Keynote, iPhoto, and iMovie will not see the benefit of OpenGL acceleration.

To use the adapter, your Mac must have an Intel processor and be running Mac OS X 10.4.11 or better.

Talk about burying the lead -- Shufflegazine did a piece on Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Hwang during a visit to Dubai recently, in which he talks about how much he and his family love their Macs, and Apple's machines add value, and in his house it's just "Mac, Mac, Mac," and OH MY GOD, what is that SITTING ON THE TABLE in front of him? OK, it's probably not definitely not an Apple tablet (yet), as there's no clear Apple logo on it, but man that's a nice looking tablet device, and even Engadget says they have no idea what it is.

The thing is, this picture just appeared with Shufflegazine's piece, and while Hwang did go on and on about how much he loves Apple stuff (and yes, the two companies have a long history of sharing some hardware), there's not word one about that tablet or anything like it in the piece, no hint of any other hardware or partnership announcement. It could be a prototype, it could be another tablet we're just not recognizing, or yes, Hwang could have just thrown it down on the table during the interview, and Shufflegazine could have just completely missed it. [They didn't. -Ed.]

Though if that last one is true, we have no idea how it happened. How do you cover Apple and their gadgets and avoid being drawn to that tablet. It's so... thin and well-designed. We'll be honest, if we were in the room, we might have licked it then and there to claim it as our own.

Thanks to Nemanja for the tip.

This is exactly the kind of thing we love to see here at TUAW (and thanks for sending it along, Danny) -- Glyph of the Twisted project got a job offer from Apple last week, and over on his blog, he posts a set of unboxing pics. Which might sound silly (an unboxing for a new hire packet?), but when you're talking about Apple, it's worth it. It turns out they put nearly as much thought into the design of their paperwork as they do into the rest of their projects. From the iconic folder to the way it's organized, designed, and laid out, getting a job offer from Apple isn't just super exciting, it's apparently a thing of beauty.

To tell the truth, we half expected him to turn the folder over and see the words "Designed by Apple in California." Good luck to Glyph with his job, and it warms our hearts here as Apple fans at TUAW to see that something the company never expected to be shown to the public was assembled with such care and thought.

Part of my work requires me to mock up iPhone apps, often to show developers how I would redesign a user interface to work better than something they've come up with. Over the past few months, a number of paper sketchbooks have appeared on the market, all designed expressly for this purpose. I decided to try out all of the sketchbooks that I could find in a cursory Google search, just to see which one would work best for me. Of course, that meant that I had to write a review!

The three products I discovered and tested were App Sketchbook (US$16.99), iPhone Application Sketch Book (US$14.99), and The Developer Sketchbook for iPhone Apps (US$19.99). All of them are designed for the same reason, to let iPhone devs or business analysts describe how they want an application's user interface to look. Follow along as I take a look at these three sketchbooks, as well as a metal stencil template for drawing UI elements.