definatalie.com » graphic design

Don’t dream it’s Oct-over (groan)

Natalie — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 05:47:50 +0000

If I sneak in and deposit these desktops right here, no one will have any idea that they are five days late…. right?! Unfortunately, no. I know you’ve been waiting and I’m so sorry for the delay. My sister got married and I’ve been doing all manner of things but now October can officially begin!

The fabric texture you see here is actually a scan of the silk dupion used in my wedding dress. No, it wasn’t purple! It was red! I tweaked the colours ;)

Get your resolution right here:
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Wallpaper for iPhone (320×480)
Wallpaper for other phones (240×320)

I spend around 12-24 hours on each desktop, inking and drawing each element before scanning everything and pulling it all together in Photoshop for each desktop resolution. If you’d like to throw in a couple of bucks to contribute to the time spent drawing each desktop as well as my general hosting costs for definatalie.com and my flickr account, your donation will be much appreciated. <3

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
You may not upload this desktop to other websites, nor may you use it for any other purpose than to wallpaper your desktop. This also means it’s uncool to alter it and reupload it somewhere as your own work.

Free to loving homes: your September desktop

Natalie — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:05:45 +0000

September is here, only four days late… can you forgive me?! I hadn’t forgotten, it’s just I was busy you see and I have a funny feeling the first few days of the month are going to set the trend for the next few weeks. The colour inspiration is quite obviously taken from a juicy watermelon, one of my favourite fruits of all time. Pretty and delicious!

Don’t delay, start downloading your desktop right now:
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Wallpaper for iPhone (320×480)
Wallpaper for other phones (240×320)

Come look at what I’ve been doing…

Natalie — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:51:42 +0000

Did I show you the poster I drew for the Leeloo Disband show? Well if so, here it is again, because Renee and Angela are taking the exhibition to Melbourne! My work will also be in this show, so if you’re local to Melbourne make a date to check it out.

I posted a snap of this as a work in progress before going in and doodling up a frenzy with my Pilot Hi-Tec-C. It’s available on Red Bubble to buy as a print.

For something a bit different: I designed a blog layout for Nick and his billionth new blog (teehee). I wanted to give him a blog he felt comfortable with and inspired by, so he’d keep nourishing it and growing it. It’s very cute and fresh, just like him!

The lovely Rebecca commissioned this piece from me! It’s sitting beside me, patiently waiting to be mailed. Eep!

One of two girls I was thumbnailing for a bigger illustration.

I liked her grumpy face!

This is the bigger illustration I did. I couldn’t think of what to call her, so I named her Daisy. Sometimes it’s just too hard naming things. What would you name her?

Worth seven thousand words?

Natalie — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:50:29 +0000

If I existed even 20 years earlier, I would waste a lot of paper in the process of making stuff. I’m pretty amazed at the technology I have on hand to create things, even my iPhone camera in conjunction with various apps helps me make things and I don’t have to stress about paper waste.

I thought it was funny that tuna and tortillas were stacked together at the supermarket.

The other day I took some portraits of myself because the only ones I had featured me with blonde hair! This one isn’t very usable, because I’m not looking at the camera but I like it. It feels more… me.

The back of my new blog business cards. Blogness cards? I can’t wait until they come back from the printer!

Our house is full of doilies that I’ve bought in op shops. They’re handy and make our cavern of an apartment feel more intimate and homely.

I’ve designed another poster for Charlie Mayfair. We’re keeping with the same visual language of the first poster and EP, but in future months we’ll be building on that language with new imagery. We decided to tell a story through pictures and design to reward the band’s fans, but also to find new listeners and lure them over to the Charlie Mayfair way!

Friday nights aren’t about neon lights and loud music in the Perkins household. They’re about sunsets, drawing and watching the masterclass on Masterchef!

Friday Fance: A jumbled assortment

Natalie — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:22:22 +0000

Tassels. I’m totally thinking about tassels lately. Flett Bertram’s tassel dresses (seen on Style Bubble) remind me of my Nana’s house and how she’d have these tassels hanging from the old keys stuck in the doors of her display cabinets. I actually have one of those display cabinets now, and a long tassel dangles from the old key!

The YFF Conference took place in New York City over the past weekend and I was sad that I couldn’t make it there, because the ladies looked like they were having so much fun! My ego was suitably assuaged when I saw the girls on live chat and they said they missed me :D

I really like the work of Kelie Bowman, and was kind of weirded out to see how similar some of her new work is to some of my old work (particularly Riddled with Paisley).

I’m sure Helen Furber‘s sustainable shoe designs have done the rounds in the last fortnight but I couldn’t not post this! I love the stalactite style heel, especially when it’s encased in clear material.

My friend Pete shared this gem of an “Inspiration Pad” on his Google Reader shared items. I can’t read French but I think the pad was designed by Marc Thomasset – you should go see the other spreads in the pad too!

I’m checking out this new image collecting community called Pinterest. Are you a member? I’m over here! If you’re not a member and you like the look of Pinterest, I have five invites. First five people to comment will get an invitation! (You need to make sure your email address is included in your Disqus account though!)

Wacom Bamboo Touch review

Natalie — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:59:02 +0000

I have a wrist injury from my job as a graphic designer, as you might know, so I’m always on the lookout for pointing devices that don’t aggravate the pain on a daily basis. A few months ago I got rid of the Mighty Mouse that came with my iMac because it has no ergonomic value whatsoever and the little scrolling nub was forever getting stuck. I moved to a Logitech MX something-or-other, and while it looked pretty ergonomically sassy, it cursed my thumb with additional pain!

I was quite stoked to win a Bamboo Touch from @WacomAustralia the other week, because I have been envious of the touch pad on Macbook Pros and the Touch looked like it would be relevant to my interests. I thought I’d take a few photos and write a little bit about how the last week or so has been since I have gone mouse-free.

I like to document receipt of exciting new toys on my dailybooth!

Here, you can see me debut as a hand model. That rest underneath my hand is a Fellowes gliding wrist support. It is super! It’s meant to work with a mouse, but I’m using it with the Bamboo Touch just fine.

It’s pretty easy just to rely on the Touch for general computer use and web browsing. I really enjoy flicking down and back and forward! I’ve never used a Macbook Pro for long enough to understand the multi-touch gestures, so I’m not sure what I’m missing out on with the Bamboo Touch because it’s limited to only two finger gestures.

In this photograph you can see my demonstration holding the stylus. At my old job I had a Wacom Graphire, and the stylus was built much sturdier, but the Bamboo stylus works fine. I do accidentally hit the side button a bit though.

Here you can see the injury I sustained after angrily washing up a food processor blade a few weeks ago. Treat those things with respect, it hurt a lot!

Err, back to the Bamboo Touch! The nifty light tells you when the stylus is close enough to the surface to disable the Touch sensitivity (around 1cm above the surface). Sometimes I scroll by flicking with my fingers but use the stylus to click around, and it can confuse the device (and me). When I have used the stylus in Photoshop to draw I have noticed a lag but it has been wonderful to use in Illustrator.

The pen holder is awesome and looks cute, but I very rarely remember to put my stylus back in there. I tend to confuse it for my Faber-Castell Pitt pens too!

A couple of annoying things:

Dudes, what is going on with this cord business? The Bamboo Touch really needs to be cordless. In all honesty, I have actually been using it flipped around and on the “left hand” setting so I can trail the cord behind my iMac. Cords hurt my life, boo!

I have had to switch to Safari for my browser, because the scroll always gets stuck in Firefox. This is kind of annoying, but now I only use Firefox if I need to use Firebug or other similar web design extensions. One of my friends has the larger Bamboo Touch and runs it on a PC, and hasn’t had a single issue scrolling in Firefox. I’ve been googling to find out if it’s just me, or if it’s a common issue using the Bamboo Touch with Firefox for Mac.

The surface is no where near as nice and glossy as the MBP touch pad. Sometimes it really irritates me because my finger can’t glide smoothly and I will “drop” files mid-drag. The left side of the device, where all the buttons are, is much glossier – I wish they’d used that surface for the Touch area! It also picks up a lot of lint, which has the potential to confuse the sensors. Sometimes my cursor skips erratically all over the screen and there appears to be nothing interfering with the Touch zone!

Some good things:

My hand feels less pain because I am moving it in different ways, instead of moving it only one specific way over and over. I have been trying to move my arm from the elbow instead of the wrist (the Fellowes gliding wrist support assists with that) so that might be helping too!

Aside from some minor lag in Photoshop, the stylus works perfectly. This small size is more than adequate for my needs, even after using an A4 sized no-name tablet for a couple of years! It’d be nice to have a little more sensitivity too, but if this is your first graphics tablet you probably won’t miss it.

Overall I’m really happy with the Bamboo Touch, and I’ll continue to use it as my main pointing device. I really prefer not to use a mouse at all because it encourages small movements over and over and over in the fingers, wrist and arm which leads to RSI. I enjoy the freedom of movement when using a graphics tablet, even though it takes a bit of practice to develop accurate and quick pointing.

Lastly, the Bamboo Touch being touched!!

Made you look

Natalie — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:03:31 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was notified that I’d been picked by Pilgrim and Stefan Sagmeister as a finalist in the “Happy” design contest on Red Bubble. I was pretty stoked (read: squealing) to be hand picked out of all the entries, because Mr Sagmeister’s approach towards graphic design is one I am very influenced by.

My prize was a copy of Stefan’s 2001 monograph “Made You Look“, complete with a personal message scrawled in his own distinct penmanship. I don’t get to buy books often, especially the most luxe of design and art books, so this is one I will put in the “pool room” along with the Marian Bantjes – Fox River Paper promotional booklet that I managed to get shipped over to Australia by a kind fellow designer!

The book is infused with the spirit in which Sagmeister undertakes all of his work. Written by Peter Hall with loads of hand written notes, his story to date is fascinating and inspiring and speaks of his quest to design things with meaning and heart.

This little flick animation is just one of the surprising things in the book! I love how I felt encouraged to really use the book, as if it wanted me to pour over it and find all it’s little secrets.

Thank you so much Red Bubble and Stefan!

I love typography

Natalie — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:19 +0000

I bought some books from Book Depository the other week and two of them were typography related, Mike Perry’s Hand Job and The Handy Book of Artistic Printing. I really relish these books because I don’t often by them for myself, and I’d been eying them for a while! As a result, all I can think about is lettering and typography right now and I wanted to share with you my favourite lettering and typography artists.

My Talented Friends – part 1

Natalie — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:06:33 +0000

I have a lot of talented friends, and I only realised it when I sat down and thought about writing profiles on all of them to share with you here! I have friends who are photographers, artists, designers, models, performers, publishers, writers, musicians and activists. For most of these guys, I’m lucky to have fallen into their company as just a “friend” while others I met in a professional sense and then we developed a friendship. Because there are so many, I am going to break this up into a series of sorts, to allow you to digest the sheer amount of talent and creativity I have around me!

Tea Tasbihgou – jewellery designer for Sacré Coeur

I met Teayam online so long ago now! She does heaps of creative things – illustration, modelling and jewellery design. She recently started up Sacre Coeur, and creates steampunk styled accessories out of the most beautiful found objects. Of course, I chose the above image because there’s a paisley pendant in it, muahaha!

Mark Payne – artist and designer

Mark and I struck up a friendship on Red Bubble when he sent me a ffffound invite (no sorry guys, I still don’t have any and even if I did I’d give it to one of my mates!) Since then he has been one of the biggest supporters of my art practice – he even won the auction for my drawing at the Brisbane Twestival! His graphic work is beautiful – foreign worlds of fragmented and dizzying objects twisted like bright alien car crashes.

Kate O’Brien – photographer

I had the fortune of befriending Kate a couple of years ago when I was planning my wedding. I had admired her vintage-esque photographs for a while, and nervously emailed her asking if she’d like to photograph our wedding – she agreed and we became friends! She has also never done another wedding since :P

Ashley Moyer – fat activist and Chunky Dunk organiser

It may or may not come as a surprise, but I am fat and I am a fat advocate. Ashley is one of my fat activist friends: she has been a cheerleader and is running Chunky Dunk in Portland this year. Chunky Dunk events are private pool parties for people of size and their allies, and were started last year to provide a shame-free venue for swimming, bathing and bomb diving for fat folk. I really want to be Ashley when I grow up, and start Chunky Dunk parties here in Brisbane, Australia!!

Stick around for the next few days to cop a load of my other talented friends!

Stop. Request Time.

Natalie — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:22:14 +0000

Now that I have more time I’d like to be able to focus on contributing more to the knowledge base available for Adobe Illustrator on the world wide interweb tubes. If you have a tutorial request, or a simple question, let me know so I can start planning a series of posts on de-mystifying this fabulous piece of software.

You’ll notice to your left, a piece I created all in Illustrator for the TED696 competition. Basically, you get to dress up a brown paper bag (I’m all about brown craft paper at the moment actually) for Toohey’s Extra Dry. Dmote, Shepard Fairey and Luca have designed three bags to kick it off, and the first week’s entrants are now in the gallery. When my entry is up I’ll post about it again and implore you to vote for me every day! Mama wants a MacBook Pro!

In my design, I have included paisley motifs taken from my sketchbook and paintings and vectored them. I was always going to work on vectored paisleys but put it off because of the time involved and the complexity of some of the designs. Now I’ve started, it’s almost like an investment in the future because I’m going to build up a bank of paisley motifs that I can include in future designs (including patterns for Naked and Angry!) Some of the Illustrator techniques I used in this piece include custom designed patterns and borders as well as extensive use of the pathfinder pallette (dividing, merging and cropping).