April 6, 2020

What is “Creativity”?

So one of my fellow designer recently posted this:

XbF0i5k

Basically one of his client saidthis

Using repetitive layout patterns in app design in order to improve learnability is just an excuse for being lazy at creativity.

And that raises an interesting question (for me anyway): just what is “Creativity”, anyway?

Now I’m not talking about its literal definition, we all have our own intepretation of what it is. I’m talking about how we – the people in the design community – perceive it.

Graphic designers, product designers, illustrators, painters, UI/UX designers, visual GFX artists, game artists etc. we’re own thrown into the same blanket category: “Creatives” they call us. But that word, Creativity, it’s not the same thing for all of us.

For graphic designers, illustrators, painters…Creativity is a goal, the ultimate destination where you want to take your creations

For UI/UX/Product designers…Creativity is a tool, and as with any other tool, you only wield it to serve a purpose. And in our case, that purpose is Usability.

Think about it, if you’re an artists, a painter, your work doesn’t really serve anyone else but your own creators, and those who follow their visions. The ultimate validation of your works is its creativity.

But as a product designer, your work serves other purposes

In conclusion, to answer the question: is it bad if your creation is not super innovative?

I’d say it depends on the purpose of your creation.

If it’s for show, then yes

If it’s for use, then no.

April 2, 2020

Figma UI Recreation Challenge #1: Streamlabs Dashboard

Once in a while I’d come across a screenshot of a cool UI that I think would be relatively simple to recreate in Figma, so I made it a personal challenge to do so. This is not something that I do in my spare time or anything because, quite frankly I don’t have any spare time anymore. This is more of a distraction to prevent me from going insane between juggling 3 different major projects atm.

I will first start with 2 Streamlabs dashboard screens.

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March 22, 2020

In Fantasia

In Fantasia

-By Kishi Bashi

In Fantasia the mirrors lie to us they plant a seed
One by one we build an empire where devils roam and breed
Fading sunsets, to forget them is the mark of death
As we break in through the window
Of mind and greed
Darkened bridges sink away into the brackishness
Swirling sin into a rainbow of atrophy
When the winters help the golden autumns take it’s leave
Opens passages for vampires
To suck and feed
Kareru kareru
Subetega kareteruno
Fuyuno sabaku fuyuno sabaku ga hirogaru
Warerano yoruga kuru warerano yoruga hajimaru
Karehaga kareru warerano fuyuno sabaku
Waking insights born of jealousy and faithlessness
Gave us strength among the gentiles of modernity
In Fantasia the spirits hide…
February 16, 2020

Yet Another GIMP UI Rework (2020 Edition WIP)

After all these years, I’ve come to the fact that GIMP is now a lost cause. It used to be a ‘Photoshop alternative’, but after years of stagnation it’s now having its butt kicked by even another open source image editor (Krita).

Nonetheless it’s still one of my all-time favorite editor, mostly due to nostalgia’s sake (I was a well-known tutorial writer back in the 2000s for the GIMP, you know, back when written tutorials were still a thing). And I especially take joy in reworking its UI. This, I do admit, is due to that fact that its interface is so godawful that ANY changes you make to it is an improvement. Whenever I feel bored or depressed, I rework

I did a GIMP UI rework some odd years ago. The project never finished due to time constraints, as I had other obligations to attend to. But that was when designers were creating UIs on Photoshop (I shivers as I remember those times). I think I blew like a week on that project. Fun times, hah.

Times had changed. We have dedicated UI design tools these days. I spent like a few hours on Figma already have more progress than I did in a week with the last project. And this was done completely on Linux! Something that was impossible the last time.

Here’s a quick sneak peak of the current WIP.

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February 11, 2020

Oscar 2020

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you must’ve heard about Parasite, the critically acclaimed movie from Korean director Bong Joon-ho, who just took home the highest honor at the Oscar last night. The first foreign movie to ever take home that gold statue.

As an Asian, this news made me profoundly proud, but from an academic point of view, I am somewhat disappointed that Parasite won. Don’t get me wrong there, it’s a fantastic movie, and it deserves this title more than any of the Best Picture winners in the last 10 years.

But this year? I don’t know.

I’ve always thought the first foreign movie to take home the golden statue for Best Picture would be something along the line of Forrest Gump, or Inception, something that blows everyone’s mind everytime time you rewatch it, something that you remember forever as one of the greatest movie ever made. Parasite, while being an exceptional movie, is definitely not something that you’d remember in a few years time.

And you can’t use the ‘but there’s no better movie released this year’ to justify its win either.

Competing against Parasite this year is 1917, the one-take movie that would probably go down in history as one of the greatest masterpieces ever made. Literally everyone who was lucky enough to experience it in the theater confirmed that it is the greatest cinematic experience they have ever had in their entire lives, and that is to put it lightly.

February 4, 2020

Home Computing – Centralized

I recently came across a sale post on facebook for a number of decommissioned Wyse thin clients. The guy was selling it for $20 a piece. Normally I’d just scroll past that but I for some reasons I was feeling especially low-bally that day so I asked, half-jokingly, if he’d be willing to part way with some of them for $10 a piece. To my surprise, he actually said yes. I guess he probably bought a shipment from China thinking it was some kind of SFF workstations. Anyway, long story short, I now have 4 Wyse thin clients that I don’t know what to do with.

Or do I really?

I’ve always wanted to get into building a homelab, and this just give me more motivation to do it. While I do have a home ‘lab’, I don’t really have a real home server to put inside it. I had an old Q6600 antique that I use from time to time to watch DIY videos but let’s face it, it can never cut it as a real home server.

I’m thinking of building a dual xeon server with a healthy amount of RAM as a central server, running Proxmox or ESXi, serving the thin clients that I will be distributing around the house. So far I think I could replace my father’s, mother’s, my wife’s and maybe even my workshop current computer with a simple thin client. Not only does this setup saves a lot of space downstairs, it may actually provide a performance boost for my parents as they’re current using very old computers.

Xeons are super cheap these days, as do ECC RAM modules. The only pricey part is perhaps, the motherboard.

(to be continued…)

February 2, 2020

Unix bash script to install all Google Fonts to your computer

Having access to all Google Fonts is crucial for any designer these days, so this script is pretty much essential whenever you make a fresh install of your OS.

Credit to Quinton Pike on Github

Install

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qrpike/Web-Font-Load/master/install.sh | bash

Uninstall

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qrpike/Web-Font-Load/master/uninstall.sh | bash