Moya flew away two weeks ago. I really miss him. I wish I had the words to describe how much.
Here is a video of him. I hope some one finds him. I hope I don’t find out he’s dead. There will be no more War Room comics featuring Moya unless he is returned to me.
We are redoing the GROK site, and we are almost finished. The new features of the GROK site will include: a totally redone site written in php and javascript rather than flash, a shop where you can download web commodities for free and buy others, a totally new portfolio system, and a uniform style across the whole site. To give you a feel for how the site is going to look in general we have started revamping the hatchery. I did a lot of programming today, and the few art assets that haven’t been revamped would be if it were not for internet explorer’s inability to get with the CSS program. Had to write a bunch of new fixed for IE. Anyway, hope you enjoy the preview, the completely new GROK site should be launching in the next week.
We, as a species, are prone to debate. The human race isn’t always into the greater good in the way that, for example, ants are. We quibble, squabble and do other things that end in –bble over sometimes the most seemingly banal things. I can still hazily remember bantering about why Cocoa Puffs is the far superior chocolate cereal versus the lack-luster performance of Cocoa Pebbles (Count Chocula ended up being the dark-horse winner of the debate, the marshmallows pushed him over the top).
While we here in the super-secret underground base that is Grok HQ would like to think of ourselves as a somewhat evolved ‘above that’ breed of homo-sapiens we nonetheless devolve into slack-jawed debating primates from time to time. Most recently Martin and I got into over the tablet PC market upon hearing the news that Apple will soon unveil its iSlab or iSlate or iBuythisnowitswaytoocool. While tablet PCs make up something around 1.4% of all computer sales worldwide Martin still thinks they’re “the future”. Well, I had some other thoughts on the matter…
My basic issue with tablet computing or perhaps mobile computing in general is that I’ve always thought of it as something of the odd duck as far as computing is concerned. While I do agree that there is a need for mobile devices in fields such as medical, construction, military etc. I always thought that the mobile computer was a bit of a contradiction.
We grab our laptops and head-out in the world to do things that we normally do in public, grab a bit to eat, a refreshing drink, but then something goes wrong. Next time you stroll into your local café count the number of people typing away on a laptop, now how many of them have on headphones? We have been freed from the bonds of our desk chairs to escape outside and what is our human response? Put on the ear-goggles, cut ourselves off from the public that we’re happy to be out in, moreover keep up the status-quo that the personal computer is a socially isolating agent. But alas, I’ve drifted off topic and could go on for days about how face to face interaction is slowly degrading, but there is a need to address what’s at hand. Tablet PCs.
From a consumer standpoint the Tablet PC cuts out a niche market with those people who like having the ability to… I don’t really know, reading about tablets I can’t really see how they differ from laptops, outside of that total lack of keyboard thing. In reality the tech of the tablet is a dressed up gimmick with outstanding lip-gloss. At CES Steve Ballmer toyed with a Multi-touch tablet built by HP running windows 7. It was brief but he used touch motions to flip though the pages of an E-Book and bantered about the ability to fit a PC into something that wasn’t much larger then a smart phone. Well Steve, that’s all well and good, I can now take my movies on something smaller then my laptop and flip through my e-books with my finger vs. my mouse. What the tablet PC market is attempting to do is not sell us any new technology but just a different way to use it. So if you feel so inclined to spend the money on a device without a keyboard, put up with shaky handwriting recognition software and basically have a laptop you can finger-paint with then be my guest. I know that Martin is somewhere claiming about the joys of pressure sensitivity and the ability to draw right there on there on the screen and while that’s cool and all. I pretty sure I can do the same with a wacom, and I can use that on a laptop or at home on my desktop. And if that’s all the tablet PC is giving us over a normal laptop, while skimping on storage space and processing power I don’t understand how someone can justify the $800 for what amounts to an oversized iPod touch. If the venerable tech vendors want to attract consumers then make a piece of technology that simplifies or changes my life. ”But Adam,” they’ll say, “this will change the way you view content.” To which I’ll reply, “Yes, you’re right. It’s on a smaller screen.” Don’t repackage old applications into a slim tablet form factor and call them groundbreaking because I can manipulate a photo with my thumb and forefinger. Make me a mobile computer that’s slim enough to be highly portable and powerful enough so I have no need for a desktop, make it so that I can easily upgrade said mobile device so I can stay on top of the latest tech. I’m fed up with gimmicky control schemes leave those to the PS3 6-axis controller and the Wii.
At the turn of the year Grok began the apprenticeship of a new intern, me. My name is Kevin Osborn. I am currently studying many aspects of graphic design and will be graduating in May.
For about three weeks, I have been interning with the guys at Grok. They have started off by involving me in internal projects that I’ve really enjoyed so far. I have already gained experiential knowledge on collaborating with other people involved in the same project and taking someone else’s verbalized concept and visualizing it into a proficient design characteristically accurate to their stipulations.
I am going through a process of creating a font based off of Grok’s signature “G”. Although I have studied typography in the past, this is my first experience of designing a font. The most prominent challenge, so far, has been creating something that is unique, visually pleasing, and in line with the style of the font while retaining the legibility of the letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other characters. Some forms have been exceedingly enjoyable to work on while others have proven themselves more of a challenge. It is a process, but I know when it is all said and done that I will find no greater joy than to type with the Grok font that I so tediously slaved over. At least for the first 20 seconds.
I have also been fortunate enough to give my input on the upcoming new logo for Grok (John’s design there dictated a lot of my decisions in the font making process also.). That being said, both the font and logo will truly represent Grok showing that they are both well-rounded and cutting-edge.
While on the topic of Grok’s versatility, there is another project that I worked on over the past week. I was given the task of designing and creating a typographic ad that will be published in comics Grok will be doing digital inking and digital coloring for. After some research on typographic designs and comics I decided that incorporating subtle elements of the comic book would be a brilliant idea. I took into account the reading pattern of a comic book as I designed the layout and finished it off with a background representative of half-tone printing done with comics prior to the 80’s. I’ll admit, not all of these ideas flooded me at once, it took a couple days. But after a few attempts, with the direction of my “supervisors” a final product was formed.
I will be interning with Grok through June. I am looking forward to spending the next few months under the wing of Martin, Adam, and John. If the past few weeks have been any sort of indication, I trust that we will retain a long-lasting relationship wherever our futures lie.
So we’ve posted a new installment of our new comic The War Room. We had hoped to get these out every week, but sadly it is going to be more like every two to 4 weeks depending on how busy we are. Que ser a ser a. I hope you enjoy this installment.
GROK is proud to announce that we have finally decided to release our web comic. It is something we have been thinking about for a while. The theme shall be exaggerations on our every day life. We decided to call it The War Room because that is the place we meet every morning. We have an old dark room built into our place which we have put some comfortable furniture in (don’t worry my photographer friends, there is still enough room for the enlarger). There is a powerful fan venting from out of the room so it’s a nice place to have a cigarette on a rainy day. I don’t smoke, but some of the guys do, and I used to so I understand the desire to have an indoor place where you can comfortably sit, and have a fag… maybe some tea. We have all our group meetings in the “The War Room” and it is where we tend to brainstorm our best ideas.
I hope you enjoy the comic. The first one might leave a lot of people out, but if you like Counter Strike then you’ll probably like this.
There’s a certain dilemma that I face whenever something is finally finished, created, uploaded, etc. I’m never fully happy with it. I find myself going back to it and saying, “Well, what I should have done was this…” or “Maybe we could have added this element in lue of X.” Point being is you are always your biggest critic. During the last parts of work on the 1st grok site I started to think about what the next one would be, “what’s wrong with the 1st one?” I think John asked, my reply, “Nothing, everything, there’s a mountain of things I would like to explore that we just can’t, less me start from scratch.” At that time we were pretty much a week behind getting the 1st site finished so I had to shelf my ideas till a latter date and time.
Welcome to a latter date and time.
This is the roots from which the tree has sprung. While this looks like the scribbles and rants of someone that should be committed to an institution, it makes perfectly good sense to John and myself. What this says about us…well I’m not entirely sure, we’ll save that post for a another time.
The original idea, if its in there, was to create a site that had both ease of use as well as having some artistic interactivity. By creating vector based art that not only changes through the user’s choices but also anchors all the information that the site has to display we thought we could create something that would be not only pleasant to look at but would also reflect something about us from a stylistic standpoint. From that launching point, one of anchoring vectors, John had the idea to strip the design down even more so that when a user navigated around they would be creating their own unique background, this was latter platformed to the idea that we could present nothing but white space and user navigation would be akin to ‘cutting’ through the background to reach other layers, much like when you tear a parts of a page out of a magazine you still see the page you’re on but also the one below it.
At this point in time the only work that’s been put into bring that idea to fruition is some simple menu creation, here’s a few examples cropped down, think of them as part of a much larger white page.
V2 Mk1
V2 Mk2
V2 Mk2b
Don’t ask how these things were reached from the madness that was scrawled on that piece of paper, its a mystery to everyone. The menus right now are very rough around the edges, however I think the color schemes are growing on me. Anyway, as things begin to evolve and take more of a concrete shape I’ll be back with an update and perhaps even more illegible sharpie drawings.
-Adam
CoreDogs, developed by Professor Kieran Mathieson of Oakland University, is a great way to learn about the back end of web design and ebusiness. The site is intended to teach you how to be a “Weber”; it helps you become someone who has the skillsets to handle some of the tech, and gives advice on how to become a better e-business person. CoreDogs is as much a study in a way of thinking, as it is a teching tool for web designers. In today’s fast paced ebiz world you should at least have a bit of an understanding of the backend, even if all you do is create nice layout PSDs for coders to deal with (trust me the coders will appreciate it). CoreDogs is simple and interesting, it takes a goal oriented approach to teaching and it is easy to use. Kieran is allways working to improve it and I’m sure wouldn’t mind a few more testers.
The GROK Hatchery Sexy Links page has been updated to include catagories and more links of interest. New Links include:
The first five six sexy links that we could all agree on are up. So go check them out by clicking on “Sexy Links” in the nav area.
