3d Extrude in Illustrator

I just finished creating an ad to be printed in the local paper to highlight the "Simple Steps to register" at Cerro Coso. This was a very short turn around project in which I had about 2 hours to work up the design, which was a spin off of an article done at our sister college Bakersfield College.

The cool thing about this project was that I had an opportunity to play with the 3d extrude feature in Illustrator. A pretty nifty little effect. I found it pretty easy to work with, and it's cool that you can go back in and edit the effect if need be. I do wish that preview was automatically checked as that threw me more than once when the effect would disappear all of a sudden, but hey, I just need to pay better attention. This is a really cool feature though and it really expands what we can do artistically with Illustrator.

What would be really cool would be if you could place objects together and merge them so you could build more complex objects, much like in 3d software packages. But then, I suppose I should just go open Maya if I want to do that...

Displacement Map & Lighting Fun

I've been having some fun playing around with displacement maps and lighting effects in Photoshop. Here was a quick attempt at getting images to look natural in a scene. It could be better, but I wasn't being too serious about it, I was mostly getting a feel for some techniques I want to share with my students. All in all though I think it came out pretty good.

Lucky Dog

I was recently asked to design the logo for Lucky Dog Canine Spa. The three color logo was created in Illustrator. I'd have to say the most challenging part was the playing cards, playing cards usually use four or more colors, so trying to get the feel with only three was somewhat of a challenge. Here is the final design.




Logo TM by Lucky Dog. May not be used without permission.

Postcard Fun

I was recently asked to design a postcard for Cerro Coso College. I presented four designs, all created in Photoshop CS2. The "Degree Ahead" concept was selected. Enjoy.

A look at web salaries

While there may be some out there who think that IT jobs are going out of style, nothing could be further from the case. In fact there is an increased demand for IT professionals, and according to projections, IT jobs will continue to increase in the coming years as more and more businesses turn to technology for solutions. The Web will certainly be a large part of our future so now is the time to get in and start getting trained for what promises to be a stable career choice.

So what are web professionals making these days? According to a survey conducted by Information Week of over 10,000 IT professionals, here are some of the average salaries for 2006 amongst staffers:

• Web security $90,000
• Web infrastructure $83,000
• Internet and intranet $70,000
• Web design and development $62,000
• Web content development $57,000

While staff salaries are pretty good, their managers are doing even better. Here are the average salaries for 2006 amongst managers:

• Web security $101,000
• Web infrastructure $113,000
• Internet and intranet $92,000
• Web design and development $94,000
• Web content development $84,000

While pay is certainly important in our ever-increasing-cost world, especially with energy and fuel cost increases, many of the respondents to the survey cited that job stability, challenge and responsibility, as well as flexible work schedules as being more important that salary. I for one appreciate those three factors very much and it’s what makes my job as a web designer much more rewarding. For some interesting reading on the IT working world, check out the article on InformationWeek about the salary survey.

Resource: Information Week, "$99,000 Salary Survey," April 24,2006 pgs. 58-59