404 – not found
Month: February 2013
Above are the current (but soon to be outdated) Modest Innovation home page and Projects section. A redesign has been a long time coming. Originally I got them up as quick as possible, I had a vague idea for the design theme being thin borders and grids – it worked on the home page, but that got lost in the projects section.
After finally getting round to making a pure CSS version of the Modest Innovation logo, it sparked a new round of inspiration for me to get the redesign and new web build together. I had to sort my act out, and so, after three days of hard graft, it’s almost there.
The simplicity, the thin accent lines and the 1:1 ratio and grid spacing all came together beautifully. Everything needed is on a single page (I love one page websites); projects and project summary, social links, thumbnails – everything. One page.
As for the actual content, that’s all hosted on the relevant site for that type of content (videos on Vimeo, photos on Flickr, PDFs on Dropbox, etc).
It’s likely that the site will be live by Monday, if not sooner.
As for its future – I’m working on giving each project its own site, similar to how I’ve showcased my fonts on their own site and User Manual, I’ll continue to do the same with the other projects. I’m also looking to update the blog to inkeep with the new style.
I’ve been wanting to make the Modest Innovation logo a single div element made purely out of CSS (actual CSS version below), instead of an image. This was for a few reasons.
Firstly, I wanted to learn how make CSS icons by calling a single element. My logo is simple so I thought it would be a good starting point. Secondly, once it’s done it’ll save the headache of optimising it for retina display devices.
Lastly, it’s super fast and fucking awesome.
Inspired by one-div I set out to learn about the :before and :after pseudo elements (with the help of Smashing Magazine) and how it all works.
Feel free to use the code and manipulate it over on GitHub.
Marcus Doodles
So a while back, I started a Tumblr blog called Marcus Doodles. I didn’t shout about it as it was just a place online to archive the doodles I do with Paper by 53. Every time I did a doodle, I posted it to Tumblr. I never checked the Tumblr, but I posted it regardless.
Just now I checked it and saw one of my posts had a like (or love, as it’s a heart). That was cool. I looked back at my previous doodles to see if I had any more. Turns out I did… One of my images got reblogged by Paper’s tumblr gaining the doodle 79 likes and a few reblogs.
Crazy.
There was also some Spanish kid who wrote a little piece when she reblogged it – I translated it on Google and it was something about one lung being smaller than the other to make way for the heart and to praise God for love or some bollocks like that. Totally off the mark, I only drew it because I was bored.
The other night I quickly threw together this website showcasing my new fonts with download links for personal use. I posted it on Reddit before I went to sleep thinking nothing of it (as my posts don’t usually fare too well).
The next morning I was shocked! My post was getting popular, so much so that it not only reached the front page of /r/graphic_design, but it was actually the top link for a while.
This morning, I wasted no time (apart from taking a picture of a leaking radiator valve for my landlord) in checking the stats for yesterday’s visitor count on Google Analytics. Two thousand visitors!
That put a smile on my face.
That, and this:
The street was silent, then suddenly I hear a child say to his father, "MORE LIKE MORDOR! Hahahaha". That made me smile.
— Marcu$ (@marcusmichaels) February 13, 2013
P.S. Credit goes to @charl0ttejane for the beautiful illustrations on each button’s hover-over state.
Twitter Timeline
Twitter have just asked me if I want to embed my timeline on my website… SURE!
It’s interesting because they had this before – but it looks like they’ve revamped it to include the ability to reply and follow from the timeline, instead of just the standard tweets.
BlockFont is now live and available to download. Enjoy it and let me know if you use it so I can get all giddy and warm inside.
Check out the awesome font I made tonight. It’s so awesome that I’m giving it away FREE for personal use right here! Download MarcusFont and watch all life’s troubles melt away.
If you do download it and use it for a project, please please please let me know, I’d love to see what you do with it.