One of the reasons Adobe Illustrator CS6 Sucks

So I complained on Twitter about how the opacity setting option in Illustrator CS6 changed from a simple-to-understand slider to a silly 10% incremental dropdown box. Especially when there *IS* a slider for the lightness/darkness of the UI (menu bar color). I tried submitting my request through their website, and got an error.

In traditional Adobe style, I figured it would be a good idea to copy my reply before I submitted it – pretty much like saving your complex photoshop and illustrator files every few minutes in case there’s a crash. Below is my submission.

*******Enhancement / FMR*********

Brief title for your desired feature:

Put the opacity percentage back to how it used to be (not 10% increments).

How would you like the feature to work?

I want it to work like it did in the previous 5 versions of Illustrator. Where there’s a slider and you can slide to any percentage of opacity. The hilarious thing is that you added a slider for UI lightness/darkness but you removed the one that actually matters. I know you can type in a percentage, but the slider helps so you can see different levels of opacity really quickly and easily.

Why is this feature important to you?

Why would you think that designers would be excited with 10 steps of opacity that are easy to define? I think that’s just silly. I’m tired of all these arbitrary changes to Illustrator, especially when I’m paying you every month for access to the Creative Cloud.

The Opacity issue I’m talking about is below. Clicking image will bring up the bigger size, look in the lower right corner. This has been changed from how it’s been since opacity was introduced in Illustrator, like 10 years ago.

A sci-fi nerd definitely didn’t plan this Dodgers / Star Trek night

I’m a science fiction nerd and I’m a sports nerd. Hey, at least I never played Dungeons & Fucking Dragons. Wait, fucking dragons? That can’t be good for you. Anyway, I was looking at Twitter and saw that Friday at Dodger Stadium is Star Trek Night. Which is pretty awesome in itself.

But they got the promotion wrong.

William Shatner will be at Star Trek Night, which is pretty cool. But the Dodgers are giving out Spock “Federation Baseball” t-shirts. You can’t give out Spock shirts when Kirk is in the crowd! Well, apparently you can.

I would have made Khan shirts, maybe.

Khaaaaan!

I think it’s cool that nerds who like sports get their own night at Dodger Stadium, just wish that the marketing tie-in made more sense with the special guest they had. If a sci-fi & sports nerd planned it I would expect to see more things like this:

• Romulan Ale booth for all the craft breweries that are starting to pop up in LA.
• Communicator night? Awesome iPhone & Android cases that look like communicators would be sweet. Those might cost some money.
• Star Trek: Deep Space 9 baseball team patch or sticker night. There were a few episodes with baseball themes in DS9 (even if the show was pretty average). What about Buck Bokai baseball card night? He was a major character in the episode “If Wishes Were Horses”. Bokai broke Joe Dimaggio’s consecutive game hit streak – 14 years from now.

Even with some of the flaws in this event, I may have found one reason to go to Los Angeles. That, and to wear a robe into Ralphs and drink some half & half, Dude-style.

Flickr turns 8

One of my earliest images ever uploaded to flickr.

I’ll never forget the day. In February 2004, my friend Morland told me about this photo sharing site called flickr. I signed up and uploaded a block of photos on February 10th. That was 8 years ago. For some reason I deleted those images and reuploaded them the next day (maybe because of resolution?). Read more about flickr’s birthday on their blog.

Anyhow, my earliest recorded image is #2375. To put that into perspective, there are currently 6.8 billion photos on flickr. The flickr of old is vastly different than what it currently is. When it was smaller, there was a sense of community that emerged.

They had an innovative flash-based chat and photo sharing area called FlickrLive that allowed you to connect with other users (based off a game they were trying to develop called Game NeverEnding – GNE). I have to say that I still have some really good friends out of those early days of flickr. I also learned a ton about how to successfully launch a product  from watching how the flickr team operated.

The instant I logged into FlickrLive I was greeted by a team of Ludicorp employees, including the CEO, Stewart Butterfield. He reached out to me directly and told me he was a big fan of Medeski Martin & Wood too (which meant he had read my profile before chatting me up). George Oates also was available to chat almost all the time, and we could discuss new feature requests, awesome photos, or even barbecuing. In fact, George & I even started a flickr group together called Bar-B-Q. We made aliases, I built a profile that was Abe Froman: The Sausage King of Chicago and she was The George Foreman Grill.

I learned from these early experiences how to develop a sense of community, which is the unifying force behind all social startups these days. They were lessons that I think about all the time even today. And now that flickr is sadly just a repository of photos that I can share online, I’ll never forget the profound impact it had on me and my career. I’ll post an interview I conducted with George Oates a few years ago next week about how they started building community.

Recent pro-bono work: Mi Camera, Mi Mundo

As you probably know, I started my own design/marketing/photography/video/social media business called Fermentable Sugar in 2010. One of the things I’m doing in my company is to have a pro-bono client going on at all times. I feel that as a designer/marketer/non-douchebag, I have a responsibility to the community and want to help non-profits that normally couldn’t afford my servicies to raise money for their causes.

My most recent pro-bono client is Empowerment International, a Colorado-based company that helps Nicaraguan children stay in school and out of places like Old Navy sweatshops. My good friends Kevin & Kelly worked with these kids in Nicaragua for the better part of a year, and I was lucky enough to get to visit them. Nicaragua is a beautiful country, but is also impoverished.

I wanted to help Empowerment International in the ways that I was best suited. I built the marketing materials for Empowerment International’s charitable fundraiser on October 8th (posters, postcards, and website). It’s called Mi Camera, Mi Mundo – it’s a photography show & auction. The 40 photos picked were all shot by Nicaraguan children who Empowerment International are working to educate.

Tickets are $35, and all proceeds from the event go directly to Empowerment International. I’d love it if you took a look at the site, and I’d love it even more if you bought a ticket to support a Colorado non-profit dedicated to helping the global community.

Help me win FREE GAS for Denver in the Ford F-150 EcoBoost Challenge!

Just a quick update to let you know that I’m a contestant in the Ford F-150 EcoBoost Challenge. The Social Media team at Ford is hooking me up with a free F-150 to drive next week as part of the promotion.

The contest has 3 sections, and luckily for me one of them isn’t a swimsuit portion (and probably luckier for you). The payoff is that if you help me win, DENVER WINS FREE SHELL GAS ON SEPTEMBER 3, in a series of flashmob giveaways.

If you want to check out the website I built that’s devoted to this contest, head over to FreeF150.com to learn more. Here are the quick details and info on how to help Denver win.

• Part 1 of the EcoBoost Challenge: The 2011 F-150 with EcoBoost that Ford is giving me averages 22MPG on the highway. I’m competing against 7 other contestants in 7 other markets to average the highest MPG from Monday August 22 through Friday August 26th. I aim to do mostly highway driving.

• Part 2 of the EcoBoost Challenge: Ford is letting people vote once a day on Facebook for their favorite contestant in the contest. Obviously this is me. So head over to the EcoBoost Challenge Facebook Page and vote for me. EVERY SINGLE DAY.

• Part 3 of the EcoBoost Challenge: Planning and executing a successful social event that benefits a local charity. I’m planning a can drive on Saturday, August 27th outside the Rackhouse Pub in Denver, benefitting Denver’s Metro CareRing. Anyone who brings 5+ cans to donate will receive a voucher for a complimentary draft beverage of their choice at the Rackhouse. Ford is hooking me up with a $500 gift card which I’ll be using to purchase $500 in canned goods for Metro CareRing. Help me fill the bed of this F-150 with canned food for people less fortunate than us!

I’ll be posting more often on the FreeF150.com site, and promoting my efforts on Twitter. I would love to have you be a part of this awesome contest!

Gap’s new logo? Total Crap.

The Gap has a new logo. I think it looks like crap. Would have probably hated to be the creatives in this one. They probably came up with a lot of creative ideas, only to have the client say something like, “we’ve wasted too much time on this already. Let’s just use helvetica and use some idiotic blue gradient box that’s completely unrelated to everything behind the P. Because that definitely says something, that we care about our bottom line and make all our clothes in sweatshops in places like Nicaragua. There’s no possible way that this logo can be offensive to anyone – that is to say, except designers.”

click image for full resolution version

What do you think about it?