The Basement Design + Motion launches new website

This week The Basement launched our new website. Each section showcases a different style that we're capable of as a company, from 2d vector animation (the pipes on the 'Homepage' and birds in the 'Contact' section) 3d work (the 'Work' section) stellar hand drawn illustration (buildings on the 'Homepage'). And of course the portfolio, case study, and demo reel in the 'Work' section show off the work that we've done in the past including motion graphics work, microsite development, and online games.

It was a team effort all the way with each member of our team tackling some element of the site. We're happy to see it launched and look forward to the opportunities that will follow.

Hancock Fabrics: The Ultimate Prom Competition Webisodes and Style Tips

This is an old project I worked on earlier this year that I'd forgotten to post until I saw it in the portfolio section of our new Basement website.

Advertising agency, Creative Alliance, recruited us to produce a microsite for a seasonal promotion with Hancock Fabrics and Seventeen Magazine. Hancock Fabrics was the official fabric sponsor of The Ultimate Prom 2009 competion. The microsite included fashion design tips and webisodes documenting three aspiring designers from New York's High School of Fashion Industries.

For this design obviously fabric and fashion design were our overarching concepts to work with. We wanted fabric to be the biggest design element so I used some satin from the Hancock Fabrics prom line and added stitching, pins, tape, and pattern paper to pull it together.

Being the only girl designer in the office it made sense for me to use my feminine sensibilities for this project. ;) Hopefully it came across as appealing to teen girls across the US and helped to portray Hancock Fabrics' as a more relevant brand for teens and younger women, and not a just store catering to their mothers and grandmothers.

Though this site has already launched and run it's course, there is still a test version of it up on our server you can check out here.

Dug up some old stuff...

Here's a Lichtenstein-esque version of my sis-in-law that I did a few years back. It was long forgotten, but somehow came into conversation recently so I dug it up and decided to throw it up on a post. I think she may end up using it as a facebook profile pic instead of an actual photo of herself if she decides to part ways with the stock icon they provide. We'll see. :) Well, happy Friday everyone!

Timeline Animations In Flash are Fun!

I love putting together a fun timeline animation in flash to add some bells and whistles to slick interface animation. You wouldn't want me animating the entire site, but I like to think of what I do as like the sprinkles on top of the cup cake. Tiny bits of amusement here and there to add a little fun. Here's a sneak peek at our new Basement website. We knew that we wanted the buttons in the 'who we are' section to have some personality so we came up with the concept of these pipes building a sign of sorts. I sketched the thought, drew it up in illustrator, then animated it in flash. This is a type of task that makes my day go by quickly because I have fun doing it. I'll be sure to post when we've got the site up and running! Until then!

Knozone's new site finally launches!

Over the past few months The Basement has been working with Miles Design to create the new look for Knozone, an organization championing Indy's clean air movement. Personally, I really enjoyed working on a site for a client like this. (Now, if only we could do the same for Indy's water quality!)

On this site I wore several hats.

Art director (oversaw motion, additional design needs such as charts and buttons, helped troubleshoot problem areas our interactive team faced)
Lead designer (main homepage and overall sub page look and feel)
Time line animator (poofing clouds, balloon siren, air whisp animation)

Miles developed the idea of the skyline and displaying content between buildings, and it was our job to figure out how to make it work. There were tons of challenges that our interactive team had to solve and they did an awesome job!

I'm so happy to see it live! Nice work everyone!!! Check it out!

http://www.cleanairmatters.org/

by hand

Designers, I'm sure you've scoured dafont.com for the perfect handwritten font at SOME point or another. Some designs just call for something less structured and more alive. Not to mention the whole DIY look has been super trendy for a while now. I guess it's the charm of something created by hand and the flexibility of the digital world. It's nice.

These handwritten fonts are nothing new. If you can't find something that you like on dafont, or you don't want to risk seeing the font you use on another design, there are hundreds of different ways to do create your own. I've known this was a possibility, but it wasn't until today that I finally took a moment to give it a try.

I can't believe I hadn't done this before. It literally took 15 min. I created mine with the online font generator at www.yourfonts.com.

Let me sum up:

1. Go to www.yourfonts.com and print out the character template
2. Fill out the template in a thin black sharpie (or thick if that's your bag)
3. Scan the template you just filled in at 300 dpi
4. Upload it
5. Get custom handwritten font to install on your computer!

Here's what my character template looked like all filled in:

In my haste, I did not pay as much attention to the hashmark guidelines as I should have, and as a result a couple characters (the lower case u and the . ) are either a little too high, or a little too low, but for the most part it worked out flawlessly.

Even if you're not a designer, this could be a cool thing to play with. I can see scrapbookers getting some good use out of this, and maybe cooks who want to preserve recipes in their mom's handwriting but are a bit too much of a search junky/technophile to rely totally on recipe cards. I realize this is cheating, and it's no where near as close as a scan of the card or the real thing, but it could be better than straight up Arial. Just an idea.

Any other ideas for how a custom handwritten font could be used?

(The above photo was taken through the viewfinder of my kodak duaflex II camera with my Digital Canon Rebel. I processed the colors in photoshop and used my fancy new handwritten font to label it. Talk about combining the digital with the DIY. Alex's grandfather worked at Peerless for nearly his entire life. This building has a special place in the hearts of his family. It feels nice to have a picture of it.)

Wednesday Desktop Background Freebie

Select your screen resolution: 1920 X 1200 | 1280 X 960 | 1024 X 768

Who doesn't love free things!? I personally like to change my desktop backgrounds often. Sometimes I make my own, other times I really like having another artists work to look at.

A week or so ago, I was playing around with the photo that I used in the processing tutorial and created a simple desktop background with it. I got to thinking that if I love free high-quality desktop backgrounds made by other artists, maybe I should contribute one of my own to the community. So here it is! Take it if you want it! Totally on the house.