Christian Ross

6th Day

End of week internet goodness for 09/25/09

The web wasn’t particularly funny this week but it did provide some some well-built infographics – which I can never seem to get enough of.

Click the images to see the full graphics.

First up, ever thought of printing out the Internet? Umm, me either. But if you tried, it’d only take your inkjet printer 3,800 years to knock it out.

If you printed the internet infographic

(via Cartridge Save) (more…)

Note & Point

I’ve mentioned before that one of my goals is to some day move in a direction that points me away from actual client work. I have nothing against clients – I am thankful for each and every one of you – but I’ve always got ideas and projects floating around in my head that I’d like to see come to fruition and a little less client work would be a step in creating time for those projects.

For a long time, I’ve been an Internet enthusiast and evangelist. I sing its praises, share its benefits and do my best to make a living off of it as a whole. But compared to many out there, it took me a little while to get into the whole, making friends on the Internet craze that some easily adopted. I’d never been one for chat rooms or message boards and never needed the services of any dating sites fortunately.

MySpace wasn’t my thing. Facebook even to this day isn’t either. But the one that did get me hooked was Twitter. Not knowing what to expect when I signed up, it took me a little while to get into it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know one person using it when I signed up. But I tweeted anyways. And then I did some writing for other sites, and my byline had my twitter username (@christianross). I got some followers. And organically as I found others I wanted to follow, my count grew as well. Twitter did what I didn’t think I needed, it forged friendships with like-mindeds around the globe and fortunately in 2009 we don’t have to be ashamed of telling others we have Internet friends now. I’m not.

Enter Note & Point. Thanks to Twitter and some organic growth, one of the projects that was in my head made it to the big screen. Dave Ruiz (http://foundationsix.com | @foundationsix) is a phenomenal designer based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and one of which I would have never known with out the social networking site. Together we hatched an idea, fleshed out a great design and developed the first online gallery devoted to high-quality design work in presentation related areas (Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, etc) in less than three (3) weeks.

I might be a little biased, but I think its beautiful. Thankfully, others seem to agree. With a little love from Twitter and word of mouth, in four (4) days time we’ve been blown away at the success it has already seen:

  • Almost 20,000 visitors to the site
  • 57,000 page views
  • Over 1,000 RSS subscribers
  • Over 325 followers on Twitter
  • And my personal favorite number: less than 5% of visitors using IE6

Even over a long holiday weekend, I am overwhelmed at the success we launched to. We know full well that traffic will level out but have been grateful for all the love shared across the net and for each and every visitor that has taken the time to stop by and/or follow along.

Feel free to add yourself to the list of followers by subscribing to the N&P RSS feed and/or following along on Twitter.

As excited as I am about what we’ve done already, we’ve really only scratched the surface so far. We already have plans in place to make Note & Point even more usable as well as working on ideas for some new projects.

PS. Since our projects don’t actually make money yet, we’re both still available for contract work. Hit us up if you’re ready to play: Foundationsix & Christian Ross

Friend logo – Layfield Design

Loving this logo by Stephen Layfield of Sydney, Australia based Layfield Design. Not a huge fan of the all-Flash site but there are some other good finds there as well if you take the time to look around.

Can any typophiles tell me the font name of the What’s Next project under his Logos section?

Ampersand Faux Cufflinks

Once or twice in the last year I’ve gone searching for a pair of cufflinks. Unfortunately, these weren’t carried in any of the stores I ventured into.

At $50, I’m not inclined to order these right now but I am adding them to my when-I-strike-it-rich list. Or to my buying-something-will-cure-what-ails-you list. Either way, they’re making it on a list.

Can be used on regular sleeved shirts as well as French-cuffed. Only problem I see with them is they do have the potential to be too much if they are oversized. Hard to tell from the images.

Ampersand Faux Cufflinks - Veer

http://www.veer.com/products/merchdetail.aspx?image=VPR0005442

Font nerds, without cheating, can you name that font?