Jai's Laboratory

Hey everyone,

Check out Emma Lehto’s portfolio when you have a chance. It’s up and running at EmmaLehto.ca
You’ll have to check with her, but I think she is open for commission work, so if you’re tickled by the work you see, fire her an Email and see about getting your own Emma Lehto signature piece for your home or office! (I would suggest trying to get your hands on the Cartel Coffee Table. It’s stellar!)

Enjoy the rest of your day!

JF

I’ve had the pleasure over the last month or so, to be working with a great talent like Jason Danielson. Aside from being a pretty amazing human being, he is also multi-talented in many different disciplines. An accomplished musician, and nigh-expert coder, he never ceases to amaze me. When I got the call from him that he wanted to work together on a new project he is starting, I of course jumped at the chance.

Jason is building a music website that will function both as a record label for DJs & Producers, but also as a place to purchase new music, templates, stems, and DJ tools to be used in programs like Ableton Live. I think he’s on to something here, since most online resources for DJs tend to not cater to producers who also perform live.
So, the company is called “Swingset Sounds”. It gets it’s name from a bunch of different places, and has various meanings behind it. First off, is the musical inflection. In a swing-set, the drummer hits the ride cymbal with a double-1/4  beat before the 2 & 4 of a 4/4 time bar (If I’ve lost you, don’t worry). You hear it all the time in Jazz, Blues, and Swing tracks.

<<Pictures & more reading after the jump>>

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So, one of the projects I’ve been hard at work for the last while has been branding and creating a music sales site based out of the Okanagan. The owner and I have come up with a color scheme, and I have a PSD mock-up 70% done. Where I really think I got the nail on the head was here in the logo. I’m not really sure this will be the logo as it is placed on business cards, or even on the letterhead, but it will appear on the site in multiple locations. The Business is called SwingSet Sounds, and deals in DJ tools as well as functioning as an indie record label for artists.
The image above achieves two things right away. It has the flow of a scripted letter S, as well as it is a swing seat, all contorted from the moment that someone leaped from it at the apex of the swing. It’s that one moment where you let go of the only thing you have control over, and you’re feeling like you’re flying. That was the emotion and the energy that the client was looking for, and I think we achieved it.

Today has also been fraught with frustration and lots of head-scratching. I am trying to find a good way to integrate my shadowbox-run portfolio in to this PHP framework. As Wordpress PHP won’t accept the shadowbox script in it’s pages, I am left with recreating the layout on a stand-alone HTML page. Not too bad, but I don’t have a ton of experience with floating properties in CSS, so there have been lots of moments where I am saying to myself “What the heck? Why in the world is that floting way over THERE?? ARGH!” Followed then by a lot of single digit fixes, browser reloads and, of course, more cursing the digital gods.
It IS coming along, tho, so I am going to plug away a bit more on it. As much as I love this work, I want this done so I can focus on other projects. I just want this site to work, and I’ll worry about making it look how I want at a later date.

no time for secret roll-outs when there are updates to be made, and work to be done. Plus, PHP, and Shadowbox can’t be tested on a native hard-drive. they need to be live. *grumble* Maybe it’s time I got MAMP and tried that out.

So much I want to do, so few hours in the day.

I have been working freelance lazily for years. Now that I am out of school, I find that I am taking more projects that I haven’t considered before. Like this one. I was contacted to make a 3D animated logo for a BC company. I took it out of excitement to be able to flex my 3D muscle, and a great opportunity to fill-in my portfolio.

When approached, I was presented with a logo that the client was already pleased with. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it and was actually impressed with it’s design. Let me tell you, having a good starting point speeds up the process immensely. The client wanted to have a logo animation that was simple, elegant, and clean. They didn’t want anything too complicated, or busy as they wanted to underscore the minimal impact their mining technology had on the environment, and the surroundings of the mining sites.

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