I’m told that this is very funny to lawyers. It doesn’t get many laughs in my crowd.

During my wife’s first semester of law school, the mentor for her section (excuse me if I’m using the wrong terminology) asked if anyone could help with a t-shirt design for the softball league. As is often the case, my wife nominates me to do it: “My husband is a creative director!” Oohs, aahs, deafening applause ensue.

It was eventually printed in white on a … bright blue shirt. It was out of my hands, people. I have my limits!

UPDATE:

Here is a link to the high resolution JPEG.

It’s hard to believe I did this two years ago. That was right after I got my first iPhone.

The whole reason this came about was because there was no good, true-to-the-original version of Mastermind in the app store. Some looked the same, some were wildly different. Some had new rules, some didn’t use all the rules, some were just broken.

None had what I wanted: the perfect recreation of the original. Six colors, four slots, use as many duplicates as you like. I still haven’t found a good, faithful version for my iPhone. There is one (called CodeFinder, I believe) that you can play the original rules, but you have to set the difficulty to hard everytime you start the app or else it won’t use duplicates, or something.

So, I set out to make one in Flash. (Two years ago, I was under the mistaken assumption that if I could make something in Flash it would be easy to make the same thing on the iPhone. I know. Ha ha ha ha.) But that’s what I did. This is entirely Actionscript 3, no library objects or timeline stuff, which was a big deal for me at the time, and one of the challenges I set for myself. I succeeded with that part.

I started to add in stat tracking, to keep track of your average number of guesses over time, and was going to tie that into a leaderboard and such. Sounds cool, huh? It would have looked like this maybe:

Then my second kid was born. End of project.

I miss you, Mastermind Incomplete. Maybe we will meet again some day.

For some reason that I haven’t time to track down right now, the instruction text file isn’t loading (maybe I used the font InvisibleInk? hmmm … copyright 2010 Jeff Culbertson!). Here are the missing instructions:

• The objective of this logical thinking game is to guess the sequence of four colored pegs the computer has selected at random (crack the secret code).

• Use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select the colors that you think are in the secret code. Left and right arrow keys move the cursor left and right. Up and down arrow keys cycle through the six colored pegs.

• You must fill in each hole in a row to make a valid guess.

• Press the Enter key on the keyboard to submit your guess.

• The computer will compare your guess to the secret code and place markers in the small holes next to your guess to give you hints to how close you are.

• Each black marker means you have placed one correct color peg in the correct position. Each white marker means you have placed the right color peg, but in the wrong position. No markers means you haven’t guessed any of the right colors.

• There is no relation between the position of the markers and the position of your pegs.

• You have ten guesses to crack the secret code.

• Good luck!

Here’s a fun (albeit lengthy) blog post I wrote on the FG SQUARED blog about how design has changed over the last 15 years. Here’s a sample:

Looking at websites in 1994, you saw a lot of default grey backgrounds, Times New Roman and blue underlined links. Any images were dithered 256-color GIFs and typically ugly as hell by today’s standards, not to mention looked different depending on your operating system. Designing for the web back then consisted primarily of fighting tables and compressing graphics as much as possible while retaining some measure of legibility. Aesthetics were a luxury not yet affordable. But that would soon change.

http://www.fg2.com/squaredroot/2009/11/16/the-tumultuous-relationship-of-design-and-the-internet/

Hectic and scary morning when I realized that I had inadvertantly deleted the Wordpress database on my site. I had tested out an install of drupal and after I decided I didn’t need it at the moment, I deleted the database. And all the others as well. Oops.

The worst part is that I didn’t even realize I did it! It has been over a week since I’ve tried to access my site and I kept getting this strange database error. It took me awhile to figure out what I did, and then restore it. Restoring it was quite a messy process, and I have Ethan Russell to thank for helping me out with it. This site would be toast without his rescue effort.

But we’re back, baby. Trism walkthrough is up again, and I really am working on an update to the Coat of Arms Creator. A couple more posts on the way on things I’ve been up to as well.

I created another ambigram, this one for my friend Ethan Russell. He has a site, Fallen Gaia, that needs a logo and wanted an ambigram, and who wouldn’t really? I don’t think his site is live yet, but I’ll try to remember to link it here when it does. (UPDATE: Fallen Gaia)

Ambigrams are fun to make, although frustrating at times. The N, which is seemingly the easiest letter in the world to create an ambigram for, gave me fits, and I’m still not incredibly happy with it. The E/G oozes cool; I’m pretty proud of that form.

I found myself making glossy buttons in Illustrator so often that I finally decided to make a library of graphic styles so i won’t have to do it over and over and over again.

So here it is to share, just in time for the glossy Web 2.0 button trend to come to an end. One would hope.

Download the CS3 file here (150KB zip file)

Here’s a CS2 and CS version (I hope they work, since I can’t actually test them).

Download the CS2 file here (150KB zip file)

Download the CS file here (233KB zip file)

Download and unzip then put the file in Adobe Illustrator CS_ > Presets > Graphic Styles.

Enjoy!

I’m mentioned in an article about Flatstock at SXSW. Check it out, page 40. It was written by Patrick Nichols, who somehow made me sound extra smart. Thanks, Patrick!

I really do love screenprinting. I took a serigraphy class in school and had a blast with it. I was just starting to experiment with using the computer in the process, and that fascinated my prof, Tim High, who was an old-school-do-it-all-by-hand kind of guy. (I mean that in the nicest, most respectful way.)

Wired has a pretty interesting article on ambigrams this month. I’ve always been fascinated by these things. Ages ago I got a John Langdon (he updated his site recently) book from the library and started making my own, which all pretty much sucked.

I’m more confident nowadays though. I created an ambigram for Norah, my daughter (above), and I’m working on one for Julian, my son. These things are really difficult, and I’ve got a ton of respect for those who can create good ones.

Gabriel Martinez Meave is one of the new type gods. He’s an incredible calligrapher, but his type design is really fresh and unlike most everything else out there. He also happens to be a fantastic illustrator and seems to be a good designer, although I’ve seen less of his design to verify. I’m pretty confident the guy can do anything.

I first heard about him when I saw Darka. I’ve been dreaming of designing a book about heraldry using that font. I was in touch with him briefly about purchasing the font a couple of years ago, but decided to wait on his converting it to OpenType. He still hasn’t done it. Sigh.

Let’s see if this new YouTube plugin (Smart YouTube) works as advertised.

Update: Okay it works GREAT! It even loads the HD version if I tell it to. It could also load HQ or SD. Far out.