OK Go are really, really good at this.

One of my clients (ARMS – Athlete Relationship Management Software) needed a billboard design to be displayed in a university stadium.  Here are some of the revisions we made, going from the first draft to final version. The requirements were to build two square billboards, one 24″x24″ and the other 8′x8′.

First version:
In the first draft, I simply pulled elements from the existing ARMS website and adapted them for use in a square billboard. This involved scaling up the background gradients and building the rest of the artwork from the original elements — logo files and fonts to ensure maximum crispness when printed.

Second version:
In the next revision we decided to emphasize the software messaging by putting the URL into an easily recognizable button element. We also substituted some different language in place of the website’s tagline.

Third version:
Changed the button color to blue to stand out more against the orange background and adjusted the wording to be more concise and less crowded.

Fourth (final) version:
In the final version, I made a number of final tweaks to the design, including emphasizing the logo highlight more so it will show up better when viewed at a distance. I also whittled the marketing message down to 3 simple bullet points, more easily read by the intended audience — coaches and athletic directors. A final increase in the height of the button helps the URL to stand out a bit more, and some bottom gradient arcs help complete the design and add additional movement and interest.

The final full-size Photoshop PDF for the 8′x8′ 150dpi file is 46.6 MB, compressed into a ZIP file only 6.9MB.

Learn more about the leading Athlete Relationship Management Software.

Buy the tshirt at YesPecan.org.

rain falls as I walk
a dog dancing through puddles
bare feet on concrete.

I wrote this a couple of days ago after walking Kuma in the rain around the park.

YouTube – Fire in the Patio Fireplace at Mad Art Gallery in St. Louis

We went to the Mad Art exhibition opening tonight. This video is was taken using my Treo 700p and was of the fire in their outdoor patio fireplace. It was quite cozy and nice.

Took some pictures of the total lunar eclipse last night. I kind of wish I had a telescope when I was taking these pics. The first couple of shots where it’s all black were just hand-held (1/8 of a second, image-stabilized by the Canon) and the brighter ones were taken on a tripod.

This is super, super cool. Each second represents 40 hours of collective time drawing on this huge internet graffiti wall.

View the history: drawball history: one year at 40 hours per second

Draw there yourself: Drawball.com

Found it via reddit.com

Miro (the open source video player formerly known as Democracy) is running a contest right now to design a revised one-click subscribe button.

A Fun Little Design Contest
Design up to three buttons and submit them as links in the comments. On August 20th, we’ll create a blog post with all of the submissions.
There aren’t a lot of constraints on what you can submit. Our goal is to have a selection of buttons that would look nice on a blog sidebar or myspace page. We hope to see a variety of sizes and colors.

Here are my three submissions, shown on different backgrounds. My goal for this is to create simple, clean, and usable buttons.

	#FFFFFF	#666666	#000000
Option #1
Option #2
Option #3

I’ll update this post once voting is started so you can vote for my submissions if you like them

Update: Thanks to everyone who voted for my submissions. (I won the grand prize. )