Richard Stelmach - Web Design and Multimedia Portfolio

Lately I have developed a deep and twisted love for Photoshop brush sets. They are a great way of quickly and easily adding texture and depth to designs and their usage can be seen constantly on the web.

I think texture and depth are particularly important in web design. Graphic designers get the texture and feel in the material they print on and often flat colours seem to work better in graphic design as lighting and texture come naturally. I think web designers often need to use allot of gradients and layering things up to give depth and makes things tactile, authentic.

This is where Photoshop brushes come into their own. You can of course build things up with images but brushes give a quick and fluid advantage where you can just stamp texture onto the mask of the layer or create imagery when you can’t find the right royalty free image.

Here are some recent examples I’ve seen Photoshop brushes used:

• http://www.mikeposs.com/
• http://www.pixele.fr/
• http://mesa.cityofgrace.com/

Adding Photoshop brushes is easy. Once you’ve downloaded some, all you have to do is open your brush pallette (F5), click on the little arrow top right and then click on ‘Load Brushes’, the new brushes will then be appended to your list.

Here is a great site for free brush downloads - http://www.brusheezy.com/.

I’ve also made my own brush set, you can download it here: http://www.brusheezy.com/brush/639-Rough-Edges

Today I managed to make it onto Best Web Gallery which, well, does what it says on the tin, as that annoying advert guy used to say. I check the site fairly often as the sites on there are always really nice.

One of my aims with the new site was to try and get onto some gallery sites so I’m really happy I’ve made it onto my fave! I’d like to say they randomly picked my site while perusing the web, but in truth, I begged for their approval. They must have felt sorry for me!

I have been attempting to re-design my site. I’ve tried to go for an information rich site and more expressive than a more simple showcase of work approach, which I find a bit dull and far too common place. Hopefully my design will have a bit of originality to it, with some of my own personal style. Style as in design style. If it was dress sense, it would prob look like a hobo.

Anyway, from a technical point of view, I plan to include a fair bit of of AJAX + PHP actionoly to it and probably some Mootools or JQuery ‘fun’. Mainly as a learning exercise but also to improve functionality. I also wanted to have a user rating system for all work and blog posts but I may have to leave this til later, as it’s already going to be pretty darn brain intensive.

Here is a sneak preview of the site so far:

Creative Binge posts have slowed to say the least to more of a creative slurge or rather slow drip. Even Ed Stelmach has regained his thrown as top Stelmach of Google, putting aside his Alberta responsibilities and taking a moment to laugh heartily, wallowing in his success.

Since my Facebook in 40 years thing that got on the digg.com front page and loads of other sites, I got a steady flow of Facebook friend invites. I think someone has copied me too with this Pension Book, it is better than mine, but has a bit of an abusive angle to it, which I’m not that keen on.

After that I mainly posted items that consisted of sick or had atleast some relation to eating disorders (see example). These were not as popular and soon the posts dried up, much like the sick, a stale remnant, slowly eroding away.

But, the future is bright, I am currently re-designing my website as this one has become almost embarrassing. It’s never a good sign when you fear people looking at your site so it must be changed.

This one is dated, with the next one I aim for a clean, modern and sophisticated look. I also want to add some nice features such as rated content, more dynamic info going on such as a Rant Box, comments on portfolio work and latest site updates so people can see what’s new. I want to highlight my Flash games more too, as people always seem to like them.

From a technical point, I’d like to maybe get in a bit of jquery actionoly in but it’s thinking of a reason, I don’t like features for features sake, there has to be a use. I keep getting alured by Flash CS3’s mobile phone support too. I would love to make some of my games available on mobile phones and it looks pretty easy, but this will have to wait.

Before I recently left the realm of Empire, I… I mean ‘we’ to sound more like a team player, made some high quality Flash games which you can play here:

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/edxtra/christmas2007/games.htm#flashg

The Christmas site itself is rather nice:

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/edxtra/christmas2007/index.htm

And my legacy, that is Bargain Finder, a means for the user to quickly and easily view the best deals on the website.

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/bargain/index.htm

That is all.

Forgive me user for I have sinned, it has been many weeks since my last blog post and my soul must-ef be cleansed.

Of late I have been designing a new ecommerce site called ‘idolised.co.uk’. I have enjoyed this very much and produced my best logo of all time, yes, that’s right - Richard Stelmach’s best logo design of all time. The last logo I did was one for my own site, a warning type sign logo of someone puking up with the strap ‘creativebinge.co.uk - consume til yer puke’. Everyone hated this concept, especially the eating disorder angle I took.

So anyway, hopefully this one will be more popular:

Click here to view the site design for idolised.co.uk.

Other than that, I have been muchos enjoying making some Flash games…despite being told not to use so much blood. Well, sorry for adding a little realism to my games, if you hit a tree while skiing at like 80mph, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt. I said that my game would probably save about 10,921 lives as people would know the dangers of skiing, well, all I know is that the blood won’t be on my hands.

And where’s the fun in disintegrating people with demonic snowballs of hate, if all that happens is that they get turned into chirpy dancing elves.

If you like the pic, go here to Digg it

I’ve added some stuff to the work section of my site.

Yes, this means the highly anticipated e-motivator, emotional filter and creative dump have not been started on… I mean finished of course.

E-Motivator (update: actually this is complete now, click here

I’m not one to keep my genius ideas secret, possibly because I know deep down they’re too unpopular to be stolen. Anyway, the e-motivator will randomly generate motivational messages to give you a “can do” attitude, a constant smile or that scary wide eyed enthustiastic expression. It will basically give you everything you need to be successful.

See below for an early mock-up (update, click the image to go to the finished e-motivator):

Yeah, I’ve basically designed an advanced system to solve most people’s life problems. Don’t be intimidated by the technology here, this piece of kit could change your life (when it’s complete).

See previous post for emotional filter concept and creative dump is too vulgar to describe.

Like two great mythological titans, battling for eternity through every chasm and depth of this world we live upon, I Richard Michael Stelmach have been persevering to defeat Ed Michael Stelmach on Google, testing my wit and ingenuity to the limit, taking me places I thought I would never have to face.

It’s a battle of pride, identity and supremacy.

Like a hunter and his prey, I respect Ed Stelmach as a politician and man. We have 66.6666666% the same name, we’re practically brothers but this can’t go on.

For many years I dominated Google as number one, top dog and most famous of all Stelmachs. In my hayday, every result on the first page was related to me, either a website I had made or my own portfolio. Times have changed and there’s a new kid on the block… Ed. He has pushed my site down to fourth in the rankings.

Arguably, Ed is an important man, Premier of Alberta, possibly more important than me. He’s a good looking guy and intelligent. I admit, the battle has taken it’s toll on me, I think I’ve lost a little bit of Richard Stelmach along the way, the hurt runs deep, can I compete with this collusus of a man?

YES RICH YOU CAN DO IT, SEARCH DEEP WITHIN, DON’T BE AFRAID, THIS IS YOUR DESTINY.

I won’t give up. I will keep you posted on my progress.

UPDATE (18/05/07): Dan Atkinson launched an offensive by editing Ed’s wikipedia article stating that Ed was “living under the shadow of Richard Stelmach” with a link to my site. Unfortunately it seems the wikipedia guys must have disagreed with this and have removed it after a day.

UPDATE (18/05/07): I have submitted this story to Digg to help SEO etc in my battle against Ed. Please Digg it using the link below:

Click here to visit the Digg article and click Digg it if you want!

UPDATE (20/05/07) I’VE DONE IT: Yep, in 2/3 days i’ve managed to defeat Ed Stelmach in my battle for google supremacy!

Related Links:

• http://premier.alberta.ca/
• Ed’s wikipedia
• http://www.assembly.ab.ca/net/index.aspx?p=mla_bio&rnumber=55

Samskara, the once glorious band that blessed pubs and bars across Yorkshire with their sweet tunes and rhythmic funkrock. I was lucky to play drums in this band with Dave Kupelian on vocals, often at one with the music, a personification of the music, leading him to break dance on stage… or atleast attempt to! Ricky Roth/ Rodder on guitar and Pete on bass.

Here are, i’m sure, some highly sort after MP3s for you to enjoy:

http://www.creativebinge.co.uk/samskara/down.mp3
http://www.creativebinge.co.uk/samskara/funkymonkey.mp3
http://www.creativebinge.co.uk/samskara/wheredowego.mp3