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Category: Work (Page 7 of 8)

Trying To Grow A Chin

3/6/'06 /

At work I’m currently designing a poster for a local junior high-school. They are about to move into a brand new building, and will have a big party with music, drinks and live performances which they obviously want to advertise prior to the event. And they want pictures of all 280 pupils to appear on it. All 280! So I spent most of the day cropping and color-adjusting the digital-camera photos they sent in.

Big fun, oh yes. Not.
Except:

That cd full of kids posing in front of the teacher’s amateur digital camera is gold material for sketching though. In one of Woody Allen’s movies — was it “Annie Hall”? I’m not sure — there’s a scene where he revisits his old classmates, has them stand up in the classroom and say what they became in later life. One goes “I’m the president of [insert multinational here]”, the other goes something like “I used to be a heroin addict, now I’m on methadon”. Well looking at the faces of these kids, I had a lot of fun imagining where they’ll end up in life. Some of their faces will surely show up here sooner or later, in ink.

Until then, I’ll leave you if I may, with a guy who’s Trying To Grow A Chin. The astute observer will notice an accute lack of smiling wrinkles:

trying to grow a chin

I Say Tomaat, You Say Tomate

2/28/'06 /

bilingual news

Pictured above is a screenshot of a site’s back-end I’m currently working on. Can you see what’s odd about it? Since you probably don’t know Flemish, I’ll tell you: each news item added to the site must be entered in two languages — Flemish and French.

Now, there’s many quirks and funny little bizarre idiosyncracies that come with living in a bilingual country such as Belgium. Cities have two names: one Flemish, one French. Depending on whether I take a left or a right turn to go shopping, I’ll be speaking Flemish or French. And so on.

But think about the consequences for people who have to build websites in this country. For every title, every product description, every error message, every button, every navigational item, there must be two versions. I suppose for the bigger shops (those that have copywriters, translators, programmers and graphic designers all working on their own little patch) that wouldn’t be a problem. If, like me, you work in a small shop, you become all these things rolled into one.

One second I’ll be typing away $error['noSuchProduct'] = array("nl" => "Dit produkt bevindt zich niet in onze catalogus", "fr" => "Ce produit ne se trouve pas dans notre catalogue") in my language.php file of epic proportions, the next I’ll be in Photoshop crafting two versions of my “check out” (kassa! caisse!) shopping cart button, whereupon I’ll be fiddling with the script that allows the visitor to select a language, and sets a browser cookie so he doesn’t have to select it again next time he visits. At times, it feels as if I’m juggling about 25 colorful balls up in the air, all of which need to be intercepted before they hit the ground.

Ugh.

Then again: I could have been living in Switzerland…

Chateau L’ile Déserte

9/13/'05 /

desert island

It’s “Bring Some Color To Moonbug” Day apparently. Here’s an oldie that came out rather nice, playing on the desert island cartoon-theme. It’s the first of a four panel cartoon for an invitation but I won’t bore you with the punchline. Coloring was done in Photoshop by setting the brush tool to “Darken”, then adding color on the same layer as the black line — hit or miss, that is. If I’d have known then that there’s such a thing as setting the line-layer to “Multiply”, then doing your coloring safely on another layer underneath, I’d have saved myself a lot of headaches…

Weirdness In The Workplace

9/7/'05 /

It occurred to me recently that, in my 12 years of working for various companies, there’s always been something weird about their physical location.

1993 – 1996: a building which used to be a snack-bar, situated right on the border between Belgium and France. You took a step to the right: in France. Step to the left: in Belgium.

1996 – 2004: a building situated alongside a provincial road which was literally riddled with second-hand car businesses. A steady stream of Polish, Czech and Albanian buyers would parade past our drive-up with their huge pickup trucks, park in front of it, come into the office to ask if by chance we sold Lamborghini’s, and there was the odd neanderthal who would defecate on the driveway. In full daylight. In full view of our surveillance camera’s. The building itself, incidently, used to be a car dealership.

2004 – present: a building located close to a cookie factory and – I kid you not – a horse manure recycling company. One day I’ll be arriving at work with the sweet smell of buttercookies gently curving its way into my nose, the next day it’ll be horse manure — whichever way the wind blows.

Can’t help but wonder what’s next…

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