Month: May 2009

Gradient Dropper = LOVE

Posted on by ARSpaulding

I tweeted about this earlier this week, but I felt it warranted an actual blog.

This tool – I’ve completely overlooked for all of this time.  Usually, I can recreate a gradient fairly accurately if not dead-on the original.  But uhm… I don’t have to!  But I didn’t know that.  I was recreating a real flower’s color variations and on occasion I’d click the eyedropper to obtain a color from the original but it wouldn’t actually apply the color!  Well I finally got a bit frustrated with this and sat back for a moment and then I noticed it.  There were 2 droppers.

2?!

Hover mouse over each.  The first was what I expected.  A normal eye dropper.  The second… a what?  A “Gradient Dropper?!  Wait – does that mean what I think it means?!”

So I gave it a guess as to how to use it.  I clicked on one spot, held the mouse down, dragged my mouse over to another desgination and… OMG!  An automaticallyish gradient created!

This is awesome.  So for those of you who are trying to figure out what the heck I’m talking about – where oh where would this thing be located – look to the lovely screenshot to the side with all of the spiffy arrows.

Someone linked me to a description of me…

Posted on by ARSpaulding

What the heck. 

So uhm – if you don’t get who I am in the design world – read this:

http://designerslove.net/?p=221

Way too freakin weird.  Seriously.  Yes – that’s about how it is.  A graphics designer who tinkers w/ more than just the graphics to make it “work” and interact and buddies up with the developers while still doing the same with the designers (though I think I’d have to speak for myself and other designers, we’re sometimes a judgemental bunch of skeptics when someone else says that they’re a graphics designer).

Anyway, I thought that others should also read the article who find themselves in the same boat.  I think the real heart of it is that we like to get to the heart of everything – every part of the “thing” and know the innerds from the techonology side, the development side, apply the pretty shiny, and to understand and see (sometimes foresee) how a user will interact and be able to personally feel the frustrations of the end user when there are malfunctions in a given application to the point of personally – temporarily – being frustrated at the state of the UI and want to take control to fix it ourselves.  And then when things are done very well, transitions are incredible and the intuitiveness of a “thing” is so well done that its almost invisible, we have internal ovations over how well its done.