As a graphic / web designer, dealing with low-quality raster images sent by clients as logo files, or artwork they would like to use in their various designs can often be a huge pain.   I can’t tell you how many times a client sends me a small .jpg image of their logo on a gradient background, and then stares at me perplexed when I ask if they have an eps file, or at least a vector version, of their logo.

The truth of the matter is that most clients have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to raster vs. vector graphics, pre-production, or any of the fun things we designers deal with on a daily basis.  Rightfully so, that’s why they come to us in the first place right?

Well, a tool has come along that may very well ease some of your woes.  http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

This vector magic tool allows you to upload an image, which it then tries to convert into a complete vectorized image that can be tweaked, resized, color matched, etc.  It even lets you convert fully photographic images into vectors, with some interesting results.  I’ve tested it out with various different qualities of images, and was very surprised with how well it handled conversion of some files.  Of course, there are limitation, and it won’t work very well for really small images with a lot of fine detail, but it’s already saved my behind a few times.  Best of all?  IT’S FREE!

Ok, as an inaugural first “real” post to the vinernet I figure I’ll contribute something from my area of expertise.

I’m a web designer / front end coder by trade. I work mainly in XHTML / CSS for front end coding because … well, no one should use tables anymore when coding a website. They’re outdated, bulky, and make for very unfriendly to look at HTML. This isn’t entirely the point of my post today, rather, I’d like to talk about standards for CSS.

A long time ago, a man named Jeffery Zeldman fought for a universal standard to be met between all browsers and how they render HTML and CSS. He’s still fighting that fight today, and his army has grown. The problem? Certain browser-making companies just flat out refuse to adopt these standards. Why? WHO KNOWS. A microsoft engineer has even been quoted as saying “standards compliance is not a high priority” for them in developing their browsers. Unacceptable.

One of my greatest woes is building out a site, and then loading up that PC to check it in IE 6. Nine times out of 10, I missed something when applying a generous amount of IE hacks in my css, and something is not rendering properly, thus forcing me to go through my code and figure out what I didn’t include that I should have. There’s a fun word, should, because honestly I shouldn’t have to put in hacks at all. They may make my page display properly in IE, but they then cause my code to become invalid. Why do I keep doing it? Because about 30-40% of the internet population still browse using IE 6, despite it’s flaws. Most of these people are doing it simply because of lack of knowledge, they don’t know that their browser is a steaming pile because most people adjust their sites accordingly. It’s a big shame spiral, really. IE 7 is a step up, indeed, but even it is still not completely standards compliant, showing thatMicrosoft couldn’t care less about standards, they would rather people make things work for them.

So what is the solution? Many are calling for developers to stop hacking their code to work in IE, especially IE 6. I like this solution a lot. It brings the issue out into the open, forcing people to see what valid code looks like displayed in this inferior browser. Most people will eventually wise up and switch to a better browser…ANY better browser. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this actually happening is slim. While a few people stick to their guns and refuse to hack their CSS to display in IE 6, most of us do not have this luxury. People like me, who work for design firms, have to do it because most clients won’t accept “it’s not going to work in IE 6″ as an answer.

So how else can we spread awareness? Seriously…I’m asking…

Why do I insist on having a blog if I never update it?  Hmm?  Seems very peculiar to me…

Suprisingly, that is not the conundrum I’m posting about!  Instead, I pose a question to the internets!

I’ve been thinking about it lately, and since seanoconnor.com is taken (by some dude’s stupid .mac photo site) and seanoconnor.info is hard for people to understand (seriously, people have a hard time understanding that it’s .info and not .com when I tell them my website address…) that a good solution might be to create a sort of “studio name” that I could use to brand any of the stuff I do, rather than using my actual name.  Does this sound like a good idea, internet?  Some thoughts I had were JetPig, or JetPackPig, or Flying Bacon Studio, etc.  It does not necessarily have to revolve around the pig-in-a-jetpack part of my site, as that can always change.

So I ask you, people of the web, for suggestions on naming my studio.  Give me some ideas, it can be silly, or serious, or a combination of the two.  I may not actually go through with it, but it’s been something I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind.

seanoconnor.info has been revamped! I am very pleased with the new design, and the new shiny wordpress backend should help me keep things updated more easily than the old flash version of the site. Hope you all like the redesign, and feel free to drop me a line in the comments, or send me an email using the form on the about page.