There are a few ways of doing this, but this way is by far my favourite because it’s so easy to modify the effect later on if needed.

First, a short history lesson.

To make you a bit more savvy on the subject, let me fill you in on the origins of the letterpress effect. You most likely own a book, container, or even business card that you’re able to rub your fingers along and feel the letters raised in or out. You guessed it, that’s the letterpress effect. Origins go back to as far as 750AD and has almost been used exclusively in physical printing until around a decade ago. Graphic and web designers then adopted it as part of their design toolkit. Current design trends were beginning to age, so designers needed something to spice up their work.

If you’re interested in seeing some examples of letterpress in web design, take a look at Line25’s fantastic gallery article.

Alright, let’s do it!

Pop open Photoshop and proceed to create a new canvas. In this tutorial, I’ll be using a canvas with the size of 400x400 and background colour of #555555. After doing that, go ahead and type your text out and make it’s colour #999999. You can replicate this if you’d like, it shouldn’t really matter but this colour and size should yeild the best results.

Alright, now let’s actually get into doing the effect. In this method, we can be pretty non-destructible by only using layer styles. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Select your text layer in the layers panel. Now, head over to the bottom of the layers panel and choose Layer Styles → Drop Shadow. Now, make sure to replicate the options in the next image below. I’ll explain what these do in a moment.

Replicated everything yet? Good. Now let me explain a few things. The first thing you should have done is set the blend mode to normal. This ensures that the drop shadow will stand out. Next up is the colour change — make sure it’s #333333. It’s dark enough to stand out against the background without being too disruptive. You should have set the opacity to 100%, which will ensure that the drop shadow is nice and crisp. Next is important, make sure you set the shadow angle to 90°. Last part is easy, just make sure the both distance of the shadow and the size of it is 1px. You can change these later if you want to change the look of the letterpress, but we’ll keep it like this for a more classic letterpress look.

Alright, now we’ll be doing doing the second part of the effect — the inner shadow. Since you already have the effect panel open, just go over to the list of effects on the left and select Inner Shadow.

You’ll immediately see the inner shadow applied, but we’ll change that in a moment. Just take a look at the image below and copy the settings.

Alright, a lot of familiar stuff here. You really just need to duplicate the settings that you used on the drop shadow, but with one major difference. Make sure to set the inner shadow colour to #cfcfcf. This is lighter than the colour we set the text to (#cccccc), and adds a bit of polish.

And that, my friends, is the letterpress effect in Photoshop. I prefer this method because it’s really easy to change the colours of the shadows and text, and believe me, that happens a lot! In this example, the text is pressed outward, but if you were to reverse the colours of the shadow and tweak the text colour as well, you could easily achieve an inset letterpress. I’ll leave it to you to experiment with that, though.

If you want to get fancy, you can also add some gradients and such. I won’t go into the details of doing this, but the above image is an example of what a little bit of creative tweaking can do.

So, in closing, let me outline a few things that you need to remember when doing the effect with this technique:

• There are always two shadows.
• If you want an inset, the inner shadow is should be a colour darker than the background, the drop shadow should have a lighter colour than the background, and the text colour should be the same as the background.
• If you want an outset, the inner shadow is should be a colour lighter than the background, the drop shadow should have a darker colour than the background, and the text colour needs to be a colour that is light, but not as light as the inner shadow.

Today, I’ll be sharing some of those shows that had great potential, but a bad time slot. With all the garbage on TV these days, it might be good to shed some light on some shows that were unique, well produced, or ahead of their time.

I just need to preface this by saying that these shows didn’t necessarily end due to lack of interest. Some may have just expended the storyline.

1. Kings (NBC)

This is number one for a reason. Rarely do I find a drama that I can actually recommend to people, and with Kings it’s no exception. Sure, the environment in which the story takes place is derived from the Bible, but that doesn’t bug me at all. The compelling acting and ever-evolving story always kept me counting the days until I could catch the next episode online. Unlike a lot of other shows that have a new scenario for each episode, Kings makes sure to play things out like one very long movie that’s been diced up into 43 minute pieces. You can typically expect what’s going to happen, but never how it’s done or what happens along the way.

It’s too bad this show was up against American football as it had great potential. Also, this was a more recently canceled show, so there’s a lot of outrage from the community to bring the show back. If not on NBC, hopefully we can see Kings on some other cable network. Make sure to share your thoughts, if you like the show, with NBC’s executives.

2. Bionic Woman (NBC)

Based upon the 1976 series, the modern day revival of Bionic Woman did a very good job at introducing another generation to the story that they would have missed out on otherwise. I thought it did, anyway. Alas, it only ran for one season in 2007 with a concurrent six million viewers and only consisted of eight episodes.

There was a mess of speculation as to whether the show was canceled. You may or may not remember the 2007 writer’s strike, which occurred during the production of the first season. Of course, without writers, production halted and no more episodes were released. After the strike had ended, it appears that everyone had seemingly forgotten the series as it’s content was slowly pulled off of the NBC sites and hulu. Two years later, and I still hold out a bit of hope for a revival, but it looks bleak.

3. LAX (NBC)

It’s probably the aviation nerd in me, but I loved being able to see some (although scripted) behind the scenes action in one of the larger airports in the United States. Like Bionic Woman, LAX averaged about six and a half million viewers across it’s thirteen episodes and only lasted one season.

I can understand why this show was canceled. It only seems mildly interesting to a small subset of people, and to everyone else it just seems like a drama encoded in the mundane operations of an airport. I do admit that I cared little about the actual story of the show and more about the United 744s in the background, but at least they tried. Still, it was very enjoyable to watch as it was a very unique setting for a drama to take place. I commend NBC for giving the show a shot.

4. Last Comic Standing (NBC)

Last Comic Standing lasted through six hilarious seasons and is essentially the American Idol of comedians. A panel of judges listen to comics at various casting calls throughout the United States, determines if they have the stuff, and forwards them onto proceeding rounds (in front of live audiences) if they do. However, in the later rounds, teams are developed and rivalries form as the two teams compete against each other and ultimately only one comic is left standing, hence the name.

As I mentioned, six seasons of this show were produced, ending in 2008. The show itself was genuinely funny, and I loved the idea of listening to concurrent acts and jokes while the comedians telling them were rated. Near the end everyone tended to step up their game in attempts to win, and the result was hysterical.

5. My Name is Earl (NBC)

This show had a very unique setting that I enjoyed very much, and a plot centered around a society in which “hillbillys” rule is certainly fresh. My Name is Earl is one of those shows where each episode drops the characters into a different situation, advancing the storyline very little. Something that always irked me was whenever the show made progress to further develop the characters, it would always be reset to how you knew them back in the very first episode eventually. That’s something I’ve always hated about that type of story, but I still found the 22 minutes of it each week very enjoyable.

Four seasons were eventually produced, raking in around eight million viewers for each episode. The show was canceled in 2009 during the production hiatus.

6. Airline (A&E)

Again, the aviation nerd in me loved this show. There’s just something about pissed off, incoherent passengers that makes me all giddy. Also, the seemingly genuine look into the operations of a CSA (customer service agent) for Southwest Airlines always was interesting to me. I’ve always been interested, for some reason, in careers that most people take for granted.

The United States series with Southwest as the focal airline was actually based off a United Kingdom program of the same name, only featuring Easy Jet as the airline in the show. Unlike the UK series, however, Airline in the US was canceled after three seasons in 2005. Production of the UK version still continues.

7. Thank God You’re Here (NBC)

Derived from Australia, Thank God You’re Here is one of the few improv shows that seems to strike my funny receptors consistently. Actors are essentially dropped into skits with no idea what they’re doing, and they must play along to find out what the skit is about from the actors who are in on the story of the skit. The only clue the actors had before hand as to what the skit was about was the costume they were told to wear. This show was on caliber in terms of funny with Who’s Line is it Anyway (another show I deeply miss).

Lasting one season over seven episodes, Thank God You’re Here was a very unique way of presenting improvisational comedy. It’s short life was during the year of 2007.

8. This American Life (SHO)

I’m a fan of the This American Life radio show, and when it was announced that they would be producing a short, thirty minute show, I was estate. Basically, interesting stories from typical people are delivered as usual, but with visuals and interesting cinematography. A few of the stories were even taken from the radio show and retold (or maybe it was the other way around).

I wasn’t able to catch the reason of the series ending. I’m assuming that it was just too much work to keep going, as poor Ira (the host) also needs to work on the radio show. Regardless, it was very provocative and interesting while it lasted and I hope it returns. The last episode aired in early 2008.

9. Malcolm in the Middle (FOX)

Most people from my generation remember watching the antics of the dysfunctional family in which Malcolm is in the middle of. I did. Malcolm in the Middle was a unique spin on a [generally] family friendly show. Each character had his own quirks that made him diverse from the rest of the family, keeping each episode a treat to watch. The show lasted six years, and it was great to see how the characters matured over that time.

Sadly, the show ended in 2006 with seven seasons. Perhaps it was due to a growing lack of interest among the viewership. Malcolm int he Middle had a good run overall, but didn’t quite end with anything significant as I had hoped. Alas, the show was very fun to watch and will remain one of my favourite programs.

10. King of the Hill (FOX)

Like Kings, King of the Hill has been canceled recently. Most episodes featured a form of satire in one way or another, and generally wasn’t a dumbed down animated comedy show like Family Guy. Although entertaining, the comedy in this show was not in the form of jokes, but rather in how the characters lived their lives. The look of horror on Hank Hill’s face when he sees someone grilling on charcoal instead of propane is just hilarious.

The reason for the cancellation is due to lack of interest. FOX is trying to cater to the kind of person that finds Family Guy funny, and a show like King of the Hill doesn’t really follow suit of that atrocious program. More insulting, King of the Hill was replaced by a program entitled The Cleveland Show, a derivative of Family Guy. Thirteen seasons can’t lie — this show was popular.

Recently I had a problem when I moved my blog from blog.fantikerz.com to fantikerz.com. I had far too many links on other sites that still looked like http://blog.fantikerz.com/?p=261, and wouldn’t redirect to the new blog’s location. I wouldn’t even know where to start if I had to change all of those.

Instead, I threw together a simple redirection script that I thought I’d just share in case anyone needed it. It’s nothing fancy at all, and stupid easy to set up. There are many ways of doing this, and in my opinion, this is the easiest.

This is explained in a way that even common folk who just want to move their blog will understand. Sorry if I insult your intelligence.

1. Create a file called index.php

Pop open notepad, go to File > Save As…, set the filename as index.php, and then go directly below that and make sure to set Save As Type to All Files.

2. Copy the script into the text editor

<?php
	$post = $_GET["p"];
	$new = "http://newbloglocation.com";
	$string = $new . "?p=" . $post;

	echo "Redirecting to " . $string;
	header("Location: $string");
?>

3. Plug in your information

This is easy. Just plug in your blog’s new address where http://newbloglocation.com is. Make sure to include the http://. If your blog was located in another directory, you’re also able to include it like so: http://newbloglocation.com/blog/. Otherwise, omit anything after the domain name.

4. Presto, now save it and upload it to your server

Do a quick CTRL+S to save and upload it via FTP to the root of where your old blog used to reside.

Now you’re done. That was easy!

I’ve always loved typography used as the focal point in motion graphic videos. I’ve even tried my hand at making them. Needless to say, I wasn’t successful due to the lack of patience on my part. However, that made me further appreciate the time and effort that these people have put into making these videos.

Sure, they’re cool, but take into account that each movement of text is scripted and perhaps you will understand the almost artistic beauty of these videos.

These videos are not order in any specific way.

#1: “Still Alive”

#2: “The Big Lebowski”

#3: “Online Songs”

#4: “Typefaces Give Us Signals”

#5: “If”

#6: “Into the Ocean”

#7: “The Cigarette Is Dead”

#8: “That Was Epic”

#9: “Lions Roar”

#10: “Dane Cook”

Bonus

These videos have more imagery than typography, but the motion graphics are still present nonetheless. Of course, the cool factor remains as well.

“Non-O-Biography”

“You’ll Rebel to Anything”

“Tangible Actions”

Everyone wants to relax once and a while and become entranced by the stupid humor that YouTube so graciously harbors. Once in a while, I come across an amusing video that should be much more popular than it currently is. In this post, I’ll share some of those videos with less than 300,000 views (at the time of posting) that will surely make you laugh or smile. No guarantees though.

Just a warning: these videos may be stupidly funny, so your self-pride may be at risk. It also might be a good idea to watch these when you’re alone, as some may be distasteful for the workplace.

1. “Fat Cat Can’t Scratch it’s Chubby Cheeks”

2. “Ysketball”

3.  “Kops Scontro Finale”

4.  “Dents and Dings”

5. “Police Fail to Catch Bank Robbers”

6. Let’s Play a Drinking Game!

7. “Cat Flushing the Toilet”

8. “A Letter From Martha”

9. “Dr. B’Bam’s Family-Style Medical Clinic”

Let me know if you liked or disliked one!

The first one comes from a person who uses the alias Dorgles. It isn’t exactly hilarious, but it may serve a chuckle to a few.

When insulting someone, make sure to proof read.

I never received a reply on this one. Now that I look back, I think I may have been a bit too hard on him. I should have excluded the birthday bit. It’s worth noting that this wasn’t sent to me directly, but one of my website service emails.

Before I start, I just want to share the songs that fueled me while doing the bulk of the work on the rework last night. You know, for fun. I was kind of in the mood for some energetic, synth-poppy music.

In v13 I removed everything that reminded me of the terrible colour scheme in v12, opting for a cleaner look with some cyan and gray mixed about. You’ll see a few subtle instances of radial gradients still, but it’s not really notable. As of now the header section is a bit too bloated for my taste so I may end up chopping that down eventually.

The content pages (Portfolio, Media) haven’t changed much. Yes, they’re still empty, and will probably remain that way for a while until I can find the patience to put them together. The contact page, however, has been tweaked a bit from the last version to make for a better experience with the AJAX interface. I also finished up the About page for now, but plan to add a few more things to it once everything else is done.

A lot has been added to the footer to de-clutter the sidebar. There are the typical social icons like before, but now my tweets and Flicker pictures are also being snagged from the respective services and are now living in the footer as well.

Also worth noting is the addition of the Labs. This was up for a while but I only showed it to a few people. Hopefully it’ll serve as a nice hub for my spontaneous projects. It’s not done yet, like most things on this site, though.

As always I welcome any feedback, and knowing me you can expect another major revision by the end of the year… Here’s to OCD!

Click for the Video

Click for Full Size Image (1200x1000)

I would be lying if I said this wasn’t Twitter inspired. I initially started with an ugly black colour palette in mind but quickly swapped that for a clean, white and blue scheme. From there, I immediately thought of clouds — that’s where cloud-no9’s brushes came in handy. Admittedly, the placement of everything isn’t very original, but that’s alright.

I probably won’t end up converting the psd to xhtml, but if someone wants to, or just wants the psd, leave a comment and I’ll send it to you.

Hopefully, if I do another one of these videos, the end result will be much more interesting. It should be noted that I still consider myself an ametuer at web design.

Just know that there’s not any particular reason for writing this, and you shouldn’t take anything seriously — unless you’re Anthony or George. There might even be some things that you agree with, but don’t be surprised if there isn’t. In all seriousness, this post is really self-centered and is mostly a joke.

• Airplane or Aircraft
  • Honestly, I have no idea why this bugs me. I prefer using and hearing the word aircraft over airplane — maybe because I find the word airplane redundant. I mean, the plane insinuates flight, so therefore the word air is unnecessary. I like the word aeroplane, though.
• Blueberries
  • These things don’t even taste that great. The only real delectable members of the berry family are the strawberry and the raspberry. I don’t even know what the differences between the blueberry and the huckleberry are. In my opinion, these useless fruits should be eradicated. They are taking up strawberry space.
• People Who Post Pictures of Themselves with no Shirt Online
  • You know those douchebags that take pictures of themselves with their crappy 2MP camera phone their parents bought for them in front of their smeared bathroom mirrors with their sixpack barely visible under the blue fluorescent lights with various pointless effects added in emphasizing their “beastliness”? I hate them.
• Pill Popping
  • Modern medicine has come a long way, but what did humans do before taking drugs became common? Working out? Using natural remedies? Resting? What are those?! It just bugs me that people have appeared to develop an independence on pills to make them feel better when there are even better remedies out there. Of course you still need medication, but it needs to be frowned upon when others take drugs for the sake of laziness.
• Posting Your Personal Problems Online
  • I know I’m not alone on this. Doesn’t it suck when you’re having a nice day, decide to go on Facebook, and then see a deeply obscure but obviously depressive message? It can totally bog your day down. I understand the need to vent, but that’s what a diary (or wrists) are for.
• Rapists
  • ‘Nuff said.
• Saying You can do More than you Really Can
  • So you want to look impressive? Then you might think it would be good to add 10 things you know shit none about to your resume. Even better, tell people that you can do those things and then proceed to show those people work that you jacked off a lowly artist on deviantArt! Boy, aren’t you impressive!
• Those Who Put their Name on their License Plates
  • Are you too good for the random string of numbers and letters that the DMV gives you or do you just forget your name all the time? Quit being an egotistical fool because we don’t care what your name is.
• Unnecessary Swearing
  • Sure, popping off an F bomb every now and then adds comical value, but you shouldn’t replace every other word with it. Swearing should either be used to prove a point, or add comical value to an otherwise stale point.
• Woefully Ignorant People
  • You want to show someone something, but they just dont get it and don’t care. This might even be something that you know they would like, but they still don’t care. You can choose to let it go or persist… you persist, if only for the reason that you know that you’ll be thinking of this for weeks if you don’t. Days later, they still don’t give a shit and you proceed to go to your next, more open-minded, employed friend and show him the thing you’ve been raving about. The person loves it and you become best friends, and the ignorant friend gets arrested for possession of a controlled substance. You need better friends.

If you’re not aware of what EvilChicken is, you should go ahead and skip this entry. Things are going to get in-depth and it’ll be hard to understand at points if you weren’t there from the beginning.

Before I go on, I’d just like to preface this by saying that I’m not trying to shift any blame around, but instead outline the shortcomings and faults that led to the site’s demise. This should also serve as good reference material for anyone that wishes to start a large, community oriented site.

Alright, so I’m just going to dive in and outline what went wrong, what went right, and what needs to be done before the site comes back up again.

What Went Wrong

• Traffic
  • On the first day the site was online, Max and Cam both uploaded advertisement videos to their YouTube accounts. Combined, they have over 150,000 subscribers. Less than 1/15th of that was all that was needed to take out the single server.
• Back End Systems
  • While it wasn’t evident to the end users, the system that ran most of the site was crippling out ability to administer it. We took a shortcut and ran Joomla on a site that needed a much more specialized codebase. We initially planned on coding our own content management system — but this was scrapped due to impatience. Once the site was up, we learned that you can’t run a large, comprehensive site on Joomla without hitting some big walls. We had a strenuous time expanding the site (games room, item database, etc.) because we didn’t know how the code for Joomla was setup (since we didn’t write it ourselves).
• Staff
  • While some may take offense to this, I must be honest and say that the staff was, overall, poorly managed. Some of those who were active (and a lot weren’t), didn’t know what their job was because it wasn’t clearly outlined. Yes, it is common knowledge that the job of the moderator is to mediate conversation — but there still were some inconsistencies between staff members. A bit higher up in the chain, you have the staff rank entitled “Owner”. This should be eliminated and be combined with administrators. It should be recognized that those people do indeed own the site, but they should not be placed at the top of the hierarchy for doing little in [forum] moderation/administration. Sure, they manage expenses and the like — but that’s not something that Mint can’t do. Some members of the staff seemed dwarfed by ranks such as owner — resulting in little motivation and spite against those above them. It’s hard enough to put in volunteer hours, but it’s even harder when those above you are getting the spotlight and even accept credit for the work you did, leaving you with little compensation.
• Design
  • Yes, the design did look pretty — for Firefox users. A higher percentile of users still use Internet Explorer, and when your site looks like a bomb went off when they visit, they aren’t going to change their browser over to Firefox just to use it. In terms of expanding upon the design, it would be very much a pain. Each little rounded box was encased inside a dozen other divisions, making for very confusing and messy code. I’m sure even the original designer of the theme has a hard time wallowing through the code. An in house, site-specific design would have taken a lot more time to make, but would payoff in the end due to the understandability of the code (since we wrote it ourselves!). Like the back end systems point earlier, this was scrapped due to impatience.

What Went Right

• Advertisement
  
  • Most sites struggle for weeks attempting to establish a user base. EvilChicken, however, was reached by thousands within hours of launching the site. This was because of the use of viral/social media. If one influential and popular user uploads a video and asks the viewers to help advertise it too — they will. Dozens of videos were made by community members as a result.
• Content
  • When a visitor comes to a site, it’s usually because of either hype, or specific content. If said content is non-existent, non-unique, or is simply not up to par — they will leave within seconds. In the case of EvilChicken, content on the site was submitted by the community. To be more accurate, the content came from the RuneGamer community — EvilChicken’s [main] predecessor. The large amount of guides, tips, and the like were moved over from RuneGamer to EvilChicken — giving the site a bit of a head start.

What Needs to be Done

• Rebranding
  • The EvilChicken name has some what been tarnished with embarrassment. The site was down the first day, then down again during the server upgrade, and then down once again during the domain transfer. When it was up it displayed improperly for half of its users.
• Closer Look into Staff
  • Clear roles need to be laid out for staff members to follow. While it may sound restrictive, it will dramatically save time and make a much smoother system for both the users and the staff. Inactive staff members should be pruned and the portion of the staff that put in the most dedication should be recognized and rewarded, either in the form finances or in proper attribution.
• A Complete Rework
  • A new name won’t be enough to restore reputation. As was initially planned with EvilChicken, the new site must have it’s own content management system and design that actually suits the needs of both the administrators and the users. Look around at some of the most popular sites and you’ll see that they don’t run Joomla or Drupal (ok, fine, a lot run Wordpress though).
• Gradual Rollout
  • When the site is totally complete, it needs to be rolled out slowly to users. Preferably by word of mouth. This way, the server hardware can easily be scaled to suit the needs of the site. It should also be noted that the “biggest” or most “powerful” server doesn’t need to be used. If a content data network (like S3) is used then bandwidth overages can be averted and HDD space can be conserved.
• Collaboration
  • The staff needs to all join one conference and lay things out. What content will be on the site, who’s doing what, the current progress on milestones, and what’s ahead for the future all need to be discussed… periodically. In addition, the implementation of collaboration software such as activeCollab or DimDim would be very helpful.

Many people invested many hours into this site and to see it go is a shame. When it does return we will have learned from our mistakes and further, embarrassing mistakes may be averted.

I’m going to close this by reiterating that I am not trying to shift blame. I do indeed have a lot to do with most of these points, for better or worse. I’m sure I’ve left many other things out, but those should be saved for another post.