Some Random Dude » Art & Ideas http://www.somerandomdude.com Some Random Dude is a blog by P.J. Onori that covers design & technology in the broadest sense possible. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:37:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Finished. Time To Start Over. http://www.somerandomdude.com/2009/11/02/finished-time-start/ http://www.somerandomdude.com/2009/11/02/finished-time-start/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:31:38 +0000 P.J. Onori http://somerandomdude.com/?p=4982 For the past year on this blog, I have spent an inordinate amount of time on the design and development of this blog. In many ways, the new direction of the blog was an amazing success. The blog has been updated literally thousands of times with all different kinds of content. The decentralized manner of publishing turned my everyday routines into a form of blogging. However, during same year, I have written a grand total of 18 actual long-form articles. Of those 18, perhaps 10 were no related to the theme development or why I was not actually writing. I knew quickly after the redesign that I missed the mark in a few ways – in one way or another, I have been working on fixing those issues. I believe that those are behind me now with this current revision. This theme has been released in a more generic form which fulfills the promise I made just about one year ago to this day. Which leads me to my next “project”. I want to turn this blog around in a big way. I am aiming to get some serious readership and some serious conversations back on this site. I want to go about doing this in a fairly naive/idealogical manner and I am planning to write extensively about it.

Devoting Time To Writing and the Process of Writing

I am not a fan of the current state of blogging – especially concerning web-related blogs. Much of the content I see coming out is drivel, intellectually unchallenging and seemingly designed to generate traffic rather than ideas. Many sites follow a pattern from self-proclaimed blogging experts on how to generate readership. The results are not pretty. I have decided to draw my miniscule line in the sand and document the process. I am going to try to generate traffic and readership the way I think it should be done. Like with many other things, I could either be completely wrong or just lacking in talent to accomplish such goals. Nonetheless, with the blog redesign project completed, I thought it would be a good time to start something new.

When Some Random Dude got started, the blog’s design/structure lacked in polish, but the content sure got a lot more attention. It is way past time to redirect my attention to developing my actual thoughts rather than a place for my thoughts to reside.

]]> http://www.somerandomdude.com/2009/11/02/finished-time-start/feed/ 10 NPR’s "The Art of Eric Carle" http://www.somerandomdude.com/2007/07/25/npr-art-carle/ http://www.somerandomdude.com/2007/07/25/npr-art-carle/#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:59:00 +0000 P.J. Onori http://www.somerandomdude.net/blog/design/npr-art-carle/ I recently came across a segment on NPR where they interviewed Eric Carle, the famous children’s book designer. Carle became well known for his style of using colored paper to piece together colorful and elaborate illustrations. Various techniques are used to create vastly different looks – the work is quite amazing.

In a time where many of us (including myself) use computers as the sole device for creative production, I find it very grounding to see how much can be done off a computer that would be unbelievably time-consuming to produce on a computer. Perhaps now is the time to ditch your desktop/laptop for just a few minutes (I know, it’s scary) to play with some pencils and/or crayons. Who knows, it might even be more fun than the carpal-tunnel-producing, eye-strain-creating fun box known as your computer.

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