The french magazine Chronic’Art asked me a couple of illustrations for their 63th issue, which main theme was Gonzo journalism and its modern heritage.
I designed the cover illustration, and the double page illustration for the main topic.

A couple of days ago, I posted a “Satanic Gameboy” sketch on my blog.
Well, I redraw it, and made it a wallpaper, in a couple of different sizes.

• 1280 x 800
• 1440 x 900
• 1680 x 1050
• 1920 x 1200
• Iphone
• PSP

If you don’t already know, you can also take a look at the excellent Kitsune Noir “Desktop Wallpaper Project”.

I stumbled today on an interesting idea on the Japanese website of Domino’s Pizza.

When you have ordered a pizza online (after a fastidious registration process, as only Japanese site have the secret), you are invited to follow in “real-time” the progression of the making of your pizza.

Since you will need to register and actually order a pizza to see it, here is a video that gives a good idea:

The video integrates your name, your order, and your geo location with a nice usage of Google Maps API. I guess this is the japanese version of the US site. A fine localization work.

The next step would be to add GPS positioning on the delivery scooters, to be able to track exactly the delivery boy during his run…

For the second time, we did a complete redesign of the PechaKucha Night website, called PechaKucha 20X20. I was responsible of the whole design, and also worked on HTML/CSS integration.

For those who never heard about PechaKucha, here is what the site itself say:

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.

We completely rebuilt the system, and also made quite drastic changes to the global design and accessibility, trying to rethink information hierarchy and to simplify the design. We also integrated the blog to the global website, and added many new features:

• You are now able to see presentations online, directly on the site.
• You can now login with both your PechaKucha account or your Facebook one.
• iCal export, to keep in touch with the calendar.
• Geolocalisation: the site will display events in your area in priority.
• …and many small usability enhancement using Javascript/Ajax.

More than the shiny design (..mmm OK,it plays a bit maybe) and the very intuitive UI (I am a big fan of Expose), it’s essentially a couple of applications — that I learned to love work with during my actual job — which made me make the jump.

Some or them are free, the others don’t exceed $100, which is not too expensive regarding their quality (and very cheap compared to, let’s say, Adobe products…). I am still quite new on Mac OS, so if you have any suggestion of useful software, I am more than interested.

MAMP

I guess every PHP developer around knows this one ;) , but for the others…

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP. It allows you to run a PHP driven website on your local machine, with the same settings as your actual live server. It is very useful to create virtual hosts, or to manage your local db.

There is a free version, which does the job quite well, and a pro version around $60.

Coda

I was using Notepad ++ while on Windows, and was quite happy with it.

Then I discovered Coda.

I never managed to find a text editor with a more intuitive interface, usable shortcuts than with that application. The FTP/SVN integration works very well too, and make working on complex projects (remote team, many revisions, etc.) very easy. And it’s beautifully integrated into the OS.

Textmate is perfect when you deal only with English, or western characters in general, but when you use multibytes characters (like Japanese, which I deal a lot with), the spacing between the characters is all messy and it’s very inconvenient to work with. I heard there is a workaround to this, but I never had a chance to find what it is (if you have an idea, any comment is welcome).

You can grab Coda here (about $100).

Versions

If you’re working as a team, which seams to be a very common pattern in this industry, chances are high you’ll need a Version control system.

For those who are looking for an easy to use, nicely designed front-end, Versions might be what you need.

It includes several SVN versions, nicely handles SSH, and offers a very easy to use timeline function. And like Coda, is really beautifully integrated in the OS.
I know that there is a SVN client integrated in Coda. But if you prefer a dedicated application, Versions seems to me like a very fine choice (and it’s only $30).

Cyberduck

Again, Coda includes an integrated FTP, but for those who like a dedicated client, Cyberduck is just really fine.

It has FTP and SFTP, let you CHMOD, manage folders, see hidden files, etc. — all the classics. And it is free.

Skitch

In my work, I use a lot of screen captures.

It can be to add elements to a design directly on the top of a capture of a live design (useful when your layout files contains MANY layers and you don’t want to open them). For archiving. To share with people. Etc.

Skitch combines the ability of Mac OS to take a screenshot of just a portion of the screen with a very useful palette of tools allowing you to scribble directly over the capture: text, arrows, circles, free drawing… You can then publish the edited screenshot online in one click, and share the URL (which is unique, and known only by you or the people you want to share it with).

It is super convenient when you work as a team, and are testing/debugging a website, a simple drawing being sometimes way more explicit than a long explanation. And also it’s free.

Don’t hesitate to leave your opinion, comments, etc.

Still some bugs:

• Javascript compatibility issues between the different Jquery versions of the plugins used: the contact form doesn’t work…
• CSS issues for some layout cases.
• The layout is tested only in Firefox 3.5.3 and Safari 4.0.3.

Yokata.jp is a free webservice for Japanese mobile phones.
It allows its users to provide a simple feedback about any live performance (music, theater, etc.), in real-time, with the use of QR-codes.

They needed a bunch of characters to represent the diversity of their users, that they could use in their communication, mostly print and video.

The “Muscial Creativity and the Environment” section of Tokyo University of the Arts (東京芸術大学 音楽環境創造科) needed a website.

They wanted something simple and clear, and not too directly related to the world of the music.
I focused on a simple layout, black and white, with only #ffff00 yellow.

The site is visible here: http://mce.geidai.ac.jp/

Red Bull Crowdcast allow people to upload live content (only text and photos for now) to both a mobile and a PC sites, in real-time. The user get a specific email address by scanning a QR-code, which is linked to an event (for example, as we did for the Red Bull Sound Clash, or, more recently, the Red Bull Box Cart Race).

Uploaded content is accessible almost immediatly, and can also been broadcasted during the event itself via a flash vissualisation module. We built also a very simple, ajax-driven live moderation tool.

I was responsible for the whole art direction of the project: from the logo and the overall look and feel, to more technical aspects like CSS and HTML integration. The project was built using the Symfony framework.

As Mike wrote on his blog,

Email on mobile phones in Japan has been a standard feature since the beginning and often acts as the primary email address for many Japanese people. It is a natural interface to participation. The time from sending your email to appearing on the stream can be as little as 5–10 seconds, so the reward for participation is almost immediate.

Audi Mobile is the official Audi Japan mobile website. It offers the latest Audi informations, an Official Audi Dealers locator, campaigns informations and goodies to download. The site is accessible from the top page of the DoCoMo official page, potentially reaching some of the 48.6 million i-mode users.

I was responsible of the whole design, form Art Direction to UI conception, while working in parallel with the development team, the client and their agency in Japan.