Well… after 6 years of dedicated and untiring devotion, my old Toshiba laptop finally kicked the bucket. The ‘ol girl has been on live support for a number of years now with countless hard drive reformats and a slew of transplants. She was loved by many and adorned by all. Lets take a moment of silence to reflect.
Very rarely do I get the chance to take a design in any direction I want while at work. However, I was able to do just that last week. The objective was to create a shirt for the upcoming SRS Kids Day. The shirt would be worn not only by the kids but the employees as well. To be honest, I feel like I could have taken this design up a notch, but I was so excited about having full reign of its direction, that I just slapped 2 different concepts to my bosses and let them choose. Its currently going up through the ranks for approval. Hopefully by this time next month they’ll be a bunch of these little XS shirts running around the complex terrorizing everyone. 
Ive been trying to broaden my Photoshop knowledge lately and the best way to do that is hands on experimenting. These are just a few “chops” that I through together. They still have a long way before they’re finished or before Im happy with them…. but its a start.
Female Racing News (FRN) in 3D - Version 1
Female Racing News (FRN) in 3D - Version 2
Lighting Effects - Amanda
We were stoked when Leah contacted us last week through our Driver Profile Website Special page. If you don’t know who this young lady is, then this image is worth a thousand words 
Her new site should be launched within the week, so all you drag race fans, keep your eyes peeled.
This post have moved [HERE]
Ive been meaning to post these for a while now. Amanda (aka DrifterMama) and I did a small photoshoot a couple of weeks ago which I thought I would share. We don’t exactly have fancy exquipment or a full blown studio, but we made due with our descent Point-And-Shoot camera, a shop light and a desk lamp. Here’s a few of our favorites.
In 2005 I worked for a company out of Atlanta which did an enormous amount of work in Microsoft Visio. I enjoyed it at first. Its ability to print large format graphs and charts and its ease of use made a good universal tool. But I ultimately grew to hate it. You know how it when you use and do the same thing over and over again. Plus compared to the software I was accustomed to using (ie Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, etc), Visio was nothing short of lame. However, now the company Im working for does most of their projects in PowerPoint!! Ugh! And yes, its terrible. When you think of PowerPoint you think of presentations on a projector, right? Wrong. I can count on one hand how many times they use PowerPoint for projector presentations. So, another words, PP is more of an elaborate Microsoft Word.
Reaching my wits end, I told them about Visio and its features. One month later, bam, here it is. One copy for me and the second copy for a co-worker. I knew what I was getting myself into by making this recommendation per my previous experience, but at this point (no pun intended) I’ll do anything to get away from PowerPoint.
So let the large format, anti PowerPoint, graph and chart building chaos begin!
The past two weeks have been VERY exciting for the Studio Rhoad team. Our work load has almost doubled and it doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon which is certainly a good thing. However, Im not content with that So two weeks ago, in an effort to expand the Studio Rhoad brand further, Amanda and I purchased a drift/race car. You are probably thinking, “why the hell is a graphic design company getting into racing?” Well, we are both very involved in the automotive world and because of that, most of our work spawns from the automotive and racing connections we have. By purchasing and campaigning through racing we are able to combine our two passions; racing and thrash metal design. Ideally, we will do enough promoting by attending events around the southeast that the additional work/income will not only support our racing adventures, but supply extra income as well.
This coming Sunday (April 13th, 2008) will be attending the first event since the new purchase at the Myrtle Beach Speedway in Myrtle Beach, SC. I believe there is a competition at the day, but our main focus for the event to shake the car down and make any adjustments to improve it. So we invite you to watch us live. We will be broadcasting a live video feed from the event so be sure to check it out [HERE]. If all goes well, we’ll have the camera setup inside the car for some pretty exciting in-car action!
Wish us luck.
As I mentioned in my first income report, Ive begun to keep track of how much money we are making online. And to be honest, this month’s report is somewhat disappointing in some ways, but the complete opposite in others. To start off, I knew that this years advertising income was going to be significantly lower from last months due to the fact that most of last months advertising was comprised of sign-on bonuses. We didn’t have that luxury this month. Further more, several of our blogs haven’t been updated on a regular basis; this one included. And on top of that, Ive for the most part completely dropped my www.iheartresources.com project. Chances are I’ll end up selling that site. Instead, I started another blog that I am far more passionate about; Rhoad Racing which will document my adventures in automotive racing (more specifically, “drifting”).
On the flip side, FemaleRacingNews.com is doing much better than it was last month. The majority of our viewers are being referred via Google searches which is excellent. These referred viewers are the ones we want because they are actually interested in the sites subject matter compared to Social Media site referrals. The word is starting to spread about the site which can only be a good thing. Im looking forward to see how it does over the next month.
With that in mind, here are the numbers for March 2008:
Pulp Fiction and great typography go hand-in-hand
Not work safe (language)
This particular video is more of an instructional video, but is extremely well done. And the typography is impeccable.
And one more vid for you viewing pleasure.
This one captures the classic “Who’s on First?” bit by Abbott and Costello and displays it in a very interesting display of type and animation. I thoroughly enjoy this one
