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The Business of Cards

Some great business card design ideas here, just to get your brain working and come up with something really creative. Now, this might not work for everyone, but these are some really nice designs nonetheless.

Creative & Unique Business Card Designs

Thanks to The Designer Daily for the link!

It’s Pickin’ Up

Well, the last month has been a bit of a whirlwind here at M.Berndt Design. In addition to my work for DH IT Consulting, I have had a slew of projects, one of which is pretty big and should hopefully get a little more exposure for the company. It’s for the Art Center College of Design‘s Photography department, and was a collaboration with Mark Berndt Photography. Working as a team, we came up with a great design, and loaded it with some great functionality as well. This site involved a little more in-depth J.Query work than I’m used, and I have to say it was kinda fun. We’re still hammering out the details, and the initial site has been sent for approval, so there will be a link to follow shortly.

I also developed a few new pages for clothesmith.com, for Juliette Smith’s new “Boot Camp” project, and well as a revamp of Michael Zadowicz’s “The Fashion Scupltor“, complete with new galleries and a different look and feel to the whole site (new link to follow when that project is complete as well).

A busy summer, but it has been rewarding and interesting to say the least. Next up, a redo of the DH IT Consulting site, which I will have a link to very soon as well. More business is always good, keep yours eyes peeled and send ’em my way, wont’cha? Cheers.

Wilco Invades Idaho

Last night, after waiting for about 13 years, I finally got to see one of my favorite bands, Wilco. Hailing from the great city of Chicago, I just kept missing them every time they played a show close (or not so close, as it were) to where I was living at the time. Finally, they decided to come through Boise again for the first time since 2008, and it was a great experience all around. I hadn’t even heard their latest album until yesterday, and I have to say it is pretty rad. Their style manages to change slightly with each record, while still keeping their famous sound on each new musical adventure.

The setlist last night had a great mix of oldies and newies(?), and lots of stuff in between, as you can see. (thanks to setlist.fm for the info!)

Jeff Tweedy was fairly subdued during the first half of the show, but started to open up in the latter portion. He made fun of the people who were up in the hills listening to the show for free, and said he wouldn’t have paid 50 bucks to see Wilco, either. He called out a guy who was smoking a doobie in the front row, and when the guy raised his hands to let everyone know who he was, Tweedy said, “Dude, put your hands down, you’re gonna get arrested.” He thanked the crowd on several occasions, and kept remarking about how beautiful Idaho was (“We’re going to play some depressing songs in a beautiful environment”) and how the crowd was great.

As usual, I had the iPhone camera on the ready – here are some images from last night’s spectacular show…

Wilco Boise 1
Wilco Boise 2
Wilco Boise 3
Wilco Boise 4
Wilco Boise 5
Wilco Boise 6
Wilco Boise 7
Wilco Boise 8
Wilco Boise 9
Wilco Boise 10

The weather was perfect, nice and sunny with a cooling evening after the sun went down, the band was on fire, the crowd was raucous, and the surroundings were gorgeous (as always at the Botanical Gardens here in good old Boise, Idaho). Thanks again, Wilco, for a great time. Don’t wait 4 years to come back again…

SMNOF.org

Here’s the most recent work I’ve done – these folks do good things for students in this suburb of Kansas City, check ’em out…

SMNOF is a unique and revolutionary concept in community support of schools, providing financial aid for high school fees to students attending Shawnee Mission North High School…in the form of financial grants through our Opportunity Funding Application [OFA] Process, plus Mini-Scholarships to in-need students & families at Shawnee Mission north High School. We also award laptop computers and gift cards as prizes in our Essay Contest each semester. A developing Teacher Supply Network helps connect teacher needs with donations from the community, and our SMNOF Caring Heart is awarded to select teachers at North in recognition of their support of the Opportunity Fund and their efforts in “Helping NORTH Students”.

The Shawnee Mission North Opportunity Fund [SMNOF] is a non-profit Kansas Corporation recognized by the IRS as a 501-c-3 public charity. It is funded primarily by Shawnee Mission North High School alumni, with additional support from local residents and businesses. The Opportunity Fund offers needs-based financial aid to individual students, and their families at North, to help with certain high school fees and expenses. This revolutionary concept in community support of schools provides a very personal approach to “Helping NORTH Students”…your contribution goes to a person in need – not a school budget.

Go visit SMNOF.org to find out all the details…or just go check out the site.
Happy Thursday!

New MacBook Pro(s) & Cons

As we get closer and closer to Apple’s announcements about the new MacBook Pros they’re going to unleash on us this year, speculation is at an all-time high. Rumors are flying around rampant on the interweb, with topics ranging from “retina displays” to new, better graphics to faster processors to the death of both the optical AND hard drive. Thought these rumors all have validity, which ones will come to fruition? And which ones will Apple make us wait another year for?

The display rumors seem to be at the top of everyone’s list, as they are expected to DOUBLE the pixels, at least on the 15″ MBP. That said, the new displays would be 2880 x 1800 pixels, which would be an incredible resolution, better than the quality of Blu-Ray. There has been no confirmation as of yet that these are going to be the new displays, but that would be an unparalleled computer viewing screen, and one that would have competitors scrambling to produce something comparable.

Another rather major rumor circulating is that Apple may be getting rid of the traditional optical drive. Now, while the majority of apps and software has gone the way of the download, there are still CDs and DVDs (last time I checked) that would require an optical drive. While these have been virtually included on most computers for the past 15+ years, suddenly they are obsolete in the eyes of Apple? They already have done away with the optical drive on the Mac Mini, which I had to learn the hard way. My rather expensive Abode Creative Suite CS4 came on discs, and not knowing about the lack of optical drive, I was forced to borrow another Mac and transfer the files over Wi-Fi, which was time-consuming and unexpected. Lots of people I know actually still buy CDs, and what are they to do when they want to add their newest gem to the iTunes music library?

Solid State Drives. They’re incredible, no doubt, but how much cost will this tack onto an already expensive machine? As it is right now, as expensive as SSDs are, you would need to have at least one external hard drive (probably 2 or 3, depending on how much storage you need) just to keep your music and pictures on. At $600 for a 500GB SSD, external solutions are definitely the cost-effective way to go. And there are still users who do not trust the reliability of SSDs yet, as they are rather new, and haven’t been truly time-tested just yet. Hopefully, the consumer will have a choice as to how big the SSD that ships with their new Mac is, and maybe still have the choice to stick with a regular hard drive instead.

These rumors, as well as others, are exciting and frightening at the same time. We love when Apple releases its newest technology on us, let’s just hope the prices don’t continue to climb too high…

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