
sketching, pencil and charcoal
One thing I have to admit is that I am not an active trend follower, which might not be good for a web designer. So when twitter has become a trend, I didn’t pay much attention to it, until one day I found it’s already everywhere that I can’t even avoid it any more… Yes, it IS everywhere, all TV news, celebrities, everyday enormously growing amount of random people, and even US governments, are all using twitter. It’s not just another social networking website, it is a phenomenon of the generation. It’s quick, short and full of information that you are interested in…. this is exactly what we are for.
Still I am one of millions of the twitter beginners, in the process of finding the value of it while already got addicted to it. Just found some small tricks of usage, and happy to share in here
1. Twitter is associated with many bookmarking website. When you submit a web page to their site, they let you post this site link to twitter meanwhile with just a button clicking.
2. hash (#) is an amazing feature of tagging the keywords. This tag will then be tracked by twitter (after you opt in and follow twitter.com/hashtags) and whenever you post with a tag word (word after #), it will show up as a real time post at http://www.hashtags.org
3. twitter has its simple HTML/JavaScript code that allows you to insert into your own website or other social network site to show your twitter’s updates on those sites.
Want to find out how amazing twitter is? Go experiencing yourself!
Papyrus is a contemporary font that has been broadly used in various art works for different types of occassions, due to its neat yet stylish look and great legibility.
The poster is sort of a typography study in Papyrus, merely composed of all letters of the alphabet and some numbers and characters.
More info for the font creator: Chris Costello
Chris Costello graduated from Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie and received an Associates Degree in Commercial Art, in 1979. While in school, he worked at Wambach Communications Group, in Rhinebeck, New York as a part-time graphic designer and was hired full-time after his graduation. During this period of his life, he was also very involved with music and played bass with several bands in the area. He eventually took a chance to follow this dream—he quit his job and joined a rock band that toured the southern U.S.
In 1982, he moved to South Florida to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, an art institute located directly on the beach. He won some awards and two scholarship nominations then decided to take a semester off and work in the field for a while. However, his job was so great, that he just kept on working and never went back.
Chris Costello worked at Group 3hree Advertising in Pompano Beach, doing graphic design, production and illustration. After about a year, he left this full-time position and went back to work for the same company, making twice as much money as a freelancer. He figured this was the way to go, so he hired himself out to ad agencies and design studios throughout South Florida. He liked the freelance idea because he could work on a lot of different projects and still had some time to hang on the beach.
After tiring of his vacation lifestyle, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts and worked for Brewster Advertising in Cambridge as an Art Director. After three years, he felt that he acquired enough experience to go off on his own again, so he left to pursue a career as a freelance illustrator and, a professional bass player. For the next six years, he had the time of his life. During the day, he worked at home, illustrating for high profile book publishers and ad agencies throughout the country. His nights and weekends were spent traveling to resorts and colleges all over New England to play music.
Costello became the Art Director for DPI, a book publisher in Woburn, MA in the year 1995. There, he learned computer graphics, web design, management and all about the publishing industry.
Three years later, he left DPI and became Senior Graphic Designer for The DeWolfe Companies in Lexington, MA. In 2002, Dewolfe was aquired by NRT and merged with Coldwell Banker Hunneman to form Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage where he was promoted to Creative Director in thier marketing department.
In 2003, he recieved a Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design and Visual Communication at Northeastern Universty in Boston.
Chris Costello currently lives in the Boston area with his wife, Anita, and his two daughters, Sheriden and Emersen. He still gets to hang on the beach every now and then… but mostly then.
Designing typefaces is a labor of love for him. After handlettered book and magazine titles for several major publishers, he thought it would be cool to produce complete character sets from some of these designs for all of creatives out there. Except for Letterpress Text, every font is inspired by his own imagination and most are inked by hand before they are digitized.
The complete list of type fonts that Chris Costello designed is as follows:
Blackstone, Blackstone Italic, Letterpress Text, Letterpress Text Italic, Letterpress Text Bold, Letterpress Text Bold Italic, Mirage, Papyrus, Virus, Virus Lethal
Chris Costello created the font Papyrus in 1983. This unusual roman typeface merges effectively the elegance of a traditional roman letterform with the hand-crafted look of highly skilled calligraphy. It includes an extra set of initialing capitals to enhance its unique style.
Papyrus is part of the Linotype Library. Papyrus is a trademark of Esselte Letraset Limited.
The font Papyrus can be downloaded at:
http://www.linotype.com/14649/papyrusregular-font.html
I’ve been amazed by the special effects created in Photoshop for a long time, and this time I would like to make one by myself. Steps are as follows:
image 1: boy and ground
image 2: sea
image 3: sky and orange clouds
image 4: crystal ball
image 5: sunFINAL IMAGE - the enlightened universe:

Gestalt is well accomplished in here. I separate the image into 5 objects: the sky with orange clouds, the surface of the sea, the boy and the ground, the fake sun and a fake crystal ball. The first 3 are from photos, the last two are made up by myself with Photoshop techniques and tools. Now, all the objects look like in one environment. I was trying to make the image match the color of the fake sun, since it is the shiniest part of the image. Therefore, the tone of the image will be yellowish orange. The theme of the image will be mystery. Sun is abnormally huge, the boy is standing in front of the sun on a high and steep ground, holding a crystal ball, just like a little witch.
There are quite some challenges I met in this project, like the colors of the original 3 images don’t go along with each other, the surface of the sea need to have reflection of the sun shine, etc. Therefore, in this project I would say this biggest effort I made is to integrate the objects to make it look like in one environment, which required the techniques in image adjustment and level adjustment.
Some fun collage I did years ago. The colors were cut off from various magazine paper.
The word came to my mind first, then I tried to find the main color it and then the other colors to match it. For instance, Vibrant - the main color is Magenta; Yellow and green are the secondary colors which goes with magenta for the meaning of the word.





Runtime Design Automation is a software company in Santa Clara, CA. I created the company’s website. But before that, I also created a microsite for them for the brief intro purpose. Screenshots are as follows. Site can be viewed from here.