Ben Dunkle

So last month I spent a bunch of time working on a logo design in response to Uncle Sam’s RFP: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/wholl-design-the-new-nea-logo-it-could-be-you/
. Regardless of what I think of spec work, I love high scale design competitions. Too much design is born from who-you-know and schmoozing.
Here’s my submission:

I’m at the ft Erie town meeting and 2 hours into it were hearing the same pro-condo heads go on and on. Were all in agreement on this point- the town needs more people, more business.
The people you’re gonna get are not what you want. You want people to fix the cottages and build new ones. Most are gonna be summer residents. Sorry, anyone who thinks CB is gonna turn into year round destination is nuts. We need to maximize what we have.

Too much music. Not enough Sea Monster.

OK all you typography snobs out there, up in arms over Ikea’s recent switch to Verdana (google ikea verdana), ask yourselves: If you had one store to shop for all of your furniture, what would it be? Ikea, right.
If you had one font to use on everything you designed, what would it be? Well, you basically have to choose a web-safe, sans-serif font to maximize utility, so here are your choices:
Arial
Tahoma
Verdana
Trebuchet MS
Lucida

Personally, I’da gone with Lucida, but Verdana’s as good as any.

I want this book:
http://bit.ly/2dwULc
The kids basically maul each other in a war. This would make such a better movie than “Where the Wild Things Are”.

A theme you hear is how parents want to make sure their kids have all the things they didn’t. I don’t get that. I had everything; my parents gave us lots of toys and good food and everything. Maybe it was being a child of the 70s/80s, when things were pretty plentiful.

Today I was proud to see my kid Grif riding his bike with his helmet on, while his friends went bare-brained. Growing up, I never wore a helmet, and I rode my bike everywhere. Most of what my kids have I had too, but at least they’re a little wiser.

My favorite text editor just got updated. Woopee!

Here’s some recent icons done for BBPress:

I’ve been working on icons for the upcoming release of Gallery 3 (http://gallery.menalto.com/). Here they are:

Well there’s nothing like spending a 90º summer afternoon in a cool lake with your three kids, all under the age of 12 mind you (that’s key), wrestling and throwing them around in the waves, with high winds whipping up one-footers. Of course it ain’t the Atlantic, but whatryagonnado. We followed it up with some Pad Thai a-la-cart which I’ll post recipe for asap. Altogether an epic day!

Thinking about trying to organize a Wordcamp in Buffalo some time next Spring. Anyone interested in helping out? I need to find sponsors, venue, speakers, etc. Not sure I want to get into unless I have some people backing me up!

I been working on my coconut shrimp:

• 1 pack 25-35 frozen shrimp, e-z-peel®™©
• 2 tb Flour/2 tsp Old Bay mixed together in a bowl
• 1 Lime
• Handful Sweet Shredded Coconut
• Handful Bread Crumbs
• pinch red hot pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup Milk/cream
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp Mayonnaise
• 3 tbsp Orange Marmalade

1. Throw frozen shrimp in some cool water for 1/2 hour or so or whatever
2. pull off the shrimp shells and chuck ’em
3. heat up pan with 1/4 inch oil on medium/high
4. dry off shrimp in some paper towels and chuck em in the flour/old bay mix and dredge those bad boyz
5. coat the dredged shrimp in a whisked mix of egg/milk/beer
6. Toss coated shrimp in the coconut/bread crumb/pepper flak mix
7. Whisk mayo/marmalade, squeeze 1/2 lime in it and whisk more
8. Throw shrimp in pan for 3-4 miutes, turn
9. Wait 3-4 minutes, place cooked shrimp on paper towels
10. When cool enough, serve with mayo/marmalade dip. Toothpicks are good to have at this point.

New work–all are 6″x4″ drypoint/monoprint, unframed. Let me know if you want one!

[nggallery id=1]

icon_effect.zip

You can download this file and use it as a starting point when designing plugin icons, so that they resemble the default set in WordPress’ admin area. Copy and paste the effect applied to the rounded rectangle shape to your own vector shape in Photoshop.

I seriously believe Makhani sauce is the best stuff you can eat on this planet. But it is incredibly hard to make. At least, that’s been my impression to date. I spent an afternoon constructing something verbatum from some website, and it sucked so bad I tossed the entire batch.

So I’m done trying to make it. Anyone know where I can buy a TUB of the stuff??

I borrowed heavily from a link my Brother sent me for this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/dining/25mini.html?ref=dining

but when I tried it on the kids recently they gagged. Soon after they all got sick, really sick, and have stayed home from school most of this week.  So I tried it again with different ingredients:

3 bullion cubes (Beef, Veg, Chicken, whatever)

Bag of noodles (not Italian pasta–using that for anything non-Italian kinda grosses me out)

2 Scallions, sliced up super thin

Boil a big pot (fill halfway w/water) and a small pot (3-4 cups) of water. Add the noodles to the big pot and the builion to the small pot. Drain the noodles when they’re soft, throw them back in the big pot, pour the builion over the noodles, and dump in the scallions.

You can add more stuff if you want, but remember–gag-risk increases exponentially with number of both ingredients and kids.

OK, dilemma here. Does the pointy part of a comment bubble icon face left or right? Consider:

versus:

so, which one says “Comments” more directly?

To clarify, here’s the one in the WordPress admin (I designed it):

And here’s the one on digg.com:

I kinda wish now that I had made the point face left, like in digg.com, but maybe not…

I’ll post my favorite quick and easy recipes as I think of them.

I’ve had enough with long winded, 3 dozen ingredient jpbs-I never make them right. Either I’m too lazy or not a very talented cook (probably co-dependent factors there), but I’ve wasted too much time and money on busted meals.

This one is easy as pie and it passes the kid test:

• 1 Pizza pie crust, dough ball, whatever you like form the grocery store
• 1lb Boneless Chicken Breast, cut up as you like and sauteed till done in a little olive oil/butter concoction
• Frank’s Red Hot
• Blue Cheese Dressing (I like Ken’s: http://www.kensfoods.com/kf/products/productView.servlet?consumerProductId=27)

Throw the ingredients on the pie crust to taste (maybe cut the franks with tomato paste or something for something milder), and bake at preheated 425ºf oven for 15-20 minutes.

Been to the studio twice, have four plates ready to proof. Friday is working out to be the best day in terms of free time, so I should have some stuff ready by end of this week.

Built a bunch of icons in photoshop, just b/w now, will try to export to C4D and see how easy it is to 3dify them.

Got assigned as Nancy’s t-ball coach, don’t know how that happened but it should be fun. Need to get a book on coaching t-ball…