Ben Dunkle’s Blog

Category: Uncategorized

  • Teaching

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    I’m a professor, which I suppose makes me a professional teacher. I instead like to think of myself as a professional learner. I believe that teaching is an extension of learning. It enhances learning. If I can teach you how to do something, it means I have learned it myself. There are other ways to…

  • How trees work

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    Looking out my window at the leaves that finally came in the last few weeks, and having played this video game Fortnight where you build shieldish fortresses, I can see that my tree building a shield so it can incubate things along its thick brown branches behind the green ruse we use, we and our…

  • Art as Anthropology part 1

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    I often think of Picasso’s famous quote, “Art is the sum of my destructions”. I’ve always gotten that. Whenever I make art, I feel like the second I’m close to that perfect line, shade, shape or texture, there’s all this pressure that I’m gonna fuck up. When that happens, I imagine a little Picasso sitting…

  • The Darkness

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    I recently read an article about someone who experienced trauma when they were very young, and how it manifested itself for the rest of his life as “the darkness”, a kind of demonic presence that was always looming. It was a very sad read. Though a very busy person, he found no joy in work,…

  • On Teaching

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    This spring, I’ll be teaching my age-old 2D Graphics course. Every time I teach it, I spend waaaaay too much time wondering what I should include in the course content. I change it every year. Adobe is the go-to graphics software company, and that hasn’t changed since they bought Macromedia long ago. I started off…

  • On light

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    We see because of light reacting with our crazy eyes and ocular nerves and brains. But there’s a lot to learn about where that light’s coming from. It’s either being emitted or reflected. The primary point of emitted light, for most of our existence on this planet, has been very hard, even dangerous, to look…

  • Multiple master icons

    Multiple master icons

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    Just like fonts, icons can be designed in different weights. Here’s how it works in my current design, chubbicons:   These are all rendered at 32×32. The bold weight was designed with 1 pixel wide stroke on a 9×9 grid, while the light weight was 1 pixel on an 18×18 grid. The solid is just…

  • Modes of Transportation series

    Modes of Transportation series

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    I’m having fun with this theme. It makes it easy to think of things to make.

  • A standard for user interface icon design

    A standard for user interface icon design

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    Editing this article to discuss general icon design standards, which I believe are needed. Icons should down-rez gracefully to small sizes, with vertical and horizontal edges aligning to the pixel grid at sizes as small as 9 pixels. A 3×3 sub grid should be adhered to when designing icons. [codepen_embed height=”265″ theme_id=”1″ slug_hash=”EvqZQZ” default_tab=”html,result” user=”empireoflight”]See…

  • Cooper Union

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    As soon as I was considering life after high school, I had my heart set on Cooper Union. I wanted to make “cool looking shit”, I was good at it and CU was where the best in the world did it. Plus it was in Manhattan, my favorite place in the world and a 45…

  • Small gouaches

    Small gouaches

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  • Had to be the most beautiful day

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    Went up to Canada with Nancy and her friend. Stopped at the grocery, got the guac stuff and some burger meat.Chased a few house wrens away. Cleaned the cottage up while the girls made guac. Went surfing at Pleasant, watched Nan and her bud get sweet rides. Got a ticket there and almost towed but…

  • Sketch

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    I have the app, I’ve played with it, made some icons, and I still don’t get it. I think folks who use it a lot aren’t fluent html/css coders. For me, it’s a lot easier to do the things people say Sketch shines at directly in code. Do you use Sketch? Do you consider yourself a…

  • The most beautiful soft rain

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    is falling outside my Lyons office window.  

  • Mystery Meat Icons

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    Icons are everywhere. As the contexts within which we interpret content become more unpredictable, so does our reliance on iconography to communicate ideas and messages. The use of iconography has exploded as dissemination of information must reach a multitude of user contexts. Icons can summarize universal ideas and complex actions with a few shapes. Icons…

  • The best cole slaw recipe

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    I only post recipes that I make up and are simple, easy, and cheap. I’m a terrible cook because I’m impulsive, lazy, and AADHD. However, this one usually works: Half a cabbage, cut up however you like it. I sliver mine with a razor sharp Global. 1 TBs Sesame Oil 2 TBs Rice Vinegar 1…

  • Loyola Marymount

    Loyola Marymount

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    This is for my Uncle Billy. He’s not feeling too great so I’m sending it to him.

  • An old monoprint

    An old monoprint

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    Digging through my old stuff, and thought this was nice:

  • Purchase days

    Purchase days

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  • Frottage

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    This was one of the first techniques I learned when I began art school, back in fall ’89. It was eye-opening. For the first time, I wasn’t responsible for every nuance that came along. The surface dictated what marks were left. Suddenly, I felt a sense of freedom from that burden of decision in art;…