Introducing Mookie Creative

As many of you know, I am a very random guy. From design to web design to photography to drawing to film to painting to deejaying to dancing, I really do have “Creative A.D.D.” ( I really need to copyright that). It’s not so much that I am not good or passionate about one thing, but more intrigued about all things creative. Keeps me from getting bored and always fun to keep people guessing as to what you “do”.

Eventually, I might only do one thing and do that one thing well. But until then, welcome my company called Mookie Creative. MC is a creative services company that assists companies by visually putting their best foot forward through web design & development, branding, graphic design, and film. MC also consults with companies to help them further their brand presence and message. If you have a project that fits those ideas contact me here. Enjoy!

Inspiration: Wu Tang Clan Blue Note Covers

So the homie, Ewell Collins, put me on to designer Logan Walters. Specializing in typography, branding, and illustration, this guy took it upon himself to redesign 21 of the Wu covers in the style of the iconic Blue Note Jazz covers. [part 1 and part 2]The reason? He thought the OG covers were ugly and thought he could do better. Plus he wanted to have cooler art in his iTunes. And I think he succeeded if at nothing else inspiring others do remix/redesign things that you love but think are hideous in design (note: dude remake rap covers circa 1980-85!) He also did the Wu Tang vs. the Beatles mixtape cover as well(below, which is a BANGIN’ mixtape if you can find it)

Logan Walter flickr photostream [link]

Cool: William Pope Phoenix March 2010 Wallpaper

Former web design partner-in-crime, future podcast partner-in-crime and current Illustrator, William Pope Phoenix, has posted his latest March Wallpaper submission [above] to Smashing Magazine. Not only is it quite typographically fresh but he was previously chosen last month for his heartbreak wallpaper [here]. It’s up on my desktop now and grab one for yourself! [here or click the image above]

Print: Housedancer.com Business Card designs

Working on the Housedancer.com branding, media kit, and promotions. We are really gearing up for July’s main house dance event in nyc. Should be really fun and a great time to market ourselves to all the visitors coming in. Dancer business cards are always have the persons pictures on them. I am not a fan so i really had to find a sweet spot between industry standard and something cool. Performers DO need their pics on the cards to market themselves, so hopelfully it came out cool.

Review: How To Be A Rockstar WordPress Designer

 

full-rockstar

Rockable Press’ How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer By Collis Ta’eed & Harley Alexander is a diamond in the rough of WordPress books. Having scoured through my fare share of WordPress related books, this one gets it right! They focus exclusively on WordPress Theme designing while most books designate 2 to 3 chapters at most. Excellent for beginners, great for the intermediate, and a few gems and reminders for experts.

The Goodies aka The Good

Written in a straight forward and clear style, the authors take you from conception planning, PSD design, HTMLcoding, and finally WordPress PHP theming. At a little over 300 pages, they cover the gamut of topics one needs to know when creating WordPress themes. The bread and butter of the book are the extras packed into it: 3 full themes, tutorial files (PSD and HTML), cheat sheets (from Liquid City and WP Candy). They give a clear process of building the 3 example themes which represent the most common usages of WordPress; blog, portfolio, and a basic non blog site. I really enjoyed them taking the time to explain and show examples for If Statements, Conditions, customizing comments, custom fields, and building a basic plugin.

The Baddies aka The Bad

For an intermediate designer, such as myself, a lot of the information could be obtained through the numerous “Build your first theme” tuts out there (which they also list). While not a bad thing, I think the advanced designer would easily get bored and gloss over these sections (which make up the first 4-5 chapters). However. more advanced users will find value in the last chapter and the building of the portfolio theme.

The Wrappies aka the Wrap Up

WordPress is loved by a lot of designers because of its customizable features. The authors take that as the basis for getting you started on making your own themes. The last chapter, on extending WordPress, is gold. From ideas on creating a Job Board, Membership site, E-Commerce Store and even a Video Portal site, the last chapter gives you just a taste of the possibilities out there. Finally, the WordPress community gets a good book on the process of making themes. It is a great starting point but also reminder of time saving theme practices. I highly recommend it to all beginning and intermediate WP theme designers.

Best of 2008

fire

So since EVERYONE and their mama has made a “best of” list, I decided just to combine the ones I liked the best. This also plays like a “who do I read these days” list as well. Also my google reader share page. So, without further ado:

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