Yes, it looks Photoshopped.

Did this little fun photoshop magic today. Not impressed with the concrete at the bottom at all, but like always I have 5 minutes to do something and it wasn't for an Ad, just something for the sales dudes.

new and improved

old and busy.

Movember 2012 Mustaches:United - Photoshoot

This year, at the company I work for, we all rocked out our mustaches all day at work.  Some rock this out 365 days a year, more power to them, but none-the-less we captured what soon became the most unproductive work day in history.

But LOOK their soo cool!
ha


Facebook Album
 A few examples

Donation Flyer

Created a flyer for a little friend in town. 

Christmas Card: 10 minutes GO!

I get this all the time, I am working on something, someone comes in my office tells me, "Hey, don't spend too much time on this or  anything, but make it look good.  Ha. This time it was a Christmas card for our annual party.  Well I had 10 minutes and came up with this.  K, Back to work.

WP-Ecommerce Shipping and Checkout Error

Pretty much spent 3 hours on this so far and couldn't find a solution...After searching online for some answers I found nothing that helped specifically.  I found the answer  and hope this helps some people from going crazy.  For me it was simply a horrible UX problem.  Under the Shipping option in the Wordpress Admin I scrolled down to where it says Shipping Modules and by chance hovered over the right side of the option FLAT RATE and an EDIT button showed up.  I clicked on it and it gave me the option to then update what rates I would use for my flat rates.  This is the same thing for Weight Rate and Table Rate.  After I configured the settings I went back to the "Checkout" page and tried to purchase one of my products to figure that the option was now configuring what it needed to to process the order, bringing up the Customer details needed to complete the purchase.  So glad I found that Edit button but WTH really a grey button on grey background.

Here is the image of what saved the day.

Log Cabin 2.0

After a bit of a hiatus, I have put back in action Log Cabin.  I will hopefully finish it for this upcoming Addy awards.  If you are reading this having no clue what I'm talking about, I started a project earlier this year called Log Cabin.  It is a web project of mine where Web designers can come hang out in an outdoorsy atmosphere read articles, check out tutorials in "The Woods", and talk amongst each other in the forum I created, called "Camp Fire". I also threw in a merch section called "Bear Necessities".  When I am finished with this project it will be fully functional on any device making it a fully responsive site.  It has been quite a journey and can't wait to start filling up the site with content.  Can't quite remember the deadline for the Addy's but am starting to feel the heat.  I have probably spent the last two weeks hitting the functionality of the site pretty hard and have finally come to the UX aspect as I can now step back, make it mobile, and think about more aesthetics.  Also got a pretty nifty domain name I'm pretty excited about.  I don't want to give too much away but here are some updated pics below.

Extreme Biking Poster for Project

Don't post much from work but thought this wasn't too crazy to post.  A little poster created for one of the brands that they will take to present to the community where we are building their new bike park.  Figured this would help keep some motivation while it is being constructed.

I took the photography in Arkansas this summer during one of the premier shoots for the brand.

Vertical Separator CSS3

Was looking around the internet trying to find a vertical separator idea using CSS so you wouldn't have to import another flippin' image to my site that had some inset shadows but had no luck.. So i made one! The example below allows you to have an editable css3 vertical separator that looks as if it is embedded into your nav bar for my instance or where ever you would separate a background or something.  Up to you!  Nothing crazy just thought it was weird I couldn't find it easily.  Start separating your hearts out.

http://codepen.io/zachwaggoner/pen/GKqHh

Skate Posters

So at work lately has been interesting.  We came up with the idea to not do full blown skateparks in areas, but just skate spots that just casually filled up existing parks.  The cool part is that we want to make the parks mores social.  By adding qr codes leading to sites where skaters can talk about the park or "check in" out of town skaters can now get in touch with the town and find where other skate spots are. It is pretty cool and dig the design and layout I made.  *toot toot, anyways check it out.

Responsive Design: Project 1

So while working at my glorious job, I kept getting the President popping in my office telling me, "Hey, the website looks wierd on an iPad." With a full schedule of catalogs to print, brands to manage, translations to translate in the websites themselves, photos to retouch.. well you get the idea. It was hard to see why, after looking at the analytics and noticing that only .83 percent of the users use the iPad, to put effort in my day in customizing it for that platform.  Fear not I pushed aside some time and started a responsive site for one of the brands I manage.  Its scalable from 960px all the way down to basically what ever phone you have.  Not really wanting to deal with " OK it looks good on the Ipad but know my friends "enter device here" looks weird," I decided to just go with responsive design rather than adaptive.  You can see for your self by taking the browser window and adjusting it to any width from as wide as you can go to really narrow the design will fluctuate as you slide.  It was a lot of fun and will enjoy the moments ahead at polishing it up when I get some time, but hey the technology works ! ha

If your lazy and don't want to go to the site I've provided images below that show how it works.

http://www.progressivebikeramps.com

How many social medias does it take to get noticed?

That seems to be a tough question, but if it has a fun UI and it allows you to show off what you create I'm down.  You can now find my organized self on zerply, as they explain it, "It's like LinkedIn for creatives".  If you have worked with me and don't mind saying a few good words follow the link and "endorse me" if you know me and hate me...why are you on this site? ha anyways thanks bunches and see you around either in real person or on one of the 7 social medias I'm on.

http://zerply.com/zachwaggoner/endorse

Love or Hate Ipad Mini:Peripheral drift illusion

You can love apple or you can hate Apple but nothing comes close to their marketing... and I can defend that.  I was reviewing their new Ipad Mini and while reading the review I couldn't help but just glance back up to the iPad.  Was I really just infactuated with the picture soo much that I couldn't take the time to read the actual review?  No and hopefully from you reading this right now you have too looked up twice to the Ipad picture I posted.  Why? The picture in the iPad itself causes an illusion that when looking at it in your peripheral will begin to move.  I love art direction and I love marketing and this is blissful.  This is the kind of detail I dream of hopefully conquering but man you have to give them credit.  Ok I'm done you can go back on with your lives.

Filter Bros. Promotional Flyer Thing

My friend needed something to hand to businesses for his little start up company he is getting into in Austin TX.  Nothing too crazy just keeping busy designing something after getting off work...from designing all day. ha. #neverending.

Filter Brah Get it, got it, good!

Codecademy

Don't really dig that they used "Lobster" as their font but hey its FREE!.

So just this week I found out about Codecademy a FREE...ok FREEEEE online learning source where you can sit down and learn Javascript and other programming languages in the matter of minutes.  When you first visit the site it literally gets you sucked in by telling you what to do to output some programming code.  I was tempted and started digging in.  After about an hour I found that I had completed 3 sections of Javascript and was waiting to get a "Want to learn more? Subsribe and pay $30.00" but no never happened.  I made an account and continued to dig deeper.  Now after 3 days I can finally say that I can execute some javascript code by hand with no help.  I always found it hard to get into a new language because you don't really understand what you are going to be using it for.  They always say if you want to learn javascript to build a bingo card or a calendar but that never impressed me.  Through Codecademy you start out small and by the end of it you create a black jack game.  That is way cooler than a calendar.  They also have Ruby, Python and a whole section on how to incorporate Javascript in to your websites.  Honestly can't wait to stop just reading javascript and actually write it from scratch.  Anyways if I have convinced you the slightest to check it out, stop by create an account and start gaining some badges.

Learn Web Quick: Treehouse

So I may have mentioned this a time or two but Treehouse is a great resource for web design/development/ and app development. I was perusing through the site and noticed this little referral snippet and thought I would share it for all to use.  Treehouse is a great resource and use it to reference new things I want to learn.  Check it out.

Great Web design Resources 2012

I've been neck deep in web design since 2010 and continue to dig deeper everyday.  Here are a list of Web design resources I find either enjoyable or something I reference everyday.

CSS-Tricks: (Chris Coyier)
www.css-tricks.com

CSS-Tricks with Chris Coyier

If you are into designing for web i.e. CSS HTML Javascript and don't know where to start.  Make this a bookmark and check back daily.  Even if you don't find his style worthy he has opened up so many doors to other web developers/ designers, authors, etc.  That it is really worth a minute of your time to do some searching through this site.  This site alone got me to learn HTML, CSS, and start into Javascript not only creating sites but understanding the RIGHT way of managing sites from the ground up.  He has a new series right now called  "The Lodge" where you can go step by step with him on redesigning a site from scratch to Wordpress, where I am now making all my sites 100% responsive do to the 12 dollar one month subscription.

CodePen (Chris Coyier, Tim Sabat and Alex Vazquez)
www.codepen.io

CodePen with Chris Coyier Tim Sabat and Alex Vazquez

This is a great place to "sketch" out some css/javascript/html5 new technologies on the fly.  You don't have to get a server started and create html pages to get going.  This site is also great to reference if you want something flashy on your site but don't know where to start.

Shop Talk Show (Chris Coyier, Dave Rupert) 
You probably know where my main influence is from by now...
www.shoptalkshow.com

Talk Shop Show with Chris Coyier Dave Rupert and other special guests

If you sit in an office/apartment/home all day and don't get much interaction with designers/web dev dudes and chickas, but still fill like your part of a community this podcast is great to hear Chris and Dave along with other special guests answer questions and concerns about the web today. It's great to be able to connect and relate with leaders in the industry and you'll soon find out that most of us out there are all the same.  Most web peeps don't have huge egos or live in mansions, we all love to create things we love and love to teach others how to pursue that passion.

Hoefler and Frere-Jones
www.typography.com

Great Typography

If you are as serious about fonts as these guys and don't have a problem spending some money for some great typography this is the place to go.  I've been in college and realize spending money on anything other than food and gas is about all you got the budget for, but if you do have some moolah hanging around check it out, you won't be disappointed.  Plus how awesome is it that they have (typogrpahy.com) <-- legit enough.

Subtle Patterns
www.subtlepatterns.com

Great Textures with a great UI website 

I reference this...Everyday. This is a one stop shop for Patterns for your website.  They come as .png or .pat for Photoshop.  I am more of a design in the browser guy so I will wire frame my site in what ever I want and build the site in my text editor and just place the .png in my image folder and just add it as I feel, but the .pat files can be downloaded in its entirety at Github. (There's a link on the site) and you can have the full collection to date sitting in Photoshop for you to mess with.  Check back regularly as more are updated everyday.

Lost Type
www.losttype.com

Great Pay what you want fonts

Great fonts for what ever you want to pay for them.  If you just want to mess with them and see if the fonts work with your ideas feel free to download it for free.  Not a lot of fonts to choose from but they are hand crafted and used a lot through the design industry.

Smashing Magazine
(Great reference for great authors and articles)

Smashing Magazine Great for articles and news in web

www.smashingmagazine.com
For me this is the first thing I got a hold of as a web designer, This is a great place to find the web community, everybody that is worthy of anything is mentioned on this site,  I actually got in contact to a local design firm due to Smashing Magazine since they posted a contact form that the company designed.  Who knows if you come up with something clever or worth mentioning it could very well be mentioned on this site.

Treehouse (Tutorials and Quizzes)
www.teamtreehouse.com

Tree house is great for Tutorials if you are learning something and don't know where to start

I am pretty sure I have followed this site from the beginning before it was called Treehouse but nonetheless I have watched this site grow into a fascinating site that covers pretty much anything from opening a text editor to PHP, Ruby, and other server side languages.  If I'm not mistaken students of universities get a membership for 9 bucks.  Great value.  Normal is something like 25 bucks so start digging in if you can.

CodeSchool (Tutorials and Quizzes)
www.codeschool.com

Great for a more advanced approach at learning more difficult concepts

This is a very intriguing tutorial site.  Much more concentrated that Treehouse as it digs more into a technical background of CSS Jquery Ruby and server side languages but they have a way of making what could be very dry information very informative.  The last one I got my hands on was something like "Rails for Zombies" so you could only imagine the analogies accompanying the tutorial.  Great site 25 bucks a month.

Paint the Town Green and Gold MSSU

So I know I'm a Gorilla, but I do live in Joplin and always wanted my home town to be more of a college town.  I had the opportunity to create a mural at Atlas Safe Rooms last weekend for a competition for Paint the town Green and Gold for MSSU.  I got sent an email from my marketing director that they wanted to put something together for the event but didn't really know where to start.  he sent me a pic and from the angle he gave me my mind shot off.  I remember back when I was in school there were these cool 3d perspective trailer trucks where if while you are passing them the contents on the truck looked 3d.  Being able to see 2 sides of the Atlas Showroom gave me enough reason that we could do this.  Having a helpful drawing buddy sitting next to me helped as well.  I showed him some images of what I was thinking.  We both kind of put all our eggs in one basket but were down for the challenge.  We never really told our marketing director until I asked for a budget. ha We got the go ahead and headed for materials.  With a couple buckets of paint, and 20 some odd hours of work we finally created a 3d mural on the outside of the structure that I hope everybody enjoys.  We had a lot of onlookers during the weekend so hopefully thats a good sign.  It was a really fun challenging project to create produce and execute all in a short amount of time to meet monday's deadline.  And now the images.

Inspiration

3D rendering via Photoshop

Execution on 20 3' glass panels

Joplin Elementary School Coloring Book

Today I got to go to West Central Elementary in Joplin to present the kindergarteners with a coloring book that the marketing team at the Joplin Admin Building put together.  I got to help create digital illustrations of a Joplin High Schools students drawings.  It was a lot of fun to hand these out.  Eddie the Eagle came along to rial up the kiddos.  They were so excited to hug the enlarged bird it was actually pretty cute.  They cheered when they were going to graduate...2025...geez that is forever away haha.  Anyways I handed out the coloring books to cheerful kids and got my picture taken by some of the Joplin marketing team as well as from some Tv stations and the Joplin Globe.  It is great to see little ones enjoy something so simple.  Kind of jealous ;) Anyways here are some pics of the book which was actually drawn by my cousins son, Jeremiah Johnson.  Didn't even recognize the kid, since I haven't seen him since he was like 9! Crazy fun day.

Back cover of Coloring book

A couple of the illustrations I digitized with the pen tool in Illustrator

Front Cover of Coloring Book

Logo Process: Filter Brothers

My long time buddy is on his way back to Austin for one of his entrepruneur ventures here in a few weeks and came to me to create a logo for him for his company, Filter Brothers, a pool filter service that cleans and restores filters in personal in-ground pools.  I had one of my business cards around and he thought something like what I had done for my fictitious company "Wagon Design" would be kind of cool.  Less talking and more showing.  Long story short he digs the logo and will be heading down to Austin with a stack of business cards and a pricing sheet to get him started.

Inspiration laying on my desk from my fictitious company "Wagon Design Studio"

The Process to creating the Filter Bros. Logo/Brand

Fake Mailer for Fun

So we headed to Arkansas earlier this week for a photoshoot with some sponsored riders for Progressive Bike Ramps and got some great shots.  One of the shots I was setting up required my good ol buddy and VP of Progressive bike ramps to stand on the ramp to make sure the flash was correctly placed...what really happened was a great photo op for him.  Got back to the office had a few laughs and put this together to test out Jason's ego ;) lotta fun have a look

Colors

So most of my designs contain some sort of variation between these colors.  I don't know if it a personal thing or if they are "trendy" but I need to branch out and try new colors.  They all seem to go together to me.  I'm personally not a big fan of green and it's complimentary color is red.  I love to use complimentary colors together but when thinking of usability I have to some what feel sorry for color blind people who view it, since they probably can't tell what in the world is going on. Ha I bet it's not that bad but figured I would put this up to see in reference as to what the colors of Fall 2012 and 2013 will be.  Ever since I started designing these colors have attracted my eye, and so I believe that it is time to let it go and move on and richen my color pallet.  Any suggestions?

Busy workin'

So this year I have been fortunate to join a company that has broadened my horizon and pushed me to create new things for new products.  This year 2 major companies have been rolled out and I have been lucky enough to be part of it all.  First off this year I was asked to create a website for a safe room/storm shelter idea that would blossom very soon.  It's name is Atlas and a logo and branding would be needed as well.  I have watched this brand come to be and have had the opportunity to make all the marketing material from brochures, websites, instruction manuals to a new store front in the Joplin Mall.

The other brand that was created when I arrived full time was Progressive Bike Ramps.  A new way of building bike parks in recreational areas, allowed me to brand and come up with all the marketing materials for this brand as well.  New website, photo shoots with pro sponsored riders, catalogs, logos, and an abundant of meetings I can say I'm a happy camper.  Today was one of the photo shoots and thought I would present a sneek peek of what is to come.

Content is King

Just one of those days. Sat down and created some flyers.  Sometimes frustration causes the weirdest flow of creativity. 

In the zone..

Creating your own theme in Wordpress

All of this can be found at the wordpress codex but if looking through that seems to intimidate you, then here is the "spark notes" version of the things you need to get your Child theme started.  But first... you may ask, "What is a child theme?" its basically building a theme that is piggy backed on another so that it may be easier to code, since you aren't coding from scratch.  If you find a theme that is almost perfect but you only need to rearrange some things then this allows for a good foundation so that you don't get half way through it all and realize the site is failing left and right.  With that said here are the 2 thing you need to create a theme.

a Folder that you will upload to the server under your THEMES folder within your wordpress install.
a CSS file with this information at the top.

/*

Theme Name:     Twenty Eleven Child  <--this can be what ever you want to call it.
Theme URI:      http://example.com/  <-- your website preferably
Description:    Child theme for the Twenty Eleven theme <--again what ever you want
Author:         Your name here  <--Give yourself some credit!
Author URI:     http://example.com/about/  <-- credit credit credit


Template:       twentyeleven <--REALLY IMPORTANT spell this right it has to be the exact       name of the theme you are piggy backing
Version:        0.1.0  <--if you are making the theme for others to use it allows them to see how many updates you have given the theme.
*/

After that the theme will show up when you go to the wordpress  admin.  If you want you can upload a screenshot of the theme but if you don't have a design layout yet then you can leave it blank.  The screenshot is located in the theme folder you created as screenshot.png.  It will pull this image and place it into the box where you can see your theme before you activate it.

You can either place this piece of code to help keep what you want of the styling from the mother theme or not include it to start from scratch (as far as CSS)

@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

if you are not using twentyeleven as a parent theme just replace with the correct spelling of the theme you are using and all will be good.

This piece of code pulls in all the css from the parent theme and allows you to write over the css you want.

Other files can also be added to help customize your theme even more.

header.php
footer.php
index.php

These are all modules that can be customized once and spread through your site without having to write out the code a million times.  Change something in the header and it gets applied to any page with
<?php get_header?> attached to it.  Pretty nice.

Like I said everything you need to know about wordpress is at codex.wordpress.org but thought this might help for a quick reference as well.

Ping Pong Championship

So I have this idea of buying a ping pong table setting it up at work and competing against co-workers. I've never really gotten into Fantasy Football and I'm sure that is way cooler than this, but I think this would keep my mind busy during the winter.  Anyways here is what I came up with to start things off.  Now off to find a Ping Pong table...

Ping Pong Banner