Matt Gipson | Blog & Portfolio of a Web Designer

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Well, it’s been oh so long since I’ve posted anything so I thought I’d give an update. As you can see by my work laptop’s desktop, I’ve been engulfed with ancient Egypt. I’m proud to announce we just launched To Live Forever: Treasures From the Brooklyn Museum. I’m really happy with the way the design turned out. Of course, it helps when your handed some great branding and graphics to work with by the IMA’s in-house designers! Built with Drupal, this site came together quickly and without much fuss thanks to everyone who collaborated on it at the IMA. We’ll be adding a few more interactive pieces over the next several weeks, including a feature Brooklyn Museum is working on utilizing Flickr so be sure to check back.

I’m also working on a few other things on the side, including a Flash based goody that should see the light of day very soon! Not to mention an exciting video based project we’re about to kick into high gear at the IMA which should be challenging and exciting.

Now, back to my HUNDREDS of unread Gmail’s… sorry if to keep you waiting.

Click here to download a free set of vector bug artwork as seen above. The zip file contains 25 scalable and editable Illustrator files and I’ve also thrown in a Fireworks file with the bugs separated as bitmaps on layers. Feel free to use them as you please in your designs.

Being delayed 2 days due to global warming, puking my guts out and not being able to eat or drink for 24 hours, and losing my voice couldn’t even ruin the SXSW Interactive Festival. This conference was truly inspiring. A week full of web & interactive design geekdom with no shortage of things to do. If your in the web development trenches you MUST get there at least once.

I, in good company with 3 other IMA cohorts (see Daniel’s blog post), managed to hear gems and nuggets in several sessions from head honchos of 37 Signals, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon, WordPress, MediaTemple, and the list goes on.

One of my favorite panels was “Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again?“, because I deal with the issues they discussed nearly every day. Unfortunately I missed several things due to mother nature, such as the Mark Zuckerberg keynote debacle, or the Respect panel featuring one of my hero’s Jeffery Zeldman, but I left feeling satisfied, validated, and full of ideas. Next year we’ll definitely be more prepared to rawk!

I even got suckered into an interview, by a nice girl from Advertising Anarchy, while taking a break and juicing up my computer in the hall. For the record, I don’t hate Microsoft (I’m using Windows right now!), just not a big fan of Silverlight. I’m more of a Flash guy I suppose you could say, so maybe I’m biased. The Silverlight promotion just seemed over forced.