How to: hand-crafting a Material Design icon.

Google's Material Design website is a rich resource, dedicated to functional and compelling web | app design. On the website, there is a tutorial detailing the construction of a hand-crafted paper-based Material Design icon; done so (with paper), for the purpose of creating true-to-life shading. 

The tutorial inspired me to create my own Material Design icon, based from my "pigeons and friends" repertoire of square-shaped iconic pigeons [and friends]. Here are the source images:

According to the material.io guidelines, the icon's design ought be uniform in stroke thickness, somewhat bold and simplistic.

I've got a challenge, at hand, therefore, n rendering and shaping the image that I end up choosing, for the icon, in that my illustrations are more gesturally-based and freehand, rather than designed and pixelated. I'm somewhat hoping to design with a future-forward eye to the project (if that makes any sense), in perhaps trying to keep detail that I might, for the sake of higher-resolution Dot Per Millimeter (DPM) schemes on devices that are newer and allow for on-screen zoom, for further clarity. Otherwise, I stand to compromise the decipherability of the icon for the end-user's sake of identifying and connecting to the icon. My goal, other than the material.io website's 24 x 24 pixel design basis (for system icon's), is a larger visual scope final purpose, such as placement and viewership established on mediums such as the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store.  

Here are the tools and materials that I purchsed for developing the card paper "shaded" model of the finalized icon, which I purchased from Blick Art Materials store in Pasadena.

Updating...

HubSpot has a cool email signature tool.

HubSpot, an online community and marketing resources blog, has a quick and elegant online tool for creating an email signature to give a polished look to online communications. Here's mine:

Jay Ammon Founding Director Publishing | iPigeon.institute 1 (323) 485-7429 jay.ammon@ipigeon.institute https://www.ipigeon.institute DTLA | South

Create Your Own Free Signature

Here's the link to HubSpot's email signature generator.

How I created a Pinterest Pincode logo QR [circular] for Google Image Search and brand marketing resource +1.

Pinterest has been a significant deliverer of trending organic web traffic hits to my Pins (rebloggéd content).   

I blogged a self-fashioned Aztec QR Code, created by Barcode Generator, from the Google Play Store, on to Pinterest.

Although, upon supposing I could describe it any better than the initial delivery of the surprise, and working at my WebApp development aspirations on the GitHub API end of things, whereas the previous work shift was largely focused on Google Cloud Platform and Firebase implementation online intermediary supportive back-end web development and [digital] paperwork, catching up on bills, etc., after spending several hard-earned days of recyclables-collecting out at the beach and at | in Mid-City.

Anyways, just check out Pinterest for yourself, if you haven't.  It's a great platform for discovering cool stuff!

Here's my post.

https://pin.it/6gknKP7

The decay of literary and illustrative artifacts of on on släbed’en jaunted AF of most of of on of Hibachi AF of on släde.

These artifact, from my earlier blogging years on Tumblr, are from Spring 2017, I believe. They’d been living in my backpack, mostly, since that time, or on the wall, or within a stack of papers. The decay and damage from handling highlights the need for astute development in digitizing significant works of dharmic dictaphone transcription when artistic merit has been ignited, within a user base of a common kitsch.

Oftentimes, the original impetus behind a work is wrought, time and again, in efforts to recapture the inspiration that spun an original work, of a timely and well-attuned gesture, or motive, as it’s known in music theory. In ink brush illustration, as well as in au jour dictaphone renderings of speaking in tongues, or highly-insightful and effectively delivered speech of intelligentsia nature, the stakes at hand are such the same, as they are incidentally (at times) made beautifully (and rarely so) as singular works of spiritually enlightened works. 

I happen to not be significantly creatively and technically skilled, of an offhand consideration, well enough to render, by hand and by memory, much of any of a classical sort of work,  that would be considered, as such; much, lately. I don’t practice either. Not often, that is, although I do spend a lot of time poring over aesthetically valuable works and various other sorts of offerings of technical, impact marketing, symbolic, or artistic efforts in my studies for the sake of furthering my endeavors of app and enterprise development, and to create gestural finery when I might be able to (very commonly due to stimulation). [I am constantly reminded, by means of my lifestyle, of my relative and humble position in communing and portraying these works]. On some level, there’s stages of threshold glass ceiling in what I could aught be able to achieve, for any foreseeable given span of time. 

Hmm. I’ve been working, now, about 5-6 straight shifts, but I’ve made sure to [this morning] take my medications, turn off the hot pot {heater ad hoc}, and attend to all reasonable demands and | or expectations I’d be best suited for, in that the suggestions had been laid in at me like that, for various reasons. At some point, - . . . is always happening, during this course of work scheduling. It’s been an effective mode of productivity. Blog hits are at a sustainably moderate level of ‘more than before,’ and things ‘seem’ sustainable, as long as I remember to keep a well-composed trail of things that reliably portray ‘fluff,’ valuated content, or finery, depending on one’s disposition distinctiveness of perspective, on the portrayal of things. So, some things are simply works of upkeep, such as maintaining my ionic periphery catalysm salts and digitizing works of analogue creation, or re-analogizing digital re-creations of originally digital works by the various means offered, through handmade means. In the digital world, everything is a step-by-step process. 

I suppose that’s enough. Here are the artifacts; this is what they look like, and are left as, after the artistic and development process has laid in through them, of my enterprise.

On the other hand, looking forward, very quick, here - I have two works of inspirational ad hoc discovery: what appears, to me, to be a near-3D rendering of my existing round logo [something more to follow up on;  potentially after rest, in a day, or so: and the baby hummingbird in hand, which I handed over to a parentally [directly a parent of a child, already] responsible individual, whereas I was heavy-laden with physical burdens. Hopefully the bird survived the trauma of leaving the nest just fine, in the end, but it is a beautiful thing of folkloric epiphany and inspiration - the bird in the hand, as it makes it way in to line art form.

Trying to figure out which one is better?

iPigeon Design Tips - using Adobe’s iPadOS apps to recreate a lifelike art-come-to-life encounter.

For those of my readers who had been following along (or, for those who had read and skimmed through my older posts), a classic and cute, humorous article from January 2019 comes to mind, as the year ends, and that progress ought to be made on the development aspirations that had come to light, as I traversed about Downtown Los Angeles, keeping with the spirit of that I could help keep the pigeons well fed, throughout the seasons.

Here’s the gist of the article, which was a photo blog.

This morning, within the space of about an hour or so, I was able to finish off a rendition of a logo I’d been recently tasked with, as for my Google Developer’s aspirations (here, in the workload laid in front of me of needing to create a logo for Google Pay Passes - a splash screen that the user would encounter that would include some terms and conditions, a privacy policy, as well as information of my company, iPigeon.institute, for the sake of the purchaser, or for the sender of finances for my company, or, in the case that I’d been planning on, a recipient of a QR code that would enable the user to gain special access to retail or gift card | loyalty goods, or rewards, for happening upon my marketing material in the form of the IoT object: the QR code [which needs to be decoded, that it must properly trace back to the website that I’d like the client to discover, through Google Lens]).

Here are some of the objects that I rendered out for the compositional logo 

My final and first rendition of a feasible mockup of a nicely-composed logo, based on guidelines with well-written instructions (thanks to Google), and it came out nicely! - I’d say, for a first run. I’ll update later on as I fine-tune the logo and it’s coloring and detail features.

Creating a logo of appropriate technical considerations becomes a tantamount priority for the conscientious developer. End users could ostensibly be quite picky about the sort of aesthetics they allow in to their device and user interactions. I created this guide for my scratch first copy logo based on the Branding Guidelines page for Google Pay Passes Application Programming Interface Developers-in-the-making (documentation).

Some of the composite elements that went in to the logo.

Adobe provides fine tools and licensed ( - for particular use case scenarios) fonts that can be integrated in to a new creation in their fonts for developers site. Here, I used Adobe Caslon, designed by Carol Twombly. Thanks, Carol! A finely rendered classically-styled font.

The impetus for creating this design comes from Google’s Pay Passes standards, which lay out the guidelines for brands creating a pay portal for payments, loyalty cards, and barcode redeemables.

Since yesterday morning, here’s the progress I made in developing for this proportion and frame size composition. I decided to make it a Christmas 🎄theme, in the spirit of the holidays, and to set myself about a goal of attaining a Pay Passes API QR | barcode-scanned redeemable marketing effort outreach and engagement with my blog’s content and purpose. 

Some more imagination towards the design of the logo imagery, after a day spent researching and establishing other project metric gains in creating Google Pay Passes.

Here’s a clip of the design development process, as I implemented it, based on Google’s Logo colorings, posted on YouTube.

pidginKit offers iPigeon.institute logo

I’ve set out in requesting that the OAuth user consent screen process works out alright and can be approved. I’ll update as I learn what the outcome is.

A new quick take at a stylized logo. (A photoblog).

Through my recent outings, I had gathered an iPad case whose logo was the inspiration for the dualistic and opposing curves of the P and g letters used in this new rendering of a logo.

Although the rest of the font is not optimally stylized, I feel like this take on a square image icon is reasonably a step up from just a pigeon, in and of itself; a sole figure whereas screen space is increasing in density, and more detail can be brought in to a smaller space. 

I feel like it has a bit of the Fibonacci sequence in the Rotarian-ness of it, I’ll work at it some more,