Author Archives: Jamie De Pould

Day 38

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Feb 7, 2012

We got a Keurig machine for Christmas. I love my Keurig machine. Almost as much as I love coffee.

I also love good design.

Today’s image is example of horrible, awful, tragically bad design. OK, I might be slightly exaggerating, but still. It’s bad design.

We went out and bought a bunch of K-cup refills, because we were running low on a few things, most importantly cafe mocha. Now, Cafe Escapes produces a number of different flavors of K-cups. Understandably, they want all of their products to have a unified design. The problem with their approach to unified design across different variations of K-cup is that they’ve chosen not to differentiate them with color, only text.

The two K-cups here are slightly different shades of brown. One is coffee, one is not. Do you see where this is going?

Because I grabbed a box in from the cafe mocha pile at the store without looking to ensure my selection was, in fact, cafe mocha, I ended up with a whole bunch of hot chocolate. We didn’t need hot chocolate. We needed mocha. They’re slightly different shades of brown.

Now, if I were designing the package in question, I’d think to myself, “Self, if someone is in a hurry and wants to buy my product, how can I help them pick the right box off the shelf so they won’t harbor an unnatural hate for me?” Keeping in mind that I want all of my various products to have a unified design language, I might say, “Self, you could use the same layout or template, and change the color to distinguish between flavors. Let’s make hot chocolate brown, and mocha blue. That way, angry bloggers won’t spend 300 words writing about us, and how much they hate our design choices.”

But I’m not the one doing the design, so next time, I’ll just have to triple check before I pay.

Day 37

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Feb. 6, 2012

Had a morning meeting, so obviously coffee was necessary. We usually just meet in the employee cafeteria for this one, which gets really nice morning light. I was trying to grab a few images with my iPhone without looking like a freak. Nobody said anything, so I think it was OK. Did a little bit of editing with Photogene to warm it up and tweak the contrast. As an aside, I really love my ceramic travel mug. Totally dishwasher safe, and doesn’t pick up any funky metal taste.

Day 36

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I have to start adding the date to these so I can keep it all straight: Feb. 5, 2012.

We tried a new (sort of) recipe today: lemon chicken and pasta. We’ve done chicken picatta before, but this was another variation. It turned out pretty well.

We were having some fun with the D300 while cooking. I really liked the neutral black-and-silver background. The red accents on the tongs, and the yellow and green sauce really jump out. The motion blur adds a little bit more visual interest and action. I also liked the way the stainless steel picked up some of the highlights without being super reflective.

Day 35

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Saturday projects around the house can be fun. We’re still finishing the whole moving process, and we decided it would be nice to have some art hanging on the walls. We aren’t nearly finished, but I did get a start on it. Three prints (two of them are mine) in the kitchen and office. I even managed to get the track lights in the kitchen to hit the pictures perfectly.

The Wrigley Field one in the foreground here isn’t mine. I picked it up from Metroscap of Columbus during a Short North gallery hop when I was an undergrad. The coffee in the background is from my 2007 trip to Vienna and Salzburg.

I’m in the process of going through pretty much all of my photos to figure out what else I want to print/hang, which is quite a daunting task.

(Shot with iPhone/Hefe filter)

Day 34

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Ana and I instituted Friday night movie night. So far, it’s been a wonderful decision. We’ve been able to watch some stuff we’ve been meaning to watch for a while–and which has been clogging up our Netflix queue for … a long time.

This week the selection was Capote, which was a new one for Ana. We projected it on the wall above our fire place, and I decided to grab the D700 (plus 45mm pancake, fun little lens) and shoot the very last scene before the credits roll.

Day 32

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I went and got my hair cut Wednesday evening, and while I was gone Ana baked cookies! She timed it perfectly, they were ready right when I got home. The Panasonic kind of let us down here, but I think the reflections in the oven glass are still interesting.

Day 30

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Candy Cane from Jamie De Pould on Vimeo.

Our first video clip!

From a project I’m currently working on at work. Porter Lyons is an 18-year-old high school senior who went into sudden heart failure Christmas Eve, and received a transplant New Years Eve. The story has already gotten some media coverage. I’m working on a multi-part web series to launch in the next month or so.

Shot on my Sony NEX FS100 with a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G.

I just loved the bright red of the candy cane. I did some toning in AfterEffects: bumped up the contrast with curves and levels, and added a slight vignette.