Tony Gil

Apple 27-inch Cinema Display

2010-03-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

So in June, Apple is supposedly releasing the new 27-inch LED Cinema Displays. I'm hoping Apple has a something a bit more slick up their sleeve. Comparing all of Apples hardware, the design of the displays have been out of place with everything else going slimmer, including Steve Jobs, ok bad joke. But seriously TV's like the Sharp LCD's are 1.6-inches thin! I love my Apple 30-inch but it's a bit bulky. So, come on Apple, show me a nice modern thin display to go with our thinner Macbook Pros. Above you'll see my concepts.

My new Razer Mamba mouse

2010-03-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Razor Mamba Casing from Tony Gil on Vimeo.

I just recently bought the Razer Mamba mouse and LOVE it! I'm very picky with my mouses and have tried out many. It needs to feel right and the tracking needs to run smoothly across my 30 inch display and laptop. The blue neon lights definitely give it a "Wow" factor! It's important for me to have creative stuff around me, stuff that motivates me and gets me excited. The look-and-feel of the mouse does all of the above. Be warned that the packaging is very fancy. Check out my video that shows what I did with the nice casing :-)

Don't skip the sketch

2010-02-27T12:47:00.001-08:00

I feel that designers are getting too comfortable with Photoshop or other design software and are skipping the most important part of ANY design. Sketching! As soon as you start pixel pushing you are limiting your conceptual creativity and brainstorming part of the process.

Quick sketches, mind maps, mood boards, are a crucial part of any design process. It's where you think of all possibilities for a given amount of time and jot down all the ideas your brain can think of. Sometimes I grab my sketchbook and go for a walk. Maybe I'll see something that sparks an idea. At the end you can rest assure that you got some good thoughts.

I like to draw as many sketches as possible. I then close my sketch book, get some coffee or go for a walk and then open it up and revisit what I drew. I look through my sketches with a vague mind, and see which one makes the most sense , which one tells the story best. I also show it to different people to see what they get of it.

Next step is moving on to my chosen design program where I'm more focused on detail such as color, contrast, lighting etc.

Remember, computer software is just a tool, like a paint brush or pencil. Good traditional skills are very important. Sketch sketch sketch

San Francisco minatured

2010-02-10T18:52:00.000-08:00

Taken in San Francisco. Tweaked it and gave it that toy, diorama, miniature look

Google Tablet

2010-02-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

From the famous lyrics of Frank Sinatra, start spreading the news. The moment you all been waiting for. My designs of the Google tablets! With webcam!
Where will this go?

No Flash Lego Speed Icon & Wallpaper Speed Design

2010-02-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

No Flash Lego speed design from tgil on Vimeo.

With all this war between the iPad, Flash, Apple and Adobe, I couldn't help myself to jump in and design a BIG juicy No Flash lego.

Wallpaper:
Wallpaper

Icons:
Mac
WIndows

Christmas Cookie Icons

2009-12-19T00:40:00.000-08:00

Right our of the oven. Since I'm not much of a cook, I thought I would make everyone some yum yum chocolate holiday icons.

Icons:
Mac
WIndows
PNG

Harley Farms Goat Dairy

2009-09-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

Shot this while visiting Harley Farms Goat Dairy.

Fail Whale

2009-09-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here's my contribution to the Fail Whale Club. Yea, you know that whale with a posse of birdies designed by Yiying Lu that tells you it's time to step away from the Tweet! This rarely seen creature has its own club which I think is pretty cool. Find out more about the Fail Whale.

Desktop backgrounds:
1024 x 768
1280 x 1024
1600 x 1200

Icons:
Mac
WIndows

Design your iPhone app with Adobe Fireworks

2009-06-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

This video inspired me to play around with these iPhone templates. Sometimes just by playing with the templates and seeing the different pieces and how they can be used can inspire you to come up with some cool app.

Meet Vincent Cataldo a 15 year old inspiration

2009-06-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

I met the most incredible kid I've ran into. He's 15 and is a tech genius! I ran into him at a cigar shop with his dad. His name is Vincent Cataldo. He herd me conversing about the Blast-O-Matic iphone app and quickly ran over and was so excited to learn about it. Right away he began to talk about stuff he's working on and knew words such as virtualization, bug fixing, beta testing, stealth mode, hacking...etc!! I was completely blown away by his age and his knowledge. A true inspiration and a true future success. He LOVES apple products. He's smart enough to have saved his first generation iPod, knowing it would be worth money someday. He also has a collection of first generation Mac's. He never leaves home without his Apple macbook and iPhone. He built his own website and gave the menu a Apple.com look-and-feel. Keep an eye on Vincent, this may be our next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Follow him on:

Photoshop texture techniques

2009-04-17T20:04:00.001-07:00

Here are some techniques that might come in handy in your next projects. 40 tuts to create your own textures. Textures can be a challenge because they need to tile seamlessly. Go through a few of these tuts and you'll be a pro!

iPhone Blast-0-Matic

2009-04-14T19:55:00.001-07:00

Ok all you iPhone Appsters. We've just released the Blast-O-Matic ray gun (formerly known as the X1 iPhaser). It is now available in the iTunes store as of April 10, 2009! Go get it and Blast Away!

Barack Obama Cubeecraft

2009-04-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

These little Cubeecraft paper craft toys are sooooo cool and free! I like Baracks Obama's but they have others characters.

Cool business cards

2009-04-10T15:50:00.001-07:00

Who said business cards need to be so straightforward and so boring. Here's "All the Business Card Inspiration You Will Ever Need". And if that's not enough, check these out!

Crazy Cool Vectors in Ai and Ps

2009-04-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I'm always looking for inspiration and new tricks. Well here's one that will get your creative juices flowing.

Wooden laptop case

2009-01-25T00:23:00.000-08:00

I gotta get me one of these!

New Site

2009-01-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

I got my hands on some AS3 (ActionScript 3.0) and I was getting tired of my existing site as well. AS3 certainly is harder to work with for none programers. You're forced to use functions, call variables and create instances. To get a button to work in AS2 you simply selected the button and added ActionScript to the button to make it work. It was easy to navigate through movieClips as well by using _parent or _root. Well all that is gone in AS3, there's much more coding evolved.

Anyhow, back to my new site. I gave it a new look-and-feel and added a few new pieces of work. I hope you like it and as always, let me know what you think.

Dump IE

2008-11-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

Here is my part in helping all innocent souls stay away from this evil beast. We've all complained about IE5 and IE6 for years but that's all we've done! It's time to step it up and protest, internet style. This past August was it's 27th birthday and let's make it its last.

The pour souls that are using IE6 are the people that have no choice because that's all they have in their work environment. Then there are the ones that don't know other browsers exist.

Things are looking up, er should I say down. statistics show that the percentage of IE users is going down thanks to FireFox, and Paul Boag thinks the release of Google Chrome will topple IE6. Popular networking sites seem to be fed up with IE6. Facebook, MobileMe have given up in supporting IE6. I agree with this decision, some will argue that because it might cause them to loose customers, but I think we need to do our part in helping people move forward and upgrade their browsers. If customers don't get what they want they will look somewhere else, in this case, they will move to another browser or be forced to upgrade.

Well, here is my part. I've designed an icon and desktop background that shows a nice big IE logo inside a big garbage can. The icon was engineered for OS X and windows to be displayed in larger sizes. Add the desktop background to catch peoples attention or install the icon to decorate your desktop.

Download: OS X icon, Win icon, desktop background

Engrave it!

2008-10-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

In my free time, I like to surf the net to try and fish some creative inspiration. Well I just caught a big shark! Truly amazing! Give your PowerBook that personalized, extra eye-catching look a la custom. Any design you want Joe Mansfield, founder and designer of Engrave can engrave it for you.

ME!

2008-06-29T08:45:00.001-07:00

Strangely, I've gotten a few email people wondering what I look like (not sure why). So I decided to purchase a blank MUNNY and customize to be a mini me! So here it is, er, here I am.

Smart Design

2008-06-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is what I call smart design. Simple, clean and light weight. The designers of the JOOLZ stroller had the user in mind. My wife and I have been doing some "shopping for the essentials" and those essentials are a lot of things! Big bulky bags, complex play pens that I'm sure will take me all day to assemble. It seems that when it comes to baby shopping, everything is so complex! When I take my little one for a stroll I don't want to look like a homeless person walking around with cart full of junk. Tho shopping for all these knick-knacks is a lot of fun, I've been having the most fun shopping for the perfect stroller and this little guy has won my attention.

The design of the JOOLZ BLOOM stroller is very well thought-out. It carries all the functionality you want in a stroller and nothing more, nothing less. Unlike other strollers, these guys are not trying to impress you with big bulky, complex, transformer-looking components, such as belts, clips, buttons, press this, fold here, bend this, detach that...kinda stuff! They are grabbing your attention by showing its simplicity. Here you have what you need and nothing more. Click a button and the whole thing folds. You can even fold it with the seat on. One click and the seat comes off to be replaced with a car seat of bassinet. One click are the magic words. No extra belts or screws. It comes with a basket for the bottom where you can store a dipper bag or any other necessities. If you're expecting a little one, I highly recommend it.

My little miniRIDEZ

2008-05-24T15:16:00.001-07:00

I launched a new website named miniRIDEZ.com. It's mainly targeted for car enthusiast that are members of car forums, or anyone who simply loves their ride. It all started one boring rainy day when I was surfing the net looking at Subaru modified cars. I noticed the characteristics of the Subaru and immediately began sketching. The result was little cars with a lot of attitude. The Subaru forum I belong to, i-Club.com, loved them. Forum members posted profile pictures of their rides which all had unique detailed modifications such as decals, wheels and paint jobs. I would then study each individual car and turn around a miniSUBY. I recently ordered a Smart Car, joined a forum and designed some miniSMARTS for the members. I have yet to see where this is going, but I'm hoping for vendors to jump in and see how these little guys can be used to grab potential costumers attentions.

My favorite new Fusion icon

2008-05-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm showcasing one of my favorite icons I designed for the new release of Fusion. The latest Beta release is ready Lots of new improvements, technical and graphical. This speaker is one of my favorites.

My thanks to Code Collector

2008-04-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

I designed this icon as my contribute to a small but very smart product that has helped me be more productive in my work flow when coding websites. Code Collector Pro puts all your code snippets in one single place, nicely organized in one single window. To mention a few features, It lets you group similar snippets and allows you to drag-and-drop them to your work area. The latest version has little extras such as sharing and transfer options. Martin Pilginton emailed me, thanking me for the icon. Him and his partner love it and will consider taking it for the next release. Download the .icns file