Who’s yer Avatar see in the mirror?

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | 1 Comment

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek • Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009 11:35 pm

When you go to an online forum, chatroom, or read comments on blogs, you’ve probably noticed that some people use what appears to be their real name or perhaps the nickname they’re called by friends and family while many more use a screen name they reserve just for use online. Screen Names allow a person to have some level of anonymity which can offer a sense of emotional security, if not real security, and it’s that subtle sense of separateness from one’s “real world” self that often allows people to explore new sides of their personality, to speak their minds, to share their emotions without fear of retaliation, rejection, being laughed at, or ignored. The ways in which people go about selecting a screen name I’m sure varies a great deal and I’ve often found myself wondering where some of the names come from and why they were selected – did the user simply just like the sound of the syllables? Had they selected the name of a favorite character from a book, movie, or game? Were they trying to project a specific image of themselves that they believe will be attractive to certain people they’d like more attention from? Does the name reflect how they think of themselves – or how they’d like to think of themselves? Certainly, some people just randomly select a screen name because they are required to but I have a hunch that most people actually put some thought into it.

If I were a sociologist, I think it’d make a very interesting study, the choice of screen names, and of course along with that would be the Avatar that people select for themselves, as well. And does it say anything about the person who doesn’t have a personalized avatar? Does it mean they’re just not technically savvy enough to know how to go about it (whether in creating their own or finding one they like online and either registering it to a website like Gravatar so it gets automatically associated with their name when responding to blog posts or uploading it to their account at a specific forum) – or does it mean they’re anti-social or snobs – or just have no personality to begin with? Could be any or all of those reasons or some other reason entirely. Maybe I’m just nosy or have too much time on my hands, but I’m curious and think about things like this. It kinda goes along with my idea about creating as a new scientific field, forensic desktop reading. 😉

If you’d like to have your own custom avatar but just haven’t found one you like yet, perhaps one of these will tickle your fancy.

Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day

The following images are either full or reduced size previews. Simply right-click (or control-click) on the preview to save the image(s) of your choice to your desktop. (Unless otherwise noted, downloads are 512px X 512px in .png format). As always, usage of any of the images offered in the “Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day” section are free for your personal use, subject to the limitations of my Creative Commons Non-Commercial – Attribution – No Derivatives – Share Alike- 3.0 license. (See sidebar for Terms of Use) For commercial or any other use, please contact me for directly.

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TopHat – Alpha-Numeric Icons

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | 4 Comments

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek • Date: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 9:01 pm

I’m old enough to remember the days before personal computers, when graphic artists turned to a family of products collectively known as “press-type” or “dry transfer type” as an alternative to hand-drawn lettering for advertising layouts and other printed materials. For $4.00-$7.00 you’d get an 8.5″x11″ sheet of waxed paper with as many letters, numerals, punctuation marks, and/or ding-bats that could fit on the page, depending on the type-size,type-face, and type-style. (note the difference in jargon as back then there were no “fonts”) To get them off the wax paper onto the mock-up, you’d place the sheet wrong-side up positioned exactly where you wanted it and use a metal or plastic burnishing tool and very firmly but gently rub each individual character off the wax and onto your paper. It was a real pain if you made a mistake either in placement or in execution as you’d have to gently scratch off the character with a razor blade without harming the paper below it. Believe it or not, when press-type was first invented, it was considered a real time saver! It also allowed the grunt-job of doing the “keylining” or “paste-up” to be done by lower-level employees so the graphic artists and art directors were freed up for more creative or skilled tasks.

With the advent of personal computers and particularly the Mac (which inspired the development of the first graphics application), press-type pretty-much went the way of the dinosaurs. There’s a plethora of fonts available now and they can be manipulated further in a wide variety of apps including word-processors, page-layout and graphics based. But the concept of having the digital equivalent of press-type available on your computer for quick and easy spot jobs where you only need a letter or two or a handful of words, is still compelling. Hence, I’ve created several icon series in a variety of styles which consist of each letter of the alphabet, cardinal numerals, punctuation marks, and a handful of coordinated decorative that could be used as ding-bats. Tonight’s offering is titled: TopHat. Enjoy!

Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day

The following images are reduced size previews. Simply right-click (or control-click) on the preview to save all of the full-size images image(s) in a single zipped file to your desktop. (Unless otherwise noted, downloads are 512px X 512px in .png format). As always, usage of any of the images offered in the “Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day” section are free for your personal use, subject to the limitations of my Creative Commons Non-Commercial – Attribution – No Derivatives – Share Alike- 3.0 license. (See sidebar for Terms of Use) For commercial or any other use, please contact me for directly.

“CSI – Mac” ?

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | 2 Comments

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek • Date: Tue. Sept 29, 2009 10:18 pm

There are a number of old sayings that declare this trait or that is a sure-bet reflection of a person’s character. Variations on this theme include: “You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep”, “The clothes make the man”, and “You can judge a person by their book covers”. Most of these adages are centuries, if not thousands of years old and most of us have heard them repeated since our earliest childhood. Whether or not such sentiments are a matter of training, self-fulfilling prophecy, or merely observation, I’ve no idea but while these clever little generalities are hardly fail-safe proof, there appears to be a universal tendency for people to unconsciously make snap judgments of others based on such accessible clues. Well, I’ve got new candidate to nominate as a suitable, superficial reflection of human personality in this first decade of the 21st Century: Computer Desktops!

Think about it. Or better yet, look around your office or dorm, classroom, or peep at the screen on the laptop of that guy sitting against the window next time you’re at Starbuck’s and tell me what you see. I believe you can learn a lot about a person’s temperament, dreams, priorities, habits, weaknesses, strengths, loves, and moods by (surreptitiously) checking in on the state of their desktop every once in a while. While I don’t advocate making snap judgments like this if you’re on a jury, are a cop, or parent of a teenager, or in any other situation that calls for more than speculation, still, developing the skill as a “Forensic Desktop Reader” could be the next big thing to show up as a TV series or be a great new career move. Whad’ya think?

Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day

The following images are reduced size previews of 6 new “Metro” series Art Deco desktop pictures. You can download all 6, at 3 different monitor resolutions, in one convenient zipped archive by clicking the “Download Now” button below. As always, usage of any of the images offered in the “Free Clip-Art / Icons of the Day” section are free for your personal use, subject to the limitations of my Creative Commons Non-Commercial – Attribution – No Derivatives – Share Alike- 3.0 license. (See sidebar for Terms of Use) For commercial or any other use, please contact me for directly.