Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Allison for being today’s interviewee.
Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
Howdy team! My name is Allison Grayce, and I’m a web designer and teacher at Treehouse in Orlando, FL. My day to day usually consists of writing blog posts, writing my curriculum, designing or recording screencasts. Since we work a 4-day workweek, on my days off I’ll work on personal or freelance design projects to keep the skills I teach fresh (and because I just love to design!).
What are you working on?
I’m always working on new content for my curriculum and blog posts for Think Vitamin. This past week, the teachers and I worked closely with our oober-talented video team to write narratives and reward videos to coincide with our students’ learning experience at Treehouse. We called it “Movie Week.” All of our remote folks came in from out of town and pitched in by either acting, screenwriting or helping on set. It was rewarding to break out of the routine and have a hand in something completely outside of my comfort zone and the work I usually do. As far as design projects go, I’m working on a photography portfolio/blog and fashion blog.
Choose a favorite shot of yours. Why is it a favorite?
I’d say the Treehouse Badges is one of my favorite shots. It actually ended up as an ad for Treehouse, which was funny to see when it showed up on Dribbble via The Deck. Having to come up with unique and consistent iconography for all of our courses (especially JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, & iOS which are naturally not very visual) was/is challenging. But when I see them all together, I’m pretty proud of the way they turned out.
Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)? (e.g. hardware, software, pens, paper, blowtorch, etc.)
I’d say 90% of my day is spent in Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator CS4. (Though I’ve been using Photoshop CS6 beta lately and love the improvements!) The other 10% is spent in TextMate, recording screencasts with iShowU, staying informed with Reeder, and sane with Spotify.
As far as hardware goes, I use my 15” MacbookPro with a 27” cinema display and it sits on top of my beloved Geek Desk. Other essentials are my iPhone 4, iPad 2, Dot Grid Book, Browser Pads and a squishy stress ball to play with while I think. :D
Choose a favorite shot from another Player. Why do you dig it?
This is so hard to do, especially lately since the Dribbble community and talent has just skyrocketed. I think I’d have to go with Ryan Putnam’s Amberbranch Packaging. Besides the fact that it’s an ampersand, this is a perfect example of shots that inspire me beyond the web. I get lost in user interfaces, and stumbling across this kind of stuff encourages me to get crafty every once in awhile.
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