steve, Author at Fishbucket

So there’s this guy who goes by the name of Dolemite, and he puts together a rap mix every two years. It’s passed around to a few friends but rarely makes it outside that circle. But hey, it’s pretty good stuff so why not share it further?

This is Rap Mix 2012, and you can tell from the cover that there’s a strong Beastie Boys presence this year, in remembrance of MCA.

Give it a listen and leave comments below. If there’s interest I’ll share some from previous years. (I mean, if “Dolemite” allows it. That dude is mysterious.)

Happy New Year, people!

Download on Sendspace →
(AAC format)

Team Icecream is back! This is a site we’ve been working on at odd hours in September. Pretty clean and minimal, introducing the new incarnation of the Icecream Skate Team. Skate on over (see what I did there?) to teamicecream.com and check it out.

This post is coming a little late, (we’ve been a bit busier than usual,) but earlier this month we relaunched the BBC ICECREAM site & blog with a new BEE LINE style. Hit that!

www.bbcicecream.com

This week we launched the full site for Pharrell’s new company, i am OTHER. This project had a quick turnaround time, and the task was to create a Tumblr-based site and brand the corresponding YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pages.

All we had to work with was the logo, so I came up with these different patterns of blocks using colors from the logo. Pharrell was happy with the outcome, and liked how it brought up thoughts of tetris and 8-bit Atari games. (Side note: it’s still a huge honor to be on a call with Pharrell and hear his enthusiasm about something I came up with!)

So hey, take a look!

Today we relaunched J. Cole’s blog, Dreamvillain, with a sparse, light & cloudy new theme.

This is just an initial redesign before a bigger project. More to come!

And I’ve gotta give big thanks to Vashtie for the recommendation. She rocks!

Goddammit.

This photo was taken at the screening of Awesome, I Fuckin’ Shot That (which I fuckin’ shot.) The biggest moment of my Beastie Boys-loving life. Yauch cracked a joke while we paused for the picture, something like “thank you for your vote.”

I wish I could say I knew him or got to spend more than one smiling-like-a-maniac minute with him, but this is all I’ve got. Plus the hundreds (thousands?) of hours of Beastie Boys I’ve listened to over the past twenty-something years.

Ten years ago today, the first Star Trak site launched. The project that basically started my career.

Rewind a few months before that: I was working at a small, sinking design company in Union Square, doing stuff for banks and doomed dot-coms and growing more cynical by the day. A coworker friend said she had this freelance project, and wondered if I’d be interested in working on it. It was a site for a new record label, run by some guys named “The Neptunes” who I had never heard of. (Not many people had!)

I looked them up (googled them? yahooed them? how did people search back then? I don’t remember.) Apparently they had an album coming out, and their group was called N.E.R.D. I asked around at record stores to find out more, but nobody had heard of them. After I spelled the name to a girl at Best Buy, she laughed and said “nerd?” I eventually found a European version of their album at a store on Montague Street. (The US version hadn’t come out yet.)

I set out designing the site, and loved every minute of it. Even though I had a day job, I’d stay up late working on it. I’d brew a pot of coffee around midnight on weekend nights and stay up until 4 or 5am (and only go slightly crazy.) I poured endless hours into it, making this elaborate Flash animation of a spaceship exploding. (I’d later actually learn how to use Flash, and realize in hindsight that I could’ve created those animations in a fraction of the time, if only I knew what I was doing!)

I built the site with Nirav, another friend & coworker at the day job. He built a forum from scratch, (these were the days before you could click an “Install Forum” button with your web host and get one running with your eyes closed.) That forum was quirky and odd and unlike any of the other forums we’d seen. Admittedly it was hard to use and easy to hack, (which the fans helpfully showed us on numerous occasions,) but it was fun.

So yes. Long story short, the site launched ten years ago today. That night I posted on some other sites to say it was up, and watched. I only had to wait a few minutes before the forum started filling up with posts. The quirky little site I’d spent all those nights and weekends on was a success.

Within a year, I parted ways with my employer and set out to work on my own, and the results of the past decade can be seen at a glance over here.

Big thanks go out to Loic, who directed that project (and many more since then)… Heather and Nirav, for all their work on that first site… Pharrell and Chad, and the whole Star Trak family over the years.

What? Fishbucket made the official website for five-time heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield? Apparently so.

Brand new website just hit the webs this week. Includes a new design and layout, with a fun interactive timeline where you can explore key moments in The Champ’s career. (Attentive viewers of Fishbucket projects may remember several classic sites that had some hot parallax scrolling action. Well, the parallax is back, but now Flash free!)

Special thanks to the folks over at KIT Digital, who managed the project. And I suppose I should also thank some guy named Anthony, who said something along the lines of: “hey, I know a guy who makes websites.” Thanks guy!

Another fun project! This is a Flash-based avatar creator for celebrity blogger Necole Bitchie. It lets users create their own “Bitchie Chick” which they can use on NecoleBitchie.com or twitter or, um, anywhere.

I handled design and Flash, but not the illustrations. Those were created by KiKi. ~~(that’s all I know. KiKi. If anyone knows more about KiKi, like maybe her full name or website, please tell! I’d love to link her up and give proper credit.)~~

Head on over and make yourself a Bitchie Chick at bitchiechicks.com.