Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews, questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. This week and next, to celebrate our fifth, we will sit in the Timeout seat. First up: Dan.
Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
Howdy, I’m Dan Cederholm, co-founder of Dribbble, designer, cautious adventure seeker, clawhammer banjo afficionado and lover of Muppets. I drive a Subaru and I’m a dad in real life. I’m likely eating a burrito right now. I hail from Salem, Massachusetts.
What are you working on?
Aside from HR duties and the general ebb and flow of running a small business, I’m also working on something we’re calling Playbook. It’ll be a simple, customizeable grid of your best work, powered by your Dribbble profile. I’m quite excited about it, and it’s been fun designing and coding something from the ground up, having less legacy than we’re usually dealing with on the main app. One of my favorite aspects of Dribbble is giving talented folks a platform for more visibility to connect with others, get hired, be a part of a great, supportive community, make friends, etc. And Playbook will be a nice extension of that ongoing goal of ours.
Choose a favorite shot of yours. Why is it a favorite?
I’ll go with Electric Service Co. from two years ago. It reminds me of a time when I actually had time to make fun, seemingly useless things. And that it’s OK to create things just for the sake of creating something. Inspired from my walk from home to the office and the manhole covers stepped over along the way. I’d still love to print a variation of it on a T-shirt. Then again, I’d love to print most anything on a T-shirt. I dig the shot because it embodies a lot of what I love about designing things: real-life inspiration, a great typeface, warm colors, and simple forms. Plus, you can’t go wrong with a lightning bolt.
Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot (e.g. hardware, software, pens, paper, blowtorch)?
I suppose it started with the iPhone camera, taking a photo of the manhole cover. I do all my vector work in Photoshop. I’m sure it’d be more efficient to use Illustrator, but for whatever reason I never learned it and have come to enjoy PS’s smaller toolset. Constraints and all that. For texture I probably used one of Liam McKay's excellent packs.
Photo by Daniel Byrne for net magazine
For the past several years, I’ve been working exclusively on a 15” MacBook Pro. No external monitor, mouse or keyboard. It means working from comfy couches wherever and whenever, which is key when you’re raising two young kids. We have desks here at Dribbble HQ, but they’re rarely used.
Choose a favorite shot from another Player. Why do you dig it?
Bull by Curtis Jinkins. Like many of you, I’m a big fan of Curtis’s work, and bought this print immediately after he posted the shot three years ago. It’s been happily hanging in my living room ever since. Curtis is a master of texture and simple shapes and custom lettering and other feats, and it’s been a joy following his work on Dribbble.
Find Dan at Dribbble, on Twitter, and at simplebits.com.
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