Digital*Impulse

Behold. I am.

Name: Alvaro Ojeda (aka Alfie)
Online Monicker: Digital*CHET
Birthday: March 13
Age: 32
Location: Canberra, Australia
Nationality: Australian of Chilean origin

What I Do

I’m a Graphic & Web Designer by profession, currently employed by Intelledox Pty Ltd.

Background

I’ve been into creative design and the arts since I can remember.  I remember hanging out with my mum watching her draw stuff, mostly faces and hands, and thinking “Wow, that’s so cool! I’m gonna do that when I grow up!”.  Then when I was about 11 my older brother was studying Graphic Design and would bring drawings and sketch books home, and I would flip through them and be amazed at the designs and creativity.  Since then, my passion for Design has flourished and taken on a life of its own. During my schooling years I excelled at the Arts and Design classes and was often called upon to display works for school exhibitions and functions.  During college, I entered a number of design competitions and managed to win some awards for my designs.

After college I took up working full-time and my design work took a back seat for a while.  I still tried to keep busy designing websites, logos, and other designs as my spare time allowed.
Sometime in 1998-99, I came across a piece of software called WindowBlinds, an application that dresses up the Windows interface with “skins”.  My interest in desktop customization developed into a hobby and that got me started on a whole new type of design: interface design.

Tools of my Trade

(Listed in order by percentage of use)

Graphic Design

• Adobe CS3 Web Premium Bundle
  • Fireworks -  I’m a big fan of this application.  It brings together the best of both vector and raster worlds and puts it all together in one neat, quick-to-manipulate and easy-to-use package.
  • Photoshop - When work requires a more refined and detailed approach, I turn to this industry workhorse.  Beyond mere photo editing, this extremely powerful application allows me to create quality artwork with little fuss.
  • Illustrator - Another staple of the Graphic Design industry.  Illustrator allows for sharp lines and scalable artwork in industry-standard formats.
  • Dreamweaver - The workhorse powerhouse of web design.  Dreamweaver is definitely the tool for serious web designers.  I find myself using it sparingly these days, as I find it somewhat clunky because of its feature set..
  • Flash - I don’t use this little beast as much as I’d like to, but lately I’ve been taking more of an interest in it and coming up with some cool work.
  • Acrobat - Great for creating and editing PDF documents.
• Notepad++ - This little beauty is quick and powerful and has a number of plugins that make working with it a breeze and a pleasure.  If you’re into coding and want an efficient, yet powerful tool, I highly recommend trying it out.

Skinning & Customizing

• SkinStudio 6
• WindowBlinds 6
• CursorFX
• IconDeveloper
• IconPackager
• ObjectDock+

Hardware

• Dell Inspiron 9400 Notebook
  • Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T2600 @ 2.16MHz
  • 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667MHz
  • 17″ UltraSharp™ Widescreen UXGA Display with TrueLife™ (1920×1200)
  • 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7800
  • 100GB Hard Drive
  • Windows XP Professional (SP3)
• 500GB LaCie External Drive
• 1TB LaCie Desktop Drive
• Casio Exilim EX-Z1200 Digital Camera