Party like it’s 1999
Jan 10th, 2004
I was lucky enough to attend the party of the century in San Francisco on December 31, 1999 during the glory days of the dotcom era. The location was the house of of one of the original Netscape engineers, Aleks Totic. In attendance were many of the other original Netscape engineers and employees, their significant others, family members and friends.
All in all, I think they were easily some 200 hundred people there.
I took my trusty little Olympus Camedia to the event, not knowing what to expect or if I would have time to take any photos. Further, the lighting condtions were very low, and I had no desire to use a flash. I hate using a flash. So the details were dark and grainy, and people were constantly in motion. Many of the shots came out blurry and too dark.
Below are the few gems that survived from the evening.
Skye
Before the party started, we all gathered around the dinner table to enjoy a catered meal and some good wine. Skye Lee, a vey good friend of mine who worked on my team at both Adobe and Mambo, and who introduced me to my wife Donna, was seated across the table. We were eating dinner and Skye was listening to someone tell a story.

The candle in front of her was hitting her just right in terms of lighting, so I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped off this shot. As soon as the shutter clicked, Skye looked at me and asked, “Did you just take my picture?” Skye doesn’t like to have her picture taken.
However, this photo turned out far better than I expected considering I only had one chance at it. Skye looks gorgeous, sophisticated and a bit mysterious. A little bit of Photoshop to create softer pastel tones and blur out the background was all that was needed.
Donna
This is one of the first pictures I have of Donna. We had just started dating, and this was the first time I had seen her all dolled up. Needless to say, I am a very lucky man.

The only unfortunate part of this shot was the low lighting level, making the shadow details muddy and almost nonexistent. It was difficult to get as much detail as I did out of this photo, but I’m still fairly pleased with it.
The Conversation
The party was just getting started, and I was running around grabbing as many photos as I could.

I liked the composition of the group in this shot, especially Paul, Skye’s boyfriend at the time and now husband, gazing right into the camera. But I couldn’t hold my hands steady crouching on the floor and the shot came out a bit blurry.
I suppose one could always chalk up the blurry look to happenstance.
Paul
Paul always has this quiet, calm persona about him. Here he was as his usual, relaxed, nonchalant self, having a drink and mingling with all the pretty women.

Once again, the blurriness of the image came from low light and movement. It’s not a Photoshop effect. I rather like the blur effect, finding the result to be bit reminiscent of Jakob’s Ladder.
Which is not to imply I think there are any demons in these shots. I just think that wild kind of digital blur is cool.
The Postcard
No idea why, but this shot reminds me of a Hallmark postcard. That’s Matt Fisher on the left, looking like a Calvin Klein model. David K. and former girlfriend Ricki stand in the center, talking about who knows what. And Paul’s on the right, always looking to insert himself into every picture he can.

Midnight
Here’s the only shot I got off at midnight. So much chaos caused everything to be in motion. That’s Carlton Waters, a good friend of mine, in the middle there wooing a young woman I had never met (and I’m sure that he had never met until that moment) for a turn of the century kiss. Carlton is the man.

Once again, Photoshop was used to create the soft pastel color look and process all the images, while Extensis PhotoFrame was used for the edges. This would be the last time I used the polaroid edge look. I got over it pretty quickly after the first six months with my camera.

Standards rant
Repeat after me
Standards do not block, impede or otherwise hinder innovation. Businessmen, engineers or product managers who only care
about how they want to implement technology or only care about their own bottom line are the ones doing the real damage
in the larger economic picture.
Design by Fire strives to be as standards compliant as humanly possible in spite of the fact that those in charge of developing
the technology, the browsers and the operating systems can't seem to to code to the W3C specification with 100% compliance.
However, even though I'm a firm believer in standards, I'm beyond sick and tired of trying to figure out what works and what does not
work according to the W3C specification. So while I make every attempt to do the right thing, occasionally I'll just do what
I have to get the thing working. In other words, if you run any Design by Fire URI through a code validator and find invalid
markup or css, please don't bother sending me an email.
With that little rant out of the way, here are some good articles about the benefits of web standards.
And of course, there's Zeldman's Designing with
Web Standards, which is easily one of the best reads from both a practical and technical point of view on the subject.
All of these sources discuss simplification of code, rapid development, smaller file sizes, faster download times,
better accessibility for a larger set of users, easier code maintenance and platform scalability - all benefits of standards at a
technological level. There's also some ROI discussion on using standards.
Andrei Michael Herasimchuk
Designer
Updated 2010
The quick and dirty summary is that I am largely considered
one of the first official interface designers hired by Adobe Systems. That is, the first one hired to do nothing but interface
design across the professional product line. I worked personally on the interfaces for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator,
and Adobe InDesign.

One of these days, I'll convince Adobe's legal eagles to let me write a book about all that I have been through while working on
those products. I just doubt they'll agree to it in my lifetime. Until, then you'll have to be satisfied with the
History of Photoshop, an article written by a long-time friend of mine, Jeff Schewe.
Work
Director, Design Team
Twitter
March 2011 - Present
Sr. Director of Product Design
Applications
Yahoo!
September 2009 - March 2011
Chief Design Officer, Co-Founder
Involution Studios
July 2004 - September 2009
Project Lead, Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Systems
December 2002 - June 2004
Director, User Interface
ePeople
April 2001 - December 2002
Director, User Interface
Impresse
January 2000 - April 2001
Director, User Interface
Mambo.com
August 1999 - January 2000
Senior User Interface Designer
Adobe Systems
August 1995 - July 1999
Co-Founding Member, Director
Specular Int'l
June 1990 - August 1995
Play
Having the opportunity to work on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom has given me a chance to explore
photography in way I would not have had access to otherwise. You can find samples of all my personal work on this web site,
and unless otherwise noted, everything here is photographed by me.
For a short period of time, I was exploring a screenwriting career. I had a script optioned by Hyde Park Entertainment (a division of
MGM), a studio that has since gone under. I even had an agent in Beverly Hills for a short period of time.
I enjoy playing poker on the side and find the game infinitely fascinating. I have made the final table in a few
bigger tournaments. One at The Hall of Fame Poker Classic
and the other at the Bay 101 Open, but no World Series of Poker bracelet
for me yet. I have had the opportunity to play against some world-class poker professionals and have gotten crushed by them.
In my off time I play bass guitar and far too many video games.
Publications and Awards
Industry Awards
1995-2000
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign have won far too many awards than is possible to list here.
The History of Photoshop
February 2000
An article written by Jeff Schewe for Photo Electronic
Imaging Magazine. This covers the history and development of Photoshop. A copy of this article can be found
here in PDF format. You can also find another copy on Jeff's web site,
Schewe Photography.
Design Graphics, Cover Story
June 1999, Issue 46
This article covered the work I did on the
redesign of the professional product line while at Adobe.
Collage with Photoshop
1994
This book
features 14 digital artists using Photoshop and Specular Collage. I'm only mentioned in the prologue, but the book was
created to promote Collage and what digital artists were doing with it at the time. I'm still fairly proud about the book
and the work produced inside of it.
Education
Amherst College
1989 to 1990
Left Amherst College to start Specular Int'l
The Hill School
1984 to 1988
College preperatory school.
Contact
andrei@designbyfire.com
To avoid getting tagged by my spam filter, be sure to create a meaningful subject line.
Colophon and other details
Design by Fire v4.0
A quick overview of the design and implementation
of DxF for those who care about such details.
Browser Support
If you are viewing Design by Fire in either Firefox or Safari, congratulations! You are experiencing Design by Fire
in the manner it was intended. If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 or less, you have my sympathies as you are getting a
version slightly less dynamic. The reason for that is due to Microsoft's lack of support for the CSS property "position: fixed;"
plus a few other things.

Bottom line, Internet Explorer promises to fix these things in version 7, so in the meantime you can either download the
beta for IE7 or switch to Firefox.
Typography
If you have purchased the Adobe Creative Suite, you should
have Helvetica Neue installed in your font library. If so, then
you are reading Design by Fire as it was intended to be read. For everyone else, you are either seeing Lucida Grande or
Arial.
Clearly, Helvetica Neue is far superior.
As for the logotype of Design by Fire, it's set using the classic
Bodoni typeface, complete with ligature for that extra flourish.
Content Management System
This version of Design by Fire is managed using WordPress. So long MovableType.
Copyright Information
Design by Fire is ©copyright by Andrei Michael Herasimchuk. All rights reserved.
You may not use any material, articles, logos, essays, technical illustrations, photos or any content from this site without
expressed written permission.
Design articles
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Oct 31st, 2008
Keeping up with the Joneses
Aug 16th, 2007
Introducing Spivot
Mar 5th, 2007
The unfortunate death of Helvetica
Oct 23rd, 2006
An Open letter to John Warnock
Aug 28th, 2006
Convenient Lessons from An Inconvenient Truth
Aug 2nd, 2006
The kids aren’t alright
Jul 17th, 2006
The Culture of Fugly
Jun 25th, 2006
Please make me think! Are high-tech usability priorities backwards?
Oct 10th, 2004
Rebranding the World Wide Web Consortium
Sep 30th, 2004
You say toe – may – toe, I say [expletive] that
Aug 17th, 2004
Gurus v. Bloggers, Round 2
Jun 20th, 2004
Design Eye for the Usability Guy
May 18th, 2004
Et tu, Brute?
May 6th, 2004
I would RTFM if there was an FM to FR
Apr 30th, 2004
The Art Center Design Conference, Part III
Apr 27th, 2004
Gurus v. Bloggers, Round 1
Apr 9th, 2004
The Art Center Design Conference, Part II
Mar 31st, 2004
The Art Center Design Conference, Part I
Mar 29th, 2004
Redesigning Google’s search results page
Jan 25th, 2004
Photography articles
Santorini in black and white
Jun 17th, 2004
Santorini in red
Jun 9th, 2004
Santorini in blue
Jun 8th, 2004
The Art Center Design Conference, Part III
Apr 27th, 2004
The Art Center Design Conference, Part II
Mar 31st, 2004
The Art Center Design Conference, Part I
Mar 29th, 2004
Party like it’s 1999
Jan 10th, 2004
An Oakland Rave
Jan 10th, 2004
Random favorites from the shoebox
Jan 10th, 2004
Portraits of Donna and Alexa
Jan 10th, 2004