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Hi, my name is Fredrik Sørlie, and I’m a freelance designer located in Strømmen, just outside Oslo, Norway. This website is my window to the world. Whether you’re a friend, a client or family, you’re welcome to have a look at my work or check out my blog.

Blog Life

2011 roundup

Another year has gone by, and as usual, I have failed at updating my website and portfolio on a regular basis. However, the activity on the website does not reflect what’s going on in my life. 2011 has been a busy, but fun year.

My first big project for 2011 was a total redesign of the official homepage of professional drifter, Fredric Aasbø. Before the season, Fredric signed a contract with EA Games and Scion to become the first professional drifter from Norway. His website had to reflect his newfound status as a drifting super star, so I got to work on it. The end result is something that both Fredric, his sponsors and myself are very happy with.

Another project that has taken some time in 2011 is the collaboration with my photographer friend, Aleksander Istad. We started Shutterspeed last year, and allthough we’re still just starting out, we’ve been to quite a few events this year. The Gatebil event in July (where I actually was supposed to drive an awesome Mazda RX7 that unfortunately blew up after only 7 laps…) probably being the highlight.

Game development have also taken up a lot of my time. Just before christmas we finally released the Fredric Aasbo Toyota Supra MKIV Drift mod for rFactor. I’ve also been involved in some work for a major game developer, but more on that later ;)

In between all this, I’ve also had time for some fun. Such as building my 1977 Cressida, and of course the occational trip to the Nordschleife.

That’s it for now. I’ve updated the portfolio with a few more samples. Stay tuned for more.

Range Rover post-processing

Today I went out for a quick photoshoot as my friend just got his Range Rover covered in satin black vinyl and needed pics for his ad. The car looks awsome sitting on those huge wheels and I was looking forward to shoot it. We were hoping for a clear sunset, as I didn’t have any lighting equipment at hand. That didn’t happen, but the satin black car still looked awsome, as there are no ugly reflections in the paint to worry about. We took a few pics for his ad and headed back home. At the end of the shoot I shot a blind shot from the ground just for fun. It was not supposed to be in the ad, just a random snap really. When I got home I realised that the angle was pretty cool, but that the car had a lot of ugly trucks and buildings in the background when facing that way. So I did the only thing I could think of. Replacing the background with an awsome sky from my collection og stock photos. One thing led to another, and after an hour or so, this was the end result.

Portfolio update

Just updated my portfolio with six websites and three logos. Check out my work section for screenshots and info

Racing season is here

As the snow is melting, the racing season is coming up fast. For me, that means a lot of work. In the past years I’ve made several websites for Norway’s top racing talents. I do my best to help young and talented drivers present themselves on the web, and allthough I’m not able to give away many sites for free, I have occationally sponsored a driver that I believe in.

Besides creating driver websites I also run a small news site over at norsk-racing.com. It’s been slightly neglected from time to time, but I’m currently working on a major overhaul. The new site will feature user registration and the possibility for drivers to publish their own press releases as well as blog about their racing. It might be a waste of time, but I have to give it a go, as I really want to do what I can to promote Norway’s racing talents.

Finally I present you a list of the racing related websites I’ve made over the years (in alphabetical order):

Atle Gulbrandsen
Harald Hellum Racing
Kim Kristian Humborstad
Norges Bilsportforbund
Norsk-Racing.com
Olrud Mobil 1 Racing
Petter Granlund
Roger Moen Motorsport
Stian Paulsen
Stian Sørlie
Tomas Eidjord

UltraLight theme for WordPress

Ever since I began using WordPress to power my projects, I’ve been thinking about making a simple template theme with clean markup and css. Creating websites with wordpress is after all about making custom themes, and it would save me a lot of time to start with a super clean base.

UltraLight is just that. A super clean, ultra lightweight theme, with valid xhtml markup and css. It’s stripped of all unessecery code and apart from a background image it’s got no graphics whatsoever. Allthough I made it for my own personal use, I’ve decided to share it as it would be a good platform for most theme designers and deverlopers. And as it’s a fully working theme with widget support, it’s also a sweet theme for any blogger who wants a clean, lightweight design on their blog.

See the theme in action and download for free over at ultralight.fredriksoerlie.com.

Back in business

The last couple of months have been kinda tough to be honest. Since the “financial crisis” became a reality back in september, my clients more or less disappeared over night. And as a freelancer, no new projects means no income whatsoever.

But for some reason, it more or less changed overnight after january 20th. I’m not saying that Barack Obama got me my clients back, but something changed on that historic day. Suddenly the phones started ringing again and the emails came ticking in. As I am writing this I’m working on four different projects at once, not knowing where to turn. It’s all good though. It’s kinda nice to be back, allthough I get a bit stressed out every now and then.

Painted lid

It’s actually been a while now since Stian Paulsen dropped by with my helmet, all dressed up in my own design. As usual he did an amazing job, recreating my rather strict design to perfection. Thanks a lot, Stian. Looking forward to launching a new website for you soon :)

Here’s the “sketch” I gave Stian to work from. He added a couple of shadow effects as well, giving the helmet that final touch.

This falls head fashion – for me at least…

Finally got around to finish my mate Stian Sørlie’s website, and here’s my reward. A brand new Arai GP5K from his shop. Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted one of these. After all, it is more or less the one most F1 drivers use.

I remember watching the older go-kart racers using GP2’s back in the early 90’s. They where so cool! Not that I didn’t have cool helmets myself. Back then I had a Simpson Bandit 5 and later a custom painted Simpson Super Shark. They where both badass, and I still love them to death. Still, never having owned an Arai has kind of bugged me – until today…

As with most wannabe/has-been racers, my personal helmet is the only thing that sets me apart from most trackday racers these days. It’s a statement that I used to be a “real” racingdriver. A reminder that I used to be serious about the sport and had ambitions. Allthough my long gone dreams of becoming a F1 driver never came through, at least I have my own helmet design!

Back in 1996 I got the Super Shark painted with my own design for the first time, and boy did it look awsome! I made the design myself, with pointers from automotive photographer Erik Nordlien. The helmet was painted by a guy in the UK who apparantly used to paint Johnny Herbert’s helmets. And he did a very good job with it, choosing nice colors and effects for the time.

10 years later my trusted old Super Shark had been through a lot, and paint had chipped several places. As I couldn’t afford a proper new helmet at the time, I decided to repaint it. Together with helmet painting guru Stian Paulsen, I did some major changes to the design, incorporating a lot of silver. The design turned out pretty cool, but the distinct features of my old design got a bit lost in the process. I just seem to prefer the old school helmet style with simple colors and design.

So my new Arai will get an updated version of my original design. Black and grey will replace some of the blue colors, and the red will become more orange. Just to make it stand out a bit more. But this time I will make sure that the white areas are kept clean, so that the distinct diagonal line at the front and the “F” on the side stay as visible as possible. It will be a high contrast, classic design and one that is truly my own.

My plugins of choice

If it weren’t for the plugins, WordPress would’ve be dropped in my trash can pretty much right away. However, thanks to several great developers all over the world, I was able to transform this blogging tool into a pretty awsome CMS. It did take some testing, and sometimes even some modding, but the result is almost worth the effort. By sharing my chosen plugins with the world, I might save some of you the trouble of trying out bad plugins, thus making my effort worthwhile :)

Here are the plugins that power my site:

• Advanced Excerpt
  Several improvements over WP’s default excerpt. The size of the excerpt can be limited using character or word count, and HTML markup is not removed.
• Akismet
  Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• Category Selector Back to the Sidebar (MOD)
  Puts the category selector section back to the sidebar of the Post page.
• Google XML Sitemaps
  This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
• Last.Fm Records
  The Last.Fm Records plugin lets you show what you are listening to, with a little help from our friends at last.fm.
• Lightbox 2
  Used to overlay images on the current page.
• PictureGrid
  Picturegrid – Add flickr to your blog, no mess, no fuss.
• PJW Page Excerpt
  Allows you to edit excerpts for Pages.
• Post-Plugin Library
  Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.
• Post Thumb Revisited
  Thumbnails images from your posts. Useful for listing popular posts, post list, etc.
• Recent Comments
  Displays a highly configurable list of the most recent comments.
• Reveal IDs for WP Admin
  Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5).
• Sociable
  Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites.
• Twitter for Wordpress
  Displays your public Twitter messages for all to read.
• WP-DBManager
  Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries.
• WP Super Cache
  Very fast caching module for WordPress.

Cutting vinyl with my new Roland cutter

Earlier this summer, my father and I decided to get a vinyl cutter and set up a small workshop at my parents place. I borrowed one of these awesome machines for a few months last year, and although I don’t want to make it my living, it’s a nice break from digital design. With vinyl I actually produce a product I can smell and touch. For some reason I find that fascinating.

So far I’ve only printed a few test stickers, but I’ve already got a few orders from friends. Not really surprising, as basically all my friends are involved in motor sports in someway or another. Apparently stickers make a car faster and handle better, so who am I to tell them that Santa doesn’t exist :D

Luckily for me I’ve been collecting vectorized logos and graphics for a few years now, and so far I have ~700 or so. Most of them car related, but also most famous brands.

So if you need stickers for your car, or whatever else you would like to put stickers on, just let me know and I will cut you some.

Siste bilder fra Flickr

Favorite Links

• Favorites

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Imdb

• Friends

  • Atle Gulbrandsen
  • Einar Brenne
  • Kim Kristian
  • Martin Sørlie
  • Mr. Doricar
  • Ove Harlem
  • Petter Granlund
  • Stian Paulsen
  • Stian Sørlie

• Inspiration

  • Faveup
  • LogoPond
  • Styleboost

• Recognition

  • CSS Based
  • CSS Container
  • CSS Creme
  • CSS Daddy
  • CSS Design Yorkshire
  • CSS Galore
  • CSS Mania
  • CSSclip
  • cssfights
  • CssGlance
  • csshere
  • Design Shack
  • light on dark
  • Most Inspired
  • The Daily Slurp
  • We Love WP
  • Webdesigner Depot
  • WPCandy

Copyright © 2004-2008 Fredrik Sørlie
All rights reserved