About Me
My name is Tony Ballinger, and I live in Chicago, Illinois with my fiance, Faith. I’m very lucky to have her in this world, in addition to my family and a great group of friends.
Professionally, I’m a designer at a small design agency in Chicago, Illinois. I graduated from college in 1996 with a degree in Multimedia Design – a multi-disciplinary curriculum of design, web/CD-ROM production, 3D animation, offline/online video editing, and audio production. I primarily do web design and front-end development, but I’m getting my feet wet in a little print design now.
When it comes to tools, I use Apple Computers with Macromedia and Adobe software for design. I’m a big fan of Macromedia Fireworks MX, and use it for everything from mocking up Flash movies and print work, to designing full-blown web page comps, along with slicing and optimizing them. It’s a great tool, and allows me to spend more time on the creative stuff, and less time messing with multiple apps to get a design done.
I spend my free time doing things with music. Mostly I go to a lot of concerts, hang around at CD stores, download music at eMusic.com and occasionally post on Last.fm. Every year I go to Coachella in Indio, California and to Summerfest on the Milwaukee Lakefront.
The 15 best concerts I’ve ever seen are as follows:
- Tom Waits @ Chicago Theatre
Mule Variations Tour - The Cure @ The Vic
Bloodflowers Small Club Tour - David Byrne @ The Riviera
Feelings Tour - The Pixies @ The Aragon
2004 Reunion Tour - Radiohead @ Auditorium Theatre
2006 Tour (Preview of New Material) - U2 @ United Center (Garbage opened)
All You Can’t Leave Behind Tour - Morphine @ Metro
Yes Tour - Laurie Anderson @ Chicago Theatre
Bright Red Tour - Coldplay @ The Aragon (Grandaddy opened)
Parachutes Tour - Spiritualized @ The Vic (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club opened)
Let It Come Down Tour - Andrew Bird @ Old Town School of Folk Music (opened for Magnetic Fields)
Weather Systems Tour - Low @ Old Town School of Folk Music (Kid Dakota opened)
- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah @ Schubas (opened for The National)
- The Books @ The Empty Bottle
Lost and Safe Tour - Peter Gabriel @ Marcus Ampitheater
Up Tour
Rarely, but sometimes I’ll create a generative music piece. Creatively, I’m inspired by Brian Eno, Biosphere, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, and many others.
On those rare occasions that I do create music I use an Oxygen 8 MIDI controller with software from Propellerhead, and Native Instruments.
Anyway, thanks for visiting my site. I hope you enjoy what I’ve made to share. If you have any comments, please use the “e-mail me” link in the sidebar, to drop me a line.