Three blog topics in one! Can't resist this, even if is sort of gimicky, you KNOW you want it, wish you had thought of it, some how must work it into your website whether it really belongs there or not. Text with a video property that bursts into flame! "Includes an alpha channel which has transparency for the flames." What's an alpha channel?! The iPoint CEO James Banks INSISTED on including this in the company website even though I told him it didn't fit with company image... what are you going to do if your client insists?
flaming text
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Blog Topic #11: Project Research
This blog topic is sort of a freeby as we were doing this for our final projects anyway, right? My final project is to do a sort of author's website for myself although I am not yet published. It is fun to look at other children's books websites for ideas and inspiration and just to enjoy the artwork. Now that I am in this class I can can better assess what I like and don't like about their website designs as well. Here's three I really like. They all achieve what I want: they promote the author's work in a showcase true to their spirit and sensibility and sense of humor.
Laura McGee Kvasnosky has a nice website that is fairly simple: www.lmkbooks.com
Her pages include a bio, list of books and an activity section with a painting demonstration, paper dolls to cut out and other activities. There is a journal or blog post section but it doesn't appear that she is active on it. The site is straightforward and her artwork is captivating. Interestingly, the site designer also has a link on her page: Max Waugh, and if you go there you will see he has himself published several children's photo books for ipad/iphone. I would like to explore that further.
Dav Pilky is one of my favorites, not so much for his fabulously successfully Captain Underpants series, although the kids in my carpool adore it, but for his earlier series of books about Dragon, especially A Friend for Dragon and Dragon's Fat Cat. So, funny, yet so poignant and I adore his paint style. He has scads of books out now, 6 series and lots of singles, AND he just won a Caldecott medal. Not bad, Mr. Pilky! I am both proud and jealous of you!
His website is just as busy as he is, this guy must be a little hyperactive, he is making a wacky movie now. I think this guy must be having lots of fun, he has large amount of creative energy. He calls his website, grandly, Dav Pilky's Extra Crunchy Website O'Fun and claims it "Stops Wetness", Fights Odors" (one of his characters is Super Diaper Baby) and "Stays Crunchy in Milk". I love the humor, and hope I can make my website fun and funny. Despite his website's busy-ness, it is still easy to navigate, with links to the MANY games he has designed, his bio, his book list, a search box, stuff for boring adults, boring stuff for adults (two different pages, which sort of fail as neither is really boring) if you poke around there is more and more stuff here to keep one busy for hours, which I guess is the point.
Lastly, the wonderful William Joyce can be found at www.williamjoyce.com. This website is very different from the first two. Nice and clean, with different rollovers to each of his series and movie work, Robots, Meet the Robinsons, Rolie Polie Olie, a link to his publisher (which doesn't really work, perhaps at one point there was an author site for him through Harper Collins?) and foundation work he has done for New Orleans/Katrina.
I would look at webpages for wanna-be authors like myself, but I don't know how to find us! So far we are invisible, I am hoping a website can grow and support my efforts to get published.
Laura McGee Kvasnosky has a nice website that is fairly simple: www.lmkbooks.com
Her pages include a bio, list of books and an activity section with a painting demonstration, paper dolls to cut out and other activities. There is a journal or blog post section but it doesn't appear that she is active on it. The site is straightforward and her artwork is captivating. Interestingly, the site designer also has a link on her page: Max Waugh, and if you go there you will see he has himself published several children's photo books for ipad/iphone. I would like to explore that further.
Dav Pilky is one of my favorites, not so much for his fabulously successfully Captain Underpants series, although the kids in my carpool adore it, but for his earlier series of books about Dragon, especially A Friend for Dragon and Dragon's Fat Cat. So, funny, yet so poignant and I adore his paint style. He has scads of books out now, 6 series and lots of singles, AND he just won a Caldecott medal. Not bad, Mr. Pilky! I am both proud and jealous of you!
Lastly, the wonderful William Joyce can be found at www.williamjoyce.com. This website is very different from the first two. Nice and clean, with different rollovers to each of his series and movie work, Robots, Meet the Robinsons, Rolie Polie Olie, a link to his publisher (which doesn't really work, perhaps at one point there was an author site for him through Harper Collins?) and foundation work he has done for New Orleans/Katrina.
I would look at webpages for wanna-be authors like myself, but I don't know how to find us! So far we are invisible, I am hoping a website can grow and support my efforts to get published.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Blog Topic #8: Web Typography
This is not a small topic. Once you start digging it is easy to get overwhelmed. If you are someone who loves looking at various fonts you can get sucked right in and never come out. Much of the information is over the head of someone like myself who has dabbled in various aspects of design (in my case architecture) but has not been completely educated on the finer points of typography. I'm so elderly I remember the joy of getting a new sheet of press-on type which you would burnish in your title block with a special little metal tool, and you could brag about how all your hand lettering was EXACTLY 1/4" high without even using your lettering guide. (Another ancient tool used in hand drafting). Kerning and Leading? That nomenclature was for those print media types, we architects just eyeballed everything on the page. We all meet in the larger world of graphic communication whether you are marketing a product or communicating a building design. And now we meet in even newer worlds of digital design and web design and we are still arguing over which type face says it best when it comes to the written word which is integral to conveying our intent.
The @font-face declaration creates a link to bring in a font from any server, the problem is that browser support for this is inconsistent, but getting better. An associated problem is that type foundries and designers were wary of users getting around their licensing agreements and using web fonts as desktop fonts if I am getting the jargon right. I think this means using the font in print media without permission? If you go to Font Squirrel and download one of their very nice free fonts, (perhaps one from Fontspring as I did) you can get a "how to use webfonts" sheet that includes information on how to upload your font, how to include it in your style sheet (it provides the code for you) and test it.
WOFF (Web Open Font Format) is one of four formats they include in their code to make sure your font will work with all browsers. These formats, and perhaps especially WOFF, which is the most widely adopted by various browsers, also help protect type designers from unscrupulous type stealers. Fontspring blog post is a place you can go to get deep into the discussion about how to code these fonts into your webdesign to make it more bulletproof for smart phones, etc.
Typekit is another place to look for type, it has a different pricing model based on subscription, so you might want to check out this too.
For all kinds of amazing information about Typography from the most basic to the very advanced, check out I Love Typography.
Here's an article on SelectingWeb Fonts, designrfix followed by anothe resource for free fonts.
As one blogger mentioned, you could spend all your time just trying to stay on top of these various and ever-changing topics and never even get to the web design itself you need to create for your actual job. Good luck finding the balance of staying on top of the industry and being industrious in your core mission.
The @font-face declaration creates a link to bring in a font from any server, the problem is that browser support for this is inconsistent, but getting better. An associated problem is that type foundries and designers were wary of users getting around their licensing agreements and using web fonts as desktop fonts if I am getting the jargon right. I think this means using the font in print media without permission? If you go to Font Squirrel and download one of their very nice free fonts, (perhaps one from Fontspring as I did) you can get a "how to use webfonts" sheet that includes information on how to upload your font, how to include it in your style sheet (it provides the code for you) and test it.
WOFF (Web Open Font Format) is one of four formats they include in their code to make sure your font will work with all browsers. These formats, and perhaps especially WOFF, which is the most widely adopted by various browsers, also help protect type designers from unscrupulous type stealers. Fontspring blog post is a place you can go to get deep into the discussion about how to code these fonts into your webdesign to make it more bulletproof for smart phones, etc.
Typekit is another place to look for type, it has a different pricing model based on subscription, so you might want to check out this too.
For all kinds of amazing information about Typography from the most basic to the very advanced, check out I Love Typography.
Here's an article on SelectingWeb Fonts, designrfix followed by anothe resource for free fonts.
As one blogger mentioned, you could spend all your time just trying to stay on top of these various and ever-changing topics and never even get to the web design itself you need to create for your actual job. Good luck finding the balance of staying on top of the industry and being industrious in your core mission.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Blog Topic #4 Customize This
It was fun to try different things with customizing my previously very boring blog page. I added the gadget that shows how many people visit your page. I have discovered I am not terribly popular, and most of the visits to my site are me, myself and I, but at least the three of us usually agree on things. Using the Blogger Template Designer you can poke around at the various features and change your layout, font, colors, borders etc. Most of these changes, including fancy roll-over effects, can be found clicking on the "advanced" feature.
I changed the colors of the fonts and some of the borders to give the page a cohesive look, (going for sort of this jarring "shock and awe" color theme!?) and picked one of Blogger's standard patterns for the background of the page. Voila!
To change my header I created a simple pattern in Illustrator. Turning on the gradient panel I drew some circles, and then saved the image as a GIF for Web and Devices. After clicking the blogger Design tab, one reaches the "Add and arrange Elements" page. Click "edit" in the header bar and here you can pick one of their backgrounds or upload one of your designs as I did.
I would have liked my custom background header to go all the way across the header but it would not repeat, and changing the size of the illustrator-created-drawing/GIF did not solve this. When I tried creating an image for the page background it did repeat however. (I did not keep that particular experimental background though) Perhaps I will go back and and try to solve the puzzle of why the header did not repeat, perhaps I could go into the htlm code and try to resolve that, but then again, perhaps I should work on my midterm project.
I changed the colors of the fonts and some of the borders to give the page a cohesive look, (going for sort of this jarring "shock and awe" color theme!?) and picked one of Blogger's standard patterns for the background of the page. Voila!
To change my header I created a simple pattern in Illustrator. Turning on the gradient panel I drew some circles, and then saved the image as a GIF for Web and Devices. After clicking the blogger Design tab, one reaches the "Add and arrange Elements" page. Click "edit" in the header bar and here you can pick one of their backgrounds or upload one of your designs as I did.
I would have liked my custom background header to go all the way across the header but it would not repeat, and changing the size of the illustrator-created-drawing/GIF did not solve this. When I tried creating an image for the page background it did repeat however. (I did not keep that particular experimental background though) Perhaps I will go back and and try to solve the puzzle of why the header did not repeat, perhaps I could go into the htlm code and try to resolve that, but then again, perhaps I should work on my midterm project.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Blog Topic #1 Dude, this is the Coolest
I like this guy's personal web page, it's catchy, sort of funky and fun. You enter an intriguing room that invites poking around. You can roll over elements of the homepage to look at his design work; Web, Interactive, graphic, print media. You can roll over the coffee cup to check out his favorite reads or click the mail on the floor to contact.
http://www.urbanmofo.com/
It looks like it is in a state of development and he could take it even farther, but I thought it was thought provoking with the little animated elements and music score, etc.
http://www.urbanmofo.com/
It looks like it is in a state of development and he could take it even farther, but I thought it was thought provoking with the little animated elements and music score, etc.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Blog Topic #2 new adventures
To fulfill the homework assignment I addressed blog topic #2; "Can I get a Resource?". I went to the BlueVertigo website:
http://bluevertigo.com
which I found in Karl Cleveland's syllabus. There is sort of an overwhelming number of great stuff to explore there, stock photos, clip art, photoshop brushes, sounds, etc. Many great resources each organized into categories, "free" , "cheap' and "commercial". One of the ones I like is called I love Typography:
ilovetypography.com
Here you can find a listing of articles, including one on "How to create a font" which gives you a tutorial on type creation, something I have always wanted to fool around with. Fun!
http://bluevertigo.com
which I found in Karl Cleveland's syllabus. There is sort of an overwhelming number of great stuff to explore there, stock photos, clip art, photoshop brushes, sounds, etc. Many great resources each organized into categories, "free" , "cheap' and "commercial". One of the ones I like is called I love Typography:
ilovetypography.com
Here you can find a listing of articles, including one on "How to create a font" which gives you a tutorial on type creation, something I have always wanted to fool around with. Fun!
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