Over the last several years, WordPress has introduced—and continues to iterate on—the Gutenberg block editor, full-site editing, and block themes. I’ve largely avoided full-site editing and block themes until recently. My thought was: why change when I have a workflow and tools that work? My workflow/tools included building classic themes while relying heavily on the […]
Creating a Google Calendar Event Link Builder
Recently, a stakeholder came to me with a problem. The Google Calendar events they created and shared with their audience weren’t working. If an attendee tried tapping the event link from their mobile device, it simply didn’t add that event to their calendar. Pinpointing the problem I discovered the broken feature in Google Calendar that […]
How I built a custom WordPress navigation menu
Recently, I was working on a website that required an accordion, navigation menu that would contain categories or single page links. If a category was chosen, it should expand to show child and grandchild categories, along with lists of posts within those categories. In addition, there was a need for an optional alphabetical list of […]
My path to productivity
I want to tell my story. It’s about how, up until 2 years ago, I never felt productive in my work. It went something like this: It’s a Friday or Saturday night and I have some free time to work on personal or freelance projects and I wouldn’t know what to start on. Or I […]
Fear of failure is overrated
“What people are afraid of isn’t failure. It’s blame. Criticism. We choose not to be remarkable because we’re worried about criticism. We hesitate to create innovative movies, launch new human resource initiatives, design a menu that makes diners take notice, or give an audacious sermon because we’re worried, deep down, that someone will hate it […]
What I learned at An Event Apart – Austin
Over the month of October, I recapped all 12 conference talks in previous blog posts. Looking back through my notes from each speaker and blogging about my take-aways helped me really organize my thoughts and remember all the great things I learned. The things I heard at the conference fall into one of three categories: […]
An Event Apart: Jared Spool
At An Event Apart – Austin 2013, Jared Spool spoke about why it’s great time to be an experience designer. Here are my take-aways: Design = The rendering of intent Imitation is: less expensive less risky where design is not valued On the flip side, innovation is: more expensive more risky where design is valued […]
An Event Apart: Mike Monteiro
At An Event Apart – Austin 2013, Mike Monteiro spoke about how it’s often the designer who’s at fault when the client requests something that makes designers want to role their eyes. The whole talk was full of really awesome quotable bits of advice. So these take-aways are basically all of those quotables: Mike Monteiro […]
An Event Apart: Beyond Play by Joshua Davis
At An Event Apart – Austin 2013, Joshua Davis shared his thoughts on why work and play should be the same, but for many, they are opposites. Here are my take-aways: Joshua Davis is a generative artist who uses computer code to generate repetitive patterns and designs that are highly detailed and pretty amazing – […]
An Event Apart: Preprocessing is for Everybody
At An Event Apart – Austin 2013, Chris Coyier shared his thoughts on CSS Preprocessing, specifically SASS. Here are my take-aways: CSS as a language is not as ‘abstracted’ as it could be, and so preprocessing serves to solve this. Preprocessing involves writing variables, mix-ins which are sets of variables, extends, and other short-hand ways […]
Jeff Bezos once said…
If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new. —Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
Nicholas Burroughs once said…
Minimalism is not a lack of something. It’s simply the perfect amount of something. —Nicholas Burroughs
2012 Year in Review
Personally Officially became free of all credit card debt while paying off 4 large debts using the debt snowball idea from Dave Ramsey Completed numerous house projects – renovated kitchen, refinished shed, shutters, doors, etc. Photography Learned many new post-processing techniques to use while processing my photographs. Check out my photos here! Became an exclusive […]
Raymond Joseph Teller once said…
Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect. —Raymond Joseph Teller (from this article)
Malcolm Gladwell once said…
Hard work is a prison cell only if the work has no meaning. —Malcolm Gladwell
Dieter Rams once said…
Question everything generally thought to be obvious —Dieter Rams For me, right now, this means – rethink all of my design tendencies. For example: Is Helvetica right for this project too? Does this website need to be centered (margin: 0 auto; for the web nerds)? Do buttons need rounded corners and a gradient? In your […]
Good design is….
Recently, I came across Dieter Rams’ ten principles of good design. I didn’t even know who Dieter Rams was – but assumed that he was surely a graphic designer, based on his definition of good design (and maybe the glasses). I was wrong! (which proves good design is transcendent) Dieter Rams is an industrial designer […]
Arthur Schopenhauer once said…
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. —Arthur Schopenhauer
Steve Jobs once said…
“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep […]
Should designers be coders? (v2.0)
I’ve talked about this in the past on this blog. I was reminded of this debate from a past professor who re-blogged a post by Frank Chimero. So, should designers be coders? The answer is, “Yes, to an extent.” I say ‘to an extent’, because we can’t expect a web designer to be able to […]
Designers don’t make things look ‘pretty’
What do designers do? Make things ‘pretty’ and ‘put a new coat of paint on something’, right? Wrong. A designer is someone who communicates visually through various mediums. This could be through print design, web design, and especially wayfinding design (the design of directional signs in our environment). The end result is hopefully something that […]
On Excellence
Excellence is not a skill, it is an attitude. —Ralph Marston You don’t learn to be excellent, you learn to work your butt off and do your best in everything. Excellence will be the likely outcome.
Social Networking, Blogging and You (or your business)
Today I presented to a group of teachers at Truman State University about using social networking tools and blogging to grow support for gecko mathematics – a unique math curriculum that was translated into English from Korean. Last year Creative Improv, the design firm I run built a website, blog and social network profiles for […]
Design is not about innovation
Design is not about innovation. Design is about communication. Innovation in design is usually a wonderful byproduct or direct result of a particular need. Design that seeks to foremost be innovative will commonly fall apart under its own stylistic girth. — Jason Santa Maria
On critiquing design
A person tends to critique a design in one of several ways. The most common, and usually least valuable, is by gut reaction. — D. Keith Robinson I totally agree here. I remember back when I interned at Workbench Magazine (now My Home My Style) and the Assistant Art Director, Doug Appleby would critique the […]
Jessica Hische once said…
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. — Jessica Hische
Should designers know how to code?
This debate recently came up in the web design blogosphere in the last week or so. It all started with a tweet heard ’round the world by Elliot Jay Stocks. Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No excuse. – elliotjaystocks There have been […]
It’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page.
I ran across this documentary on Hulu about a month ago. Lemonade tells the story of laid-off folks (mostly in advertising and creative fields) who are taking full advantage of all their extra free time. They are pursuing their true passions and finding so much joy in it. You might say that they are making […]
My Holy Sh*t Moment
Recently, Mitch Goldstein (a great designer and educator at Rhode Island School of Design) blogged about his holy sh*t moment. His was that you could photograph type instead of just ‘typing’ it. A design student, Brittany Loar responded with her ‘moment’ as well. Here are few of my holy sh*t moments: Throughout high school I […]
A case against freelance job board websites
Check out this article on whether freelancing is a commodity or a profession. My favorite part is this: There seems to be a basic disconnect between what is needed to earn a living as a freelancer and what clients seem to want (at least on these outsourcing sites) to pay. The disconnect goes even deeper. Suddenly […]
What makes a website great?
I recently read this on CSS-Tricks: There are websites that we visit because we have to, but we wouldn’t get an account with. There are websites that we have accounts with that we would never participate in. There are websites we participate in that we don’t enjoy. There are websites that we enjoy but don’t […]
Questions: Design Style
I recently had a conversation with a good friend about design styles. The question was posed to me… That begs the question….is it better to develop your own “style” that you become recognized by, or have an arsenal of styles to draw from to please your clients? Both have valid arguments… That’s a tough question. I think […]
What Makes a Logo Great?
I don’t know too much about logo design, since I focus most of my time with magazine design and web design, although I will try to list some things I’ve learned. Effective Logos… …are distinctive …are visible …are usable …are memorable …are universal …are durable …are timeless …do not sell, only identifies. …derives its meaning from […]
Misconceptions of Designing for the Web
Websites should look pretty and that’s all that matters. They should be well designed, but from a usability standpoint. It’s not a magazine ad, where the audience just looks at and reads it. Think about how the user will navigate through the site, their Internet speed, browser support, search engine optimization. I don’t know HTML […]
Poynter’s Eye-Tracking Problems
I found this article by Andy Rutledge to be very interesting. He believes Poynter is doing the public a disservice by putting out studies on the eye movement of people who read things on the web or in print (the study is here). Now, I’ve always found information about the typical eye movement of people […]
Great Newspaper Ads pt. 1
I’m new to designing ads for newspapers, but not new to designing and laying out newspaper pages. I worked a semester at the Truman Index. I stared at very full newspaper pages with columns and columns of text all the time while trying to fit even more stuff in there. It’s all about how much […]
Chicago 2006!!!
The AIGA trip to Chicago was amazing. And not because there were 6 guys and 19 girls on the trip. Because I realized that I loved the atmosphere and the work environment that the design firm had, that we visited. I definitely want to live there sometime before I settle down. Here’s what trip was […]
What I’ve learned in regards to graphic design.
What I’ve learned in regards to graphic design. 1. You should stab yourself in the hand if you feel the urge to use a drop shadow, stroke or gradiant. A direct quote from my Professor. I believe that drop shadow can be used, but very faintly and only to achieve better readability 2. Large blocks […]