I Spy With My Little Eye » Tutorials
Job Search 101: Working with Recruiters
One of the greatest assets we have when searching for a job, can also sometimes be one of the most confusing. The recruiter. Most recruiters are good people, simply trying to earn their living by fitting the right peg (you) into the right slot (a job). But, there are a few recruiters out there who are a bit lackluster, and a very small minority who cannot be trusted even a small bit. Hopefully, by hearing what I … Read entire article »
Tip: Using CSS :focus for pop-up images
Here’s a great way to start your Monday…go learn how to use CSS :focus to change image displays. :focus, which is allowed on elements that accept keyboard events or other user inputs, to be applied to other elements. (from cssplay.co.uk) For example, these four images (taken from a textures collection I shot in and around my house), click on an image to see the difference: The code is below and works in IE8+, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.. You … Read entire article »
Inspiration: Sketch Theatre
Sketch Theatre announced this past week that they launched a new improved version of their site…even though their site needed NO improvement. If you like art, and drawing in particular, you should really take the time to give this site a look if you’ve never been there before. They feature great over the shoulder views of artists creating rich, wonderful drawings right before your eyes. Whenever I feel the slightest amount of artists block, a few minutes … Read entire article »
Filed under: Tutorials
Lynda.com has a course on Android / iOS apps
I’m a big fan of the courses at Lynda.com…if you haven’t tried them, let me tell you they are WELL worth the investment. (I say this even though Lynda’s brother kicked me off his bulletin board / mailing list way back in the pre-interweb days.) Got the usual monthly email from them, and I see they’ve added a course on using Dreamweaver and HTML 5 to created apps for Android and iOS. Lynda.com has some great courses, and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Inspiration, Tips & Tools, Tutorials
Why resume writing isnt fun…
I got a couple of emails about yesterdays post, and thought maybe I could clarify things about my dislike of resume writing… I’m a website designer. Its what I do, its what I’m good at. I’m NOT a writer. I’m also not a braggart. Sure, if we’re talking about my kids, I can brag all day with the best of parents. Want me to brag about my family? No problem. But ask me to brag about me…and well, I don’t do it so well. Its not that my accomplishments aren’t something I am proud of, but as a designer…as an artist…when asked to talk about my own work, I’d rather just point at the work and say, “See for yourself.” It’s either good or it isn’t. No amount of bragging or seasoning with buzzwords will … Read entire article »
Filed under: Tutorials
Determining My Target Audience
dem·o·graph·ics /dim-uh-graf-iks, noun ( used with a plural verb ) the statistical data of a population, especially those showing average age, income, education, etc. In any aspect of design or marketing, online or offline, demographics play a key role. It’s important to know who is seeing your work or your offers, who might be visiting your site, and who your customers are, so that you can tailor your offer to better suit that audience. If you sell a … Read entire article »
Filed under: Case Study, Tutorials, Web Design
Case Study: Redesigning Graveshow.com (Part 1)
They say “the cobbler’s children go barefoot” (interestingly, back in 1773 the proverb was listed as “The Shoe-maker’s wife often goes in ragged shoes”)… And this site is no exception. I’ve wanted to redesign for some time now, and this current design is just a free theme I found somewhere and decided to use, “in the interim” I thought. Well, its been months now, and the interim carries on. So, taking a cue from Paul Boag and his site, BoagWorld, I’m going to redesign right here in full view of you, my readers, and thereby give you a glimpse into my thinking and my design process. In the past, I’ve created a redesign in obscurity, and just launched it when it was done. But this time I plan to approach it … Read entire article »
Filed under: About, Case Study, Design, Web Design
I’d LOVE to think GoDaddy listened to ME
Exactly 20 days ago, I did a post entitled Web Tip: Look at things from ALL angles. The point of that post was that we, as designers, get so involved in what we are doing, we often cannot see the forest for the trees. So occasionally we need to step back and look at things from a new perspective to make sure we are still headed in the right direction. Like I said: Back in art school, I had a drawing teacher who would compel us to stop from time, and turn our drawing upside down the figure out what was wrong with them. Sounds goofy…but it works. I used as my example, the home page of GoDaddy. The example wasn’t some screw up, or me pointing a finger saying “GoDaddy sucks!”. In fact, … Read entire article »
Web Tip: Look at things from ALL angles
Back in art school, I had a drawing teacher who would compel us to stop from time, and turn our drawing upside down the figure out what was wrong with them. Sounds goofy…but it works. The idea being, by forcing yourself to look at something from a new angle, you notice the irregularities you might not have previously seen. This is something we should adopt in web design as well. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Design, Tutorials, User Experience
The DEATH of RDFa?
In their infinate wisdom, Google, Bing and Yahoo have announced a new initiative called Schema.org. The aim of Schema is to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. Now, if you’re new to this concept, understand that the concept itself is NOT new. For years now, we have had 3 competing markup schemas: Microformats RDFa (Resource Description Framework – in – attributes) Microdata They each served a similar purpose. Say you’re the web designer / developer of a library website, and in your database you have thousands of books. Each book has a database entry for “title”, “author”, “publish date”, “synopsis”, etc. To any search engine, web browser, or even any shopping comparison site, its just a bundle of text, just a string of … Read entire article »
Filed under: News, Web Design, Website Optimization