the singularity of being and nothingness
Posts tagged Web Design
Quick Link: Flex Skin Design Extensions for CS3
May 12th
Honestly, I haven't done anything in Flex for a while (and I loathe that fact daily). Nonetheless, I ran across a pretty cool thing today. Flex 3 now has skin design extensions for CS3. This allows designers to create skins in Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks (yawn) and Flash, and then import them straight into Flex 3 using the skin import tool.
I think this is a very important development–Flex is awesome, but difficult to skin out of the box. These extensions should help make an already killer development framework infinitely more sexy, which is really all that matters (of course!).
So enough of this. Grab the extensions, and also check out Flex 3 if you haven't already.
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Google Reader: An Essential Tool for the Web Designer
May 6th
I wish I could express how critical Google Reader is to my web design process. How does an RSS feed reader aid my web design, you ask?
I'll tell you!
There are approximately 13.25 billion CSS design galleries currently on the world-wide interblog. In my experience, each gallery updates their gallery with approximately 5-8 new designs every 3 days. So, in the course of 3 days there are 60+ billion websites featured on design galleries, give or take a handful.
Obviously, I kid, but the truth is not far off. There are a lot of CSS design galleries out there, and they are constantly adding new sites every day. Morever, there are hundreds of really talented designers out there that have incredibly creative ideas about good web design.
Now let's be honest: creative web design is never done is isolation. I personally find a lot of great inspiration from others, and attempt to distill the best of what I see into my own designs.
So where does Google Reader fit into this? Well, imagine trying to follow each of these sites (I currently follow over 108 galleries, and design-related blogs). Live bookmarks is unthinkable. Visiting each site would be an absolute nightmare. So I need More >
First Crack at WordPress
May 3rd
So normally I REALLLY prefer custom development to canned solutions. Sure, the pre-built software peices are nice in that they provide out-of-the-box solutions: but the problem is that the solution is not always very useful. End soap-box.
Today I began my first-ever implementation of a site design to WordPress. I've used WordPress for blogging before, but I've never really messed with it from a design standpoint.
My initial impression is that it's okay. Just as with Blogger and other similar services, the plugging in of functionality is sensible enough (although Blogger's tag-based version seems a bit more intuitive…). There are fifteen-billion functions available for getting dates, user scopes, etc. So that's all fine and good.
I guess my biggest objection–and this is true of all software like this–is that styling the default WordPress widgets is a PAIN. There's a lot of un-classed generated code that one has to wade through to get down to very mundane–yet extremely design-important elements like <a> tags. What's more is that these default plugins appear to live outside of the "themes" that one can build. So if one is not interested in traversing several levels of inheritance just to apply a different color to a "Most Recent More >
On Becoming a Better Web Designer, Part Deux
Apr 28th
A month ago, or so, I reflected upon my journey toward becoming a better web designer. In that post, I dwelled mostly upon time-saving practices such as creating organized folder structures, labeling Illustrator layers, etc.
Another point, however, was about avoiding becoming completely consumed with solving specific problems as they are encountered. I noted that although there are some problems that have to be solved before progress can be made, the vast majority of hang-ups can be saved for later when a fresher perspective (or possibly a new bit of learning gained through doing other things) might make the answer more clear.
I think this is a gigantically important point, and I want to expand upon it, but from a different direction. In my first post, I was talking mostly about code–but what about actual concept development?
When it comes down to it, good design is–on a high level–of course about the user. A good design must facilitate an easy-to-use and a rewarding and enjoyable experience. While a lot of this occurs in layout, how users interact with code, etc., there is also an important part that small details play in contributing to a successful visit.
It is these details, after all, that More >
Unobtrusive JavaScript…Duh!
Apr 15th
As I develop more applications that leverage JavaScript–both for data manipulation AND for superfluous effects–the more I come to realize the inexpressible need for finding as many shortcuts as possible. Without exception, as my JavaScript becomes more involved, so the complexity increases exponentially. To remedy this, I've started relying on frameworks such as Adobe's Spry, mooTools, jQuery, etc. to make my life easier for everything from element selection to major effects processing.
However, probably the biggest time-saver is making a concerted effort to make my JavaScript unobtrusive. What is this, you say? Well, by no means does it have a solidified meaning. However, a few principles are core to any definition.
The first is the idea of abstracting the functionality of JavaScript (be it data handling or effect processing) from the design layer on which the functionality is placed. In short, this means that the HTML markup of a site (and its corresponding CSS) should not be dependent on the functionality of JavaScript; rather, the functionality of JavaScript should be "pluggable" into the markup that it finds.
Now of course, this is all-too-idealistic. There is never a scenario in which markup and functionality are mutually ambivalent towards one another. However, the More >
Big Thanks to Everyone!
Apr 5th
This post will be short and sweet: In the week since the relaunch of singularityconcepts.com, I have been inundated with incredibly encouraging responses from an unbelievable number of people. The reaction to the new design has been overwhelming, and I am very humbled by the kind words that people have shared with me, as well as the design galleries that have featured my design.
Because I want to especially thank the design galleries that have featured this design, I want to include links to each gallery that gave kudos to the relaunch of singularityconcepts.com. All of these galleries feature extremely talented designers, and I am incredibly humbled to even be mentioned. Please take some time and check them out.
Most Inspired Blog – Weekly Top Standards
Share this: singularityconcepts.com Relaunched!
Mar 26th
Hey everyone!
Welcome to the relaunch of singularityconcepts.com! I am very excited to present my new design, something on which I've worked exremely hard for the last few weeks.
For first time visitors, let me introduce myself: my name is Joel Watson, and I am web designer/developer hailing from central Kentucky. Web design is a passion of mine, and I spend way more time than I should working to get better, discover new tricks, and just explore how to craft more immersive and meaningful web experiences. If you have a few seconds, take a look around, and if I can impose just a little on you, be sure to let me know what you think.
One final note: I love to blog about my experiences in web design, so be sure to grab the feed to this site's blog, and I definitely welcome any and all feedback on what you read, see or think.
Peace
Share this: Transitions
Mar 26th
I am proud and excited to announce the relaunch and redesign of my web design portfolio – singularityconcepts.com .
This redesign has been long needed (I never really liked the original), and I am very pleased with the final outcome.
For this redesign, I not only took a radically different approach to the aesthetics, but I also retooled the purpose of the site. Originally, I tried to pass off singularityconcepts as a multi-person design firm, utilizing "we" to refer to work that, honestly, only "I" do. For this redesign, I ditched the disconnected feel of that kind of language and have switched to making this site a personal web technology portfolio of sorts for myself.
This means radical changes for existdissolve.com as well. From now on, all of my technology-related posts will happen at singularityconcepts. For those who read this blog (all 3 of you) and are bored by my ramblings about web design, those days of languish are over. And for those who like that sort of stuff, you will have to change your bookmarks :). To compensate for this, I am going to endeavor to be more regular in my theological postings. Life around my house is starting to normalize, so I More >
On Becoming a Better Web Designer
Mar 24th
Anytime one approaches a new design project, it is easy to get distracted by trying to have the project finished NOW, instead of doing necessary preparation work to ensure maximum work efficiency. I am as guilty of this as anyone. In the past, designing a website and bringing it through development was a hodge-podge of cutting Photoshop files and piecing together random bits of code, all the while constantly being frustrated that things were not finished YET.
As I've matured, I've learned to identify several time black-holes that serve to quickly derail a project's timeline.
Unorginization
Without question, this is the one for me. It is especially a problem because from design concept (Illustrator) to web-ready images (Photoshop) to HTML (Dreamweaver) to database (MySQL) to application code (ColdFusion), my files are touching a lot of applications. If I'm not careful, it's easy to, say, save Photoshop files to random places and then have to search for them when I need them in Dreamweaver. While this is only a matter of seconds (normally!), it adds up over the course of a project and is frankly annoying.
So the biggest time and headache-saver I've learned is to standardize every aspect of the project. This means I More >
phillipnewton.com
Feb 18th
A good friend of mine recently approached me about creating an online resume for him. He wanted it to be incredibly simple and to focus on the content.
So that's what I did.
This design is quite a departure from what I usually do. Normally, the designs I create include standard content sections like a header, navigation, content body, and footer. Since this site had so little content, I decided to jettison those concepts altogether.
So because these content divisions were non-existent, and because there was so little content, I decided to keep all of the content on one "page", and to create divisions through a javascript slider (I used Adobe's Spry framework , if anyone is interested).
Although I was hesitant, I submitted this design to several design galleries. To my pleasant surprise, it was featured by a few of which I've been trying to make for a while with my designs.
Here are the galleries which have featured this one so far:
css creme css design yorkshiremostinspired.comboxedcss.com
To be perfectly honest, I was not expecting a lot of response on this. However, I think the focus on content and design simplicity attracted some attention, for which I am grateful.
::::::HUGE UPDATE::::::
I just found out that phillipnewton.com More >
