I had a very productive weekend, one which included: yard work, basement cleanup, gym, personal time with family and friends, design work and consulting work. So: no Bother yesterday and today’s rather slimmer. Politics Blake Gober on the GOP field. His money is on Romney. Mine is on Perry. Either are acceptable to me. However,… Continue reading this entry
The “magazine” format has taken blogs by storm this year, and if you’re of the mind to move your blog in that direction, there are a few things to consider. First, ask yourself: what is a magazine? As a collection of features covering different topics, one can argue that most blogs fall under the term,… Continue reading this entry
In God Emperor Of Dune, Leto II Atreides ruled for almost four thousand years as tyrant of humanity. In doing so, he created a desire for people to be free, and ensured that they will never stagnate and fall victim to the need for a single commodity for existence. Back in 2002 I started to… Continue reading this entry
I’ve been doing a little research for a few upcoming web projects of mine and, reading through resources on grids, I came across the 960 “system.” It’s then that I realized a few things: first, a lot of the swank designs that have come out in the past two years use this or Blueprint as… Continue reading this entry
We’ve all come across this kind of online feature before: “top 25″ this, “top ten” that, of any subject from skin care products to methods of murder. Most models follow two paradigms for presenting a feature like this. The first is your usual long article, with a jump or pagination, featuring more than one entry… Continue reading this entry
I’ve designed WordPress-powered sites and blogs for almost five years now. I have my niche, for which I am grateful. Recently, I came across some huff-and-puff regarding Matt Mullenweg’s decision to remove over 200 themes from the repository, citing non-compliance with the GPL. I have a feeling I’ve been living under a rock for the… Continue reading this entry
From Althouse, the Nth example in a long line of stupid, avoidable mistakes involving the use of foreign characters, especially Chinese, in publishing and graphic design: A respected research institute wanted Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, something beautiful and elegant, to illustrate a special report on China. Instead, it got a racy flyer… Continue reading this entry
It isn’t just Ann; after having a rough morning at work it’s way cool. It can be argued that it’s quite unnecessary for such a tool, but we humans crave customization, even if the only end is to please our aesthetic needs.
My lastest project was actually launched over a month ago. Under the art direction of my client, RSC Partners, in conjunction with the Log Cabin Republicans, I developed the WordPress theme for the Republicans Against 8 site. I had a lot of fun working with RSC on this one. For one, the rounded boxes with… Continue reading this entry
Andy Rutledge shows that while we’re few and far in between, creatives do exist on the Right side of the political spectrum, and, when we do flex our humor muscles, what comes out is world class.
Jeff Goldstein pops up his head from his shell to share with us a horrific account of awful performance in the web design/web mastery market. I, for one, am lucky enough not to have had encounters with the pathologically dissastisfied client. Most of my design work happens rarely (about three to four jobs a year)… Continue reading this entry
I remember getting my feet wet with blogging back in late 2002. Oh boy, were those the days: the politics, the blogfights, the blocky but groundbreaking methods with which CSS was used to finally make the web a little easier to design. I’ve been around since b2, and I’ve seen the way the designs for… Continue reading this entry
I initally named my new design as “Moonlit Beach,” which, while appropriate on a descriptive level, seems to be too simplistic for a name. I needed a new background for the photos that I plan to more often showcase on this site. Comments are, as always, welcome.
Three months ago I asked about a CSS layout positioning techinique that involved floated elements, three columns, and whose sidebars came after the main content in the document structure. After a moment of inspiration from the Neptune theme (which my friend asked to tinker with because the content section was too narrow), I figured out… Continue reading this entry
Meryl’s got a new look going about her. Looks good, ya? Bears my mark, too. This is the first template that I made that doesn’t have posts as the subset of the date. I remember reading Michael Heilemann‘s iconoclastic blog post about it a long, long time ago, but didn’t have the nuts to do… Continue reading this entry
I’ve been studying the CSS for the SlatyStain theme; it’s a pretty ingenious use of image backgrounds to layout the boxes and all that. I’m looking into using similar techiniques (like faking rounded corners using a header BG image, but I don’t do rounded corners) to improving Shiva’s CSS, because I am having problems with… Continue reading this entry
A comment by Prof. Chris Lawrence on my previous post on CSS positioning got me thinking of a couple of things. Here’s what he said: CSS positioning gives me a massive headache. I used absolute positioning for the sidebar and floated the main body to the left (and fixed the width of it so it… Continue reading this entry
Most sites that use a two-column layout—one like mine, for example—use the float property to move one section to a side and have the flow push the next to the other. Here’s a quick and dirty mockup of what I am talking about: Now, the Classic WP layout used a relative an absolute positioning for… Continue reading this entry
Are rounded corners really worth those one or two extra divs? Additional thoughts: Considering how Coldforged’s methods (using a full background image to have a “faux div” and having Mozilla-compatible CSS rounded corners) are a bit more tasty, I am focusing the question on the “old method,” although since I never really tried it and… Continue reading this entry
The 2004 Republican National Convention website (screenshot) tries to dust off the boring, stuffy, religiously authoritarian stigma associated with Republicans in exchange for a look that reminds me of hip online clothes stores: DC Shoe Co. USA (Flash site, be warned; screenshot), Pacific Sunwear (screenshot), and American Eagle Outfitters (screenshot). Could it be that the… Continue reading this entry