Brian's Blog

Week 15 of Web Design

comegitsome — Mon, 10 May 2010 02:14:48 +0000

This week my site really came together. In previous weeks I had alot of trouble with my templates. Through the online conference, Prof Schuster was able to help me resolve the issues. So I was able to copy and paste most of my content into the new template pages. I didnt make a whole lot of content changes. I did add the gallery pages although the images in them are just temporary right now. I was FINALLY able to add text over my header image. That had been a real problem for me. Anytime I would add the text it would push my nav down. I didnt know I had to subtract the height of the text from the top position of the navigation. It was a pain in the butt. Other than that my site is almost finished. Just a few tweaks here and there. I would say its about 80% finished right now. With the exception of the gallery pages, I could be using it right now as my portfolio site.

I found that in the group project, we all had pretty much the same problems with the site. Navigation issues, color problems, and indexing. Im looking forward to see how everyone handles the problems. I have a feeling they will also be very similar.

We all chose this site for our field trip file: New York Public Library

The other two I chose out of everyone’s posts were the Pratt Library, which I also chose in the original post, and the Cincinnati Library, which I thought was a good representation of what the NAW site wanted to do.

Week 14 of Web Design

comegitsome — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:13:06 +0000

WOW!

This week was crazy. Alot of headaches. My website is coming together nicely but im hitting a lot of speed bumps. I had to start over because I changed something and it blew apart my layout and I couldn’t figure out the problem. But, for the most part my homepage has come together just as I had originally planned. The portfolio page is getting there but I still have a lot to do. Im trying to make it so that you click the thumbnail and the image pops up over the site while the site is slightly darkened. I have the thumbnails set up but im still working on the other part of it. The resume and contact pages are both pretty much done. The only thing I need to do to them is make them a little more attractive. Right now they feel pretty boring. I might add some more images to them. Im not sure yet.

We also started the case study this week. I enjoyed it. Now that we know a lot about how websites are created, its easy to see what has been done well and what has been done poorly. I may not know how exactly the good things are done or how the bad things can be fixed, but I have a general idea. I chose the Los Angeles Public Library, The New York Public Library, and the Pratt Library to show examples of a good library website. The NAW site has a lot of good things. Their information is organized very well but it’s mostly the design elements that need work. The content is there so its not too bad.

We are getting near the end and I feel like I have learned a lot. The online aspect is making it a little difficult to troubleshoot problems but Im working through it.

Week 10 of Web Design

comegitsome — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:54:26 +0000

There was alot of fun stuff this week. I feel like we are almost to the point where we can start to make really cool websites. I found the lynda exercises very useful today. I never knew that with both fireworks and photoshop, you can create a functional html mockup. Its really neat how you can slice up all the images and use them on your page. I feel like it has opened up a whole new world in photoshop! The DigitalJenn excercise really helped reinforce what we learned. The slice tool is super easy to use and I think I will be using it all the time in the future. Also, on a side note…I never knew you could group layers in photoshop up until a few weeks ago when we learned it in a lynda video. Now, i use it all the time. Sometimes it can get confusing when you have 20-30 layers and the group function makes it super easy.

The other big thing this week was working on our design comps more. I was pretty close in the first pass so I was able to really focus on the details this go around. I reworked my header a little bit by changing up my logo and adding an editable phrase that can be used in search engines. I also added a link to my resume in the navigation.

There were lots of vids this week!

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/digital-design/getting-started-06-exporting-css-and-images/

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/digital-design/creating-cssxhtml-layouts/

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adc-presents/export-css-and-html-from-fireworks-cs4-part-1 (There are 2 other parts)

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/everyday-timesavers-web/quickly-transform-photoshop-layouts/

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/digital-design/getting-started-06-dreamweaver-integration/

Weeks 3-5 of Internship

comegitsome — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:24:54 +0000

Things are going well at Sports55. I feel like im part of the team now. I start my day by making sure all hat setups are done. Most of the time they are so I head right over to the art dept. and get to work. I can pretty much get my day started without seeing the supervisor now. I access the computer system that tells me what work needs to be done. I start by doing all of the fangear pages. Usually there are only 1 or 2. Then when I’m finished that I move onto vinyl setups. Most of the time there are none so I go onto artwork revisions. Its basically taking customer input and making appropriate changes to their jersey mock-ups. Sometimes it involves altering logos, resizing things, changing colors, etc. Pretty simple but sometimes it allows me to be creative. Especially when they want a lot of changes.

On occasion I get to do a mock-up. Thats creating the entire jersey from scratch. Sometimes the customer supplies a logo, or tells us kind of what they want. Other times that pretty much say “be creative.” I’ve only done a few but I have a feeling that as time goes on, they will ask me to do more. Im still learning Corel Draw but im slowly getting the hang of it so soon I should be able to do alot.

I still prefer the Adobe products over Corel though. They run better, are more intuitive, and are so much easier to use. Ill admit that Corel is easier to learn in a shorter amount of time. But Illustrator blows it out of the water in almost every category. Every day people are yelling and cursing about Corel crashing or freezing. In fact, i have to avoid certain tasks because it will freeze my machine. I cant resize text without it crashing. Numbers are ok, but letters will crash it. I have yet to have any problems with Adobe and I experience problems with Corel every day. Sorry for the venting, I just hate Corel lol. Its not my place to say anything, but if they switched over to Adobe, they would be a lot more productive. It would take some time to switch over, and retrain everyone. But they would love it in the long run.

Week 9 of Web Design

comegitsome — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:44:10 +0000

This past week focused alot on Selectors and Typography. We learned about them in previous weeks but there was a heavy focus on Class and ID selectors this week. There was also some reading on Typography. I learned the editable text on the web is not anti-aliased. If you want to use text that is anti-aliased, it must be shown as a graphic.

We also completed our banner and animation designs. Im very happy with how they both came out. Expecially my spring banners. I feel like I made an attractive, yet functional design. Over week 8 and spring break we did our design documents. I enjoyed creating the storyboards. It really helped to start to draw out how it would look. And by creating a morgue file, my design changed many times. Gathering all the ideas really helped alot.

Here is the reading:

http://css-tricks.com/the-difference-between-id-and-class/

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/css_typography/

Week 7 of Web Design

comegitsome — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:07:24 +0000

This week we learned about search engines, domains, and animation.

We had a few lectures on how search engines work and how we can be effective in making sure our sites are shown in the search engines. For example, a good tip we were given was to use hyperlinks on homepages to get better search engine results. We also learned tips on creating a good domain. For example, they should always be easy to type.

The most useful piece of information I got from the readings was the article about creating a good webpage. I am guilty of always going with the header first. It makes a lot more sense to develop the content first, and then worry about where the header should go, and how it should look. I think designers make the mistake of thinking that the header is the most important element on a page. While being very important, its the content that makes a page what it is.

We had a lot of practice this week with animations. I knew a little about animations in photoshop but I didn’t really know what all I could do. I liked how we had the follow along exercise because it gave a good, basic overview of how to develop an animated banner. And then it was fun to use that information, and create a banner from scratch using whatever tools we thought necessary. I have to admit I missed doing some html stuff this week, but designing the banner made up for it. Im in this class for the design aspect of it so anytime we get to do something creative like that, i really enjoy it.

Also, i really started getting into the design document. Most of the thoughts on my site were just merely thoughts but I started putting stuff down on paper. Im glad that we have to do the design document first because I have already changed my mind about a lot of things and it would have been a pain to do that while creating the site itself. The biggest change was that I originally would have had 3 pages. An intro, about, and gallery. But now it has developed into a lot more. Im going with a portfolio site for myself because i REALLY need a good one. Now, it will be useful people who just want to see my slimmed down portfolio as well as anyone who enjoys my work that may want to see everything I have done. My old portfolio site just has my portfolio and a brief about section. Now i will include more galleries that give people the chance to see more of my work if they choose.

Im excited to get it going so hopefully we start creating elements of our sites with the software.

Here are the articles:

Optimizing Animated GIFs

GIF shareware

12 tips for A Good Domain

Search Engine Placement Tips

Web Design Tips <

Week 2 at Sports 55

comegitsome — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:49:19 +0000

This week went a lot smoother than last week. I only worked 2 days this week instead of 3 like last week. I had them completely caught up on their hat embroidery stuff so my supervisor gave me a new task. Although I don’t know all the in’s and out’s of it, some customers get enough work done that they have their own “fangear” page. Basically we create a whole page worth of merchandise that either the team or fans can purchase. Going off of their original artwork, we put their logos onto hats, sweatshirts, shorts, towels, etc. A lot of it is as simple as just placing logos. But im given a little creative freedom in the way some of it is created. For example, we create full sublimated hoodies that are based on a teams jersey. This means the jersey can look however we want it to. There are no graphical limitations. Its fun because I like to use elements of the original artwork to create a whole new design that feels like it belongs with everything else. I also enjoy it because it takes some time and that means I have plenty of work to do.

The only thing I havent really liked about the experience is the lack of work they have for me to do. Usually I end up going home earlier than I planned. John, my supervisor..and company co-owner, would gladly let me stay and hang out in the art department, but sometimes that can get kind of boring. If im not being productive its hard for me to stay motivated to stay. But, as they are teaching me more and more things to do, im becoming more occupied. I think we are heading towards a point where i can just work on many different projects throughout the day. I’ll do some hat setups for a while, and then do some vinyl stuff, maybe some fangear, and then some mock-ups or revisions.

They are teaching me ALOT of different things. I think the original plan was to show me one or 2 things and let me work on them for a while. But im picking up things very fast and getting everyone all caught up on what they need to do so it’s giving me more opportunities to learn new things. A few months from now, i should be able to do every art related job they have at least a little bit well.

My First Week at Sports 55

comegitsome — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:03:57 +0000

So Friday finished off the week for me at Sports 55. My first day was pretty slow and boring. I didn’t really do much at all. In fact, I was a little disappointed. But it got better.

My second day (Wednesday) went a lot better. Well..kind of. I walked in to have the foul odor of fecal matter greet my nose. They had a plumber working on the bathroom and I think a pipe exploded. So the whole place smelled like crap. It was lovely. The best part was that the office I was working in was right next to the bathroom. At one point someone came in the office to ask my supervisor if they could ask the plumber to not walk through their dept. because he was spilling buckets on the floor as he carried them outside. Wow. It was an interesting day. But all that aside, I was actually given some work to do. The smell eventually faded so it wasn’t too bad. I was given some logos that had to be prepped to be embroidered. Basically I would open up the customers file and pull their logos from their art mock-ups. I would then make sure that they would work ok with the stitching. It involved just making sure there wasn’t too much detail, checking to make sure that borders were thick enough, etc. If there is too much tiny detail it will come out looking sloppy. I was given one to do and I quickly breezed through it. Then i was given 3 more. Again i had no problems and knocked it out in a few minutes. The lady training my then realized I was no rookie so she gave me a stack of logos to do. So i started doing them one by one. Eventually she left for the day so I had an office all to myself. It was pretty cool. I’ve never had that before. It took me about an hour and a half to finish them all and then i went home for the day.

Day 3 was my best day by far. I came in and found the owner/my supervisor so he could give me some work to do. He took me to the lady i was working with the day before to see if she had more logos to do. She said no because I did it all the other day. She was all caught up. I think she was very happy about that. So he took me over to the art manager and got him to train me how to set up vinyl logos. Vinyl is kind of like iron on stuff. Except it lasts longer and looks more like a screen print. Basically I would pull team logos and place them into a document that would be print ready. It was just squeezing logos and numbers onto a 14×40 document that would be printed onto sheets of vinyl material. Super easy stuff. Again i breezed through it and finished it all with time to spare. So I think they started figuring out that im pretty good at what I do so the art manager decided to give me a real project.

The funnest thing a designer can do at Sports 55 is do jersey mockups. Thats basically taking a jersey template and designing the whole shirt from colors, to the logo, etc. He showed me a customer order and basically said have at it. Normally, a customer will request a certain logo type, ideas, font types, or something like that. But this particular person gave us a color scheme and that was it. So i could do whatever I wanted. There are only 3 other people there that do the artwork like that. Everyone else just works off the artwork that they created. So i felt very fortunate that I was given the opportunity to work on one. The plan was to let me work with the software a few weeks until I learned it well enough before I started working on the mock-ups. But I guess they saw that I was picking it up really quickly and decided to give me a shot.

It took me a couple hours to do the artwork but I got it done. It wasn’t as good as what the other people there have done but I was proud of it. For it being my first go at it I think i did a pretty good job. This week I will find out what the customer thought of it. Hopefully they were happy with it. Or at least mostly happy. There are always things they want changed but I will feel pretty good if they liked the overall design. If im allowed, I will post a picture of it on here.

This blog was pretty long so ill keep the future ones shorter. There was just a lot that went on this week.

Brian Out.

Week 6 of Web Design

comegitsome — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:41:43 +0000

Week 6 was another fun week. We were able to do some more work on our banners which was fun. Im pretty happy with how mine came out. Its a little plain but i figured that I didn’t want it to be too distracting. I also enjoyed the resume assignment. I really like doing the html coding. As I said in a previous post, I think I like it more than I thought I would.

We learned alot more about CSS this week. Before this week it was mostly learning about it and not really applying it. This week we got to put it into action. The reading that had CSS overview really helped out alot. It provided a lot of useful information. Its all starting to come together. Im learning alot about html and how it works. CSS was a mystery to me before. I didn’t know what it meant and how it was used but im starting to understand how useful it is. Also, im really starting to LOVE Dreamweaver. It literally takes seconds to connect to the FTP and upload files. It’s so easy a caveman could do it.

Here are the articles we read. Very interesting stuff.

Good Web Design

Breadcrumbs!

Redesign Tips

Brian Out.

First Day of Internship

comegitsome — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:33:04 +0000

Yesterday was my first day at Sports 55. They design and create uniforms for sports teams. As well as hats, pants, shorts, towels, etc.

They have brough me on to work in the art department. They use Corel DrawX3. I am unfamiliar with this program but its similar to Adobe Illustrator. For the time being, i will be assisting in preparing designs to be embroidered. This usually means I will take a design and alter it so that it will work on a small hat or shirt. After I am comfortable with using the program, they may have me actually start doing some designing of uniforms and such.

My first day was pretty boring. In fact, it was one of the more boring first days ever. It was basically just a lot of watching. I sat in the art department and watched people work on the computers. I learn better from doing hands-on stuff. It would have been better if they game me a sample project and said here do this and ask us if you have any questions. So for almost 2 hours, I sat and watched people work on the computers with absolutley nothing to do for myself. Eventually someone suggested I hop on the computer and try it myself. So I did, but after only working for about 15 minutes, the owner came and got me and brought me into the embroidery department.

Again I had to do more watching. But this time I learned a little more because I was taught how to prepare the designs. After doing that for about 20 minutes, I was taken to the room where the merchandise is actually stitched. The manager left me there for about 45 minutes and told me to just watch. It was very boring. I had nothing to do but watch machines stitch logos on hats. It would have been just as helpful if I were in there for 5 minutes. I saw how it worked. I think they just kept forgetting about me.

I was taken back to a computer and shown a few more things about embroidery and then was told I could go back to the art dept. and work some more on the computer. The owner told me I could work til whenever so i checked the time and decided i would only stay another 20 minutes. It had been a very boring day and I was ready to go home. Hopefully, as they integrate me more in their plans, i will be given more work to do. Once i have a full plate of projects lined up to do, i will be much happier and will enjoy working there more.

Ill post another blog at the end of the week after i’ve had a few more days under my belt.

Brian Out.

-Come Git Some!