October 26th, 2006
I love martial arts and last night whilst walking to the shop I realised that being a good web designer is like being a good martial artist. On that note I have decided to write a few articles that will take concepts from Bruce Lee (I love the concepts involved in Jeet Kune Do) and bind them to web design, I hope you enjoy them and feel free to engage me with any thoughts you have…
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend. - Bruce Lee
How many times have you nudged a design into shape via the beauty of CSS only to find it has popped out of place in another browser? Web design is a fluid medium, everything you do has a knock on affect on other elements on your page, nothing can be pixel perfect and you can never guarantee how your user is going to be viewing your site.
One of the most crucial aspects of designing a good web site is being able to read these reactions and incorporate these fluctuations into your design. Do not think in resolution for the screen only, anticipate all of them and how your different elements will flow in each environment, be flexible and you should be just fine.
This philosophy does not only apply to the front end, the back end of your site must also be able to agile, are you thinking of the bigger picture? Will your site scale? Is your database architecture well done? Could you take parts of your database and easily reuse the data without having to do any extra work to move it to a new format?
In my past experience I have worked on projects that have contained one set of data but grown to contain more and more data, in turn this has had a knock on effect on the structure of the front end of the site and also the design.
Planning at the beginning of a site is paramount, you should analyze everything you would like to have before you even start to build and then look at how you can do this. Understand that at a later date your site may change to incorporate one of the things you want and prepare for this before hand, be flexible before you need to be!
October 17th, 2006
Whilst trawling my RSS feeds today I found out that my friend over at Renegade Zen has taken the time to make himself into a South Park Character using a rather fun tool over at http://www.sp-studio.de/. He has encouraged everyone else to take part so here is mine…
I look forward to seeing what you all get up to with this so please ping us both back so we can check ‘em out.
Have fun!
October 14th, 2006
On browsing what has become one of my favourite sites Notcot I came across an artist I had not encountered before and I have to say I am hooked, his name is Luke Chueh and his artwork rocks.
I’ve created a tool I call “The Color Wheel of Doom.†In my color wheel, I’ve designated each color with a particular mood or action. Blue represents depression, green represents pestilence, red represents violence and bloodshed, and orange represents insanity. I’ve chosen yellow and purple to function as “wild†colors that can be used for any scenario I deem fit. However, I’ve found purple/violet to be a difficult and unsettling color to work with. I guess I simply haven’t conceived of any purple ideas.
Color Wheel of Doom = Frickin awesome concept! How many times have you been trying to come up with a colour scheme for a site and how many times would a color wheel of doom have brightened up the process?
I have been spending a bit of time recently getting reaquainted with some cool stuff, for ages I did a lot of research and learning online so have been really enjoying cruising round toy sites and design sites when I have had a moment to breathe. I have to say I am so glad I found this artist, it was even nicer when I was having a look around his site to find his fans paying homage to him with works based on his creations.
I quite like toys like Gloomy Bear, I think there is something funny about the macabre cute and the work that Luke does has definitely got that edge to it. One of my favourites has to be this one called The Exit…
I am also a big fan of this one…
What do you think? I think they are awesome and will probably keep going back to see if there are new works that he has done, I know that I will probably work some of them into my own desktop pics at some point. Not for public consumption, just so that I can enjoy them myself, I have working 10 desktops in my Ubuntu installation and I use a program called Wallpapoz to give them different backgrounds so I could have a full theme going on with his artwork.
Maybe I should set up my own desktop mood color wheel as that could be fun, oh and by the way… I HATE THAT SPELLING OF COLOUR, I spend so much time coding CSS that I end up just going with the flow now if someone is already using it (i.e. in the blockquote used above).
Anyway, I hope these pics brightened up your day, they certainly entertained me for a good half hour and more and will continue to give me enjoyment. I think I will write some more about some artists I like in the future…
October 7th, 2006
Well, that’s about done it for me, I absolutely have to become a millionaire now so that I can embark on lunar adventures, the beauty of it all is that I can get it all for cheaper given the strength of the UK currency. I reckon this is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen for sale online so I think I might add it as the number one item on my non existent wish list.
Richard Branson deserves a hat tip bigger than any other available, this is truely the dogs nuts Check out stellar travels for sale at Neiman Marcus Online and feel free to take me with you for telling you about it.
You can find out more at Virgin Galactic which deserves another hat tip for probably the best ever URL purchased!
October 6th, 2006
Well I don’t know about you but I love super heroes however there have to be thousands of ways to make fun of them via the medium of bad jokes hence this weeks theme. My main image is of one of my favourite TV shows ever but I have decided that my joke will have to be about a member of the X-Men.
Q: How can you tell there’s been a member of the X-Men in your Fridge?
A: Claw marks in your butter.
October 3rd, 2006
This is a definitely a picture worth sharing which I found by accident this morning, hope it makes you think that little bit more creative for the day. It certainly has me ready for action!
