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March 5, 2008

SXSW Interactive 2008

I’m headed to Austin in a couple of days and couldn’t be more excited about spending time with friends that I only get to see once a year, meeting new people, eating, drinking, bowling and oh yeah, going to the conference itself.

In preparation I’ve made a few tweaks to the site. There’s a major redesign in the works, but that will have to wait until later this year. For now though, the content has been is the process of being updated and the new home page format will now allow for shorter, but hopefully more frequent posts.

Spring Recap

May 30, 2007

Well spring is almost over and I have to say that it’s been really busy and exciting these last few months.

Austin

SXSW Interactive I was in Austin again this year for SXSW Interactive and as usual, it was an awesome experience. It was great hanging out with friends, meeting new people, and putting faces with others who I have talked to over the past year. There also were several really good panels and the screening of a movie with a typeface as the leading role.

National Multiple Sclerosis Society Not too long after that, I again participated in the annual BP MS150 bike tour from Houston to Austin. I didn’t think it was possible, but this year’s experience was even better than last year’s.

Recently Launched

There are three projects that I’ve been heavily involved with lately that have recently launched.

designgive

designgive This was and still is a great project for me; I truly enjoy working on it. I’m collaborating with Chris from Tomato Creative to create and develop this apparel site for designers by designers. All designs are by featured artists, and with each purchase, a donation is made to the charity of your choice.

Montechino

Montechino I designed and developed this web site for Montechino, a master-planned lakefront community reminiscent of European villages on the edge of Lake Travis, just outside of Austin.

Stewart

Stewart Along with my team members, we recently redesigned Stewart’s corporate website. In addition to creating a new look and feel, we have also added some new functionality. You can read Matt’s post for more information.

New Job

whiteboardlabsLastly, as of May 1st, I am now the Senior Designer at whiteboardlabs. It’s a great opportunity and I’m very excited about becoming a member of their team and working on some great projects.

However, I will greatly miss the team of talented individuals who I had the pleasure of working with at Stewart.

Front End Alignment

March 8, 2007

I’ve performed a little facelift on the front of the site. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, since I felt the home page wasn’t a correct reflection of content within. The blog is a main section, but I don’t consider this site primarily a blog, and it was one of the most prominent elements on the page.

Better use of space

There are other areas of the home page that also get updated and they were being relegated to the sidebar. I wasn’t very happy with that and I also really wanted to break away from the the big column and sidebar look for the home page. Reducing the the real estate for the blog really opened up the space. Now there’s also more room for the other dynamic elements to balance out the most recent blog entry.

Fueled by Design

I’ve also taken the opportunity to incorporate a new tag line Fueled by Design that ties in more with the theme of the design. Most importantly, the area directly below explains what Supercharged is about and directs visitors to other areas of the site.

The message was always there, it just wasn’t be communicated as well as it could have been.

Rebooted and Rebuilt

November 1, 2006

The changes may not seem like that much at first, but it’s definitely more of a realignment than a redesign. When I originally set out, I had just few goals in mind that I wanted to accomplish. I kept adding more changes and it ended up being almost a total code rewrite.

More contrast and tire marks

My first objective was to increase the contrast. On some monitors the older version had a washed out look. I wanted the graphic elements to be subtle and not overpower the content, but I think they were a little too subtle. So, the colors and the graphic elements such as the pin-striping have been adjusted for greater contrast. I toyed with the idea of changing the background color to something light, but in the end I decided to keep the background dark. My next goal was to have the page load faster and reduce the file size of the background images. That meant getting rid of the huge gradient background in the previous version. It has been replaced with a much smaller and simpler gradient. The biggest visual change however, is the addition of the dark footer at the bottom of the page.

Page structure and new templates

In order to implement the footer, the XHTML had to be restructured. Originally the footer information was not last in the structure of the XHTML and that’s something that always bugged me. Now when the site is viewed with CSS off, the pages make more sense from top to bottom. The PHP templates that power the site have also been redone. When I first implemented them along with Wordpress, I had two sets of templates. One for the main part of the site and one for the blog. Now they both use the same templates, and while I was at it I upgraded to the latest version of Worpress.

Designing with rules and breaking them

One of my other priorities was to establish consistent rules in which to treat different types of content. Take links for instance, on the last version links might have been a myriad of different colors. Now white text indicates that element is a link. Other rules have also been established, text is a grey, headlines and elements are orange, and buttons all have the same treatment. Rules are always meant to be broken, it’s knowing when and how that makes it acceptable. The one place the links are not white is in the bottom part of the footer. The decision to do this was based more on an objective than it was on aesthetics. The need to have this information recede overrode the need for it to be identified as a link.

Doing more with less

There were two reasons behind establishing rules for the design. One was to establish consistent behavior of elements throughout the site. The second reason was that in writing CSS, I have been trying to establish general styles for the different types of content, and then writing additional styles only as needed. When new or different types of content are added, there is a lesser need to write new styles to accommodate them. The last goal was to not just simplify the code, but also the presentation of the content. There seemed like there were too many pages for the amount of content on the site. The main area of the site that this affected was the portfolio. Instead of individual pages for each item, all the pages have been merged into three main pages. To accomplish this Thickbox was implemented with some modifications. The result is fewer clicks to access the same amount of information.

Standards Reboot

For the first time I participated in a community reboot. Standards Reboot launched earlier this month and it is focused more not just on the aesthetics but on the code behind it with an emphasis on Web Standards. This was in line with the changes that I was making to this site, so I decided to participate. I really never intended to recode mostly everything, but it really helped with updating the way I approach a project. This is important in a environment where techniques and processes are changing daily.

Back in Austin

May 2, 2006

Austin again

Earlier this year I attended the 2006 SXSW Interactive in Austin. I met lots of fantastic people, attended some great parties, and even learned a thing or two about the web.

The weekend before last I was back in Austin, but for a totally different reason. I was participating in the MS150: a two-day cycling event from Houston to Austin that raises funds to help people living with Multiple Sclerosis. The ride is a little over 180 miles, and this year there were approximately 13,000 people that participated.

The ride

I’m not really sure what I expected, but by the time I rolled into La Grange on first day after 100 miles, I was still really excited. By far though, the second day was the best. There is a challenge route that goes through Buescher State Park, and it is the probably the one of the most fun parts of the ride.

Finishing in Austin was definitely the highlight of the trip. The atmosphere there is celebratory, there are thousands that come to show their support for the riders as they cross the finish line. Sharing this moment with friends and family was exhilarating. I had an incredible time, and I did way better than I expected I would. After months of training and hard work there was definitely a sense of accomplishment that made everything worthwhile.

Sean and Darren at the MS150 finish

What really reminded me of why I was riding was seeing those, such as my sister-in-law Jamie, diagnosed with MS cheering you on. It’s their courage to fight a disease for which there currently is no cure that inspires you to pick up a bike and ride 180 miles.

Thanks

Thanks so much to everyone who helped me out by donating. Your charity is greatly appreciated. For those of you that would still like to donate there’s a few days left, but I’ll be turning in my donations soon.

Thanks also to my wife, Alana for putting up with me the past few months. She’s had to sacrifice her time as much I have so that I could go on training rides, and I couldn’t have taken this on without her. I’m already looking forward to next year, and who knows? Maybe this time she will be riding with me.

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