Wednesday, 19. August 2009, 22:45:08
Santa Rosa, Zapino, ZAP, zapworld.com
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NOTE: I just updated one of the links in the message, this is actually about a year old.I've been a very busy busy boy, getting up to speed with two versions of Drupal (5.7 & 6.2) at ZapWorld, and moving to new digs in Santa Rosa. I redid most of the front page at
zapworld.com (among
many other things), but I just finished the April (May?) newsletter, which allowed me to indulge my more (but not most) creative side. I did pretty much everything in a text editor (for those CSS purists, it should be noted that few, if any, email clients display
divs correctly, so I had to do my layout with tables), but I also did the two prominant banners, for the header (pictured below, with a link to the full page) and the Zapino, an electric scooter modeled on the ever-stylish Vespa. For the header banner, I even used one of the photos I took last summer in Glen Ellen (as one or two of my dedicated reader will
surely recall...).
Friday, 6. March 2009, 05:00:44
Alien heads found in Georgia, typeface, Georgia font, typography
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Georgia, a typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft, is named after a tabloid headline which reads “Alien heads found in Georgia.”
Read more...
Thursday, 2. August 2007, 09:01:05
graphic design, blogging, Opera community, photography
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As much as I liked the design that I had on this blog, it wasn't
mine. I felt strongly that I had to step forward and be counted as a true Citizen of the World™.
Yes, it was clear I had to
As you can see, the overall design of the site is much more basic, but I thought personalizing my own blog was something long overdue. And, I think I did a bang-up job making the banner. (that's me at the far right of the photo, reflected in a shop window in Santa Rosa)
I'll try to add more features as I overcome my limitations as a designer, web logger, lover, astronaut...
oooh. way past my bedtime...
Thursday, 11. May 2006, 01:18:35
Colbert, website, graphics, graphic design
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Sleep schedule's been waaaayyy off. Energy is dropping in the dirt when I need to get things done...
boy, that Colbert thing was pretty heady stuff! I didn't realize when I posted his video that we were making history of sorts-- I just thought it was a cool thing for Colbert to do, given the opportunity. I actually met someone (whom I'd never met before) who was bounced to my site the first night I posted the video. Mom saw the video on ABC four nights later, and asked if I had "heard about it".
I've been working since then on a website that I'm doing for a nonprofit, and as a result I'm brushing up on my graphics design as well as scripting (which I still suck at , for the most part). I have some books on AJAX on order, so I'll be trying to learn
that (poorly) soon.
Also bringing my main sites online soon,
The Paranoid Gazette and
glassangel(design). In the meantime, I'm still
here, with a very amateurish design, until such time as I can get these other sites up & running.
Saturday, 29. April 2006, 04:58:12
Fireworks MX, calligraphy, vector, drawing tool
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A friend of mine is working on an annual "Star Search / American Idol" type program, and he's asked me to work on his site. There's a fifties theme to this year's event, so I thought I would "chrome" the website, using a neon/drive-in type motif, and in order to do that I decided to create some vector graphics.
Not having worked in graphics production very often, and certainly not recently, I wanted to do a primer in Macromedia Fireworks MX (the only version I happen to have), so I purchased a discount used copy of Fireworks MX: Zero to Hero. I was kind of skimming through the early chapters, where they explain what each of the tools do (which I pretty much know, or thought I did), and when I got to the vector line drawing tool, I almost skipped over it...
(Hey man! I know how to draw a freakin' LINE, MAN!!!)
So, anyway, to keep myself amused, I'm screwing around in the property inspector for each tool, to see what all I can find to screw around with-- and I find I can use different virtual instruments for the line strokes. I pick "calligraphy" and move on to the "knife" tool. With that, I am instructed in the book to slice my line in half, and move one half to another position...
THAT's when I realize the calligraphy setting had a very specific stroke and texture, which became evident when I arranged the lines together. With an absurdly simple tool that I was preparing to overlook, I was able to begin a meaningful design by just arranging simple lines!
WoW!
Apparently, my pathetically short attention span paid some dividents in this case...
WIDGETIZE