My 5 Sites – Online Portfolio Examples

Here’s my 5 websites I looked at for this week, all of them representations of the online portfolio site that I’m hoping to build for the final project of this class.

Abiyasa Online Portfolio

I think this first one is my favorite site, since it does a great job of mixing effective navigation with a personality that is a reflection of its designer. Despite being very colorful and somewhat cartoonish, the site still does an excellent job of presenting its content professionally.

Ralph Bartholomew – Visual Communications

This site has some nice balance and an efficient appeal to its choice of fonts and colors. It’s simplicity is appealing, but it does lose points for lacking a distinctive site flow.

Haruka Hayakawa

A portfolio site for a student that makes some good choices on color scheme and navigation design. In particular, I like the site’s use of white space to convey a clean and uncluttered layout. However, I think some of the content that is included doesn’t enhance her image as a designer (like her design sketches or “Links” section) and as such should not have been included in the site.

The Portfolio of Tanya Frank

Very elegant and sophisticated portfolio that instantly tells you its creator knows what she’s doing. The choices of color scheme, layout, font, and navigation flow are all expertly handled, and her portfolio work really shines through. Only complaint is that the text size is really itty-bitty, which I’m sure would cause problem for some viewers.

Trevor Smolinski’s Resume/Portfolio

A very bare bones and direct site that wins points for its simplicity and accessibility. While this makes everything straightforward for the user, it also misses the potential to convey the designer’s abilities as a creative and artistic force. A good example for beginners and for the target audience the designer is speaking to, but not what I would be aiming for with my site.

50 Links to Boggle Your Mind

For this week I hit the jackpot: a collection of over 50 articles meant to make you a better web designer. There’s a whole lot in there that we can use, though some of it is a bit old.

After browsing through the links, I picked two articles that I felt would be the most helpful to where we are right now in our studies. The first is entitled 6 Keys to Understanding Modern CSS-based Layouts. It’s a simple breakdown of the main things we should remember as we start using CSS more and more. We have yet to cover most of these point yet, but the first two (floated columns and box model) are particularly helpful references to what we’ve been picking up in class.

I highly suggest checking out the link “The Box Model” within the header dealing with that subject. It covers everything that was mentioned in class, and like the handouts it has a lot of diagrams that provide an excellent visual reference for all the things that we need to remember when figuring out the height and width for content.

The very bottom of the article deals with how compatible existing browsers are with the box model. This is of particular importance to me since I regularly encounter these issues at work and need to be aware of which browsers present problems. I have already had particular angst dealing with Internet Explorer 6 (c’mon people, I like using PNGs), so it is helpful to know how to work around some of these issues.

Going back to the main article, I also recommend the “Floatorial” article – it helped me to finish the homework for this week and gives some tips that will no doubt help as we get more used to floating.

For my second main reading I went with something less technical and chose an article entitled “12 Ways to Tap Into an Endless Well of Creativity”.

I find myself lacking creative inspiration these days due to my busy schedule, something that really irritates me. This reading gave me some new ideas to help combat this, the most important one being “Set Regular Habits”. I currently lack the consistent routine recommended here and can certainly vouch for it being an integral part of keeping a creative spark. I tend to put off simple creative exercises (like doodling, picture taking, or looking at design work) with the simple notion that “I’ll get to it when I have free time”. However, this appointment keeps getting pushed back, and even now I find my brand new Moleskin remains empty – a very depressing sight.

It’s very difficult to feel inspired when you’re consistently tired from school, work, and a terrible sleep regimen. I think the problem is that I’m approaching these creative exercises like one large task, much like any other school project or chore around the house. The trick is to make it a small, 15 minute daily routine like this article recommends, so that it is no longer an assignment but a habit. I’m definitely going to give it a try.

Semantic Stuff

The first writing for this week re-hashes some of the definitions we have covered in class concerning what semantic mark-up means. It adds to these meanings while also giving nice little summaries of why we should be working toward well-formed mark-up.

This is a nice little writing that is helping me understand the “why” of what we are doing. Though I clearly understand why developers are moving away from using tables and archaic methods of designing web templates, it’s still helpful to get a few more bullet points on the resulting benefits you get from learning to script in this manner.

I highly recommend that you also take a look at the comments posted for this blog entry, as they are even more interesting than the main article. One respondent asks the author why there is such great importance on well-formed mark-up when business clients and the general public just won’t care what the source document looks like. I found the answer really valuable, since it relates to a part of my job that I have already had significant experience with: search engine optimization.

Because the first article spiked my interest by mentioning the link between semantic mark-up and SEO, I searched a little more on the subject and found my second reading for the week.

The article helps to clear up some of my questions about the scripting-SEO relationship. I was already aware of some of the methods used by Google to crawl websites, but I didn’t know that it included the search engine making correlations between the title and header tags used in the document. Common sense already says that these two tags would be similar anyways, but I haven’t consciously been making an effort to ensure that they are always alike while adding pages to my company’s website. This also relates to making sure that the header tags are always used in relation to their subject’s relevance (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and so on…). Again this seems obvious, but only in retrospect after someone has told you about it

Design Articles

My first article is a brief summary of a helpful 5 step process for designing a website. It’s here.

I liked the article because it’s very concise guide that makes some great points without ranting on. In particular, you can tell it was written with a backbone of real world experience, as evident in its focus on client interactions and forming measurable goals for any design project.

 

The writing presents no wildly remarkable ideas. It offers something similar to the research-brainstorm-roughs-and-final approach we’ve already had a lot of exposure to, but there are a few hints which I think will be particularly useful in the future. Of these, I think the first paragraph was the most insightful. The advice to “reformulate the client goal in your own words, and present that to the client” in the very first step of the process makes complete sense, but seems like a step many designers (including myself) might overlook in their zeal to dive straight into brainstorming ideas; in other words, to get straight to the “fun stuff” without staying on track with the client’s notions of what needs to be done. This kind of simple but very relevant advice is what I took away from this excerpt.

 

The second article deals with the role of testing landing page alternatives until you reach an optimized and ideal design to drive visitors to register, buy, click, or whatever your hoping to make them do.

I think too often student designers focus too much on the purely aesthetic aspects of building a site (or in this article a landing page) without keeping a very basic premise in mind: test, test, test. I have had some exposure to this at my current job, where even now I make three to four alternatives for a prospective landing page and then choose a winner based on click-through results and registrations. It’s quite interesting to see this concept taken to a much higher level with the 1,000 possible design combinations used in this story.

 

It is revealing how this kind of thorough testing can dispel design “rules” that you often hear about. In fact, I have previously been told of the classic warning to avoid using flash on a landing page unless absolutely necessary, because it distracts a user’s eyeballs or makes things more complicated than needed. Pretty interesting to see that this is not entirely the case as seen in this writing.

“At SWSX, the new Twitter is… Twitter”

Was scanning some of the stories coming through my feeder – and ran into this. My topic for our class wiki was Twitter, and writing that entry got me interested enough to start using it, so this story’s timing seemed pretty serendipitous.  

It’s startling to hear how a storm was brewing on Twitter even before the moderator had finished her discussion, and even better she responded to these comments later. The “real-time” crowd response that Twitter provides in this story will, in my opinion, become a much more visible technology in the news during this year, particularly due to the election coming up.

I really think Twitter is going to blow up, in a way much larger than it already has. What I’m envisioning is an almost national craze with TV audiences being swept into Twitter, like enormous instant messenger discussions. 

Obviously, IM technology has been around already for a long time, so why would it become a bigger deal now?

It all comes down to the numbers. While we have traditionally used IM messages to speak to one person, or at best a handful of people simultaneously, Twitter gives you the capability to organize and/or join massive discussions far beyond the microscope of IM and cell phone text messaging. This results in a very interactive experience with the formation of “collective intelligence”, and I think the appeal of this type of public discourse is in-line with popular tastes.

We can already see it occurring across the scope of the blogosphere, and I think Twitter has the potential to match or exceed what blogs have done because it’s synonomous with an already accepted, popular form of technology (Instant Messenger). Blogs are everywhere, but there is still an significant part of the population that hasn’t used it, or that doesn’t care to. I think this is largely due to the prevalent “junior high school  journal” picture that most people have when hearing  about writing blogs, a notion that will decrease as blogs continue to get more popular. However, a lot more people feel comfortable with Instant Messaging or text messaging because it’s use was more widespread among a broader scope of the public, particularly among the generation of the 90s. That’s why I believe Twitter is at a tipping point.

We already see interactive voting in real-time TV shows and up to the minute blogs from sporting events and political events - imagine the same concept but in a much more audience-oriented way. Giant (and probably sponsored)Twitter discussions on everything from TV reality shows to presidential debates, where the audience creates a responsive and dynamic ”hive-mind”. In turn, the program or event being watched could then react to this reaction!

This already happens whenever you see candidates leave the stage during commercial breaks on TV political debates -it’s in their interest to gauge crowd response. What I am imagining is a step beyond this, where the people watching at home take an interest in being heard during these kind of situations. Perhaps I am taking this out of proportion in terms of scale, because the SWSX story mentioned above did occur among a group of frenzied technophiles. I’m just thinking the eagerness expressed by the “Twitter mob” to tear down Sarah Lacy while still in the middle of the SWSX event is an emotion everyone can relate to, not just the technology crowd. So I don’t think it’s difficult to see this brand of real time, inclusive crowd interaction becoming very popular though Twitter, or through a Twitter-derivative. And because of the upcoming presidential debates, the time is ripe for such a trend to breakthrough.

Look into it if you haven’t already, unless you think I’m speaking jibberish. In that case, leave a response -

Nerdy Times with CSS/HTML

My experiences with HTML and CSS are largely a result of my current job, where I now deal with both concepts on a daily basis. When I began the job, I only had a passing knowledge of how either worked, and most of my previous knowledge was from a course I had taken in high school that, unfortunately, I had not followed up on.

However, I’m pretty impressed with how far I have come with working with CSS/HTML. The company I work for does almost all of its marketing, lead generation, and selling on the internet, so I was expected to pick up the needed skills without taking too long to do so. Over the course of several months, I picked up the basics using a combination of continuous trial and error, internet research, and help from co-workers. Whenever I ran into a problem, I would always first try to troubleshoot the problem firsthand. This included a great deal of tinkering within Dreamweaver (which is what I have almost exclusively relied on, even until now) and looking up FAQs or tutorials online. Most of the time, this approach was very effective. If I couldn’t work through it myself, I would turn to my nearest co-worker, who was far more knowledgeable on the subjects and was always willing to lend a hand. Well, most of the time; sometimes I couldn’t help but feel a slight sense, “Another f-in question?” coming from her direction.

Nonetheless, this mix of self-learning and outside assistance has proven very effective, and I feel confident now working within the basics of HTML and CSS. I would like to invest even more time to develop CSS style sheets of my own, as I find their application far more exciting than basic HTML. Unfortunately, most of the CSS files at work have been deemed “official”, meaning that I have very little room to go in and modify existing styles or create new rules of my own. I imagine this will be an intriguing aspect of my own personal website when the time comes to begin building that.

I find it especially ironic that now I’ve become the CSS/HTML mentor to a more recent hire in the company, a position I have been relishing when I remember how much of a noob I originally was.

Some particular problems that stick out in my mind over the course of learning CSS/HTML on the job: CSS rules that affect text and table margins, “default” HTML properties for things like cellspacing and cellpadding, and learning the standard format for how CSS rules should look and be referenced. I even remember the day, long ago, that I stumbled upon the target=“_blank” command for links. Good times. Good, nerdy times.

I still have a good deal of intricate things to learn however, and even now I still get a slight thrill whenever I am able to solve a problem on my own. Kinda lame, but those “Aha!” moments at work are what I consider the most rewarding aspect of my job, because every time it happens I know I’ve just learned something that will help me indefinitely.

Enough With Stuff – GTD thoughts

At first glance, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when I started to read David Allen’s summary of what is Getting Things Done. It seemed like the standard plug used by product evangelists everywhere: “Here’s a life changing concept that I will summarize in the most glowing fashion without giving you any real clue of what it is about! Would you also like a set of Japanese kitchen knives while you are here?”

Plus, it made me fairly uncomfortable that you were required to cough up your home address and proceed through an online checkout system for a free PDF. As someone who regularly deals with e-mail lists, I know how why he’s asking you to pass over that information, but that’s exactly why I wasn’t going to hand it over.

Anyways, I finally did find a much better definition of what GTD is from doing several FAQ searches, and the concept, while insulting obvious, seems surprisingly effective. The discussion of what “stuff” is and how it negatively impacts a productive workflow really resonated with me, such as phrases like “you find yourself putting out fires” as a description of handling to do’s. I regularly find myself in such situations and tend to just handle my most immediate, pressing concerns. And indeed, it really does create an ever-present worry that taxes your mind – it always seems like there’s one more thing I have to do, with only a vague assurance that I’ll get to it “sometime”. I would definitely describe my day-to-day activities as being poorly organized.

Because of these descriptions reading similarly to what I am experiencing, I looked deeper into some of the mechanics of the system. I’ve always used lists to organize my deadlines so this also was a naturally appealing aspect of GTD, though I wish I had been able to learn more about how to assign these different lists based on importance or immediate relevancy. Lists are only as powerful as their ability to categorize tasks based on importance, and while I was able to get a brief summary of some of the different list names (“Projects”, “Next Action”, “Pending”, etc.) I found the explanations insufficient. However, I will most likely submit to Allen’s Orwellian demands and provide my address after all, because I am intrigued enough and very tired of “stuff”.

Interesting Wiki

Was at the office and ran across this new article about Wikileaks, a wiki website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive corporate and government documents, while taking measures to preserve the anonymity and traceability of its contributors. Basically, it gives whistle-blowers everywhere a chance to bring their case to light without fear of reprisal.

Very interesting news, and the concept of the site is fascinating. Look here to read why it was recently ordered by a court to shutdown.

Back to work……

New Post on Personal Blog: Something Extra

Hey gang – there’s a new posting on my personal blog. This week’s entry deals with how simple Craigslist postings can turn into interesting stories, like how got a one-day gig as a movie extra over the weekend. Check it out here.

Podcasting Thoughts

The future potential of podcasting and vodcasting seem so limitless that I’m a bit ashamed to not have been more knowledgeable about their capabilities. I had heard of the concepts before, but apart from running into a podcast on a blog from time to time I had neglected to investigate how I myself could use this technology for my benefit.

In terms of an educational setting, podcasts are a huge benefit for students and faculty. Particularly for lecture style classes, it is a great resource for students who may have missed a class, or just feel that constant playback of a recorded lecture will help them retain the information more easily. This is a huge leap in also capturing the true intent of a lecture lesson as well; often when you take notes, you’re more concerned with quickly writing it all down than fully devoting your attention to what someone is saying, or to catching extra examples that may reinforce the subject matter. I know whenever I hear an instructor say “This won’t be on the test, but it will help you understand the lesson”, I tend to zone out or ignore what’s being said, almost always based on the fact that I’m simply tired of the effort it takes to manually take down notes to paper or laptop. Now with the ability to fully listen to such a lecture afterwards coupled with the mobility of an iPod, there’s a greater chance such “extra bits” will be absorbed. I imagine the cumulative effect of absorbing this extra information will be improved total comprehension of a subject, which has huge implications for the value we get out of schooling.

Though I confess that many of the reasons I missed class were far from admirable, it’s obvious this technology is a also very helpful for those who can’t regularly attend lessons, particularly the segment of student’s who are forced to work to help pay tuition. As the author notes with some of his questions, it will be interesting to see how podcasts contribute to the overall concept of “classes without a classroom.” I feel a huge part of the classroom experience is the back-and-forth dynamic debate that occurs between students and teachers, so replicating this experience in real-time seems difficult to envision, though it seems we are already approaching such a possibility.

On the lighter side of all of this, I can’t help but think that podcasting will lead to a rise in iPod induced injuries. Much like it’s been proven that talking on a cell phone impedes your ability to drive attentively, so I imagine listening to recorded content like lectures will lead to a higher chance you’ll lose your concentration and cause an accident. Although this could cause serious harm, I’m really hoping this grows extremely popular for the sole reason of one day seeing someone run smack into a street sign because they were so engrossed in their podcast.