A new blog that I may actually update!

A new blog? Yes! This one is going to be me designing and trying to make sucessful an adsense based site.

Week 8: Inefficiency Scales

The book “Building Design Portfolios Innovative Concepts for Presenting Your Work” discusses online portfolios. It suggests that take into account what the user may be using to get to your site. Your site is flash only? Your site looks good in Firefox but in Internet Explorer it is messed up? I feel the flash problem should not be a problem, if a user wants to be able to look at sites on the internet they should be expected at this time to have flash installed. For a portfolio this is acceptable. Would you want to harvest lumber with a axe when power tools exist? Of course not. Internet Explorer is a tricky problem though, because it’s so popular. In my opinion the only way to encourage people to upgrade is to make sites they want to go to impossible to go to without an upgrade. This works for sites in which the user has enough drive to upgrade there browser. A portfolio site though is not the place, you want anyone and everyone to be able to see your work, at least as long as you’re new to the field.

In “Designing a Digital Portfolio” we learn about optimizing. Optimizing is important because it reduces business costs. A website that gets ten hits a day will not gain much from a 10 kb to 20kb reduction of images. If however that same site gets hundreds of thousands of hits, inefficient images will cost real money. Broadband allows for less compression being necessary. We designers still need to be efficient when it doesn’t cost us quality. Take a website with a gradient background, you only need a one pixel by x pixel silver (or visa versa) to get the effect you want.

Week 6: A Shadow of Itself

Within “Designing a Digital Portfolio” chapter 6 there are tips on how to digitize your work. Doing this properly is important because your work can easily suffer if done incorrectly. When showing work originally done digitally it may not be the best to show it as a plain picture. I could show a business card as a flat picture, but that doesn’t really give the feeling of a business card. The flat picture of just the design would merely be a shadow of what the business card would look like in real life. If print out my design, then take a picture of it, it will look more like if I handed you a business card. Same for letterhead, or other printed materials.

In the book “Building Design Portfolios Innovative Concepts for Presenting Your Work” the author echos what I said in the previous paragraph. “There are some drawbacks, however. Book portfolios, like websites, show your work as a group of reproductions, and as such they’re a step away from the original design”. (17 Eisenman) It’s important enough to justify two paragraphs, well at least on this blog. You simply do not get the same feel as you would with showing the final product.

The idea of picking the right package for your work was brought up in “ Building Design Portfolios Innovative Concepts for Presenting Your Work”. To me this is a nuts and bolts part of the portfolio. Important details that effect the main body of your work. What you decide on depends on your preference as a designer. The idea of a three ring is nice because it’s flexible in that it can take different forms of work as well as being easy to change as your work changes.

Week 5: Technology is our friend

Week: 5 Organized?
When reading “Designing a Digital Portfolio” chapter 5 I was struck with how this chapter should be read during the first year of college. You should have a copy of all your work, a backup as well. I prefer an external hard drive mainly because it’s big enough to carry my work plus whatever else I may want to store. Not only should it be on an external hard drive, flash drive, etc. it should be at least one place else. External hard drive, laptop. Paper, flash drive. With email allowing tons of storage, you could even use it (though it isn’t the best idea).

In “How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul” the author argues against a pure digital process. I disagree, you do not narrow yourself. I as a designer am thinking of designs before it even forms on paper, or on the computer. This thought is what governs the end result, to this end I feel the computer is a better to start off. Designing on computer is neater then freehand, it’s faster and small changes are easier to make. The quality suffers if you’ve not put proper thought into it, not because you can go faster. You can make twelve good logos in a lot less time then if you sketched it. I understand the value of viewing the work at angels or stepping away, but the computer does not preclude you from doing this (Well, monitors are only meant to be viewed at a given angel range.) Good process has nothing to do with technology, if you have a tendency to not follow it with a computer then do your sketches. Technology improves the efficiency of our work, but it should not necessarily effect the way we work.

Week 4: Canton CT, one man, one town, mmmmmm food

Have you ever heard of betamax or how about laserdisc? Yes? Well then gold star for you! When I was reading “Designing a Digital Portfolio” it mentioned zip discs and advising against using them for a portfolio medium. Really? Using expensive fragile discs to hold important data is not advisable? I would of never guessed. I know heavy laden sarcasm may be a little much but I feel knowing a technologies advantages and disadvantages should already be ingrained. I am not going to use a hammer to saw a two by four. Nor am I going to use a mini cd in a field dominated by macs. (often having slot loading drives) The right tool for the job.

When reading “How to be a graphic designer without losing your job” it talks about methods for finding work. This ties in nicely with a web designer/s I discovered. As I’m looking at a take out menu I notice a URL, I of course decide to see what the site looks like. Turns out it looks like this. Being the curious sort I follow the link to the sites creator and finally to the client sites page. Now see Collinsville Screen Printing? Next door is Crown and Hammer restaurant (mmmm). Focus on Canton, Canton HOD, Canton , Canton, Canton! This business is obviously targeting local companies, which is a good idea. If you go up to a local business offering to make them a website, they very well may take you up on it. Simple enough? Yes it is. It’s a shame really because if the companies shopped around they would probably have gotten higher quality work.

Splendertastic!

Surprisingly , Aviary Phoenix is surprising fluid for a web-based program. (well at least painting and magic wand) If anyone wants an invite post a comment.

Bah! You kids and your fancy web-based programs. Back in my day we programed using punch cards and we liked it!

What if Adobe Suite was free (or at least cheaper)? Well Aviary is a collection of Air programs that could very well lower the cost of entree into the field. (Yes I'm well aware of bittorrent and piracy but let us assume that we're all upstanding citizens who would never pirate software) People who may never of tried fooling around with Photoshop do to its high cost may develop a taste for retouching, logo design etc. etc. etc. Bad, in that it's more competition. Good, in that it's more competition. Competition makes getting a job harder, and so raises the quality of work that buyers can aspect.

Personally without using the programs yet I cannot say if Photoshop has to worry. I find web-based programs generally lacking in some way that there OS optimized counterparts don't. Of course then again...



If I ever get an invite I will see if this video shows an excellent tool or merely someone skilled at using said tool.