Blog
Hello 2012, and more importantly, hello to a brand new Vectorthis.com! From Flash, to a custom built CMS, back to Flash, to Wordpress, and now to Drupal (plus mobile) there really isn’t much left for me to toy around with the 6th time around.
Mobile web design is becoming more and more common/popular. There are numerous business who are already devoted entirely to mobile technology. It’s just a matter of time before every web designer needs mobile in their arsenal of abilities. Luckily, I have my own site I can use as a guinea pig, and I've been making progress!
You read it right: once again I’ve realigned my portfolio. I’m often criticized for my never ending design revisions and constant adjusting to my own portfolio (and other projects as well), but I don’t see the problem with that. I’m always on the lookout trying to implement interesting new features that will improve the user experience. I thought that;s what being a good designer was all about.
Normally my realignments end up telling the same old story: I’ve got some new projects to show off and a clever new way to present the different slides. This time I had a plethora of objectives.
I’ll have to admit, this last year at Moxy Media unfolded much differently than I was expecting it to when I took their offer last summer. When I interviewed, we discussed the normal graphic design stuff I expected: brand the project, design/build the website, promote and advertise it. Things sounded good...
The .PNG (Portable Network Graphics, PNGs not GIFs) has been around for years. Over a decade actually. Mid 1990’s (95-96) discussions arose revolving around the replacement for the popular .GIF format for various reasons: the 256 colour limit, the Unisys and LZW patent enforcement, among others. As of 2004 .PNG has been recognized as an International Standard (ISO/IEC 15948:2003).
With the web2.0 boom and exponential increase in popularity with xhtml/css in 2006/2006 the .PNG has also been embraced by the web development community. The shortcoming. however: IE6. IE6’s final release was in the summer of 2001, years before .PNG was adopted as a standard, thus IE6 does not support 24bit. As of January 2009 an astonishing 18.5% of Internet surfers are still browsing with 8 year old IE6, which handcuff’s many web developers who are not allowed to drop support for such a percentage (still 1/5th of the market). The Solution: IE6 .PNG transparency hacks.
Over the last couple weeks I've gotten a few requests for design advice from a few friends regarding layout/structure and the common thing I noticed with each is that no strict margin/grid system was being implemented.
I wrote up an explanation illustrating the process I follow to get my structures in place, so I've decided to throw it up in the blog for anyone else who might stumble upon it.
When I launched the latest version of Vectorthis.com a few weeks ago I incorporated a lot of SEO techniques we were experimenting with while I was working as the full time web designer for Hockey.com. Last night I decided to see if any of these techniques had any effect on my placement in Google searches, and to my delight I found out I’m placing #2 in Google for hockey.com graphic designer.
I’ve been without a full time job since June - I wouldn’t say I’ve been unemployed, because I’ve been making just as much (just as frequently) picking up freelance contracts for the last 3 months, but things have been slowing down lately; the summer is winding down and people are finishing up their fall & winter campaigns, so I’ve decided to take a job with an old partner company of eMedia, Moxy Media. Coincidentally, the 2 Hockey.com dev leads who departed when Hockey announced its move to Oakville are running the team I will be joining, so I’ll be working along side a lot of familiar faces.
It’s been 2 months since Hockey.com closed down. I’ve been doing well grabbing contracts as freelance designer - I got calls the afternoon people found out about the layoff. However, I’m becoming concerned with the type of work are starting to send my way.
We’ve been building the site for over a year. Re-branded it, redesigned the whole look and feel of the site, rebuilt the features from the ground up, and got a community following over night. Then bought and renovated offices in Oakville, Ontario, created and filled unnecessary positions, bought $60k worth of infrastructure we didn’t need and now we have no money left and the project is dead. What a waste.