Hey, long time, no talk.. Sorry about neglecting my readers but I have been overworked & very much stressed (but excited) with several college projects. One of the projects I’m a part of is organising the annual digital media exhibition. Each year the third years of the creative multimedia course are required to organise the event, which was previously called Digital Expression. This year however we have decided to rebrand it as “Pen and Pixel”, and we have a brand new web design to go along with it (which I created ).
The exhibition displays a range of media, such as photography, audio, video, animation, graphic design and text pieces. This year there have been some truly amazing submissions and I can’t wait to see them all displayed on the walls of our college on Thursday the 14th of April. If you’re nearby, we’d love if you could join us!
PRESS RELEASE
Tipperary Institute is holding its annual Digital Media Exhibition on its Clonmel campus. Renamed Pen & Pixel, the exhibition takes place on the 14th of April at 6.30pm and will run until May.
Each year the college hosts an exhibition showcasing the work of students on the Creative Multimedia course. The exhibition is organised by third year students.
This year the photography competition will be judged by Clonmel based photographer Wojciech Ryzinski. The exhibition will also showcase student work in mediums such as video, audio, animation and flash applications.
For more information you can check out the website –www.penandpixel.ie, or follow us on Twitter – @penandpixel2011. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Yep, finally got my new design online and the comments are functional! I still have one or two links to add on the homepage, but it is 99.9999% complete.
The overall design is far from my my comfort zone. Usually I go for pixel perfect, very clean web design. Although I have experimented with grungy designs before this is the only time I was really happy with the result.
Words cannot describe how much Dribbble has influenced me in creating this. Having a constant stream of tremendously talented designers displaying what they are working on at the moment really got me thinking of the subtle details I could add to make this site look more presentable. On the flip side, I have edited some things over 50 times just to get things right.
Bold statements
What I’ve done on the homepage even surprised myself. I have abandoned the portfolio images altogether, and I’ve kept writing to a minimum. This is all new to me, and I dont know if it will work well , but I may as well try it before I scrap it.
League Gothic
Yes, this font is used in abundance throughout this theme. Its probably one of my favorite free fonts to use in my projects and I’m using font-face to embed it on my site. I could have used a javascript method like Cufón or Typekit, but I’ve found that fonts behave better when being used normally. Oh and the added bonus of this being free was nice too.
Portfolio
My portfolio page has gotten a drastic overhaul with larger images. This has been missing from my designs for much too long, so I’m pleased with the outcome. I have quite a few projects still to add to that section so thats not quite there either.
Articles
Starting this project, I had considered going entirely sidebar-less in order to get the user to focus on the content in the articles directly. But then realising that the rate of which I post is about once a month, I thought that the content of this “blog” wasn’t all that important.
Overall I’m happy with this new layout. And although I’m bound to have the exactly opposite opinion in a few months, I thinks its a fairly accurate representation of where I’m at as a web designer.
So for the few of you who still read this thing, you may (or the more likely may not) have noticed that at the start of the summer I had redesigned this site with a bright blue shade, with green’s whites and textures galore.
Sadly this is going to change mid-September, due to another refresh. I’m not happy with the comic feel to the website. It looks dated already, I ended up using lots of images. It doesnt portray exactly what I hope to achieve from it.
I’ve been extremely busy with college work and work work but I hope to get some time to do some stuff when I get my break at the end of August.
You can follow what I’m doing on Dribbble (whenever I’m up to posting)
Things I hope to rectify with the new design
Comments (I totally forgot to add this)
Smarter, sharper look (I’m about 60% pleased with what I have so far)
Focus on my services and promote myself better
My Tumblr (Its already in the menu but I hope to integrate it better with the site in the future)
An About Page (about time)
I was also given the opportunity to be in the new Web Designer Magazine, but I missed the deadline for submission. So I think I’ll hold off until the new site is up and functional before I submit it again.
I just cannot seem to keep a version of my site online longer than a few months at most. This one, Miralize Design v10, came from me absolutely hating the last design, which only lasted a month (a record I think). Its also the fastest from conception and design to final release, a mere 14 hours of work. I’m actually quite happy with it, as I now have the portfolio launched too.
The blog template now looks more like a blog, rather than a gimmicky excuse for one. One of the most important things about any website is the fact that “Content is key”, and I think I forgot that last time. I have what I need on the side of every post, and nothing more. I always say I’m going to post weekly, but now that it looks pretty, I think I can manage at least one post a week.
Still no HTML5, still set in my ways of XHTML Transitional. Lots of CSS3 though, and @font-face is being used extensively. The theme for this theme is “BIG!”. Big heading text on the homepage, big footer and the font is easily readable. There is no more useless jQuery that slows down the site, and while IE6 isn’t fully supported yet, I’m here all week.
I think this is a very much needed update to the site. If I’m going to attract clients, I might as well showcase the best I’ve made in a while. But of course, no design is perfect, so if anyone has any changes/features they’d like to see here, please leave a comment!
Oh and by the way, if you have a design blog/site and you want to have a link in the sidebar, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Hey folks, hope you’re all having great holidays. I definitely am, especially now that Miralize version 9 is released. Yes, the same “Miralize v9″ that I’ve been tweeting about since late September. And the same one I have posted images about. The reason for the extremely long delay was because of college, and the business with others. (more…)
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