Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Crafting Web sites since 1999

I am a Web designer passionate about creating elegant, inspiring, and usable Web experiences that connect with an audience and fulfull business objectives.

Random

Cookies from New York

June 4, 2011

It is amaz­ing how the Inter­net has changed our lives. I think about the fact that I just had a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion with one my best friends who lives in Hun­gary. I remem­ber a time when our rela­tion­ship con­sisted of a cou­ple let­ters a year. Now we talk pretty reg­u­larly on Skype. Twit­ter and social networking […]

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I would enjoy a private retreat like this

December 10, 2010

I would love to use a space like this. I would love to sit in this space and jour­nal or read or cre­ate Web­sites. I would enjoy meet­ing with God here in my daily devo­tions. I love how nature invades this space through the views. I stud­ied archi­tec­ture in col­lege so I have an appre­ci­a­tion for […]

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Video about motivation in your work

May 26, 2010

I found this video inter­est­ing on 2 lev­els. First, I thought it was a cre­ative and engag­ing. I enjoyed hear­ing the per­son talk. And the amaz­ing draw­ings did such a great job of sup­port­ing the speaker. Being a visual per­son, it really con­nected with me. Sec­ond, the con­tent of the pre­sen­ta­tion. It is very inter­est­ing to […]

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Web site or website: Breaking old habits

April 21, 2010

Last week, AP announced that it is chang­ing the offi­cial AP style from “Web site” to “web­site.” I guess it has caused quite a stir with those who are more con­scious about lan­guage than I am. The change will affect me. It has been a least a cou­ple of years since I embraced “Web site.” One […]

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New approaches to projects and clients

April 9, 2010

For some time, I have been think­ing about how Web design agen­cies func­tion. My obser­va­tion is that most agen­cies take their approach to projects from the print world. The model was project-based. It worked in the print world. But Web is a dif­fer­ent ani­mal. Web sites are not “done” once they have been designed and […]

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Web Design Superheroes Revisited, Part 1

February 25, 2010

On Tues­day, I had the priv­i­lege of eat­ing lunch with one of my Web design super­heroes, Jared Spool. I have a lot of respect for Jared and his com­pany, UIE. UIE empow­ers design­ers and other Web pro­fes­sion­als to cre­ate bet­ter Web expe­ri­ences. They dis­till the lat­est research and thoughts into prac­ti­cal advice that can be […]

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Food for the Creative Web Designer

February 10, 2010

I have read a cou­ple of arti­cles recently that I wanted to pass along. Cookie Cut­ter Web sites — This post from Think Vit­a­min is a chal­lenge to cre­ate sites that reflect the per­son­al­ity of the com­pany, prod­uct, or per­son we are design­ing for. The author’s pre­sup­po­si­tion is that more and more Web sites look the […]

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Tell me a story: Google’s Super Bowl Ad

February 8, 2010

I was delighted by this com­mer­cial last night as I watched the Super Bowl. It is a great exam­ple of sto­ry­telling. I was totally drawn into the story that this com­mer­cial tells. As Paul Boag points out, “They take some­thing very mun­dane like a search engine and give it real emo­tion and per­son­al­ity. This ad connects […]

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Walled In

July 1, 2009

I saw this on DW Jour­nal report last night. It is a very inter­est­ing look at how East Ger­many kept in it’s peo­ple dur­ing the Com­mu­nist era. I have a great inter­est in the his­tory of com­mu­nism because of my trav­els to Hun­gary. My first trip was the sum­mer after the Wall came down. I remember […]

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Note to Self — Enabling Media Library Uploads in WordPress

June 12, 2009

I was get­ting really frus­trated today because I was try­ing to upload images into the Media Library in a Word­Press instal­la­tion. After get­ting an error mes­sage, I looked around the WP con­trol panel and stum­bled across “Mis­cel­la­neous” under Set­tings. There is a form field on this page where you set up the path to the […]

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Beyond the Web site

June 4, 2009

Yes­ter­day after­noon, I received this email from raysbaseball.com. I had bought tick­ets over the week­end to see today’s game. I was really impressed with the infor­ma­tion in this email. It told me about the start­ing pitch­ers for both teams and had links to rel­e­vant sta­tis­tics. There were also links to infor­ma­tion about vis­it­ing Trop­i­cana Field. […]

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Where is the fun haiku

September 24, 2008

Where did the fun go? Many detail tasks to attend I want to design My team leader men­tioned yes­ter­day that the fun has not been in his work recently. I feel the same way. I want to design or craft a Web page. But too many other details or meet­ings have taken my time. These are […]

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Running on Empty

August 22, 2008

This car­toon from My Life in a Cube says it all for me today. I like the dif­fer­ent medi­ums that this car­toon­ist uses and how they help com­mu­ni­cate his mes­sage. The Red Bull can is very appro­pri­ate for this cartoon.

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What I am I doing?”

July 23, 2008

I finally entered the world of Twit­ter last week. I decided to do it after talk­ing to some of my col­leagues at work. We thought Twit­ter might be a good team solu­tion to be able to keep track of our team­mates. I decided that I would give it a try. And I have jumped in head­first. I […]

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Rock Chalk Champions

April 8, 2008

I was a fresh­man 20 years ago when Danny Man­ning and the Hawks last won the cham­pi­onship. It was a great game and what a last sec­ond shot by Mario Chalmers. This year was an excit­ing run. It feels great to be a Jayhawk.

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A Week of Web in Boston

November 8, 2007

I have been attend­ing the UI12 Con­fer­ence in Boston this week. I have been look­ing for­ward to this since last May when I signed up. I had attended the con­fer­ence 2 years ago and it was really good. I wish I had more time to process all that is being thrown at me. I would […]

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Open Source Software for Web Development

June 21, 2007

A friend of mine asked me for my thoughts on free or cheap soft­ware to do Web devel­op­ment. There were a few open source soft­ware pack­ages that I have heard of and had been rec­om­mended by oth­ers. I did a lit­tle more research and here are my find­ings. Dis­claimer — I do not use or […]

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A Little Lonely??

January 3, 2007

I saw this law office is a lone build­ing in a sea of park­ing lots. It is wild to see this two story build­ing in this wide open space that is flanked by tall office build­ings and hotels in down­town Den­ver. I was really struck by how “alone” it seemed and not some­thing I expected […]

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Off to Denver

January 1, 2007

I am head­ing to Den­ver today to attend the Den­ver Christ­mas Con­fer­ence. This is a gath­er­ing over about 1000 stu­dents from Kansas, Mis­souri, Nebraska, Col­orado, New Mex­ico, Wyoming and other places. I am going to be inter­view­ing stu­dents at the con­fer­ence to help me guide me in future improve­ments to GodSquad.com. I am tak­ing the […]

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More Reflections from Refresh06

November 16, 2006

I real­ized after I posted my entry last night that I did not dis­cuss what I took away from Andy Budd’s sem­i­nar on CSS Mas­tery. He encour­aged us to be proud of our work and the choices that we make and not to worry about what oth­ers have to say. He made this com­ment in […]

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