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

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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Refresh06 — Crash Course Day

November 15, 2006

Today, I attended the first day of the Refresh06 Web con­fer­ence here in Orlando. I attended 2 crash courses. One of them was taught by Andy Budd, pic­tures on the right. I had read his CSS book last spring. I enjoyed meet­ing him and get­ting to chat with him a cou­ple of times dur­ing the […]

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Refresh06

November 14, 2006

I am really excited about attend­ing three day Web con­fer­ence here in Orlando. It is going to be great to pull back and focus on devel­op­ing my Web design and devel­op­ment skills. Tomor­row I am tak­ing 2 crash courses, CSS Mas­tery with Andy Budd and Under­stand­ing AJAX with Jeremy Keith. Andy’s book on CSS Mastery […]

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