thirtyonethree

One of my interests of late has been to learn the fundamentals of design. I was really challenged by this after doing an all day seminar with Luke W at UI12 in November. Here are some of the resources that have been helpful to me:

• Site Seeing - Luke W’s book that covers much of the content of the one day seminar I attended. One of the things I got out of it was thinking about hierarchy on a page. Thinking through the hierarchy of content and then coming up with a visual organization on the page to support that message. I also liked the idea of thinking of design in terms of visual organization and personality (often what we call look and feel). I have been challenged to consider visual organization first and then to come up with a personality for the site that enhances that organization and the message that site is trying to communicate.
• Principles of Design series on Design Meltdown - I liked the use of examples from other Web sites that supported the principles discussed in these articles.
• Exploring the Elements of Design - I saw this in a Border’s bookstore in Boston while attending UI12. I have enjoyed going through this book. It is filled with lots of examples mostly from the graphic design realm.
• Universal Principles of Design - This is a book that Andy Rutledge suggested to me. I am looking forward to reading it. It contains short chapters on different design such as 80/20 rule, Fitt’s Law and Gutenberg Diagram.
• Principles of Design, Elements of Design, Designing for the Web, and The Principles and Elements of Design articles on Digital Web - good primer articles to get familiar with the principles and elements of design. This was the article that I first read and then wanted to go deeper.
• Contrast and Meaning - Article by Andy Rutledge

This is a story that highlights how one of the Web sites I develop is helping Campus Crusade to reach students by launching new ministries:

In North Carolina, a pastor’s wife emailed Campus Crusade’s staff wanting to start a ministry at Richmond Community College. By the time the staff met with her, the pastor’s wife had already established Campus Crusade as a recognized group on her campus, had 3 student officers, a faculty sponsor and a church partnership. As students stood in line at the campus bookstore to buy their books for the semester, the pastor’s wife was giving away flyers directing students to visit everystudent.com, an evangelistic Web site of Campus Crusade. There was also information on the flyer about a kickoff event that the ministry was having the next week.

When the Campus Crusade staff showed up at Richmond Community College to offer some coaching, the pastor’s wife had put together an outreach with a live band, 600 slices of pizza and an iPod that had been donated by the church partnership. To enter to win the iPod, students were asked to fill out a “30 second survey” that was downloaded from GodSquad. The survey generated over 100 contacts of people interested in small group Bible studies or knowing God personally. Over 60 students heard the gospel during the concert. GodSquad played a central role in helping to equip this pastor’s wife to begin the Campus Crusade ministry at Richmond Community College.

The choice of font is not exactly what you would expect for a headstone. Of course it does lend some personality that you don’t normally see in this context. Maybe it represents the person Mr. Morton. I’m not so sure it is the wrong choice.

From The Onion

Here are some resources I have been looking at recently to develop in the area of color usage in design:

• Pantone Spring 2008 Fashion Color Report
  
• ColourLovers - resources include a blog and color scheme generators
• An Eye for Color - This is a recent book I purchased that was recommended by Dynamic Graphics Magazine
• Pantone Fall 2007 Fashion Color Report
• Pantone Fall 2006 Fashion Color Report - the palette for this site came from here

I had some time to color correct some photos I took this summer at the Sweatsville Zoo. This attraction is a unique sculpture garden of creatures made out of scrap metal near Fort Collins.

I have been playing around with some techniques I learned at a Photoshop CS3 Power Tour seminar that I attended in October.

Check out my Flickr photo set.