Most of what I’ve been doing with my time lately can be summarized in one word: learning. I’ve just finished Designing with Web Standards by Zeldman, and I’ve moved on to Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cedarholm. These books are both extremely easy to read and highly informative if you’re interested in web design (and in coding in a meaningful, accessible way). Next on my list is CSS for Print Designers by my friend J.D. Graffam, and I’ve been told that it’s pretty awesome (by J.D., of course). It’s been a fun past month or so, cramming my mind full of better practices and approaches in my own web endeavors.

I’m also planning on designing my first WordPress theme soon. The wife wants to self-host our blog soon, and we want to have a theme that fits all of our needs perfectly. I want to be able to make the theme myself, and I’m really pumped about this project. Plus, I’ll have the input of my client whenever I want and I know she’ll be brutally honest. This project will also help me learn PHP, which will be useful in future projects involving clients other than my wife.

That’s the plan, I’ll be sure to post updates in my process as well as links to how I’m learning to do what I’m doing. Have a great rest of the week kids.

With the way media is today (movies, music, literature) it seems like there are always more new things coming out than anyone can possibly digest. Media consumption is easy, but it seems I have to be super selective because if I’m not I may waste precious time on something that isn’t worthwhile. Are the raging rapids of today’s media causing us to lose sight of what it means to really appreciate something? Probably. But maybe the solution means getting out of the rapids and onto the shore. Maybe what I should do is more along the lines of fishing. Maybe I should just stand on the shore and cast the line of my interests out there and see what bites.

It’s annoying sometimes, the constant screeching of media, trying to grab my attention all the time. But sometimes I really enjoy being pulled lots of directions and being completely stuffed with a diverse palate of media goodness. Oh well. I guess it’s usually better to have too much than too little.

I just added Casablanca to my Netflix queue.

Here we go.

Q: How can CSS include animations if CSS is supposed to contains styles?
JD: The idea behind CSS animations is accessibility, not needing JS. Good point re: where does decoration end and behavior begin?
Re: CSS doesn’t have to be accessible, the content has to be accessible no?
JD: Good point. But do you disagree with having more than one way to skin a cat? Another thing to consider is what you want the cat to look like when it’s done being skinned…tools often determine results. Reminds me of the last paragraph of this article - http://24ways.org/2009/css-animations
Re: Back to the cat, I’d suggest different knives and/or scissors but I’d never suggest using the back of a hammer
JD: Depends on how the hammer is designed. If CSS3 supports animation, then isn’t the tool designed for it?

Q: What was the first webpage built using CSS?
JD: Style sheets have existed in one form or another since the beginnings of SGML in the ’70s. The CSS1 spec’ was completed in ’96.

Q: I would love to know the most straightforward way to create navigation using css. Sprites or no?
JD: Short answer is that sprites are fine for nav, but not required. You can just style the text to be pretty and use CSS3 for effects. If sprites are used and the nav is vertical:

HTML: <ul><li><a href="#">Home</a></li><li><a href="#">Contact</a></li></ul>

CSS: li a{background: url(nav.gif) no-repeat 0 0;display:block;width:200px;height:40px;text-indent:-9999px;}

And for hovers and pressed states: li a:hover{background-position:0 -40px;}li a:active{background-position:0 -80px;}

Q: What do you think are the most useful css3 effects for nav?
JD: I think that’s a design question, but border-radius, text-shadow, box-shadow and gradients (http://css-tricks.com/css3-gradients/) come to mind.

Q: How many housewives does it take to code a stylesheet?
JD: One, as long as she knows CSS.

Q: If you could add one feature to CSS what would it be?
JD: Great question. Vertically-aligned columns.

Well that’s all we got in this week. Next time will probably be even more informative, once the word gets out that there are free tips out on the Twitters for the taking. Be sure to follow JD (@jdgraffam) and submit some questions next time.

This morning and last night I have been wondering about my creative process. Or to put it more accurately, the development of my creative process. I don’t think I have any sort of specific way of doing anything, and I think that it’s been hurting my desire to create things. I have a great job, and I create stuff there, but it’s not the sort of thing that I would be creating if I was just sitting around trying to think of something to make.

I love illustration, probably because I have never made any money from it. But making time to sit down and create an illustration is hard, and that’s why I don’t do it more often. Maybe if I had a more solid process-like approach to it, it would be easier. I’m not necessarily looking for easy, but I am looking for a better way to start. Starting is the hardest part for me.

I recently read a book called Poke the Box by Seth Godin, and it’s primarily about starting. He says you should be continuously starting in order to finish (or “ship”). It’s good advice. He also said that people oftentimes have trouble starting because then they would have the possibility (or at times, obligation) to finish. I think that’s where I get nervous. Sometimes I won’t start because I am not sure if/when I’ll finish. That’s lame. I should stop that.

That’s all for now, I’ll go back and link to his book and blog later.

Lately I’ve been thinking about FourSquare, and whether or not I think it’s a good thing. My conclusion so far is that it’s a GREAT thing, but only on one condition: YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT. I like FourSquare much better than Facebook’s Places thing because it is much more private. I like having a separate friend list on FourSquare because I know that only those people are going to be able to see where I am if I choose not to share my location with Twitter (and in turn, Facebook). FourSquare is great because it allows you to learn more about your surroundings, even in a city like Memphis (that admittedly, isn’t the fastest to pick up on trends like geotagging). The badges are fun, and it helps me discover new places that are right around the corner that I never knew existed. I think it’ll only get better from here, as FourSquare is adding new functionality all the time. You can read about their latest additions to the platform on Mashable.

That said, there are lots of people that don’t know how to use FourSquare or any other method of “checking in” correctly. They are using these programs in such a way that their privacy is at risk. People I know check in at their homes every day when they get there. If someone wanted to harm them in any way, it wouldn’t be hard to do. It would be even easier to just rob these poor people blind: if they haven’t checked in, odds are they aren’t home. Or they’ve checked in somewhere else, and you know exactly where they live because they check in at home all the time. You can just click their home location and get directions right to their door!

So like all social media, you have to be careful how you use it. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an iPod.

The idea behind this new wave of posts is wonderings. I find that in the mornings, generally while I’m taking a shower, my mind wanders. I occasionally have brief but intense thought experiments that play out in my  head while I’m waking up from a dream, and they sometimes carry over into the rest of my morning. I always have about 30 minutes to myself before I have to leave for work, so I want to start recording these here as I can during that time.

Today’s wondering is about magazines. I’m sure several of you have a magazine that you either subscribe to or have access to that you don’t actually read. Mine is Business Week. Amanda has had a subscription to that one for awhile now, and neither of us are sure why. I’ve read an article here and there, but I mainly skim through them to see how they do their type layouts. The covers are always fantastic, and it’s obvious that they take that aspect of their magazine very seriously. They are always well thought out and extremely well-executed, and it just makes me happy to look at them. Several of their articles that I’ve seen recently also demonstrate an experimental but incredibly legible approach to type layouts, whether it be the title text or an infographic. Whatever firm is doing their layouts has really got it goin’ on.

This made me wonder about the main thing that I feel like we lose when we start digitizing magazines. It’s no longer about the cover art pulling you in. There are some magazines that have made incredible advances in the digital format design-wise (WIRED), but the drawback in my mind is that the cover loses importance. These digital versions of publications count on the fact that you’re going to be a subscriber, so they don’t have to worry much about pulling you in to their magazine “from a distance”. It becomes more about the brand, and less about the design. And while content is always king, I still want my content to work for my attention, to grab my eye.

There’s tons more to say about digital versus physical formats in the magazine world; but like I said, these are wonderings. No research-heavy, ultra-philosophical stuff here. I guess I’ll leave it at that.

Here’s to keeping this up.

I was planning on moving my blog over to my own domain about 2-3 weeks ago. Unfortunately, the blog theme that I am currently using is not available for free outside of WordPress.com, and I love it so I don’t want to use a different one. They do have a free version, but they took away most of the cool features that I love about this theme so that you’d be more inclined to buy the “Premium” version. Side note: I hate it when people offer a “Premium” version and a free version, but the free version is so bad that you wonder why you would ever want a premium version of something so terrible. It’s not that the free version of this theme is that bad, but they literally stripped out all of the features that took full advantage of WP 3.0. If I hadn’t been using the Premium version for so long, then I don’t know that I would’ve been interested after fooling around with the free one. End rant.
So, the plan for now is to keep writing on this blog until I set aside some dough to buy the Premium version of this theme. But here’s the main point of this post. I am going to start writing about my “journey” through teaching myself HTML 5 and CSS 3.

I am not as confident in my overall HTML/CSS knowledge as I would like to be, so this experience will also be about practicing and becoming more efficient in my everyday use of these markup languages. I think that this topic would be of interest to a lot of different people because I’m not some pixel native web guru who’s just learning new things for fun; I am (more or less) a “pixel noob”, as one of my friends likes to call designers that are new to web. I’ll speak in plain language as often as possible and really try to give whoever reads this an honest look into how this stuff works, what parts are difficult or weird, and where you can look to find resources for yourself.

My plan of attack:

1. Finish reading Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman (read about it here). So far I’m over halfway through, and it just makes a lot of sense. Read it.
2. Try implementing what I’ve learned into sites I’ve already made
3. Read Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm (read about it here).
4. Most likely, I’ll realize I’m still doing things wrong/weird/inefficiently, and I’ll most of the sites I just re-made.
5. After that intense relearning process, I’ll begin to really delve into HTML 5 and CSS 3. This is where the writing and sharing links on this blog will really pick up I imagine.
6. I’ll turn 50 years old.

So that’s the gameplan, hopefully I’ll be writing again very soon to share what I’ve learned. Oh yeah, I’ve decided to call this whole thing “Noob to Native”. You know, just in case there’s a book later. Ha.

As for Johnson, you can visit his movie review blog here. The beautiful images I’m using were taken by Aaron Phillips during the filming of the trailer, and I also want to thank Dave Whitley for the initial design. He did the promotional poster, which has been cropped down for the Home page image. The subsequent pages riff off of his use of scanned letterpress type in the background of the images. You can check out more of Dave’s stuff here: davewhitley.com . Enjoy the pics!

Home Page for Blood Feud

Project Page for Blood Feud

Gallery Page for Blood Feud

Drug War page with space for Google News

This first print is an Ode to Vader. I used the symbol for the Galactic Empire (in case you aren’t as big a Star Wars geek as I am) as a custom halftone to create a big red lightsaber in the background. I really liked this one, and the Ode itself is pretty funny. But I guess you’ll have to come see this one in person to know what it says…

This is a poster I made for the Haiti Poster Project. I produced 25 of these and sent them to the Project HQ, where they were then sold online as a way to raise money for the victims of Haiti’s earthquake. My message was that money is only a temporary fix, like a band-aid. The band-aid itself is custom half-toned with dollar signs.

This is a gig poster I designed to commemorate the event March of the Dead, which is when me and a few friends dedicate the entire month of March to listening to nothing but the Grateful Dead. We usually don’t force this on others, we mainly do most of our listening when we’re hanging out all together. This poster was also the first time I tried psychedelic lettering, which I had been wanting to try for quite awhile (Wes Wilson is my hero). This was the biggest run I did, ending with a few small prints of just the black and white skull and rose. I really want to do another gig poster for fun, because I really got into this one.

That’s all for now, have a good day/night, whichever applies.