I designed MyToothTrip.com, and I must say the owners were great to work with.  They knew what they wanted, had examples of sites they liked, and even knew the content they intended to use.  It made designing for them a real treat!  Check their site out and tell me what you think.  It was Joomla-based.

My friend Jamie, owner of ThePataCakeBaby.com, is opening a new site, so we’ve been toying around with look/feel ideas.  The store will be Baby Cottage Gifts, so here is a jpeg of a potential header:

Cottage, Trees, Flowers, Grass, and Sky

I’m pretty sure we’ll go a different way, but I wanted to point out that this was all done by hand with vectors.  Jamie asked me, “Where did you get the little graphics?”  Well, I made them!  Ha!  And I did them fairly quickly too.  I’ve been brushing up on my vector skills and I’d say I’m improving.

I have some SEO work to do by Friday, some work for Carrie, and of course the site for Jamie.  And–eventually–I really need to redo my OWN site because I haven’t left enough room for all my portfolio.  I am in a graphic design community on Livejournal and lately there have been a lot of discussions on portfolio display styles.  I want to go back through all the posts and get a clear idea of how I want my portfolio to look, then I’ll redesign my site that way.  For people who are evaluating me as a potential web designer, the portfolio is the most important part.

Also, in my spare moments, I am toying with the idea of designing templates for purchase for Wordpress, Joomla, and more.  I’ve become pretty proficient at these.  I need to look into how to go about integrating a shopping cart with my site, or setting up a second site with a shopping cart for immediate graphic and template purchase.  Perhaps this is down the line!  But it’s something on my mind.

Navigation

• Left-aligned the text in the left-hand column
• Decreased the width of the left-hand column
• Increased the line height of the text in the left-hand column
• Added a hover-over color to the text of the left-hand column
• Added the “Information” menu as a horizontal menu in the footer
• Added key menu items across the top in the turquoise bar, under the banner
• Changed header image to return user to homepage

Look/feel

• Added Posh Mom sticker and Paypal button to banner image
• Made the banner about 20px shorter
• Made a “favicon” and uploaded it to the server

I’ve also just finished up a round of graphics that will go into a flash inset in the same site.  They aren’t ready yet, however, because we need to firm up what offers will go in the bubbles.  When I have it finished, I’ll post it!  (This is really fun stuff for me…how many other mothers get to fiddle with code and graphics while their babies nap?  I’m so lucky!)

That brings me to another point:  our parents’ generation, the baby boomers, overhauled American culture in a major way.  It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that my generation has done the same, and at times we are guilty of ignoring useful knowledge because it’s not presented to us in our language.  “Oh, what’s the website for it?” is a common phrase.  No matter what you’re presenting to us–even if it’s for our own benefit–we want to see it in pixels before we digest it.  To stay current, companies and even individuals have to have a web presence.  And yet, as web browsers become more accomodating to graphic needs, it becomes more and more difficult to get a good site up and going.

Is it worth the considerable time for the average person to become a fantastic web developer and graphic designer, just to have a web presence? I think perhaps not.  It’s common for people to think, “Well, I read a lot of websites, I could design one myself!” and then find themselves throwing their laptops across the room in frustration hours later.  It makes so much more sense for folks to do what they do well and hire a reasonable web designer to do what they do well.

Thepatacakebaby.com is smart–focusing on their customer service and inventive baby designs, rather than spending months learning code.  Their website isn’t the entirety of what they do–it’s just one way they connect with their customers.  I’m pleased to contribute to a company I like so much.

Ha!  You’ll get this if you’re a webby person…if you aren’t, it’ll just confirm your suspicions:  yes, CSS-ers are a dorky, dorky bunch.  Here’s where I found this comic.

Just felt like fiddling around a little with drawing water bubbles from scratch (see above for my results).  Lately I’ve been challenging myself to draw all my own vectors…it’s fun!  And I can change sizes of objects without pixelation.  My husband has an extra wide-screen monitor, and any day now we are going to get another video card for my desktop so that I can have not one, but TWO wide-screen monitors.  Any day now.  Annny day.  (tick tock!)  Can you tell I’m anxious?

In the meantime, I’ll have to get by with one.  Next I’m working on converting photos to vectored 3-D graphics.  Gosh, that sounds like it has some depth to it.  Perhaps I should grab a cup of espresso?  YES.

Roast: Espresso blend, Boca Java

Style? Doubleshot, sweetener

Number of the day? Two!

I’ve been having a great time drumming up this new coffee-themed site.  I have to be careful not to stare at it in the evenings, though, or I start craving more java.  I have to limit my coffee intake to mornings and early afternoons, otherwise I’m up all night.  In any case, I started this theme a few days ago, so I’d say that three days from beginning to end–while watching a toddler 24/7–is pretty good.  Once I finally nailed down the theme that felt comfortable, it was easy peasy to create and code.  Mmm, I love a good clean CSS in the morning.

My friend Carrie, owner of Zarily Jewelry, dropped off some jewelry for me to photograph.  I have my new digital camera–a Canon Xi–and I’m excited to get some shots.  I photographed some of the pieces previously, but there was too much directional light and it created awkward shadows.  There is definitely an art to photographing fine jewelry.

Once I get better shots, I’ll put them up on her site prototype.  When we’re ready to unveil it with some products, I’ll be sure to post to let you all know!  I am really enjoying working on her site.  She’s been great about giving me examples of sites she likes and the attributes she appreciates about those sites.  I created her logo off a particularly lovely piece of jewelry she designed, and the color scheme just popped into my head as I was toying around with her signature crimson.  To keep the site light and airy, we’ve gone with a salmon-peach dithered blend on white and black.  It’s feminine, but strong and clear-minded–a bit like Carrie herself.