BarCampBirmingham2 is coming up this weekend. It’s a gathering of tech-minded folk in town — from their wiki, “BarCampBirmingham is a user generated conference created around an open, participatory workshop-event, with content provided by participants. Those participating choose the session topics for the day and then present to each other. It’s free. It’s fun. It’s a great way to meet the local technology community.” — and for some reason I’ve decided to head a session on design for New Media (i.e., the Internet).
Not that I don’t know what I’m talking about - except, it’s one thing to be at the top of the game in a world filled with people that can barely check their email, and another all together to feel comfortable in a room filled with people that do this sort of thing every day, for a living (or worse, spend every waking minute thinking about information systems or programming or whatever their devouring passion is).
My biggest problem in doing web design is that — compared to everyone else in the field — I’m scattered. I’m not a techie, as much as the programmers and security guys and the engineers are, and I’m not a designer with a natural eye for graphics and layout and the like. I’m somewhere in-between, the classic ambidextrous divide, equal parts right- and left-brain. I’m trying really hard to convince myself that this is a strength — there aren’t too many people with strengths in both areas — but it keeps coming back in my mind that it’s a weakness.
I’m guessing most Jack-of-all-trades probably struggle with this.
I’ve thought about designing for the Internet a lot — touched on it once here, in fact — but I can’t manage to unscatter (I guess the actual term I’m looking for is “organize”) my thoughts. I don’t want to come screaming in with a list of problems and no solutions, but in the forefront of my brain that’s what I’ve got.
Any of you reading that do work with websites, or even read them — any thoughts or suggestions?
- BarCampBirmingham2
- April 12th, 9 AM to 3 PM
- Innovation Depot, 1500 1st Avenue North, Birmingham, AL / Google Map
For the second time in two days, I’ve upgraded Wordpress. You don’t know this this time because I’ve not changed the look. And soon, when I do change the look, you’ll think I’ve upgraded again, but I won’t have. Because I’m crazy sneaky like that.
Time to go hurt myself for a few hours. I’m back playing soccer once a week. I figured out that I can do this, because endorphins are good, and if you’re 36 years old and terribly out of shape, as long as you’re on a team comprised of other bartenders and bar regulars who smoke and drink as much as you, you don’t look or feel as bad as you would if you were on the other team. And going out to the sponsor bar afterwards for beer and burgers makes it all warm and fuzzy worthwhile.
Does this count as upgrading me to a new version?
Now listening to
Saigon Kick The Lizard
I don’t. Really. But the design on this teaser poster really jumped out at me:
Sure, I’m looking forward to seeing Gillian Anderson as Scully again, and hopefully they’ll bring back some of the quirky behavior to Mulder’s character that made the show worth watching in the first seven seasons (remember the Stephen King penned ceiling full of pencils?). But I refuse to get excited about movies anymore. If only they were more like this poster: simple, sleek, elegant, a little clever, and a whole lot intriguing.
I suppose when you’re making entertainment for the masses, though, it’s better to go for the in-your-face approach with lots of mindless violence and some big breasts thrown about for good measure.
Upgrading WordPress at 2:30 AM when you’re in the middle of watching GANGS OF NEW YORK.
Guess I’ll never know what happened to Bill the Butcher and poor little Leo DiCaprio now.
There are bookstores — I’ve been in them — that are treasure troves crossed with nightmares. You never know what you might find, but that’s primarily because you have no idea where to start looking — and gods help you if you are in search of something specific. There are boxes everywhere, on and under shelves that sag threateningly under the weight of piles of who-knows-what. Card tables are set up haphazardly, forming makeshift aisles. The walls of the maze are made up of even more books, magazines, and VHS tapes that probably have some vintage porn recorded on them.
Continue reading “Information Architecture”
As my work with third party web designers has expanded over the past few months (prior to now, I did the design work — along with the development — whereas now I’m primarily working to implement other people’s designs into a content management system), I’ve started seeing more and more one of the primary downfalls of the web as a medium to date. More and more, I’m coming to realize that designers (by and large) are either trained and trapped completely in a static medium (print, by and large) or — hopefully not the case — utterly incapable of thinking in dynamic terms.
Continue reading “On Dynamism”
