Final Critique

Index of pages from this semester.

Fall 2010: Update 11

This week I worked on a small portfolio I can take to interviews. It matches the portfolio site I've built. The book's about 8x8. It will be spiral bound, which makes margins a little tricky. I'm thinking if I leave half an inch on the side that's going to be bound, the contents should be clear. There's about a dozen pieces in the whole book, some from the internship I did last year, some from classes, and a few things I've done independently. It also includes a short resume, contact information, and a spot for a business card. This coming week, I'll have to make some business cards to go with the book.

Fall 2010: Update 10

I've gotten a finished website up on the Internet! I did some research on the best site for webhosting, and finally settled on ipage.com. The price was reasonable, they have lots of protection features to keep the site (and my information) safe, and they have a 24-hour live customer service department. That said, check out AttentionSpann.com to see my new portfolio site. Once I got it up on the Internet, though, I decided to make some changes, mostly in the color scheme, which means I've been introduced to the joy of managing uploaded files. That's a bit of a pain, but I can't really complain considering I now have a portfolio site up and running.
I've also started working on a small book to take to interviews. I've got the design down in my head; it's just a matter of getting it out and on the computer.

Fall 2010: Update 9

I've been working on my porfolio site this week. I started building some graphics for it last week and started assembling, as it were, Monday. There are five pages to the site: home, advertising, graphic design, resume, and contact. As of right now, there isn't anything on the home or resume pages and just simple contact information on the contact page. What's taken all week was setting up lightboxes on the advertising and graphic design pages. There were other ways to display my pieces on the website, but I decided I like the lightbox best because it lets people click on one piece and click through the larger images without having to click on another thumbnail. In addition to the lightboxes, I built a navigation bar that took some time. I'm pleased with the progress I've made in just one week. Check it out for yourself.

Fall 2010: Update 8

Toward the beginning of the week, I was looking for and trying to make sense of some css and html code for galleries and navigation. Specifically, these were code for navigation using tabs, which involves mostly css. You code the way the links appear differently than they normally would. I noticed that most of the examples and tutorials I found use lists to organize the links, which I would never have thought of. The gallery script I found was impressive, but there were a few problems. The first is that I can't make sense of it; it's too advanced for me to do anything but copy it. The second was that it has spotty cross-browser support. It works great in IE, but Firefox and Safari are tricky. So, it works in most browsers; it just works funny in most of them.
The last part of the week, I started working on graphics for a portfolio site. I want to build one from the ground up. I know you can use websites like wix.com to build and host a portfolio, but I want to build one using css and html (and as little javascript as possible) just to prove I can.

Fall 2010: Midterm Critique

Index of pages I've worked on so far.

Fall 2010: Update 7

I've been looking lately at the css zen garden website. So, this week I've been doing a lot of studying the code (html and css) written by the site's contributors. It fascinates me that so many different designers can use the same html and css tags to make such different designs for a page. The css and html is right there on the site to download because they want people to submit their css designs. I've been thinking that I could, perhaps, do something like the css zen garden for my portfolio website. I could design a few different css files and put links on the site. I don't know if that will be feasible or not, but it is something to think about. This next week will be a lot of reading. I got the book that goes with the website, and it looks like it will be really useful.