Designing Web Graphics

Job Boards

Sue — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:49:33 +0000

In this class we covered the principles of design, usability, and web design process.

These skills are important as you look for work in web developer world. The great thing about this field is that you can work with people from around the globe from your own home. Below are some great job sites that you will want to keep on your radar.

One important note about job descriptions. Many of these job descriptions are for front-end designer. What does that mean? Most job descriptions for a front-end designer include working with imaging programs such Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks with additional knowledge with technologies such as hand coding web pages (HTML and CSS) and JavaScript. Knowledge of some of the backend technologies such as PHP and MySQL are also desirable but are typically not required.

I hope this class has been useful for you and have a great summer.

Authentic Jobs – these site was created by Cameron Moll
Design Jobs on the Wall – started by the same guy who created web designer wall
Krop – This site includes a wide ran age of job offerings
Smashing Jobs – from Smashing Magazine
37 signals job board – from the 37 signals, creator of basecamp

Flash Wars Heat up

Sue — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:55:46 +0000

The Apple website posted a letter from Steve Jobs. It looks the Adobe/Apple war is heating up.

Steve Jobs thoughts on Flash

A Book Apart

Sue — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:53:14 +0000

The popular website A List Apart has a new subdomain called A Book Apart. The first book they will be offering is HTML5 for Designers by Jeremy Keith. This will be a good book to get to learn more about HTML5.

Flash Video Example

Sue — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:36:26 +0000

In the example we talked about encoding video and creating a video player

Web video template: Dynamic video playlist via the Adobe Flash Developer Connection
Using Adobe Media Encoder CS4 – via the Adobe Flash Developer Connection

Flash Inspiration

Sue — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:27:29 +0000

Flash vs the Animator by Alan Becker
http://levitated.net – a collection of Flash experiments
Homestar Runner – a collection of Flash animations with the Strong Bad character and others
Bembo’s Zoo – cute animations involving typography and zoo animals
Face Shuffle – via Monface
Colors in Motion - a presentation about colors

Flash Funny

Sue — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:17:26 +0000

Animator vs. Animation (Official version from ABS)

HTML5 & CSS3

Sue — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:46:17 +0000

I have created a demo page to showcase some new techniques you can use for using HTML5 and CSS3 in your web pages. Keep in mind many of these techniques may only work in some browsers and most likely will not work in Internet Explorer (ver 6 for sure).

Demo page

Adobe CS5 is coming…

Sue — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:39:31 +0000

If you are free next Monday morning, be sure to sign up the Adobe CS5 Launch event. You can sign up here. Adobe has released videos of some of the new features. Take a look.

Favicons

Sue — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:19:35 +0000

Did you ever notice when you load a webpage in the browser that an image will appear next to the web address? In some browsers this image will also appear when you bookmark a page.

This is called a favicon and is relatively easy to create. There are several favicon generators where you can upload an image to create the favicon but you can also create it in Photoshop or Fireworks as well. Follow the guidelines below when setting up your document.

Creating your own favicon

Create a new document 16 px X 16 px.
Zoom in and create your image. Keep it simple and use as few colors as possible.
Save for Web and in the save dialog box change the file extension to .ico.

Favicon Generators

This links shows the code necessary to display your favicon in the address bar.

How to Add a Favicon to your Site – via W3C

CSS and Background Images

Sue — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:00:19 +0000

I have posted some more content on my student site to prepare for Dreamweaver module. Today we will take a closer look at using CSS and background images. Remember that next week is spring break so I will not assign any new homework but I do want to review the HTML & CSS refresher.