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Archive for category Design

Ready to Roll

Dec 7

Posted by Mike in Design, Development, Inspiration, Personal, Wordpress | 11 Comments

I’m jumping back onto the wagon and hopefully getting my design and coding chops back in order. I will first need to upgrade my WordPress install and get a new place for the digs but not to fear that should be the easy part. I’ve at least got some inspiration to get designing on a new site for a band that we just started about a month ago.

Nothing special, just some over age guys with an excuse to play some songs and drink a few beers. Even so, it’s nice to be playing again. I also figured this would give me some creative inspiration to mess around with some site design again.

My thought is that I can at least keep a bit of a iterative progress check on how things are transpiring. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve got WordPress installed and set up in a new directory and done a complete reset of all the styles. Now it will be time to sketch out my ideas and then get to laying down some pixels. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I won’t procrastinate too much.

I’m gonna say it again.

Mar 6

Posted by Mike in Business, Commentary, Design, Development | No Comments

VerdeBook LayoutEarlier last year I wrote a post dealing with my frustration over the lack of cross browser and cross platform consistency when creating XHTML strict code. Well I’m back to gripe again.

Jesus! You would think that the single landing page that I designed over the weekend would be a snap to code. I tried to keep it very simple as I knew I needed to get the site for our VerdéBook out there this week. I had the overall framework down in about an hour. I was just tweaking and fine tuning things a bit and adding a nice ajax slide show type viewer into the overall layout, when I started to check out what things were looking like in IE, Safari and Opera (as I was already viewing it in FireFox).

Much to my chagrin it didn’t look all that great. In fact, my browser was actually displaying things differently than the same exact browser on another machine, running the same OS! I just don’t get it. I really love the idea of keeping compliant with my code, but does it really need to be that difficult?

I know that I am no code jockey so if anyone knows of a good cheat sheet out there so I don’t have to second guess my hacks or code, please let me know.

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Business as usual. No way!

Jan 8

Posted by Mike in Commentary, Design, Development | No Comments

Well, I’m still plugging away here at efotolab.com and I must say I am enjoying the ride. It’s always refreshing to me to be part of something as it grows. While the business is growing slower than we’d all like, it is looking favorable. As we had into the new year it will be challenging to rise above the noise out there and begin turn a profit.

The team recently sat down to discuss plans for 2008 that include among many things a website revamp. This to me is an exciting opportunity to really make a splash. Because it is an e-commerce driven website and has a lot of functionality supporting it, the information architecture and usability in my mind is the number one focus. Design is key, but is a supporting role. That said, we have a tall task ahead of us. With a lean team it is sometimes tough to maintain focus but that is my goal moving into this year.

Among other activities we have going on include advertising, adding new product lines, contacting customers, mass mailings, not to mention the day-to-day business operation activities. All in all, 2008 should be a busy year, but then again that’s how I like it.

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