When I think about a site design, I draw it out. Then, if it needs complicated imagery I go and make those images. The actual design part is never moved any further than paper, no photoshop mocks, just a pencil sketch. I code design.

For this site, I drew out the initial idea and I went straight to textedit, photoshop comes afterwards and is only for the little things like the content highlight image. Of course, this presents a problem when dealing with clients, who would rather have many photoshop mocks than anything else. They are wrong. It takes me much less time to code 3 templates in CSS/xHTML as long as I cut out the photoshop stage. If I go through the entire, well used design process using mocks etc, then it quite easily triples the time. But the simple fact is, it makes the final product worse.

Most designers I know have a simple process: pencil sketch >> photoshop mock(s) >> xHTML/CSS design to code >> extras/revisions. To me, it’s wrong. I work like this: pencil/pen sketch >> xHTML/CSS framework >> photoshop bits (if needed) >> full site >> revisions/extras. Thats it really, a slight difference but it just seems to work better. If you start with code then you can get the layout and see the basic idea before you begin to design.

…and those are my thoughts for the day. I’ve been a little slack on posting lately, I have my GCSE’s starting in three days so it’s been all work no play   Good luck to all those taking they’re GCSE’s too.

I’ve always had a dream, to have only one site, one url for everything I host. A site to contain:

1. My company
2. My hosting company division
3. My blog
4. My new script (Stat Monster)
5. My ‘hub‘
6. My CSS gallery

I believe that’s it currently. I would just love to have them all under one site, one directory, one design. Of course, that would be really stupid. But from an organization point of view, one site with other sites based as subdirectories is best right? Having one header file, one footer file, one design to manage, one site for people to visit. Yeah it would have benefits but would it be better than multiple domains like the current set up?

the now

Currently on the web most people who have multiple sites or types of content to host, use multiple domains/designs/sites. I have it too, as shown above. The closest site I can think of to what I want is google. They have everything or almost everything under one general design and one main domain. Yeah, they have a billion domains but they all redirect to directories or subdomains of google.com. I can see that from many point of view’s, this is a much much better way of organizing data. As for everyone else, people seem to choose one of two routes: having a ‘hub’ with all their sites branching off that site. Or, simply having multiple sites. For some reason this set up just annoys me.

What d’ya think?

Before a thousand design changes ago, I had this design. A simple clean, thin, one column design with a small grey box in the middle for content. Well, now I have it released to the public, as a wordpress theme. It’s very simple and I wasn’t going to release it but after being asked a few times I have done.

Download | Test Run

So recently I’ve been upping my photoshop skills. Inspired by a discussion on Mint Pages I have decided to have a go at icon creation. Why not? I’ve never really considered making icons before, not because I didn’t want to but because I’m lazy and just use the same set everyone does. With some idea as to how to go about making icons and a nice little helper, I plodded on an popped open the ol’ photoshop.

creating ‘blobs’

So I made my first icon, a little man. Well, a man zoomed in 1000 times. At scale of 1, a blob. Making icons viewable (especially at such a small size at 16px*16px) is close to impossible. Normally in photoshop I never fill the canvas, I like a little space to the side of my work, a little ‘relaxation’ space. You can’t do that with icons, your pixel by pixel creation has to touch as much side of the canvas as possible, or it’ll be a blob.

I think that these days, with so many great icon artists around, designers and normal internet users just take them for granted. We just assume that these icons are made with no effort and it’s as simple as that. You’re wrong, I was wrong, we all were wrong. Each and every icon requires at least half an hour to get right (well it does for me – and mine aren’t perfect). Each and every icon also requires great care and skill to complete (which is why mine are rubbish).

the result

My attempts (can you guess what each is?):

Normally I don’t post recycled stuff from Digg, but this time I had to. It’s always a wonderful thing to see your most hated company taking ideas from your favourite:

Well after many days of decision making and planning, me and Matt have got ourselves some servers (well one for now). We plan to start the Brain Hub Network on these servers (the Brain Hub Network is our new hosting company). Hence the new domain (actually, it will be back to the old one once I figure out the problem with the nameservers, very annoying that all my domains EXCEPT politicalmonster.org transfer successfully). Thats just a quick news update for ya, more info coming later when we get the site up and smooth out all the errors and issues that come from moving everything. Stand by…

In the previous post I was referring to the new server I am hopefully moving to. I’ve been with ASO for half a year now and they are amazing, the best shared hosting ever. However, that word, shared, that’s the problem for me and Matt. We’ve both decided it’s time to move on, to expand to our own vds/vps server (hosting that acts like a dedicated server, but many one one machine). So it’s still sort of shared I guess, but we get full, root control. We can install what we want, when we want and where we want. It’s all under our control. Sadly, this comes at a cost. Me and Matt have agreed we’re going to both put in $15/month towards the server but that only makes $30/month.

We have two one plan lined up. We are looking for similar people like us, sick of shared hosting. We want you to join us. Basically you change hosts. On top of that you can if you want become a server admin and a member of Kerplunc, which is just a cloud company for all the projects ideas we create, together or separately. Below is the specs of the two plans we are looking at and, at the bottom, the price with number of others we need to join at $15/month. Offer less if you wish, but expect less space and so on. If you do go for the full $15/month, you can either just get hosting, as if you had just changed accounts or, you can become and admin, equal to me and Matt and then be a member of Kerplunc and join in on whatever projects you want etc etc (we would prefer this).

This is also another chance for those who originally expressed interest in Kerplunc after we were full. So, hate sharing with thousands? Come share with tens…

The plans

serversharks.com plan 2:
1. 30gigs space
2. 450gigs bandwidth
3. 100mbit connection for the server (around 10 vps’s/server)
4. upgrades available
5. new but recommended company
6. directadmin
7. 50% managed – they fix stuff and install apache etc
8. $30/month (we need no more people but want to upgrade a plan or two, so we need 1 or 2 people)

We have now purchased the server at $30/month, but are still looking for other people so we can upgrade the plan.

Update #2, we have now got our own servers after receiving poor and slow support with serversharks. Me and Matt have now started the Brain Hub Network. More coming soon.

Well, when I say storm, I’m hoping. Oh, and the title refers to this site…

‘Stuff’ is coming up, projects are nearing alpha launches, large plans are beginning to turn into action, servers are being questioned, hosts being cross-examined, servers preparing, control is coming, me and Matt are waiting.

If you can make any sense of all that, well done.

Hi everyone, today is the official CSS Naked day, and that’s why my design has vanished. Never fear, it’ll be back tomorrow.

So, whats the point in this whole ‘get naked’ thing’? Well I’ll just let the site explain:

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>.

Enjoy!

It’s really strange this blog, my writing style has changed. From long, boring spews of rubbish I am writing more fluid and snappy paragraphs of quick (hopefully interesting) info. That and the fact I’ve actually been writing something, yes, well done me

Design Something

I’ve finally got my act together and given up redesigning (except my Virb page – despite the previous post). Instead I’m now working on personal projects, other peoples designs and improving my design skills. My most recent piece on photoshop is a little idea I had. It means nothing and is not meant to:

So anyway, thats my most recent work, before that I made a little poster called ‘Drugged Society’ (big image):

That it then, hope you like my new works, I guess this post was a little random, but hey. It’s still hasn’t got a title either.