Saturday, April 9, 2011
4/9/2011
Vacation! You might know what that means - time with friends, no work deadlines, and finally a few uninterrupted hours to update my own website! Check out the print design tab for a brand new section entitled "Personal Work." New Client Work pieces are also slated to go up soon!
Thursday, April 7, 2011
2/26/2011
Notes from an actual potential client: "I found your resume online...do you have a portfolio online?"
*insert cricket noises*
Clearly if you found my resume, you either a) didn't open it, period or b) saw jenniferdipalma.com stamped everywhere linked to various projects, and chose not to visit it. I wasn't interested in the project - a retail website. I might talk myself into expanding my interests down the road, but for now, I quite enjoy my niche of medical, church, and artsy websites.
Today's thoughts: learn to read, America. If you can't bother to read my resume, what makes me think you're going to read anything else I write to you?
*insert cricket noises*
Clearly if you found my resume, you either a) didn't open it, period or b) saw jenniferdipalma.com stamped everywhere linked to various projects, and chose not to visit it. I wasn't interested in the project - a retail website. I might talk myself into expanding my interests down the road, but for now, I quite enjoy my niche of medical, church, and artsy websites.
Today's thoughts: learn to read, America. If you can't bother to read my resume, what makes me think you're going to read anything else I write to you?
Monday, February 7, 2011
2/7/2011
I'm so guilty of not updating this thing. I was really shooting for one post a month in order to post my recent art activity. But I'm at an absolute standstill with my new WordPress site. I just can't decide what texture goes best with IT jokes. I will have to brainstorm some more. I normally don't sit on a project like this, but as it's just for my own personal amusement, I'll let it ride while I spend my time web consulting with clients who have deadlines and wait till I have a more appropriate time to study texture.
Here's my tip of the day: Web 2.0 on WordPress sites...it's over! Go send your rounded corners to someone who cares. I saw one of my client's 3rd party consultant websites today while I was surfing the networking, and it's just old and boring kids. Rounded content boxes are like rolling out of bed without showering. I promise there's some fresh-scented soap behind the door if you get off your themes long enough to draw something.
Here's my tip of the day: Web 2.0 on WordPress sites...it's over! Go send your rounded corners to someone who cares. I saw one of my client's 3rd party consultant websites today while I was surfing the networking, and it's just old and boring kids. Rounded content boxes are like rolling out of bed without showering. I promise there's some fresh-scented soap behind the door if you get off your themes long enough to draw something.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
12/19/2010
Ah, finally! I had a few minutes to sit down this past weekend, and with the help of Chris Coyier's wonderful videos on www.css-tricks.com, I learned the ins and outs of WordPress. I'm sure there are many more topics that could be covered since the tutorials didn't even touch all of the plugins out there, but for my purposes CSS Tricks was perfect because I am mainly interested in being able to design 1) on a blog platform or 2) just to give people an option to update their own websites if they'd like.
I might experiment around just a little bit this month with a WordPress site for myself. I've been toying with the idea of having a blog-style tech support website, mainly to laugh at my job and all of the silly things we run into at work. I'm still deep in my sketchbook right now and will make another post when I solidify a few things.
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In other news, the St. John the Baptist sweatshirts came out just wonderfully. We ended up switching from a hoodie sweatshirt to a non-hoodie sweatshirt at the last minute to save money, but here is the artwork, that did not have to change from this switch:
(click for an up-close view!)
I might experiment around just a little bit this month with a WordPress site for myself. I've been toying with the idea of having a blog-style tech support website, mainly to laugh at my job and all of the silly things we run into at work. I'm still deep in my sketchbook right now and will make another post when I solidify a few things.
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
In other news, the St. John the Baptist sweatshirts came out just wonderfully. We ended up switching from a hoodie sweatshirt to a non-hoodie sweatshirt at the last minute to save money, but here is the artwork, that did not have to change from this switch:
All of the graphics for the sweatshirt are made out of a font named Gastada.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
12/2/2010
Lookin' good, Digestive Specialists of the Southeast! I'm very happy to post these guys live today; they've been one one of my favorite clients, and probably one of my better technically-driven sites.
http://www.dothangi.com/
I probably could have simplified the background images a little more--maybe just used 1 repeater for all the horizontal lines. I may go back in during the middle of the night one day and update that just for ease of sanity, but everything's running pretty smoothly at this time.
http://www.dothangi.com/
I probably could have simplified the background images a little more--maybe just used 1 repeater for all the horizontal lines. I may go back in during the middle of the night one day and update that just for ease of sanity, but everything's running pretty smoothly at this time.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
11/20/2010
5 kinds of fun is what's going on these days. I never fancied myself an archdiocesan designer, but it's just plain coincidence that 2 churches and a youth group in Alabama have all contacted me for design needs. I finally got to play around with jquery for both sites...I truly love the slideshows we can build with jquery.
Speaking of slideshows, it's pretty funny and timely that I got an irritated phone call at work the other day. Some SEO consultant was pretty peeved that her client's slideshow was built in Flash, so she couldn't tag the images. I'm sure I didn't improve the situation when I accidentally blurted out, "Well, seeing as how I used to be blind, image tagging is really only for the visually impaired anyway. Our company is otherwise not concerned with image tagging..."
Anyway, onto the fun stuff:
http://oursaviorparish.org -- Our Savior Catholic Church
I finally got to rectify a wrong here! Their website was built years ago in tables using a 100% width. These guys approached me a couple of months ago desperately needing a site with a fixed width that would fit on everyone's browser. We also redid the graphics to match the altar of their church.
http://southalabamacsa.com -- Sacred Heart of Jesus, Catholic Student Association
These are my favorite kids ever for breaking out of the box. It's kind of embarrassing that the main technology the University of South Alabama is sporting is...the frame. Seriously didn't we leave .htm pages at least 3 years ago? I know I ran as fast as I could. After some recurring difficulties with IT, we slapped on a redirect and moved the hosting to a Windows platform where I promptly indulged into the land of ASP.
We also had a really rockin paint party for the student center. It's always scary when the paint studio picks out the exact colors that I would have chosen.
[click on the image to enlarge!]
I'll have another post as soon as St. John the Baptist gets its sweatshirts printed. I always geek out when I figure out how to build an image entirely out of typography for a project. Sometimes there's nothing better than letters jumbled together. :)
Speaking of slideshows, it's pretty funny and timely that I got an irritated phone call at work the other day. Some SEO consultant was pretty peeved that her client's slideshow was built in Flash, so she couldn't tag the images. I'm sure I didn't improve the situation when I accidentally blurted out, "Well, seeing as how I used to be blind, image tagging is really only for the visually impaired anyway. Our company is otherwise not concerned with image tagging..."
Anyway, onto the fun stuff:
http://oursaviorparish.org -- Our Savior Catholic Church
I finally got to rectify a wrong here! Their website was built years ago in tables using a 100% width. These guys approached me a couple of months ago desperately needing a site with a fixed width that would fit on everyone's browser. We also redid the graphics to match the altar of their church.
http://southalabamacsa.com -- Sacred Heart of Jesus, Catholic Student Association
These are my favorite kids ever for breaking out of the box. It's kind of embarrassing that the main technology the University of South Alabama is sporting is...the frame. Seriously didn't we leave .htm pages at least 3 years ago? I know I ran as fast as I could. After some recurring difficulties with IT, we slapped on a redirect and moved the hosting to a Windows platform where I promptly indulged into the land of ASP.
We also had a really rockin paint party for the student center. It's always scary when the paint studio picks out the exact colors that I would have chosen.
[click on the image to enlarge!]
I'll have another post as soon as St. John the Baptist gets its sweatshirts printed. I always geek out when I figure out how to build an image entirely out of typography for a project. Sometimes there's nothing better than letters jumbled together. :)
Saturday, October 16, 2010
10/16/2010
So, did the new Gap logo inspire anyone else to buy some real estate, or maybe open up a 401k? I personally thought it looked like an advertisement for a financial institute! Its implementation and subsequent retraction spelled out 5 kinds of hasty. I spent days complaining about the sloppiness of swapping out 1 logo on the website while completely ignoring the fine details of things like the favicon, existing .jpgs on the site that used the old logo, and so and and so forth.
But you know what?
I visited the Gap website at least 5 times that fateful week.
I've never been to the Gap website, let alone taken the time to browse their clothing section. Ultimately I'm not a shopaholic, and therefore have no need for their trendy sweaters, but what a way to generate some talk and maybe even some sales.
I doubt I condone it if that was the sole purpose. "Hey, let's upload something ugly just so we'll get a few more hits." As an SEO advisor, I constantly hammer home a message at work that bears repeating "usability and honesty." Generate content specifically for your users and not specifically for the web hits. But for this average Jane, a crappy logo got me to their website and shopping. Take of that what you will, and keep on keepin' on.
But you know what?
I visited the Gap website at least 5 times that fateful week.
I've never been to the Gap website, let alone taken the time to browse their clothing section. Ultimately I'm not a shopaholic, and therefore have no need for their trendy sweaters, but what a way to generate some talk and maybe even some sales.
I doubt I condone it if that was the sole purpose. "Hey, let's upload something ugly just so we'll get a few more hits." As an SEO advisor, I constantly hammer home a message at work that bears repeating "usability and honesty." Generate content specifically for your users and not specifically for the web hits. But for this average Jane, a crappy logo got me to their website and shopping. Take of that what you will, and keep on keepin' on.
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