Fresh Portfolio

I stumbled upon this site recently. Although I am not crazy about the logo, colors or much else, I am liking the way the portfolio page is setup. I dig the way the designer took the websites and angled them in the box. Very refreshing.

http://geekgirlwebdesign.com/portfolio/

The Many Hats of the Designer

While being a Graphic Designer, I have been required to take on many different roles. I imagine many other designers have found themselves in similar situations.

For instance while being a designer I have had to play the IT person, feeling around aimlessly in the dark. This is one field I wish I knew. My tactics are much more hit or miss than applied strategies.

Another role I find myself in sometimes is web developer. Now, I love web design and consider myself a Web Designer, but when it comes to just hand coding, some serious architecture building, ruby and php I again find myself guessing. This field is so massive in itself, it takes a master to be able to do both design and development. Usually the two fields find themselves satisfied with friendly collaboration.

I have also been asked to design products. Product design consists of strong drawing skills with a touch of engineering.

I have also found myself behind the lens, whether it be moving or still. The most confusing part of this is that within these two fields there are many others. Such as prop designers, production artists and more.

Lastly, I find myself wearing the hat of the Illustrator or Flash Designer. I have a steady hand in both of these, because I need to in my field. However, my belief is that for the optimal solution to a project, an experienced Illustrator and Flash Designer should be consulted if animation or illustration is an integral part of the job.

Bottom line is we designers have to know a little bit (or a lot) of everything to be most useful to our client/employer. Although it would take a lifetime, if not more, to settle into all of these wonderful professions.

Design at its Best

I stumbled upon Phire Branding while researching design in my area. There is not a day where I am not researching design and absorbing all I can. By saying that I research on a daily basis, when I take the time to focus in on a particular designer or firm, it certainly means that I have found something valuable. Phire Branding's web-site makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It is so intuitive, as I feel completely in tuned while it displays its contents. It moves from left to right, from top to bottom, supporting my natural instinct to absorb information.

Phire Branding is Flash at its best. Their usage of the program is exactly why I am learning it. The site is so organic and seems to have a life all its own. With every click there is something new and compelling, while maintaining the consistency that is so essential in design. This site is fantastic, so much so that it must be shared. Here is an article about the firm if you would like to know a little more about them.

CSS Issues

When starting a style sheet everything seems to go fine. One thing I have to watch carefully is to connect each page to the same style sheet, so that's easy enough. However, an issue I am finding is sometimes I will try to set a style and it will not work. This dilemma leaves me guessing over and over again for long periods of time. I fool around with making the style external and even internal to get it to perform. This trial and error can leave me with repetitive and even useless code in my style sheet. So, these are the cliches I need to work out. When this happens I look in the code and I just can't figure out why it is not working. I am guessing there must be a style already defined that conflicts. I know the rule of thumb is "work from the outside in." That might be my problem too.