Wonderful public-submission how-to site Instructables always has all kinds of contests going on, and with Halloween approaching, they unrolled a whole lineup of Hallow’s Eve themed contests. From costumes to jack-o-lanterns, they’ve got it all. But mostly, the photomanipulation one caught my eye. The deadline’s tomorrow, so sorry if you’re getting late notice, but I’ve been working on my entry for the past two weeks or so. Check it out after the jump.
Well, as some of you know, I’ve written poetry for some time now, including at an open mic last year, to a wonderful audience response. This year, the monthly events are starting up again, with the first about two weeks ago. Only this time, I entered in the poetry slam competition portion after the open mic. Here are my 3 entries…
I’m kind of a redesign junkie. I remember reading somewhere that the best designs come from something solid being tweaked and adjusted over time to streamline and refine it, and I completely agree. But most of the time I design something and leave it alone for months and months, and when I come back with substantial new material (or like this time with a whole new type of material to accommodate) I just decide to completely overhaul the whole thing. Maybe it’s therapeutic, maybe it’s just getting into the mode of the work. I don’t know what it is. But I like it. I don’t do enough web stuff constantly, so sporadic in-depth projects are fun to do every few months.
Over the last year I guess I’ve had a bit of a light-colored-site fetish. Both of my earlier portfolios are very white and light gray. Interesting.
The first one is more my style of portfolio site, much like this one, where I’m trying to show as much as possible out of the stuff I’ve done that I like. I like giving a full picture, with lots of information. And I’ve done a lot of stuff, and lots of different kinds of stuff, so I like being able to remember it and show it. Believe me, just in making this it’s been a bit of a trip, going through all my old work, having to find some of my old work I’ve put in storage elsewhere. Fun fun.
I’m pretty proud of the translation from design to completion for this site. It’s almost exact. The top left link caption idea didn’t work, but I’m fine with that, I actually like having the other two links up there better, and room for a third. The footer was an afterthought, but I like it. The image gallery doesn’t work correctly, but that shouldn’t be my fault. It used to, and does on other sites, so I don’t know why it’s not working right here. But the images are up and viewable, that’s all I need. Lastly, the end of each post is a little different, where it lists the ‘Class:’ it also says ‘Personal’ and ‘Freshman’ instead of having class and year separated. But whatever. I don’t want to fudge around until I get it right, it’s good enough now, and if I hadn’t mentioned these flaws I’m sure nobody would have been bothered. 
Note: The gallery functions work now, it was a simple fix, something I just didn’t know about. Make sure you leave wp_head() in your header file if you’re making custom WordPress themes.
These are various web projects I’ve done over the last year that reached various levels of completion. There’s an all-code layout, some purely design pieces, but the ones that made it to code were pretty cool I thought.
First, obviously, is my personal blog layout. I don’t keep up with any blog well, but this one was an accomplishment to build. You can see it in action here.
The grungy typewriter musician layout made it to HTML code but was never adapted to any kind of CMS or WordPress or anything.
The parchment-looking portfolio minisite I was really excited about, and it made it to code and I’m pretty sure to some sort of WordPress thingy, but I guess I never finished it. Not sure why I never ended up using it… I remember having trouble formatting text around the image of myself at the bottom right, so maybe that was it. But I kind of also remember ending up with a usable, finished theme from it. Oh well. Oh no I did finish it, I just found it . I finished an HTML/CSS translation of it, but never took it into WordPress. Not sure why, but the coded version right now works fine.
I got really into cooking a while back, and still am, so I mocked up the food blog layout. It made it through to HTML/CSS.
I really like the blue portfolio idea. I never used it because just thinking about gave me trouble figuring out how to adapt it into a workable WordPress layout. It would be really cool, and I’d be super proud of it, but I’m cool with something simple like I’ve got at the moment. I tend to get wordy too, so having something that works large and small is probably better than this one.
I’m very happy with this as far as a for-profit work. So far my personal stuff has been where I’ve pushed myself and my paid work had been kept to what I know I can accomplish. Part of that is probably keeping it within a relative budget, but still, I’m not learning, and I end up hating those jobs. But this one I approached with that in mind and made sure to keep it simple and straightforward, usable by essentially anybody with the password, but still making it look good.
It’s built for WordPress, just as a basic theme. Each post doesn’t have its own link, when you click on a category on the left, it brings you to the list of all posts in that category, without any permalinks. I’ve used that a couple of times to showcase lists of things that don’t really need their own page. For this site especially it worked because the dogs have very little information besides their main image, competition stats and small image galleries. And all of that fits just fine on a page of all of those posts. I believe pagination is activated, but she’s gonna breed a lot of dogs before that even becomes an issue.
The client was super complimentary throughout the entire process, and has thanked me numerous times in the near-6-months since I completed the job. It’s a good feeling .
Visit the site here.
