Jun 03 2007

Finally Making Progress

Design, Art, Friends 14 Comments

It looks like my plan to rid myself of designer’s block worked. I made five layouts in the last two weeks and am now more than halfway through my huge backlog of design projects. Go me!

The first three designs are grossly belated birthday gifts for my college friends. I was broke last year, so instead of buying cheap gifts that I wouldn’t want for myself, I promised to make new layouts for those who had blogs or LJs. I’m still broke, so the question is, what will I make for them this year? :P

Anyway, the fourth is for our group blog, and the last is a streamlined, resume-appropriate version of my portfolio. Check them out! Links and screen shots (as well as a few web design questions that I’m hoping you coding gurus can answer) are after the jump.

Bedpotato @ LJ — Chrissa went to London twice in the last several months, traipsing all over the city and molesting unsuspecting yeomen, Royal Guards and various other men in uniform. Of course I had to draw a cartoon and make a layout based on that!

Bedpotato @ LJ

Over Coffee & Tea — If you know Tin, you’ll know that she loves the color orange, caffeine and sweet desserts. It’s funny, because I unwittingly used the same shades of orange and a couple of the same accents (speech bubbles, hearts) that I used for the cartoon I did for her last Christmas. I only noticed the similarities after Tin suggested that I use that drawing as her profile photo.

Over Coffee & Tea

The Poor Princess — Ivy is crazy over stars, so her layout had to have at least one of them. I put in a dozen just to be safe. The suckiest browser in the world, also known as Internet Explorer, gave me grief over this layout. Look! One freaking pixel! ONE! I hate you, IE. Please die.

The Poor Princess

CWSO Blog — This is a long overdue redesign for the group blog I share with my college friends. The last time it had a new layout was way back in 2003… I think. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember. Check out the Wall of Shame! Life is so much more fun when you don’t take yourself too seriously.

CWSO Blog

nb.bottledsky.com — I’m in the process of rewriting my resume and I wanted a more formal and professional-looking portfolio to go along with it. I didn’t want to create a whole new site parallel to this one, so I just went with a simple, one-page showcase of my “recent” work. (A couple of the older screen shots are temporary placeholders for projects I’m currently working on.)

nb.bottledsky.com

Naturally I encountered a few problems while coding these layouts. I’m hoping you guys can help me by answering these questions (if you can):

  1. Does anyone still use IE 5.5? How concerned should I be if a layout looks like shit in it?
  2. Do you know of a script similar to Lightbox that doesn’t act up in Opera?
  3. Is there a max-width hack for IE that won’t invalidate my CSS? I used width:expression(document.body.clientWidth. > 800? "1000px": "auto" || document.body.clientWidth. < 900? "770px": "auto"); for the CWSO Blog. It works, but it doesn’t validate.

That’s all for now. Hopefully, if I slave away for another week, I can finish the rest of my pending projects. It’s crunch time, and my inner crammer is loving the challenge. The rest of me just wants to sleep :P

14 Comments

  1. Tobey 06.03.07 #

    galing galing! :D D

  2. Ashley 06.04.07 #

    Yay for you! No more designers’ block! I love the design of your resume and I think my favourite layout there is the “Candylover” one. *love*

  3. Angel 06.04.07 #

    super adorable illustrations, ahlavett!

  4. Amanda 06.04.07 #

    Oh they’re lovely…as always. :) I am totally envious of your drawing skills and colour choices…wanna somehow pass some talent this way? :P

    I think I like the portfolio design most.

  5. izza 06.04.07 #

    I love that it’s our picture that’s plastered on the screenshot of the CWSO page. xD

  6. Rafia 06.05.07 #

    I always love your layouts, always so cute and pretty! These are certainly no different.

  7. Skye 06.06.07 #

    how about highslide? or maybe try a thumbnail viewer instead for wordpress (i use this on my blog). i find highslide, lighbox, and all those flashy stuff too annoying nowadays. and it’s kind of heavy on the bandwidth too.

    you’re talented at making layouts!! i have one question, how do you choose a color scheme? i’m so stupid at that.

    the screenie made me laugh lol one friggin pixel!! i code my design (note singular form here) at firefox, and when i looked it up at IE, lo and behold, a nightmare, had to fix it!!! it’s really a pain in the arse if you ask me.

    i love the bed potato theme a lot!! maybe by my third layout, i’d be ask good as you! (wishing… *rolls eyes*)

  8. Nikki 06.06.07 #

    Thanks for the great feedback, girls! :D *squishes everyone*

    Skye, the thumbnail viewer plugin is exactly what I want. Much simpler and it works in Opera. Thanks for suggesting it! I’d have to upgrade first, though, because I’m still on 2.0 :P I’ve been putting off upgrading for fear that I’ll break everything LOL. But I’ll definitely switch to that once I do upgrade.

    I don’t really have a method for picking colors. Sometimes a color combo catches my eye while watching TV or leafing through a magazine, and I’ll use it for a layout. Most of the time I just make it up as I go along. I tried using those online color schemer tools before, but they don’t work for me.

    maybe by my third layout, i’d be ask good as you! (wishing… *rolls eyes*)

    But you are a lot better than me, considering it’s only your second layout. My second layout was so far away from being as good as yours :P

  9. tyler 06.07.07 #

    Nikki, if you like, I can email you a link where you can download my thumbnail viewer plugin that works with WordPress 2.0. Just send me an email.

  10. katherine 06.07.07 #

    ashley, it’s my favorite layout too… *hugs nikki*

    wow! i like your portfolio! and you’ve included the children’s book you made! yay! :D

  11. Nikki 06.07.07 #

    Kats, are you sure it doesn’t look like crap on your high-contrast laptop? I’m sure the light blue looks like white on it :P

    Tyler, that would be awesome! I’ll e-mail you right now :)

  12. Kat 06.08.07 #

    Wow wow wow! I find designing for other people hard, to get their personality and taste and fuse it with your own style is a challenge. But you do it so well! I love all your designs :) Your portfolio is flawless, just beautiful! Well done :D

  13. Amber 06.09.07 #

    I am more than jealous of your graphic design skills. If I didn’t like reading your blog so much and wanted to return I’d have to thieve one from you. :P

  14. Nikki 06.10.07 #

    Thanks, Kat! :) I find it a lot harder to design for other people, too. The Poor Princess layout is a do-over actually. The first layout I made didn’t feel right to me and to the person I was designing it for. Her feedback helped guide me toward the right direction.

    Amber, LOL. It’s great to know that my designs are now worth stealing :D

Comments Closed

To minimize spam, comments are automatically closed for older entries. If you'd like to comment on this entry, please e-mail me at bottledsky@gmail.com instead.

<< Beach Trip: Now with Real Sun! Illustration Friday: Suit >>
eXTReMe Tracker