I let this blog fall by the wayside!  I’ve been busy with work but haven’t taken the time to upload my latest projects.

I designed MyToothTrip.com, and I must say the owners were great to work with.  They knew what they wanted, had examples of sites they liked, and even knew the content they intended to use.  It made designing for them a real treat!  Check their site out and tell me what you think.  It was Joomla-based.

My friend Jamie, owner of ThePataCakeBaby.com, is opening a new site, so we’ve been toying around with look/feel ideas.  The store will be Baby Cottage Gifts, so here is a jpeg of a potential header:

Cottage, Trees, Flowers, Grass, and Sky

I’m pretty sure we’ll go a different way, but I wanted to point out that this was all done by hand with vectors.  Jamie asked me, “Where did you get the little graphics?”  Well, I made them!  Ha!  And I did them fairly quickly too.  I’ve been brushing up on my vector skills and I’d say I’m improving.

I have some SEO work to do by Friday, some work for Carrie, and of course the site for Jamie.  And–eventually–I really need to redo my OWN site because I haven’t left enough room for all my portfolio.  I am in a graphic design community on Livejournal and lately there have been a lot of discussions on portfolio display styles.  I want to go back through all the posts and get a clear idea of how I want my portfolio to look, then I’ll redesign my site that way.  For people who are evaluating me as a potential web designer, the portfolio is the most important part.

Also, in my spare moments, I am toying with the idea of designing templates for purchase for Wordpress, Joomla, and more.  I’ve become pretty proficient at these.  I need to look into how to go about integrating a shopping cart with my site, or setting up a second site with a shopping cart for immediate graphic and template purchase.  Perhaps this is down the line!  But it’s something on my mind.

Whew!  Just got done with a round of changes, both graphic and code, to a website.  It’s fun to see how well I can do, jumping into someone else’s template!  I liked it.  Here’s what I did:

Navigation

• Left-aligned the text in the left-hand column
• Decreased the width of the left-hand column
• Increased the line height of the text in the left-hand column
• Added a hover-over color to the text of the left-hand column
• Added the “Information” menu as a horizontal menu in the footer
• Added key menu items across the top in the turquoise bar, under the banner
• Changed header image to return user to homepage

Look/feel

• Added Posh Mom sticker and Paypal button to banner image
• Made the banner about 20px shorter
• Made a “favicon” and uploaded it to the server

I’ve also just finished up a round of graphics that will go into a flash inset in the same site.  They aren’t ready yet, however, because we need to firm up what offers will go in the bubbles.  When I have it finished, I’ll post it!  (This is really fun stuff for me…how many other mothers get to fiddle with code and graphics while their babies nap?  I’m so lucky!)

Whew!  I’ve been helping a client improve her e-commerce site, and I have a newfound appreciation for the struggles of the average website owner!  Her site–thepatacakebaby.com–is powered by ShoppePro, and while it’s a pretty good platform, it’s quite difficult to tweak the look and feel of a site.   If it’s confusing for me to flip through the options, I can’t imagine what it’s like for a total newbie!  She’s pretty web savvy herself, but I picture the struggles of someone who is new to the world of web CMS (content management systems).  Ouch.

That brings me to another point:  our parents’ generation, the baby boomers, overhauled American culture in a major way.  It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that my generation has done the same, and at times we are guilty of ignoring useful knowledge because it’s not presented to us in our language.  “Oh, what’s the website for it?” is a common phrase.  No matter what you’re presenting to us–even if it’s for our own benefit–we want to see it in pixels before we digest it.  To stay current, companies and even individuals have to have a web presence.  And yet, as web browsers become more accomodating to graphic needs, it becomes more and more difficult to get a good site up and going.

Is it worth the considerable time for the average person to become a fantastic web developer and graphic designer, just to have a web presence? I think perhaps not.  It’s common for people to think, “Well, I read a lot of websites, I could design one myself!” and then find themselves throwing their laptops across the room in frustration hours later.  It makes so much more sense for folks to do what they do well and hire a reasonable web designer to do what they do well.

Thepatacakebaby.com is smart–focusing on their customer service and inventive baby designs, rather than spending months learning code.  Their website isn’t the entirety of what they do–it’s just one way they connect with their customers.  I’m pleased to contribute to a company I like so much.