Gradients is perhaps part of what defines “web 2.0″, or rather, the current trends in web design as per the last few years. The problem that I’ve seen thus far is the abuse of gradients – while it’s fine to use them (I, after all, use gradients on my own site design), it’s not so fine to over use them, or to use them improperly.

Gradients can create a very visually appealing site which pulls the audience in – or they can be overly distracting and cliche’d. So let’s take a look at a few sites which use such gradients. Read more »

Today, I am trying something a bit different. I’ve put up a premade site under my portfolio; depending upon how much popularity this theme and the others I plan on posting receives, I will be considering creating a page dedicated to premade web templates.

Normally I charge $20/hour for a project; for a full project, this amounts to around $400+, though I’d say my average is around $500 depending on the amount of programming and changes requested. I allow clients to have an unlimited amount of requested changes, but at the same time, I do not work for free.

This theme in question is very flexible; its navigation can be requested to be placed anywhere (though I would suggest horizontally), and it can have contact information placed opposite of the logo. The image can be edited or left as-is, and because it is content rich, not only will it have a greater amount of SEO, it will also show flexibility for what one might wish to put in there; RSS feeds, social networking links, or even just more content about your company in general. Read more »

Well, I’ve finally done it. I doodled a panda, and I placed it on my site. It was bound to happen; I already have panda avatars on most sites, pandas on my printer, a panda on my keyring, I even turned my calendar to the one month that has a panda. And don’t even get me started on the pandas that populate the desktops of my iMac and my Macbook. If anything, however, at least I was able to just sit and have some fun with gradients and the other goodies in Illustrator.

And now I have this. A small experiment I did while procrastinating further updates to my site’s scheme and layout, and while searching for ideas for what to do with the site footer, which I wanted to redo. On an unrelated note, however, I do have something I’ve been pondering. Read more »

One of the biggest sins our society has made is its creation of lies. Lies and slander, even, concerning the educational system in particular. We tell our students that they are preparing themselves for life by getting their college degree, and that by getting this slip of paper after four years of work they will be able to step out immediately into the real world. Just check out the University of California sites – their way of enticing students to pay a higher price for their education is to show very exceptional students who are being hired right out of school.

The problem I have with this is my own experience. I have already learned for myself that the world does not work this way. Part of why I have chosen to attend college in a field other than design is that I know that yes the degree helps, but I also know that design is a very difficult field to enter into, especially without a very strong resume. Read more »

Apparently, many of the items from my portfolio appear to have disappeared from the Internet.

No matters. I will be working overtime this week and weekend to upload the screenshots which I kept of the designs in order to keep the completeness of the portfolio.

This is why it is always important to keep samples of work, even if one thinks that the domain will last forever