Nancy is a great reader
Posted on December 16th, 2008
She read her biggest word ever today–
“Wonderful”
She sounded it out beautifully. She is becoming an amazing reader.
Nancy
Posted on December 14th, 2008
Nancy’s drawing
Posted on December 14th, 2008
Perfection and lazy day
Posted on December 14th, 2008
2 hockey games done with, now we’re reading counterpane fairy and playing perfection.
The extra icons
Posted on December 3rd, 2008
I did a ton of icons for the project icon contest, here’s a chart of ones that didn’t make the cut:
the losers
Wordcast
Posted on December 2nd, 2008
Last night I was on wordcast, the podcast for wordpress users. David and Kym and I talked about the whole icon project. You can listen to the podcast at http://www.wordcast.com
Digital
Posted on November 22nd, 2008
You truly are a digital artist when you understand what a point is. I still don’t.
Just won the wordpress 2.7 icon competition!
Posted on November 17th, 2008
So psyched I won; I really busted my butt on these, and I’m glad it paid off. So happy to be involoved with such a cool project as WordPress:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/11/the-results-of-project-icon/
Logos
Posted on October 18th, 2008
I’ve given up asking clients for logos before just checking for them at from brandsoftheworld.com. I can’t fathom why every company’s logo ends up as a jpeg.
Trip to CT
Posted on October 13th, 2008
Just got back, it was fun and another landmark in my long string of trips down there. The drive bakc was great. The sunset coming down the 90 was very intense, augmented by a nice Annie Lennox channel on Pandora. I broke down and gave Nancy my pristine new Moleskin which she proceeded to fill half of up with her flowers and letters and clouds. Oh well, it kept her happy. Maybe she’ll be an artist, but lately she’s been saying veterinarian and singer so we’ll see.
Busy day coming tomorrow.
Code
Posted on August 23rd, 2008
I wish < and > were keys on the keyboard.
Victor is a cool kid
Posted on August 1st, 2008
It’s been great having him!
Summer cloud
Posted on July 31st, 2008
Watching a cloud move slowly across the summer sky
Rethinking web design instruction
Posted on July 30th, 2008
I’ve taught Web Design for many years now. I started out teaching students how to use the now defunct Adobe GoLive. I realized quickly that wysiwyg editors such as GoLive and Dreamweaver were effectively bad ways to teach students how to build websites, and moved into html and css.
I”m seeing a new trend in web design that may make me rethink how I teach it. It seems that the big open source CMS packages, drupal and wordpress, are taking over high-end website design. If your site isn’t built on one of these two platforms (OK, maybe there are one or two others), it ain’t cutting edge.
This summer I’m undertaking two major site designs, one in drupal and one in wordpress. The drupal one is finished: http://www.msja.org (assuming they’ve launched it). The wordpress one is under construction.
My hope is to gain a deeper understanding of how to build within these two environments, and begin to shift the focus of my classes from building sites from scratch, to starting with basic CMS templates. This fall, I’m teaching Intro to Web Design again, and my summer projects will definitely bear some weight on the material.
xmas
Posted on July 20th, 2008
Xmas in the 70s seemed warm. Maybe it was the smell of pine or what always seemed like bright sun outside. I liked all the electronic games we got.
Speakers
Posted on July 18th, 2008
The speakers are good, but it is hard to sit still for hours at a time. I like workshops much better.
WordPress
Posted on July 17th, 2008
So I spent the night getting the basics down of wordpress theme customization and as I figured it is easy, but there were a few hurdles. It was definitely easier than Drupal, and I think this will be my focus of study for a while…
Typography
Posted on July 17th, 2008
I’m at the typecon conference and a lot of people are talking about how to teach typography in the education forum.
My take: Tap into the love of typography students had when they first learned how to write. My kids all scribbled and stuff, but the revelation came when they learned how to write their names. Nancy, in particular, writes hers all the time now, and puts curly flourishes on the ends of all the letters.
Kids grow up loving to write letters–but usually not the letters they are forced to write by their teachers. They (the interesting ones, anyway) fill the edges of their notebooks with all kinds of funky letters and words.
My conclusion: every typography class should feature a section on hand-lettering. It could be structured like the kind I learned about in my workshop with Stephen Rapp yesterday, or more informal and experimental, like one I would love to teach. Once students reconnect with the fun of letters that they may have lost long ago, typography has hooked them.
The Circles in Powerpoint
Posted on June 18th, 2008
In the upper-right cornerof the screenare some little circlesarranged in a gridthey are different colors—maroon, sky-blue, tan They remind meof circles I sawwhen I was very youngvery tactileI could almost taste them
Swimming
Posted on May 28th, 2008
So I started swimming. Last night I went 3000 yards in an hour. Not bad for being out of it for a year.
I’ve always loved swimming on a certain level. There’s no impact, just a “plodding along” type of thing. People hate it because it’s boring compared to running or biking. There’s nothing to look at, nothing to discover. I like it for those reasons. With running or biking, you’re always kind of wondering how you’re getting home. You keep your eye out for dogs, potholes, cars… In swimming, there’s none of that. There’s just you and the 25 yards/18 strokes/6 breaths till you get to the other end.
When I was swimming a lot, I guess I was around 12 or so, I did long course at the local university. The pool was enormous. I remember having visions of the most beautiful lettering, it was green and blue and kept shifting from one word to another. I must have been really oxygen depleted because it was definitely an extraordinary experience.
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