Web Design

Things I’ve learned and noticed about web design

{ELSE} Poster Design

September 27th, 2015

In {ELSE}, I pretty much do everything, and this includes designing posters for our shows. I don’t do much designing any more, so this is really my only design outlet. My wife, Ellie Jerow, takes all of the great photos that go into the designs.

Ad Design

September 19th, 2011

As a web designer for Journal Interactive I design dozens of ads a week in addition to working on larger projects. The below samples represent my favorites from the past two years. Read the rest of this entry »

Tap Milwaukee

May 3rd, 2011

A few weeks before Thanksgiving I was brought on board a brain-storming team as the lead designer for the next big thing the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was working on. The idea at the time was very nebulous, but the basic premise was completely overhauling JSOnline’s entertainment section and launching it as a new site. I was eager to work on the project, excited for the opportunity, and had no idea what I was in for. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Things That Will Save the Web

July 19th, 2010

Following up on last week’s post about things I never want to see online again, I’ve compiled a list of the 5 great new technologies which will help make those old atrocities obsolete forever. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Things That Need to Go Away from the Web

July 16th, 2010

The only thing worse than a friend overstaying their welcome is an odd acquaintance you never really liked overstaying their welcome. The same is true when it comes to web technologies and design practices. Some things are just so awful it’s tough to imagine them ever being conceived, much less sticking around for a decade. Here are the top 5 things I’d like to see go away forever. Read the rest of this entry »

New Project – Safe CPA

March 23rd, 2010

I’ve added a new project to my portfolio, a website for a startup Financial/Tax advising company in the Milwaukee area. The site was designed and developed for WordPress using my new design and markup framework. The project gave me an opportunity to  spend some more time in Illustrator, explore some new WordPress plugins, and work out the kinks in my framework (more on this to come).

Please take some time to visit Safe CPA.com.

WAMP, Framework, Illustrator, and CMSeses

March 5th, 2010

First of all, what is the plural form of CMS? Anyone? Anyone?

As part of the never-ending learning process I have decided to dedicate the next few weeks to a lot of projects I should have started years ago. To begin, I finally installed a working WAMP environment on my machine so that I can test server -side code, including CMS installations, locally. This should save me hours upon hours in development time in the future.

I also finally finished developing my own front-end web framework. It’s a hybrid of the 960 Grid System, my own default style preferences which I use in the vast majority of my projects, and 6 jQuery plugins which I always reuse. I realized after a while that I just kept running into and spending hours solving the same problems with each project I started, so I instead decided to work out all of the nitty-gritty details and create one clean web page with all the bells and whistles that works in all the major browsers. Now I should be able to just copy that source folder and apply project-specific colors and images and be done with most of the markup.

I’m also finally taking the time to learn all that there is in Photoshop and to learn Illustrator. I’ve never done vector illustrations before but as I’m doing more and more design work it’s becoming a dire necessity. I’ve only been at it a week and it’s been a bit more difficult than I would have hoped, but within a few weeks I should have the basics conquered.

Getting  more familiar with the various CMS systems available is also a major item on my to-do list over the next few weeks. I’ve been using CMS Made Simple and WordPress, and I’ve decided that I just plain don’t like Joomla. I think I’ll take a look at the latest offerings from WordPress and CMS Made Simple as well as checking out Cushy CMS and maybe Drupal. Does anybody have any CMS recommendations?

One Year

January 9th, 2010

Well, the blog has been live on this site for just over a year now. It’s crazy to think that at this time last year I had never touched any blog software, had not yet programmed any database interactions, didn’t even know what jQuery was, and could barely remember how to make a simple tween in Flash.

In this next year I hope to keep learning, get more involved in the local development scene, and maybe make some better use of this blog. Hopefully I’ll find the time to post some code tutorials and more snippets of wisdom.

Huzzah, it’s Finished!!!

August 7th, 2009

My two-month long redesign project is finally done!!! I spent a lot of time deciding what went  into and what would come out of this revamped portfolio/blog and I couldn’t be happier. I decided to take out things like detailed “About Me” sections and the “FAQ” page since nobody seemed to ever read them anyway. The “Services” page also went away for the same reason. I went with a hybrid thumbnails/large images approach to displaying my work on the portfolio page and made a simplified contact form. There were a lot of subtle touches and tough editing that went into the final design and I think it turned out rather well. Now that this is done hopefully I can start some more freelance projects and get back to more regular blogging.

Redesigning

May 3rd, 2009

This weekend I finished most of the work on the redesign of my techno band’s website. The site now features a cool abstract background, an improved audio player, and a lot of jQuery effects to drive the interface. I’m pretty excited for it to go live… though the server which hosts the production site has been down all weekend 🙁 I guess that’s what happens with free server space sometimes.