Working with a team

In the past my experience working with other designers/developers has been limited. I now work directly with programmers as well as a few graphic designers from time to time. Having like minded people to bounce ideas off of has helped me think differently about how and why I do things as I’m designing.

As a freelancer my only source of feedback was from the client and anyone in my Twitter feed who took notice of my project. Feedback is crucial in this line of work because it’s very easy to get lost in what your doing and lose sight of the big picture.

Designing with less restraints

During my first big project with the company one of my interviewers had commented that my work was looking better than what I had in my portfolio. The reason for this is that a majority of my clients were interested in web design packages that were competitively priced.  With keeping things competitive I could only produce a limited number concepts. I’m now in an environment where I am free to conceptualize my ideas.

In conclusion

Making the switch from freelancer to full time employee has been a great move for me personally. It’s shown me that on my previous career path that I could not have gotten as far on my own as I have now. I feel more challenged now than I have in the past six months and I feel this is where I need to be. If I were to have chosen full time freelancer over taking a position I think I would have had to work even harder to keep from becoming stagnant. I see how important it is for freelancers to network and take on bigger fish than they’re used to.

I’d love to hear your comments or questions, thanks.


body {
     background-color: #000;
     color: #fff;
}
 
#container {
     height: auto;
     width: 960px;
     margin: 0 auto;
}


If using Adobe Dreamweaver’s Source Formatting it will appear like the above. Now when I started getting into WordPress style sheets I found that some authors would code a little different.


body {background-color: #000; color: #fff;}
 
#container {height: auto; width: 960px; margin: 0 auto;}


This code writing style is a result of the WordPress coding environment. Since your probably at some time or another going to be modifying your style sheet through the WordPress Admin you won’t be able to use the Tab key in order to space your properties below your selectors. Even though this is a coding style that is a result of problem solving around the Tab key function, it also has some things I find attractive about it. This technique significantly reduces your lines of code. Since the code is being entered in a horizontal orientation you also benefit from heavy vertical scrolling. The first example I find much easier to scan through to find the desired selector.

The last thing I want to touch on is order of the properties. When I first start writing a style sheet I try to organize them but I sometimes end up breaking that order. I always try to keep related things together like dimensions, visual elements, sorting functions etc. In some of the books I read they recommend having multiple style sheets like one for appearances, fonts etc but I just don’t find that to be very efficient sometimes.

In conclusion I use a combination of these two methods. If a selector only has one property below it for example…

p {
     padding: 10px 5px;
}

I will sometimes make it one line like this

p {padding: 10px 5px;}

There is no confusion for me to find that property because it’s singular. Only thing I don’t like about making it one line is that it sticks out and is not consistent but I do like that it takes up less space. I am pretty particular and always striving to do things that make the most sense. Of course it’s going to work either way but I like to have a higher standard and good reason for doing anything.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, please leave a comment if you have something to contribute. Do you use the first or second example?

The site is built on a WordPress install and I modified a free theme called ComicPress to my likings. Now that I’ve had a few months to see how this is going to shape out I’ve come to the conclusion that this blog style format is really not the best solution. Since these comics are not sensitive to time I can use them out of order without it making a difference. Recycling content is going to be a key factor because those unfamiliar with the site aren’t going to dig three pages back unless they’re really seeking it out.

So after finding some sources of inspiration I have created a new concept which I am hoping to improve upon some of the things I have mentioned. We (The other authors and myself) have also talked about expanding the site to include videos, store front and possibly a blog. So below you can see that we have the current design (top) and the new concept design (bottom).

Header

The old design is dark and doesn’t reproduce well between monitor settings, so in this new design I made improvements to the look and play of the navigation. The site will grow by two pages and I think this works well.

Content Area

One thing I’m not happy with in this new design is that the comics are roughly 40 pixels smaller in width. Not a huge loss but a reduction is a reduction. The content to the right of the comic is going to go through some changes as I’m not happy with it at the moment. I’ve thought about putting the comic title above everything else and running the width of the content area. I do like the new look of the highly visible social media button which will illuminate into their respective colors upon hover. The images below the main comic will be a gallery of old comics that scroll to the right.

Footer

The footer will be the new home of the twitter feed. Some other ideas could be to post a user submited #pissmeoffand tag line and possibly have the users vote on it they like it or and maybe award the winner with a prize. The new blog post section at the moment works for me and helps get the new content up front.

So in conclusion I think this new design is going perform better and improve the look of the site. If you have any comments or suggestions I would love to hear them. I also might be creating a VLog of this process because I’d really like to share more of what I am doing for others to benefit from. Thanks!