lindsey bell » Blog

Window Pane Effect

lindsey — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:42:39 +0000

I came across two sites recently that create a sort of animated layered effect to really great results. Each approaches the effect slightly differently.

First is One Pause Poetry:

The

is a transparent PNG. When the user hovers over the tag words in the right column, a new background slides in. To me this is so successful because the site is rather minimal and the background effect ads some nice details.

The second is Bobadilium:

As the user scrolls down, the color of the navigation & header animate in to match the background of the current section. This site uses sprites to achieve this effect. This effect helps to show the user the evolution or navigation through the site.

Useful tool: TypeStacks

lindsey — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:07:24 +0000

TypeStacks is a tool that helps you figure out what font stack to use in your CSS. Input the font you want to use & it will give you the CSS necessary to include in your stylesheet.

As a huge fan of Comic Sans*, I had to see what would happen if I entered that into the search field:

* Just kidding!

First Speaking Opportunity

lindsey — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:17:31 +0000

Last night I had the opportunity to give a presentation at the Art Institute of Philadelphia on theming WordPress. It was the first time I’ve presented on something web-related outside of a class and I’m really happy with how it went.

Hopefully I can continue to refine my public speaking and presenting skills, as well as my presentation, and continue similar opportunities.

Just Released: Ocean City Magazine

lindsey — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:09:31 +0000

A few days ago I released the first of 3 sites for a client through my part time position at Chop Dawg Studios, Gone Native Communications.

Ocean City Magazine is a lifestyle magazine for Ocean City, NJ. They wanted a site that reflected the shore location, that felt modern and had some functionality including archiving issues and subscribing to the magazine.

The site runs on WordPress, which allows them to run a blog/news section, their issues section and an easy to update events listing.

Unfinished Mock Up

lindsey — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:26:12 +0000

I started this mock up for a client, but soon realized that I was headed in the wrong direction. I really like where it’s headed, so I’ll have to unearth it and develop it further and see where I can take it.

Tools: Photoshop

Fonts: Cabin, Yanone Kaffeesatz

March/April Links

lindsey — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:01:41 +0000

Some links I’ve been storing the past month plus:

3DROPS: I love the implementation of the lightbox. It takes up the whole screen and feels very immersive.

Gridulator: Create a png grid overlay that you can import into Photoshop/your design tool of choice. Definite the width of your grid, the gutters and margins, etc.

How to Move a WordPress Website using MySQL and phpMyAdmin: I’ve been doing a lot of WordPress lately and this is the best guide I’ve found for moving from MAMP to a live site.

Advice for dealing with design clients: Great advice. My favs – “Don’t call yourself a freelancer”, and “The client is not your boss”

25 CSS Snippets for Some of the Most Common and Frustrating Tasks

Enjoy!

Dyslexia Information

lindsey — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:40:03 +0000

Recently I’ve been seeing quite a few searches for the dyslexia project I completed for school course on web accessibility. I removed the project after I re-launched my portfolio to be less school centered & more freelance/professional centered.

Since it’s been getting so many searches, I decided to put it back online, viewable here. Documentation is available, which goes into more detail and lists many more sources of information. Please contact me for more information or for a copy.

On a personal note, I’m really happy to see it’s received a tiny bit of interest and can be of help to people. My brother has fairly severe dyslexia, so this was a chance for me to research deeper into how he views the web & how I, as a web designer, could make it easier for him.

February Links

lindsey — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:37:45 +0000

Starting this month and continuing, I’m going to create a list of links that I’ve discovered throughout the month. Mostly web design related, but also inspiration and other good things I want to share.

Web Design Resources/Blog Articles:

Inspiration:

Wildcard:

Music for me is a necessity, especially when I’m coding. For this month’s wildcard links, here are two music related links I’ve come across this month.

Site Relaunch

lindsey — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:44:47 +0000

It’s been a long time coming and I’m really excited to finally relaunch my portfolio. Prior to this, I’ve had the same static site, which was a bear to update and maintain. I’ve sketched out countless ideas on paper and in Photoshop, but nothing really stuck. Eventually I decided to jump in and just design in-browser – I wasn’t looking to do anything crazy that would require a lot of slicing images, so manipulating the structure and design in-browser made a lot of sense.

I still have some tinkering to do on the backend and a section for resources to add, but the site is about 99% done and most of the things left to do won’t be noticed by the end-user.

If you notice anything off, please contact me.