Lovely Geek Design

Winter Portfolio Show

Cristina — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 05:10:22 +0000

Yesterday I went to my school’s quarterly Portfolio Show not only as a student but as an industry professional through my work.

Looking forward to graduating with these guys in June! Check out the work of this quarter’s web designers:

I can’t believe in 12 weeks it’s finally going to be my turn. Nervous and excited!

Database Concepts

Cristina — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 04:59:35 +0000

For my Database Concepts class our final was to build a photo gallery site . I created a small site called Photolicious. I created a similar photo gallery a few quarters back as a small project for Interface Design class, but this time I took the design and build further.

Users have the ability to sign-up, log-in, and upload and edit their own photos. In addition to creating our photo site, we really dived into database, learning how to properly write SQL statements and best practices for database management. Having this class alongside eCommerce this quarter helped out a ton in understanding the material.

eCommerce Site Design

Cristina — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 05:37:28 +0000

When I first enrolled in Art Institute I remember this one was of the classes I was looking forward to because it would involve learning something completely new to me that would ultimately help me in my industry. Prior to Art Institute when I was freelancing, building an eCommerce site was a service I couldn’t offer. Now, after taking this class I feel confident in my abilities to put together a fully functional eCommerce site for a small business.

For this class we had to make up a fictional business, design the site, and make it a fully-working eCommerce site. A friend of mine had a temporary small cookie business in which she used to help raise money to fly her and a fellow musician to a one-in-a-lifetime band performance. I developed her menu and then some into a small eCommerce site.

I used jCart as the shopping cart itself which works with Paypal. Probably the most challenging part of the project was pulling product information from the database and getting it to display properly. That and making sure I was hungry while working on the site. Empty tummy + developing a sweets site = not a good combo, haha!

I had used this site idea before to test out of another class, but the design was terrible compared to now. Overall, I’m really proud with how this project turned out.

Emerging Tech

Cristina — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:36:08 +0000

Emerging Tech was just exactly that: we dealt with emerging technologies in our industry. We sampled everything from HTML5 to Responsive Design to Augmented Reality. We also got into mobile app development using Flash.

When we found out about BlackBerry’s promotion to develop an Android app to get a free PlayBook, we worked as class to develop an app in time for their February 13 deadline. My teacher helped us put together a simple stopwatch app, and it was up to us to design it.

I had done a vector version of a George Nelson Ball Clock a couple quarters ago in order to make an animated clock using Action Script, so I recycled that design to make a Mid-Century Stopwatch.

By the time I got the app all ready to go BlackBerry extended the deadline, so we spent the remainder of the quarter working on getting it submitted. Most of us had submitted it on time, but we were waiting to hear back from them. It took 3 weeks to find out mine had been denied due to not being signed properly, so I’m trying again. We’ll see what happens!

Interaction Design For Entertainment

Cristina — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:17:25 +0000

This quarter I did a lot of mobile development. For my Interaction Design for Entertainment class I decided to design and develop a web-based iPad app for Pinterest. Seeing as there isn’t an app for it (it’s in development), I thought it would be neat to put together the interface I felt would make sense. Six Revisions had a great article, Designing Web Apps for the iPad, that I used as a resource to help guide me in the right direction.

I used the same set-up as the Twitter for iPad app. While I tried to find a jQuery/AJAX/Javascript version of the overlapping effects they use, I was only able to find the actual interface as if I was building the app. Instead I used iScroll to help with the effects and layout. I didn’t get the same effect that I initially wanted, but it had a template to set it up in a similar layout, which was very handy.

This was my first web-based app, and it was definitely a lot more challenging than I expected it to be. The API was unavailable, so I had to manually add images, which is why some of the images repeat. Plus I learned that a lot of web features may work in the browser, but they either work differently or not at all in a tablet browser. Hopefully once the API is released I can make it work in the future.

The Vendor Client Relationship

Cristina — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:08:48 +0000

This morning in class my teacher shared with us an awesome video that shows what it would be like if clients treated other professionals the way they treat web designers. It’s pretty funny, because if you’ve ever read Clients From Hell, you’ll recognize those clients in the video.

Blackout

Cristina — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:01:58 +0000

Today, Lovely Geek Design has gone black in support of Anti-SOPA Day.

“On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity.” – SOPA Strike

Articles to Check Out:

We code hard in these cubicles!

Cristina — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:32:29 +0000

This gave me a good LOL tonight.

In other news, tomorrow begins the 23 week countdown till I become a college graduate. Goodbye social life!

Happy Q*Bee Blogging Day!

Cristina — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:45:56 +0000

In addition to Lovely Geek being revamped, my fellow Quilting Bee members should take notice that my quilt is updated with a new layout. I’ve been a MIA bee for quite sometime (boooo school), and I felt what better to celebrate Q*Bee Blog Day than to get a fresh start!

For those of you wondering what this “Quilting Bee” thing is, allow me to gush about this wonderful club. The Quilting Bee is an online pixeling club that has been around since 2000. The idea is to create a quilt page along with your own patch and trade patches with other members, thus putting together a quilt of traded patches. You can see my quilt as an example. In addition to trading patches with other members, there are monthly activities to participate in as well.

I have been a member of The Quilting Bee since 2004. A lot of my online friends have been made through this club. I’m so happy to be apart of this club, and I’m so grateful for all the wonderful friends I’ve made. If you’re not a member, consider joining!

Intermediate Motion Graphics

Cristina — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:00:32 +0000

Picking up right where Motion Graphics left off, I feel like I ended this quarter with more work that I’m proud of than the quarter before.

A lot of the stuff we did was silly little exercises, but one of them was to create a countdown; I chose to jazz it up a bit and do a countdown flip clock.

Then for our mid-term we had to do a title sequence or teaser trailer, so I did a teaser trailer for The Hobbit.

Based on the feedback I got on my mid-term project, I decided to do another title sequence and challenge myself further. I did a title sequence to Kill Bill.

I had a lot more fun in this class then I did in the beginning class last quarter, but I’m glad that I’m done with After Effects for now, hah!