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The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Golden Triangle site was launched on Thursday (2/4). It’s a very small site, done on a very small budget, but we’ll probably be adding more to it over time. The Monroe County site was also launched, but I will not be linking to that one… I really wish they would have let me get in there and fix and improve upon it, but that hasn’t happened. But it’s evidence of the difficulties one sometimes faces when a project changes hands (or designers) mid-development—no real organization or direction, unclear message/lack of focus, etc. Chalk it up as a lesson learned I suppose.

Next week I’ll be working on updates to the Form Trainer site. I’ve learned quite a bit of new tricks since I developed that site last fall, and am going to make some pretty cool changes, most of which will be relatively transparent to the end-user but should help the site in the future.

In the non-Web world of work, I’ve finally gotten back into the habit of drawing on a mostly-daily basis. I have quite a few sketches going at the moment, most of them unfinished or close to being finished. I’ve also committed to a sort of drawing group that will be working together over Google Wave to collaborate on individual projects. Two people in the group are friends from grad school, and the rest are friends of one of them. We’ll basically be taking basic shapes and all creating characters/designs based on those shapes, just as a sort of side exercise to keep each other moving forward in learning and improving our skills. I will probably post the results of these weekly sketch sessions right here on CS, so feel free to check back periodically.

Tomorrow I finally plan to buckle down and start sketching and wireframing some designs for this site and my pro site. I’ve already got a color scheme in mind for both, and a relatively rough sketch for a logo for this site, but that’s about as far as I’ve had time to get. I’m hoping I can crank up some Pandora, sit down at my drawing desk and get some creativity flowing. As tempted as I am to just get something, anything up on here, I’d rather take my time and craft something that fits my standards. Plus, the fact that I’ve got to use WordPress on two sites I’ve worked on recently has seriously improved my understanding of how WordPress works, which should help me have a better idea of how to proceed with designing elements needed.

Well that’s all I can ramble about, so I’m off to play some Final Fantasy 7.

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Check out the DRIL Project Showcase [PDF]

I’m the one on the far right on the first page, btw.

The designs that I did (other than the entire showcase PDF) are:

• Monroe County, Mississippi (Go Monroe) - this one unfortunately didn’t turn out how I would have liked; I was asked to add in too many links when I wanted to keep things simple and organized. But this design was originally done by another on our team, and I had to re-work it. (Not yet launched)
• Boys & Girls Clubs of the Golden Triangle – this one was done on a very limited budget, so it’s very, very simple. The local B&GCs have been struggling financially so they didn’t have the funds for a better one I suppose. (Not yet launched)
• Injury Mechanics Laboratory – I like how this one turned out, there are some issues I’d still work with on it (not happy with the footer for instance), but overall pretty good.
• Chickasaw County Development Foundation – I love the concept for this one, but my execution of it wasn’t that great. I was just beginning to really learn to use Illustrator when I did this, during my last semester of grad school. Not quite on the same level as my traditional illustration skills yet. They are going with another design anyway, but I plan to continue to work on this for the portfolio.
• Form Trainer – Now this one I am exceptionally proud of. I know there are some issues with it too, but this is the best site I’ve done so far, by far. It was very difficult for me to do also considering I had to integrate it in some way with the Yahoo! Stores platform. I never got the hang of RTML or whatever it’s called, so I ended up using their “store tags” instead.

So yeah. There’s a sampling of some of my web work. Still got a lot to learn and a long way to go, but I’m enjoying it every step of the way!

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I installed OpenCart after that, which seems pretty simple and is also pretty, which helps. I like pretty things. Unfortunately after I got it all set up, I couldn’t really do much of anything because once I was into the admin area if I idled for more than a minute I would get logged out. After trying multiple ‘fixes’ found on the OC forums, nothing worked. And their host, Network Solutions, won’t let you touch the php.ini in the event that this was (probably) a sessions issue. I did try adding php.ini’s into the directory and the admin directory with the fixes as directed but, again, no luck. So, OpenCart was deleted.

I noticed Network Solutions’ hosting comes with the ability to add Magento, so I installed that through their administrator panel. Easy to setup, but once I got in there I was completely lost what to do, and the documentation is abysmal. The front-end AND back-end were also incredibly slow loading, and this is on NetSol. Shared NetSol, but still… NetSol. The very first domain registrar. It sucks, because I kind of want to learn Magento, but oh well. Magento was nixed. I’m trying OpenCart once again, and hoping that maybe the problems I had the first time were just a bug. Maybe it’ll work this time. If not… I guess I’ll have to figure out Magento, because I refuse to use tables-heavy OS Commerce.

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Take myself for instance. I currently work full-time as a Web designer, but I also do illustration work and am in the process of learning photography, traditional graphic design, and concept art (which I consider a subset of illustration) as my time allows. I also have an interest in 3D modeling & animation that has fallen on the backburner. Of course, I’m hardly a master at the things I currently do “professionally”. I’ve only been out of school now for around 8 months. I’m not so naive as to think I could ever become a true master of Web design, though I certainly try my best—I’m constantly absorbing information from various design-related sites and RSS feeds and observing and learning from the work of those greater than myself.

I’ve come to realize, however, that the more I spread myself out across these various disciplines the more difficult it becomes to do them as well as I feel that I should. Reading all of these various design sites and working on Web-related work leaves me with very little time to work on my true passion, art and illustration. Very few clients like the more “artsy” designs of sites such as Web Designer Wall, preferring more conservative looks using basic shape elements. So I can’t usually express my interest in more illustrative looks in my professional work, which leaves only sites such as this one for creative experimentation. But with the little free time I have keeping up with the Design World™ and still trying to learn as I go, there isn’t much time for all of that, as this site’s current non-existent skin indicates.

I do think there can be a lot of good in experimenting with these different methods of creativity in that it helps to broaden your horizons, and helps keep things fresh. But when you’re somewhat of a perfectionist like me, once you start getting into something you want to go all out and become the best you can be at it. I guess since I was never much of a sports nut growing up this is the way that I get competitive, even if I’m competitive against myself and a faceless “them”, the other designers that are out there doing their thing.

Ultimately though, I guess eventually I’m going to have to decide on what I want to be my main area of focus, and relegate the rest of my interests to side projects. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

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The plan is to post thoughts, sketches, finished pieces here—but only the cream of the crop will make it to my professional site.

So, I hope you’ll join me in the next few weeks as I work to get the ball rolling on all of this. I know I’ve been putting these things off for years, focusing on work for pay, but the fact of the matter is, all work and no play has made my life very boring lately. So I aim to rectify that with experimentation in different media—digital photography, acrylic painting, concept art, illustration, and web design—the progress and results of which you’ll be able to see right here.

Stay tuned.

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