Craig Dennis

QR Stamps

Craig — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:04:27 +0000

The aim was to create a stamp that promotes renewable energies. While traditionally a graphic design brief I tried to make the process of informing people more tangible.

The stamps use thermochromic ink which, when heated, turns transparent. Two different colours are layered to create a nice effect. Body heat is enough to activate the process. When the ink is activated it turns transparent and reveals a QR tag underneath. The QR tag is then captured by a mobile device and automatically directs it to a mobile site. The site contains contextual information related to the specific stamp as part of a photo sharing social network

The inherent social aspect allows for real discussions about problems and solutions. With the rise in connected devices and the increase in mobile cameras, the concept relies on existing technologies. QR tag readers are available on any mobile device and can be downloaded for free. Many mobile devices are being sold with readers already installed and if this continues then the uptake of QR tag usage would naturally increase.

Join the disucssion on these:

April 3, 2008 -- New Rave On Air (8)
Today I got a message from Danille Leben from Rave On Air askin me if I had received the email about the new branding. I hadn't but I had. It was in my spam folder. Anyway the new 'branded' site is on...
May 9, 2008 -- Blog Re-Re-Design (7)
So although I've been hacking away at the code of the current design of this site I realised that it wasn't conducive to a portfolio site. So in an attempt to make myself seem more 'designery' I will ...
December 10, 2009 -- Using Twitter For Customer Service @VirginMedia (4)
Recently I had a bad experience with Virgin Media when I moved out of my last house. There was some fine print that meant when I upgraded my broadband, they actually just started a new 12 month contra...
March 13, 2008 -- Microsoft Says No Way to Blu-Ray (3)
Microsoft has confirmed that they will not incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Xbox 360. They're argument is that they can still deliver HD content through the 'rental' of media through their Mark...
April 25, 2008 -- Stupid Birdie (3)
I have just got back to my parent's house and found a bird had made a nest... in a parasol on the patio. Couldn't resist in taking a few photos. I did scare the bird away, and it hasn't come back yet....

Zero Wallpaper

Craig — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:19:58 +0000

Zero Wallpaper explores the nature of spaces and customisation of environments looking at how people change their environment and how they change to suit their environment. Can technology help in facilitating the transition?

People create their desired experience by drawing a shape on a surface and filling it with content. An example would be drawing a rectangle and selecting ‘TV’ to give that shape the characteristics of a TV and enable the viewing of broadcast channels within it.

Through user-testing the inherent ‘wobble’ people produce when they draw freehand (be it on paper or touch screens) was show to be exacerbated by the touch screen interface. This prevented clean and simple object creation and as such a guide was introduced. The creation of objects is now simplified by drawing a single line that is then outlined on all sides by guide lines. The guides then become the shape allowing for quick and easy creation of perfectly symmetrical objects optimised for content. If desired, the guide function can be turned off and allow free roaming object creation or doodling.

Millie Dunne

Craig — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:18:52 +0000

Millie is an actress who wanted a simple site to convey her talents. She wanted people to be able to listen to her songs and watch her showreel without having to send out hundreds of CDs and emails.

The only assets provided were the headshots and the songs. The site was designed around the greyscale theme of the headshots and Millie was included at every stage of the design process. On the main page the headshots are faded in a flash animation so as to not need to decide which one was the best to sit on the website.

The site is a static site not built around a CMS meaning that Millie is not able to make additions to the site herself. After some initial teething problems, Millie is happy with the site and feels proud to have it as her online showcase. Currently she is waiting on her showreel to come through and when it does an integrated flash movie player will be positioned on the appropriate page.

Webit

Craig — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:00:02 +0000

Every day, more and more information is created and every day there are more and more people trying to access it. This project looks at the way people navigate the internet focussing on the way they read pages or watch videos and then navigate to other content through search engines and other tools.

Webit knows what people are looking at on the internet and automatically provides related information from the rest of the internet. Webit searches the internet in the background to provide links most relevant to the current content.

The links are displayed in order of relevance, highest to lowest from left to right. They can also be sorted by media type as well as omitting media types altogether. There are three different browsing methods which form a cohesive user experience when used together including single line view showing icons or text labels, list view showing details of the links in a scrolling list, and relational view showing the relationships between the links generated. Different media types can be included or excluded based on whether they are selected in the preferences.

Join the disucssion on these:

April 3, 2008 -- New Rave On Air (8)
Today I got a message from Danille Leben from Rave On Air askin me if I had received the email about the new branding. I hadn't but I had. It was in my spam folder. Anyway the new 'branded' site is on...
May 9, 2008 -- Blog Re-Re-Design (7)
So although I've been hacking away at the code of the current design of this site I realised that it wasn't conducive to a portfolio site. So in an attempt to make myself seem more 'designery' I will ...
December 10, 2009 -- Using Twitter For Customer Service @VirginMedia (4)
Recently I had a bad experience with Virgin Media when I moved out of my last house. There was some fine print that meant when I upgraded my broadband, they actually just started a new 12 month contra...
March 13, 2008 -- Microsoft Says No Way to Blu-Ray (3)
Microsoft has confirmed that they will not incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Xbox 360. They're argument is that they can still deliver HD content through the 'rental' of media through their Mark...
April 25, 2008 -- Stupid Birdie (3)
I have just got back to my parent's house and found a bird had made a nest... in a parasol on the patio. Couldn't resist in taking a few photos. I did scare the bird away, and it hasn't come back yet....

Are We Forfeiting Privacy to Pay For Security?

Craig — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:59:03 +0000

My dissertation is about internet security and internet privacy issues. The fact that they are both such large parts of everyone’s online experience and yet they seem to constantly battle against each other for supremacy. Can there be harmony or is there an inherent paradox between them meaning they can never function in equilibrium?

As part of the dissertation process interviews were conducted, one of which with the global IT manager of Premier Oil, to establish what issues are involved in business as well as consumer experiences and what guidelines they have to adhere to. More importantly if any of them are working or not.

Join the disucssion on these:

April 3, 2008 -- New Rave On Air (8)
Today I got a message from Danille Leben from Rave On Air askin me if I had received the email about the new branding. I hadn't but I had. It was in my spam folder. Anyway the new 'branded' site is on...
May 9, 2008 -- Blog Re-Re-Design (7)
So although I've been hacking away at the code of the current design of this site I realised that it wasn't conducive to a portfolio site. So in an attempt to make myself seem more 'designery' I will ...
December 10, 2009 -- Using Twitter For Customer Service @VirginMedia (4)
Recently I had a bad experience with Virgin Media when I moved out of my last house. There was some fine print that meant when I upgraded my broadband, they actually just started a new 12 month contra...
March 13, 2008 -- Microsoft Says No Way to Blu-Ray (3)
Microsoft has confirmed that they will not incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Xbox 360. They're argument is that they can still deliver HD content through the 'rental' of media through their Mark...
April 25, 2008 -- Stupid Birdie (3)
I have just got back to my parent's house and found a bird had made a nest... in a parasol on the patio. Couldn't resist in taking a few photos. I did scare the bird away, and it hasn't come back yet....

Shoutbox

Craig — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:46:58 +0000

The objective was to create an interactive environment with the premise of a 21st century ‘village fete’. Looking into what makes a fete and how this can be recreated with new interactions. The traditional village fete was analysed to see what underlying principles to find out of what one consisted.

What did people remember from them? Why did they go to them? Research shows that people enjoy village fetes because of the sense of community, fun and prizes.

Designed to give the user a feeling of fun and community, Shoutbox creates ‘bubbles’ in a variety of shapes and colours based on sound input. Any sound can be used such as a single voice, many voices or instruments. The louder the input; the larger the bubble and the longer the length of the sound; the faster the bubble moves across the screen. In addition, whenever there is a collision between the bubbles, the sound used to create the bubble is played back. Sound attracts people, drawing them together and developing an ad-hoc community wherever it is deployed.

Join the disucssion on these:

April 3, 2008 -- New Rave On Air (8)
Today I got a message from Danille Leben from Rave On Air askin me if I had received the email about the new branding. I hadn't but I had. It was in my spam folder. Anyway the new 'branded' site is on...
May 9, 2008 -- Blog Re-Re-Design (7)
So although I've been hacking away at the code of the current design of this site I realised that it wasn't conducive to a portfolio site. So in an attempt to make myself seem more 'designery' I will ...
December 10, 2009 -- Using Twitter For Customer Service @VirginMedia (4)
Recently I had a bad experience with Virgin Media when I moved out of my last house. There was some fine print that meant when I upgraded my broadband, they actually just started a new 12 month contra...
March 13, 2008 -- Microsoft Says No Way to Blu-Ray (3)
Microsoft has confirmed that they will not incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Xbox 360. They're argument is that they can still deliver HD content through the 'rental' of media through their Mark...
April 25, 2008 -- Stupid Birdie (3)
I have just got back to my parent's house and found a bird had made a nest... in a parasol on the patio. Couldn't resist in taking a few photos. I did scare the bird away, and it hasn't come back yet....

Will Avatar Be The Tipping Point For 3D?

Craig — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:35:25 +0000

For those of you who don’t know what Avatar is, have you been living under a rock? …at the bottom of the ocean? …on another planet? Avatar is the latest (and apparently greatest) film directed by James Cameron. You may remember him from such other great films as Titanic, Alien and Terminator. Currently he has the next Terminator film and a remake of Forbidden Planet in production.

So what’s so special about Avatar?

Well, for a start it is the most realistic CGI film ever made with a huge budget of over $200 million. Does this mean it’s going to be successful? Well, no but you’d expect them to want to make their money back. Nobody invests that sort of money on a whim. The real reason Avatar is so special is that it will be the first blockbuster to be available in true 3D. By that I mean that the 3D elements included are not used as gimmicks as in the ‘olden days’ but serve to further envelope your senses and draw you deeper into the story.

But I thought 3D was for kids and theme parks?

Believe me, I thought so too. But given the rise of 3D recently and the leaps and bounds it has been making in terms of production quality, it isn’t really surprising for Hollywood to want to capitalise on it. Given the recent success of films such as ‘Up’ using 3D and the high definition IMAX screens capable of doing justice to the feature length 3D films, I for one would be interested to see how this affects my viewing.

What else is in 3D then?

At the moment, not much worth noting except ‘Up’. Toy Story 3 is being produced in 3D as well as TinTin, Shrek Goes Fourth and George Lucas has said he plans to remaster all of the Star Wars films in 3D. So does this mean that 3D is the way forward? Is this the death of standard films? I don’t think so. Truly I think that Avatar will be something amazing, but 3D will still sit in its niche of certain films until such as time as there is a viable way to view 3D without wearing any glasses. TVs are already available that produce a 3D image with very good results but not the quality which would be acceptable for regular viewing.

Until those pesky glasses are gone, 3D market penetration will still be small. Putting on glasses every now and again to watch a film such as Avatar though, might be acceptable.

Using Twitter For Customer Service @VirginMedia

Craig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:20:17 +0000

Recently I had a bad experience with Virgin Media when I moved out of my last house. There was some fine print that meant when I upgraded my broadband, they actually just started a new 12 month contract (even though I’d been with them for 2 years). They then sent me a bill for the remaining balance of £133 or there abouts and I was fuming (as when I spoke to the guy on the phone during the cancellation process, he mentioned nothing about this).

Anyway, I tried several times to contact the customer support through various numbers and finally spoke to an Indian woman who’s first language was not English. After some struggling to explain the situation, she said she couldn’t help me. That’s not the answer I was looking for.

Where does Twitter come in?

After this very poor experience with Virgin Media I was very disillusioned and told Twitter as much (including @VirginMedia) so as to warn people about the experience I had so avoid them making the same mistake. Later that day I received an @ mention from Virgin Media asking me to send them an email (to a specific e-customer service address) detailing the problem. So I did.

A day later I received an email back explaining what had happened. The downside was that I still have to pay the remaining balance. On the plus side, maybe due to the call centre’s ineptitude, they said that if I take their services out again – they will deduct the amount I paid, off the account.

So I made the payment, and they lost it. So they passed it to a debt collection service who called me on my birthday.

I Tweeted again and emailed them (via the e-customer service address) and they said they would fix it and that I wouldn’t have to do a thing.

Now while none of this should have happened in the first place, it would have taken far longer and far more effort to resolve it. With the Virgin Media Twitter team on top form and always replying within 24hours, normally within only a few hours.

Conclusion

For the delivery of their services and the Twitter customer service I commend Virgin Media, for everything else… well lets just say that I’m not sure if I will be taking out services with them again. An experience like that, while tempered greatly by the fast action of their Twitter team, still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The Future / Death of the Browser-check

Craig — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:11:59 +0000

Recently there has been a lot of press about new standards coming in across all aspects of the web. HTML5 and CSS3 offering us many new features and some not-so new ones but making them standards to which everone can adhere to (I’m taking to you Microsoft).This coupled with the recent release of Safari 4 and the future release of the Chrome OS by Google promises the hold grail that web developers and designers have been longing for. Cross-browser cross-OS rendering synchronisity. In other words: one design, one build and no cross-browser testing and no layout bug fixing.

This got me thinking about the actual likelihood of this occurring. At the moment, most web sites are built to WC3 standards and comply with various levels of accessibility, but we are all still coding for IE6 to some degree. There is always a dedicated machine (virtual or otherwise) that is running the dreaded browser. It’s strange to think that the IE box model is actually a better way of viewing content on the web but it causes so many other issues that it has been demoted in favour of a more forgiving model.

So how long are we going to be checking out work on IE6? It’s been around since 2001 and has yet to die as the Twitter hashtag #IE6MustDie can attest to.The reason is that in most corporate environments it is still the predominant browser and as such has a huge user-base. This is not due to choice though.

So if that is the case then, we need to replace the corporate world’s browser to Firefox something else. With IE9 peeking its head over the horizon and Windows 7’s record breaking adoption rate, could we finally start to tell clients that we will not support IE6 in our designs? This depends on the client themselves. As the majority of work the company I work for does involves insurance companies which tend to lend themselves to a more corporate environment, will we ever be free?

Windows 7 looks like a very stable OS and with Office 2010 and their online suite looking to take off, now might be the right time for companies to overhaul their outdated systems and with it their browser. A lot more companies now are allowing their employees the freedom to choose browser and Windows 7 incorporates this into their setup (UK only).

The sad fact of the matter is that no matter how far along we go, web technology has a leapfrog progress. We constantly have to account for older generations of browser or markup. CSS1 to CSS2 and now to CSS3 means we can do more but we have to make sure that they degrade gracefully to ensure people with the older stuff can still get a good user experience. This obviously applies to HTML and all this hangs on a browser being able to render it correctly.

The only recent experience that has given me a glimpse of the death of cross-browser compatibility issues was designing a mobile site specifically for the iPhone. All iPhones/ iPod Touches are the same size, screen resolution, brower and OS. This means that if I design and build a site that works on one iPhone, it will work on all of them.

I can’t put it any simpler than this: IE6 causes longer development time, more expense and a worse user experience so stop using it and use something else.

Join the disucssion on these:

April 3, 2008 -- New Rave On Air (8)
Today I got a message from Danille Leben from Rave On Air askin me if I had received the email about the new branding. I hadn't but I had. It was in my spam folder. Anyway the new 'branded' site is on...
May 9, 2008 -- Blog Re-Re-Design (7)
So although I've been hacking away at the code of the current design of this site I realised that it wasn't conducive to a portfolio site. So in an attempt to make myself seem more 'designery' I will ...
December 10, 2009 -- Using Twitter For Customer Service @VirginMedia (4)
Recently I had a bad experience with Virgin Media when I moved out of my last house. There was some fine print that meant when I upgraded my broadband, they actually just started a new 12 month contra...
March 13, 2008 -- Microsoft Says No Way to Blu-Ray (3)
Microsoft has confirmed that they will not incorporate Blu-Ray technology into the Xbox 360. They're argument is that they can still deliver HD content through the 'rental' of media through their Mark...
April 25, 2008 -- Stupid Birdie (3)
I have just got back to my parent's house and found a bird had made a nest... in a parasol on the patio. Couldn't resist in taking a few photos. I did scare the bird away, and it hasn't come back yet....

Website Design For The iPhone

Craig — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:32:07 +0000

Recently I have been taking a course provided by the W3C on mobile best practices designed to give the participant the best ways in which to design for mobile.

Topics covered are things such as graceful enhancement and graceful failure, designing specifically to allow access on various mobile browsers and adding enhancements to the site to improve user experience on the desktop browser or to allow them to fail gracefully so as still accessible on the mobile platform.

Doing this has inspired me to design a mobile specific version of my own website. Now while I would (ideally) like to create a version that is designed for all mobile platforms, I think I will start with just the iPhone.

Step one is already complete! Which is to say I have set up www.craigmdennis.com/iPhone/. Really tricky stuff…

The next step is to set up some kind of automatic detection and redirection to make sure if people using an iPhone access my site, they get taken to the iPhone specific version.

There are several tricks and treats (pardon the Halloween pun) available when designing a site for the iPhone that allows for the use of certain javascript functions to make use of the touch screen and the orientation detection. Something that means you can even show completely different content when the orientation of the iPhone changes. A great tutorial from Engage Interactive shows what is needed to do just that.

So I am designing a basic UI to navigate to the various sections of my site: Portfolio, Blog, Photography & CV. I want to make sure of the iPhone style photo navigation but that will be a little later on. I can’t decide what to do for the blog section and whether to have a list of titles, titles and descriptions or just the most recent post.

I also have to figure out how to turn off the iPhone redirection when linking to the ‘normal’ version of the site.

Web Design Is Dead: Long Live Web Design

Craig — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:16:45 +0000

“Yeah I’m a web designer”

That response to a question about your chosen career path used to lead people to think that you live in your parent’s basement, wore square glasses taped together, wore your trousers too high, were bad with girls and were generally a massive nerd.

Oh how times have changed (for some). As has the role of the web designer.

Web design is more than just coding a website, web design is now just a tool in a larger process. More and more is being included in the sphere of web design as the need for conversion on the web is becoming more and more important. Investment in advertising on the web recently overtook advertising on TV for the first time which means that we need to design the user experience rather than design a ‘website’.

During the process of this ‘experience design’, there are many more aspects that are involved than just a website.

You may be designing an entire campaign centred around a site or it may just be that you are AB testing two or three or even five designs for improved conversion. How does a user move through the site. Which pages are they landing on when they reach your site? Which PPC leads them to which section? There is a huge role for analytics on websites to try and determine all of these factors and design / test new ways to increase the number of users reaching an intended goal. More often than not meaning parting with some dosh.

Then there is SEO to consider, something I am learning at the moment. Things like URL structure, alt text, anchor text and conomical URLs can have an effect on the keywords your site is found with. There is a large market for optimising websites for search, and as search engines get better – so too must the way we optimise for them to maintain hight ranking.

One of the most recent and yet important inclusions is that of social media campaigns into the design.

Use of sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote a brand also promotes brand awareness and gives the market an opportunity to have direct communication on an open platform. This means valuable customer feedback (positive and negative) can be obtained at no extra cost.

The added benefit of social media inclusion is in the realm of search. If you search for a brand on Google you get a list of results related to that brand, but some may be negative from people bitching on forums etc. The more social media sites you have such as Twitter or Facebook push those negative results down and even onto the second results page (and who looks there?).

So the whole process can be done by one person but really you need an entire office of ‘web designers’ each with their own focus in design.

So am I a web designer? Yes… but really I am an experience designer with a specific focus.

Am I Boring?

Craig — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:38:26 +0000

I have been looking at lot recently at portfolio designs and ‘creative’ websites and wondered whether I should be trying to compete with them.

Compilations such as ‘30 Fresh and Inspirational Portfolios With A Twist’ from Smashing Magazine are fantastic as portfolio pieces and happen to be portfolios which seems to be a perfect combination. They have great work and nice looking sites but it all depends what message you want to send.

This is what I am now thinking about. What message do I want to send?

Well…

I want a job and want people to want to employ me. So I need to come across as professional.
I want to be taken seriously as a designer so I need to show that there is a reason for the things I have done and show the thinking behind them.
I want people to pay attention to the things I say so the content needs to be the priority.

So do I need a flashy website with bells and whistles? Not necessarily, I need to have a site that is accessible and looks professional, getting people to what they want to look at as quickly as possible. Sure there can be bells and whistles but so long as they add value to the user and are not just there for the sake of it.

In the design of my current site I knew I wanted certain things that would add value to the first impression of it as well as keep people coming back.

Things I added…

‘Read More’
This allows me to break the content into an introduction and only list that on the main page rather than the whole content as I had it before. It makes the most use of available space and shows more content for people to see if they want to read further. If they want to read more then they can, otherwise they just skip to the next post.

Recent Comments
Show other people’s views on my posts means that those posts are more likely to get attention from people who are either interested in the content or just wanting to see what all the fuss is about. I want to encourage discussions. If I have said something that is inaccurate, I want to find out why it is. Being proved wrong is just as valuable as being proved right.

Recent Tweets
Twitter has become huge and I have been using it for some time. I always wanted to find a way to integrate it into my site so that people who might not know about Twitter or who might not otherwise have seen my tweets, gets to see them. Instead of having one tweet at the top of the page I added the most recent three in the sidebar. With three tweets people can judge if they find them interesting, funny, useful etc and make a better judgement of whether they would like to follow me.

Recent accomplishments
Whether it is awards or podcasts, I think it is important to show what you are proud to have achieved recently.

More categories
Originally I only had four – Personal, Projects, News, General. I was using tags to describe various posts but while this is good practice it was actually rather stupid because the tags were listed at the bottom of the sidebar in a cloud. So more categories means a faster and easier way for people to go to what they’re interested in.

My External Links
YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter etc are all separate sites for a reason, they all provide different tools or features to people. I want someone to be able to get a good idea about me by looking at all the things I do so I include as many as possible. I have even included my Facebook but you will have to send a friend request to see anything. Each link says something about me as does the last time I used that site.

Links in the footer
This was more of an experience thing than anything else. When you scroll to the bottom of the page, you no longer have access to the menus that appear at the top without scrolling back up. Having the most used links at the bottom means that the experience doesn’t need to be interrupted by innate scrolling up to find a link. However if people do want to go back to the top I have included a ‘Back to top’ link that does just that. The active clicking of the link ensures that the experience continues quickly.

Recommended Posts and Natural Language
Linking directly to posts that relate to what has just been read is valuable because it shortens the time for people to navigate to other content they might like and also increases the likelihood of them staying on the site for longer. Using language like “If you liked this you might also like…” rather than “Related Posts” is a much more human way of interacting a reduces the sharpness, again increasing the chances of further reading.

What all of this has led me to discover is that my site is perfect what what I am using it for. It is clear, professional and the content is the main point. It does what it needs to do and it does it well.

So do I want a flashy, all singing, all dancing website? No thanks, but I like to see what can be done. Does that make me boring? No, it makes me more creative ;)

The Importance of Conveying Ideas With ‘Human’ Presentations

Craig — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:20:57 +0000

During my final project ‘Webit’ at Ravensbourne I learned the difficulty and value of adequately presenting ideas in a way that is easy to understand for the masses.

The initial presentation idea was to have a super-real representation in a real-world scenario and show how Webit would be used. Sounds perfect until I tried to show that in an interim presentation with the feedback being “I don’t know what I’m looking at” and “I don’t get it”.

I realised I was trying to hard to show how the thing would actually work rather than what I should have been doing which was trying to present the idea. With realistic graphics and real-world scenarios there is the danger that whoever is looking at the presentation will be focussed more on the aesthetics of the presentation rather than the general idea. The idea is the most important part after all, everything else is just a means to make that idea more accessible and usable.

“Make it more human”

A great example of this is an OpenID video that uses a rough-around-the-edges approach to make you focus on what it is rather than what it looks like and the implementation.

Using this as a base, the character of Webit was created to showcase the idea for my final project. Webit is a small animated frog who helps you find things on the internet. In the scenario there is a stick man, Rob (voiced by Rob Strode), who is browsing the internet. Webit is introduced as a friend and shows Rob what else is on the internet.

The fact the the characters are roughly coloured and animated means there isn’t a glossy finish to them, making them more accessible.

The end result of this is an interview with .Net magazine and a featured podcast available to download from iTunes here or via RSS here.

New Designers & Degree Results

Craig — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:15:01 +0000

Today is the final day of preparation for the New Designers exhibition tomorrow. This includes finishing the website http://raveinteraction.com and picking up the trump cards. That’s right, we have trump cards.

The theme of the show for Ravensbourne Interaction is ping pong. We have a ping pong table, 600 ping pong balls, 15 paddles, 1000 A3 folded portfolios to take away, 2 bound portfolio books and 9 different trump cards each with us all dressed in table tennis gear making aggressive poses as if we are pros.

It should be highly entertaining as I think a few people are dressing up in that table tennis gear for the exhibition. Not me however as I feel that it is inappropriate to take it that far even though I do love the theme.

The downside is that Royal Mail have lost my business cards that I ordered 2 weeks ago. This means I will have to rely on the trump cards as business cards, something unusual should help people remember us. At worst I will hand out my old cards but they are not in keeping with my new brand. C’est la Vie.

On a brighter note we were informed today that our degree results have been confirmed and signed of so we will be able to access them on friday at about lunchtime. I would like to say that I am excited but I am actually too busy to think about such things. I have my current day-job as a Samsung intern and at night I am working on my portfolio / website and other things for New Designers. I haven’t really thought about it. The past month has really gone very quickly indeed. Once I have received my results I can’t even go and get drunk to either celebrate or drown my sorrows (who am I kidding?!) as I have promised to help a good friend out with a party such as I did last year. It is an annual event and I will be a waiter, the good thing is that it was huge fun last time and this time I will be starting most conversations with “I found out I got a [insert correct grade here] from my degree today”.

The last thing is to say that I am still looking for a job. Samsung ends in August and they are not planning on keeping any of us on. I have arranged some more work experience with IRIS however this is unpaid but travel expenses should be covered.

No doubt this will be a very difficult time for me but I relish the challenge and hope I end up doing what I want to do… when I find out what that is I will let you know!

CSS, Troubles & More

Craig — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:36:56 +0000

With New Designers coming up rapidly there has been much fretting about who is doing what and who is designing what. With myself and a few others being on an internship at Samsung it has proved hard to keep things consistent.

After much arguing through many emails I have decided to defer my vote to someone else as it’s getting heated. Just need someone to make a creative decision who is higher up in the hierarchy than we are.

Forgetting all of that stuff, I have redesigned my website, business card and all pdf documents and updated my ‘brand’ since doing that for the final degree exhibition. I changed the colour to 100% Magenta instead of orange but kept the same font The portfolio section is now up with proper descriptions, pictures and styling (with some more projects to come when I get a chance).

My business card can be seen below and yes I am aware that the back of the card has the wrong corners rounded in the image.

While at Samsung I noticed that my new website design did not look correct in IE6 (no surprise there then) so I spent some time correcting some CSS problems. No sooner than I had done that than I tried it in Safari and it failed even more to display correctly.

After several hours trying to figure out what the problem was, changing (and improving) my CSS stylesheet I discovered that even though I zero’d all margins at the start of the CSS by:

* {margin:0px; padding:0px}

Safari is a bitch and does not recognise that. So after several hours of trying, finally declaring the padding and margins as 0 for ul and li elements as well as entire divs, the formatting magically came into alignment in Safari.

After doing all that, feeling like I needed to vent some of my frustration and being British I wanted to write a strongly worded letter to Mr. Jobs. Instead I am blogging about it. This in itself proved more difficult than first anticipated as when I logged into Worpress, the visual text editor for the post screen had gone and all the text was coming out in white! After a quick Google and a re-install of Wordpress 2.8 the editor came back and I can see what I’m writing now.

I have just received an HTTP error while uploading my business card image. Seriously what is going on with the internet tonight?

Now the reason I am blogging at this late hour and not in bed, asleep in preparation for work tomorrow is simple… There are people in my house who I don’t know, playing very loud music. I hope tomorrow is a better day.

Craig Dennis

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