There is a huge lesson I have learned while studying architecture at the university… …yes, I am an architect who really likes web development, and for all those who might ask themselves what am I doing behind the keyboard, I should explain that the architecture career in Venezuela, is design centered, not that technical as in USA or Europe.

Anyway, thing is that I learned that the less I lied to myself, the better designer I became. But how do you manage not to lie to yourself? Quite easy. Don’t lie to your professors, teachers, boss, clients, etc.

A simple case scenario would be when you get to class with a project you have been working just for two days, when you know it would take much more to entirely resolve it. Unless you had a team which you gracefully directed and managed to make everyone fit on the project, IT WILL BE INCOMPLETE.

Another case would be that you come up with a mockup of a website the same day you have the meeting with the client to check out the progress of the project. No matter how much effort you put onto explaining how things will look like, your client knows it’s poorly executed. That doesn’t reflect good working habits and will led to a shortage on the confidence given to you.

So, you might think that the two cases I’ve mentioned would be you trying to cheat on others, but actually the only one who’s being fooled is you and that, is kind of sad.

So, stop laying to yourself, but how?

As you might have read, lies in this case are a consequence of not having dedicated the right amount of time and work to something. Whatever the cause of the lack of time is, name it slacking, too much projects at the same time, incapability to perform on something you don’t handle that well, you got to go to the source of the problem and start being truthful to yourself and those you try to fool.

Stop slacking, don’t take that much projects at the same time, organize your time better, tell your client the real amount of time you need to do something instead of saying it will be ready in two weeks when you actually know is practically impossible, and when the time comes to tell someone, the work they have been waiting for is not ready, tell the truth. You would be surprised how understanding people is in front of honesty (of course, you cannot abuse on their trust, and way much more if they have paid you on advance to start the project).

I myself found me quite a lot of times on situations like these, and the outcome started to become good by the time I started being truthful to myself. Nowadays, I tell clients that the project is going to be ready in twice the amount of time that fires through my head during the conversation. They will of course beg for a shortage of the period, and there is where you have got to express these nice sentences:

“If I tell you that the wait will be shorter, I would be lying to you, but I prefer telling you the truth and so we all are aware of what to expect and we wouldn’t sour our relation as a firm and a client in case of a delay on a deadline I first knew I couldn’t meet.”

Brutal honesty, but those would be the best words you could ever tell to someone in order to gain their trust.

Start doing it and you will see how things start falling in place.

Pic Credits: Slacking Pics taken from of  The_Uptake and slworking

It is programmed entirely in javascript and google’s JSON feeds making it able to work with no server side code. The deployment on a website is a matter of copy and paste.

The advantages of this method are many. You can share the calendar and give access to other users to add and modify activities. You can add public calendars from google’s directory and your backoffice is the one that google made for us.

The script works hand on hand wih jQuery. The tooltips are added via the “title” attribute of the days making them more eyecatching and cross browser enabled.

The HTML implementation is completly non-intrusive and the calendar’s function gives us a “return” instead of a “document.write” for you to keep on modifiying the output via your own functions before showing it onscreen.

It has been provided with mouseover, mouseout and onclick functions on every active date for code expansion purposes.

The zip file holds the uncompressed javascript code for you to fit it to your needs, an html file that contains the calendar’s deployment and the tooltip jquery plugin for extra eycandy on the dates.

Demo

• Sucre’ s County Website
• and Here

Download It

• cal.linke (English)
• cal.linke (Spanish)

This page was aired during the celebration period of the 15 years of the Discovery Channel Latin America in march of 2009. It served as the website of the contest organized by the network.

Credits & Specs

• Web Design: David Linke.
• Production: David Linke, TMS Group (Miami, Florida).
• Flash animation: David Linke.
• ActionScript code: David Linke
• Origin: Miami, Florida, USA.
• Main Audience: Latin America.
• Platform: HTML & Flash.

Views

• Home
• Prize Page
• Signup Page
• Banners (300×250) · (728×90) · (120×600)

This website was aired in april 2008 as the site for the Latin American promotional contest of the Bravo TV show “Shear Genius” broadcaste by “People and Arts” a subsidiary of Discovery Networks Latin America.

Credits & Specs

• Web Design: David Linke.
• Production: David Linke, TMS Group (Miami).
• Flash Animation: David Linke.
• ActionScript Programming: David Linke
• Origin: Miami, Florida, USA.
• Main Audience: Latin America.
• Platform: HTML and Flash.

Views

• Home Page
• Landing Page
• Contest Page
• Thank You Page
• Gallery Page
• Quiz Page

In 2008 David Linke took work at the company dotmarketing, based in Florida USA, developing html and CSS for diverse sites in the United States such as Marywood University, Pitt State, Gettysburg College, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Oberlin, Harvard, etc.

This is the first experience as strictly standards development for the company, setting the bar for future projects based on Strict Html, CSS, Grids, and accesibility Standards wich are mandatory for public institutions in the States.

Th experience with dotcms, being short, is considered to be the foundation for the quality of our work, and led to other projects abroad.

Here’s an example of the work done for dotmarketing.

DailyMe is the first international experience for linke, and represents our startup as an international web agency. The work was done for their beta version and for the project of version 3.0.

Being the firs CEO of the company (Eduardo Hauser) a Venezuelan, he established a headquarter at Caracas with the help of Jose Antonio Zozaya, former president and founder of ProWeb. The work inherited was in design and later on in intergface developing. It was the boom of the so called web 2.0 and exponential social growth.

Here is one of the mockups done for the version 3.0

• Home page mockup with ajax interaction
  Multiple layouts in one page, strong client side programming

The Souh Florida Medical Center page is an exmple of a multi-team execution for a site to go live.

it was coded by Webmodo, using a nice CMS paltform called Baseline CMS

The job was to pick up the design, made by Stani’s Garage, slice it up and create the html and css template wich led to the Baseline CMS template they needed to deploy it on the site. it had to have a slight modification in order to change all the colors for it’s implementation on 2 pages of the medical center, and what’s best, the cms had to work with only one template file.

The work was produced by opem, stani’s garage and webmodo. The HTML, CSS and Baseline CMS template execution was done by us.

Have an Example of the code for you to evaluate it

For as long as the greek ruled the western world, there has been th knowlodge of grids to compose structures, sculptures, paintings and designing stuff. Actually, the nature itself has got its ideal grid to build stuff.  Those who don’t have design instruction, maybe don’t know this fact, so i introduce you to a really useful rule filed under the name of  “golden ratio” or “golden section” from the latin phrase sectio aurea wich is represented by the number 1.61803399.

The golden ratio is the proportion in wich nature creates it’s stuff. It is like a magic number wich sets the basis of proportional growth. it is in flowers, snails, spirals, trees and also the human body as illustrated by Corbusier on its Modulor Studies and drawings.

So, you might be thinking on what does this relate to web design? WEll, actually a lot! cause you can implement a grid system wich will be allways proportional in a natural way using the golden section wich will lead to a better feeling of your visitors while browsing your page.

Lets make an example of a two column page on the most common wordpress configuration around.

You have to draw a sidebar that is 300px wide for ad purposes, so the other column width, whre your content will be placed, should be 485px wide, because 300 x 1.618 = 485.4 This makes a total amount of 785px, fitting your page in the 800 x 600 screen resolution.

You might think but what about the space  left to fit the 1024 x 768 resolution? well, you could make this proportion grow on both columns by resolving the following equation, taking for granted that the usable space in that resolution is 1010px:

1) First equation

1010 = A + B

2) Second Equation

1.618 = B/A

3) Use Second equation to get a value of B in terms of A

B = 1.618 x A

4) Use the previous value of B in the first equation to get the value of A

1010 = A + (A x 1.618)

Use Distributive property to match a as a standalone variable

1010 = A x (1 + 1.618)

1010 = A x 2.618

1010/2.618 = A

A = 385.7

5) Having the value of A, lets find the value of B

B = 1010 – 385.7

B = 624, 3

6) Let’s round up to have pixel numbers

A =385

B = 625

And there we got the magic numbers for a two colum sit in 1024 screen resolution width.

Of course, there is a less geeky way to do this, and it is by having the golden spiral drawing, wich gives you the exact golden proportions to handle when creating a site. Hand this over illustrator or photoshop to expand or shrink and you are set to make.

Golden Ratio Spiral (Adobe Illustrator AI zipped) 941Kb

PHOTO CREDITS: The golden ratio in the growth of a Cactus pic was taken by Benjamin Penter