My Work

Recent Work – Summer 2010

So I’ve been really busy lately, and I wanted to show a few of the recent projects that I’ve been working on in my spare time. Here’s some of the ones that I can actually show you.

New work from the summer of 2010

All of the above projects have been for ministries of churches that I’m connected to. I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

Free Font Resources

Great fonts can be the lifesaver when it comes to a great design. No one likes to pay hundreds of dollars for stylized words. That why I put together some of the resources I use when looking for that perfect font. These are just a few, but some of the most helpful that I’ve found.

Image SCR URL’s

I haven’t posted anything lately so I thought I’d update you on something I learned recently.

I’ve been pushed pretty far, by a project I’m working on for the web. This site is extremely image intensive, and as I began to build it out, the site became slower. I knew ahead of time that I would have a lot of images on the site so I had set up a special server to host all the images. My theory was that if I hosted all the images on one server, and all the HTML, CSS, and Javascript on another, it would allow for more files to be downloaded at once. (Since you can only download 2 files at once from a server. I theorized that 4 files at once would be better.)

I was wrong.

The problem with this theory is that since you’re using a completely different server, you have to use a full [a.k.a. absolute] URL.

<img src=”http://www.johnnyrocketcreative.com/images/image.png” alt=”Image”>

So, ever time I needed an image, the DNS had to resolve (When you type in a website, there’s a short delay, where the computer asks other computers where to find the website.) Now, when you’re browsing the web, it’s not all that big of a deal, but once you have to ask where to find EVERY image, that gets to be lengthy.

So, I tried putting all the files on the same server and using just a relative URL [URI] (i.e. src=”images/image.png”) in my IMG tag. See the different from the full URL? There’s no root website in the URL (http://www.johnnyrocketcreative.com). Well, that cut the load time almost in half.

I learned a valuable lesson. Whenever possible use relative URL’s in your IMG tags.

<img src=”images/image.png” alt=”Image”>

The Blog Archive. Why?

There’ve been some great posts on the web lately about redesigning the interface of blog archives. You know, the date structure of the blog that allows you to go back in time and find a post you made 5 years ago. The inspiration from these posts are great for the creative side of the brain. However, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the reasoning behind the blog archive.

Why do we have it? What’s the use for the blog archive? Is this a tool people prefer to use?

We’re all familiar with timelines we’ve seen on paper, or maybe even a neat interpretation of a timeline in an interactive app. But it still begs the question of:
Do we need blog archives?

The more I think about it, the less I can find a good solid reason for it. It seems more natural to browse by topic than by date. You’re more likely to remember the general category of a post, rather than the date you read it.

On my blog, I’ve chosen not to incorporate it. Does that bother you? Had even noticed until now?

I think it’s time to rethink the way the archives work. I haven’t come up with a solid solution, but my mind keeps going back to a better way to browse by time. When I figure out how time works, maybe we can better understand how to build a great archive interface.

My Bookmarks Exposed

Every designer has their resources. In the spirit of community, I thought I’d share my bookmarks with you. These are some of my most visited sites. I have them broken down into sections, so you can scan them quickly.

Website Gallery
CSSMania
CSSRemix
CSSnack
SubmitCSS

HTML Email Gallery
Beautiful Email Newsletters
HTML Email Gallery

General Design Articles
Smashing Magazine
Think Vitamin
CSS Tricks

UI/UX Articles
Johnny Holland
UX Booth
UX Magazine

Inspirational/Resource Blogs
Abduzeedo
Noupe
Web Design Ledger
Web Designer Depot
Inspired Mag
Design Mag
Web Design Booth
The Design Buzz
SpeckBoy

And one more I can’t recommend enough, a design community named Drawar. It’s a great place to be involved.

I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a peek into my bookmarks. If you have any others that you recommend, feel free to leave them in a comment.