Allchorn Design

I’ve always found it interesting how others depict themselves in an avatar. Specifically the caricature style. Some people use avatar generators, and others either do self portraits (Brad Colbow for instance) or have someone they know design something for them. Here’s a small collection of avatars on the web at the moment. I grabbed them from various sources. Some are from blog comments (using gravatars) and others from their Twitter pages.

If anyone has a gripe about their avatar being used here, let me know and I’ll take it down. Might be fun to name the owner of the avatars in the comments? If you know them… (thats a dare).

I’ve been hard at work on the buggy template today. I think it’s coming along nicely and I’ve launched an open source alpha v0.02 this evening. I’ve written a brief (to be expanded upon) readme file explaining how things work, but as time goes on, I will improve it and the template itself.

I still want to add some nice navigation elements, lists, image styling etc. Possibly integrate lightboxing and look into some other semantic, non intrusive javascript that is realistic to use in as wide a variety of systems as possible. I’ll probably look more into jquery, but I do want to keep things as simple as as scalable as possible.

The more it goes in one direction, the more difficult it is to backtrack. I guess this will be an evolutionary process.

I’m currently hard at work on a couple of developments that require a framework of sorts. Not only code, but a versatile design framework that I can effectively speed up production for a niche market. The first of these I’ve nicknamed Buggy after the image I used in the initial design.

Essentially it’s working on a 12 column grid and can easily accommodate a neat one, two, three or four column layout. Work in thirds, quarters, halve it, or use the full width (960px) of the design. It’s a fixed width, centered design and I will likely make it into a Wordpress theme in due course.

I started building this as an illustration for the course I’ll be teaching in web design for Hirt & Carter next year, and it’s grown so far beyond that. It’s good fun, and tests my skills and knowledge. Coding is going to be fun, but it’s so rigidly grid based, I suspect it’s going to be quite easy. Little do I know hey?

I haven’t added to my portfolio lately, and mostly because the timelines of the projects I’ve been working on have not reached their end yet. I have however completed a number of designs and some internal things. Some of which are tied up in NDA’s, but some thankfully are not.

Here’s a snapshot of one design I did recently for Fry’s vegetarian. The site is still to be coded and developed, so perhaps this is a bit premature. I suspect it will act more as a teaser of things to come. The site will feature delicious recipes, information for agents and a whole lot more.

Well, now you know I haven’t just been sitting around and playing with Photoshop. In fact; if you add the preperation for the impending web design course I’ll be teaching next year for Hirt & Carter, I’ve been pretty damn busy.

Have no fear though. I’m currently available for freelance work, so if you need any design or website development work done, please feel free to drop me a line. </shameless marketing>

I attended the KZN launch of Adobe’s new Creative Suite (CS4) today. Adobe always come out with great updates but I’ve never been the best at keeping on the latest latest versions. This time round, I must admit, I’m keen to get onto their latest offering as soon as possible.

They ran 3 talks. One on web, the other print and the last one on video. Covering new and improved  features in Dreamweaver, Fireworks (glad to see my old friend still in their stable, and improved), Flash (big improvements there), Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, After Effects, Premier and Soundbooth.

Mo from Adobe who spoke about the new web and video tools.

Skye who spoke about the new print tools.

Skye in the foreground and Mo by the lectern.

Mo showing off Soundbooth’s new editable audio file format.

Sky about to display Illustrator’s new abilities in isolating grouped elements to work on them without ungrouping.

People filtering out of the room at the end.

Pepsi, the Coca Cola wannabe have released (Oct 29 2008) their new packaging and logo to the world. What seems to be a regular occurence with this brand, they’re redefined their look, and on a whole I think it’s pretty nice.

Not everyone will agree with me, and sure, you’re entitled to your opinion. More people still drink coke, and perhaps with this recession, this is an attempt at getting some much needed recognition. The brand isn’t that big here in SA, but it’s certainly here.

Either way it sure beats the pants off London’s 2012 logo… which has been compared to Maggie Simpson performing unmentionable acts on someone. Can’t see it? Good for you.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

I’m currently working on the largest screen I’ve ever used. We moved offices today (SA Web Design and myself) and in so doing, I set up a previously un-used screen that almost takes up my whole desk!

Quite nice working with all this screen real estate. The resolution isn’t super high, but in doing designs, I can almost see each pixel individually. Oh happy days!

This just out. The website design course I’ll be teaching at Hirt & Carter in Durban is nearing a more complete structure. Here is some preliminary marketing speak so you companies and individuals can see what it’s all about and what you’ll leave the course being able to do.

8 Week Comprehensive Web Design Course

The course is comprised of comprehensive training in the aesthetic and structural aspects of website design. Following a day on Mac basics, candidates receive in-depth training in web standards based design, markup and site creation. Starting with a theoretical and practical introduction to the web and semantic markup with HTML, going through page layout and styling using CSS. The course continues through the principles of beautiful web design including designing web graphics, layout, composition, colour, texture, typography, imagery, animation and usability. Students will also be taught to upload and download websites using FTP, the different file formats on the web, the business of domain registration and web hosting, an introduction to web server basics, databases, content management systems and an introduction to the programming languages on the web. Candidates will leave the course with the ability to effectively design and create valid web pages to be published as is or integrated into any modern web content management system. The final project of the course will involve students publishing their work in an online portfolio, hosted on the Hirt & Carter server or their own (www.studentname.com) domain name. The minimum pass mark is 70% and a certificate will be awarded to each student on graduation.

Prerequisites for the course:

• Photoshop skills required: Making / working with selections, Quick masks, Layers, Shadows, Colour correcting, Cropping, Deep etching, Modes, Cloning, Adjustment layers, Resolution + image size adjustments & Saving in the correct formats.
  A 2 week Photoshop course will run prior to the Comprehensive Web Design course if students don’t have this prior knowledge.

If you are interested in the course, please send me an email so we can add you to the list. More details to follow.

Some readers of this blog might remember a concept I started a while back called Sitepress. Essentially it was to be a Wordpress website design solution offering, but with my other obligations, I chose to take it down for lack of time to commit to it.

I had a recent resurgence of interest in the idea and spent a bit of time redesigning the interface. I think it came out pretty nice, but subsequent to doing all that, I decided I’m going to publish the concept on a different domain and under a different name.

I just figured I’d share the design, and if anyone wants it to perhaps make a theme out of it, I can send them the layered PSD.

I came across this a while back, and for the life of me can’t remember where. Please let me know if you do, and I’ll give credit where it’s due.

Click on the image to view it larger.