Allchorn Design

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.

It’s been a while since I last tried my hand at illustrating something from scratch. As far as I can remember the most recent was when I did that illustration of my fountain pen in my logo.

After viewing the work of Brad Colbow’s Bradz, and my buddy Chris Mugnai’s art, I thought I’d give it a bash. I honestly thought it would come out crap, but after drawing it in pencil first then doing it in vectors, I think it didn’t come out too bad!

I wonder what a more seasoned illustrator would think of it, but regardless, I like and thats what matters at the end of the day for me.

In my role as a web design consultant, I often need to do a fair amount of research into a specific client’s needs. In that research, I tend to come across a lot of really cool technology and parts of it that enhance a website in really useful ways.

As it seems Wordpress is the talk of the web publishing world right now, I’m busy with a lot of Wordpress related projects. I had to looks for some specific extensions for the system called Plugins. and in so doing, I came across some nifty addons that I’d like to share. Some I will use on client sites, some on my own, and others I’ll just keep a note of for future reference.

Google Sitemap Generator

This one was actually found in a search for a meta tag management plugin for Wordpress, and although I discovered that there are other ways to solve the meta tag debarcle (another time), this one was a good find, and already on this site.

Sociable

This plugin gives you a huge selection of social websites that your visitors can use to share the content of your site/blog. I’ll integrate it into this site, but need to do some offline testing before it doesn’t post links below my intro blurb on the front page (my entire site is Wordpress driven).

Wordpress.com Stats

Now, don’t get me wrong, I use Google Analytics every day, as I believe it to be the most effective and easiest to use analytics software available. However, the Wordpress.com (hosted Wordpress) stats plugin gives you instant statistics in your dashboard which is handy and doesn’t require you to log into GA for a quick glance at your traffic.

CForms II

To me there is no debate over this being one of the most useful plugins for Wordpress. Create, manage and edit your forms for your website. Publish them on pages, posts, whatever. Submit to email or a database. Built in AJAX form validation… etc.

Subscribe 2

Allow your visitors to subscribe to notifications of new posts and content. Even taking your content and sending an hourly, daily or weekly digest of your new additions. This one is really handy to keep those unfamiliar with RSS up to date via email.

Well, those are them. Some are almost essential (CForms & Google Sitemap Generator), while others are nice to haves that definitely won’t hurt.

You might already know, but I’ve taken up office space in Durban with SA Web Design. Things are great so far, and it’s nice to be working from such a professional environment.

Gone are the dogs barkling in the background, although I admit, I do miss working from home in some respects. Well, here are the photographs I took today with some captions.

Waiting room on the left and the corridor into the engine rooms on the right.

The glass meeting room.

Inside the glass meeting room. Acoustics sound like you’re talking in a tunnel.

Another photograph of the inside of the glass room left, and some Dynamo portfolio work adorning the corridor wall on the right.

My desk.

The open plan space I’m sharing with 4 others.

Chess anyone?

Sharona, one of the head developers for SA Web Design.

Fancy boardroom showing the pretty side on the left, and the business side on the right.

I found the first one interesting and the second one hilarious!

Dove Evolution

Slob Evolution

It’s suprising how much of a difference it makes when a client actually goes out of their way to write you an email about how happy they are with the job you did for them. Completely unsolicited makes it even better…

Recently, I did a (very) small Wordpress driven website for a friend of mine for his up and coming laptop and notebook repair service. Things went anything but smoothly in some aspects like moving from his hosts at the time (no names mentioned) and then some controversy three quarters of the way through when someone criticised me to him sparking some doubt in his mind over my costs. This is what caused me to write about lowballers in the web design industry.

I won’t paste the entire email as there are some bits that are not related to this post (and personal stuff), but since he said:

“Feel free to post any of this on your blog, with my email address as a ref. Will be happy to advise others to use your methods.”

I decided to use this one paragraph which sums up the tone of the email and what he was saying:

“Most importantly: Your sites work – you can quote me on that. I think the value of the site far exceeds what you have charged, and I really want to thank you for going out of your way to sort me out on mates rates there. That CMS is absolutely necessary, there’s just no contesting that.”

Well, to me, that makes me feel a whole lot better in an industry where there is a lot to get frustrated about and it’s nice to know there is more to it than just the pleasure of working with technology in these exciting times on the web.

6:45am at the 3 Sisters Guest Farm. Literally seconds before the sun poked over the peak and flared out the lens.

Well, for those that care, it seems like things are on the mend. Some pretty major adjustments to what I’m used to, but things are starting to look good.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about; We’ve (Wife, 2 dogs and I) relocated 1000 miles across the country to the land of curry, bananas and Zulu warriors. Also known as Durban.

Two and a half days on the road driving between 65 and 90km/hr was quite an interesting experience. Anything faster and the 3m long trailer started to get into a bit of a speed wobble. Anti nausea tablets for the normally motion sickness prone dog worked fine. Unfortunately Bobby the 4 month old puppy also suffers from motion sickness. He puked twice.

Well, we’re here now. Thats behind us. I make it sound worse than it was. The 3 sisters guest farm was beautiful, and the 4 star B&B in Bethlehem was nice and relaxing with a great breakfast. Once the trailer was off, I spun my tyres a bit and did a bit of speeding and I felt normal again.

Already in an office

Less than a week and I’ve already set up offices in Musgrave Road through a kind offer by Kevin at SA Web Design. It’s a great help and so far they seem to be a very talented and experienced bunch. They work exclusively in ASP.net, but I’ve already done some design work for them. I’ll keep it off the portfolio until I have their permission to publish it. Some fun work though.

Some exciting prospects

Since arriving here (and in some cases even before) I’ve had some truly remarkable offers.

There is a chance I could be heading up a website design course for Hirt & Carter in their training dept. in the new year which is something I’m quite seriously considering. I think it would be truly great to introduce web standards based design to a country that is void of this as far as I’m aware. A bit more usability and semantics, and a bit less “learn Dreamweaver” mentality is just what this industry needs.

I’ve received a couple of other offers that all look great. There is one that particularly strikes my interest and they’re a company I’ve had a lot of dealings with in the past. I’ll hold back on mentioning who they are for now, but if you know me, you’ll probably already have guessed who they are.

Well, it’s good to finally have the time to write something in here, and this post pretty much sums up where I currently stand. Things are looking up.