Tacoma Groups

Award Winning Design Firm

Josh — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:41:56 +0000

We’ve written this before. When we design websites, they get noticed. Well, we were informed once again today that a website we designed and developed has won an award from an international design agency. Visit Faith Seminary’s website to view Design Firms Best of January 2008.

Mungering my email

gabe — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:49:10 +0000

I’m using the site: addressmunger.com to munger my email address to keep bots from locking onto me with infinite amounts of junk mail. The catch when mungering the address is that a significant amount of excess code is included that kept the mungered address from working- once i figured out what to clip off, it seems to work great.

Here are the settings for the mungering site and an example of the excess info that needs to be deleted:

on the site set it to "plain email link" and include email in the box to the right. then uncheck all other options (unless these are things that you think might be helpful to you). and finally, make sure you check the ASCII munge as opposed to the Javascript munge.

When the munge button is clicked here is an example of what you will get: (i’m leaving out the beginning

="mailto:ga

be@ainswo

rthstudio

.com">gabe@

ainsworths

tudio.com

Turns out that all the code from the > towards the center of the line to the needs to be deleted leaving:

="mailto:ga

be@ainswo

rthstudio

.com"

this shortened version will work now as an href email link that will appear as my email address.

good luck-

Ran across this, been looking for a long time for it.

Josh — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:01:12 +0000

Hey guys, here’s a link I’ve been looking a long time for. There are things I will add to later but, this definitely gets you started.

http://shoutingzone.com/blog/designer-resources/

Okay Guys, next assignment

Josh — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:56:13 +0000

You will be using jquery a lot so I want you both to be familiar with it, this is a fantastic tutorial. Go through it, but don’t download any of the stuff (images, text, etc.). The more you type this out, the more familiar you will get with it, the more you create things in photoshop, the more comfortable you’ll be when the real world fwam’s you in the face with it. So, go through this tutorial, make it your own, make the links your own, I want to see you send me to other sites.

Here’s what’s coming up, once you’ve completed this tutorial, the next step will be you implementing it into the spoonfed template you just put together, meaning, you will be creating a second page and putting this into an area of that original template among other things.

Have fun: http://nettuts.com/html-css-techniques/how-to-create-a-slick-tabbed-content-area/

Advertisement: Tacoma website and graphic design firm Ainsworth Studio in Tacoma Washington. How can we help you?

Marcus and Gabe - Assignment

Josh — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:35:02 +0000

Guys, I want each of you to create both of these tutorials, create them on ainsworthhosting.com, just ftp, make a folder, called gabe for gabe, marcus for marcus. create a new index.html file and do this tutorial first:

jquery navigation

Then, after you finished that, make one of the links in the navigation link to a second file, I don’t care what you name it, just link to it from the navigation you just created. In the second file, do this tutorial:

http://nettuts.com/site-builds/build-a-sleek-portfolio-site-from-scratch/

My timeline for this is as follows:

Gabe, this is your major assignment for the week, I’d like it up by Thursday before you do the bulletins.

Marcus, The end of the school year is here, you’re busy, I’d like this done by the end of your first day at Ainsworth.

More Discussion about not getting stuck

Josh — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:36:18 +0000

Eric Karjaluoto writes a blog called ideasonideas.com. He is in the middle of writing a book and this chapter is fantastic. Gabe, we’ve been talking about how to not get stuck in a rut. Read this chapter, but go beyond and make this site a regular read. Here is the excerpt about this chapter:

So, in order to feel as though something is happening, I’ve taken one chapter, stripped the visuals, and present it for you today. This passage is for when you find yourself stuck. At such a time, just open up to this chapter (again, it’s supposed to be part of a book), and try a random exercise. As you face more problems, you’ll likely uncover which approaches work best for you.

http://www.ideasonideas.com/2008/05/blockbusting/

Another article about Divine Proportion

Josh — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:22:23 +0000

So we’ve been discussing Mark Boulton and his simple steps. Here is an article by smashing magazine that expands on the divine proportion.

This article explains what is the Divine proportion and what is the Rule of Thirds and describes how you can apply both of them effectively to your designs.

There are a couple of other posts from Smashing Magazine about Grid systems and design, whether for graphic design, website design or photography, according to the divine proportion.

Grids are good

Josh — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:57:32 +0000

Khoi Vinh at Subtraction.com along with Mark Boulton in the UK did a fantastic talk on grids. Here’s the article. Read the pdf while listening to the mp3.

http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0318_oh_yeeaahh.php

http://www.ainsworthhosting.com/GridsAreGood.mp3

Typography and Font Resource

Josh — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:03:18 +0000

The other day my friend Gabe Van Wyhe and I were having a conversation about fonts and their personalities. Laughing about how I would describe Optima as a person, or Verdana, etc. He asked how I knew I was right, I told him: “because I’m always right, as a matter of fact, I’ve never been wrong, only mistaken.” (Ha, Just kidding.) No, the real answer is = RESEARCH. I spend a lot of time reading because there are people out there who have done the research and summarized it for me, I just have to find them. Along comes fonts.com with their typography 101 and resource section. Developing a love for fonts is a long road, this resource will help get you started on the right foot: http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Type101/

Design Information Thesis

Josh — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:49:19 +0000

Amazing Stuff. Especially the shape of news:

http://cvanvleck.com/vanvleck_thesis.html