Elevate Your Graphic Design
This summer, I was asked to put together a modest For Sale By Owner website. We saved a huge amount of time and effort when Pagosa SUN’s Mike Pierce had produced an ad for the upcoming Relocation guide. His ad became the basis of the site design.
The site features a rotating slideshow and Google Earth maps to pinpoint the property.
It’s fall, and even though it has seemed a bit slow to peak this year, in the right places, you can catch some spectacular color. So it’s also time for the most colorful background of the seasons.
Fall around here also means lots of things to do. Things to put away in the yard and on the deck that will be covered in snow before we like it. Deciding which plants can be transplanted indoors, while the rest are sacrificed to the frost. Time to gather firewood, call the chimney sweep, clear out the clutter around the woodstove, etc. etc. It’s a busy time. The summer was busy too. We spent a lot of time traveling around and celebrating outdoor time.
And work has been busy. I’m so excited to report that it has been work that has really kept me away from this blog. It was still spring when I last made a post to this site and so much has happened since then. I decided I should blog about my to-do list for this website (kinda like the one I’ve got going for my fall chores). Here’s the short list:
I completed two new projects and have at least two more in the pipeline (and that’s just the work that’s related to Subalpine that’s worth talking about—I’ve been doing my usual wearing all the hats I can get. I like hats.). In July I published a site for a For Sale By Owner home.
I also plan on adding a Photo Gallery section to my Services page. I’ve always wanted to add my candid photos of landscapes, dogs, etc.; but have also recently been hired for some product and real estate photography and would like to share some snippets of those photo-shoots. I know a lot about photography and editing photography, but I consider myself an amateur photographer and am often surprised what comes through the lens.
…And actually the list is much longer than that, but I think I’ll start with baby steps. My best idea is to stockpile content through the winter so when I start spending a little less time around the computer in the summer, I’ll have basic stories collected and almost ready to go. See it all comes full circle back to the season. Fall. Enjoy it while it lasts; and gather and stockpile everything you need for the winter to settle in.
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day and Spring—the Spring Equinox this year is Sunday. It was high time for me to change my wintry, gray and white website to something more green, bright and spring-like. The background photo I chose was actually taken in June of 2004 at Buckles Lake which is 20 miles south of Pagosa Springs. We took the VW bus (a 1965 13-window deluxe) and the dogs camping and ended up next to this gorgeous field of flowers and iris blooming amongst the aspens.
The aspens in my yard are starting to get fuzzy catkins but have not started leafing out yet. I think we still have a few weeks, and it will probably be May/June before the aspen groves up high are accessible and look this lush.
With the aid of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), it’s very quick and easy for me to change elements of my site. The changes today probably took me about an hour—and most of that time was deciding what photos and colors I wanted to use. I think writing and organizing the content for this post took me at least that long! I use Firebug to tweak the colors and opacity and to preview background image choices before I update the final version that you see. It’s a very handy web tool. I wouldn’t be able to design and test CSS sites without it.
Updated (March 22, 2011): I really like the green changes and have every intention of changing the color theme throughout the season, but I’ve been looking at my site since I added the green and feel like something’s still not quite right. Something’s making it too busy. Maybe too difficult to read?
Today I decided to tweak it a little bit more. I changed the background to another image I have of aspen trees on our way to Poage Lake. You can see other photos from this area in my post about The Name of our company. I also decided to flip the background color to purple and accents (like on my portfolio page) to green. I think this is a little easier on the eyes and isn’t quite as intense. It is only March anyway and things aren’t THAT green yet.
With the launch of SubalpineDesign.com a few new and exciting projects have crossed my path. One was for a friend, talented artist and cellist Mark Dudrow’s new CD with guitarist and fiddler Justin Dean. This was one of my first professionally printed pieces in a LONG time. They came to me with the overall design, but I had to tweak it to fit the template and got to make some additional design and typography suggestions. See you at the CD release party January 30th at the Taos Inn!
I also had the opportunity to offer design solutions for a new company starting here in Pagosa, Little Weedz. It’s a line of cute clothing tailored to grow with the child. Whenever I have a project, I strive to present at least three very different design concepts to my client. This stretches my imagination and allows for several options to recombine and modify. Click on an image below to see some of the suggestions that were offered to Little Weedz and a sneak peek at the final concept which should launch within the next month:
I also was asked to create the functioning menu I envisioned. I had to change up a few of my strategies for the rollover images and needed a suggestion on how to use PHP to change the bee’s position to correspond with your current page.
What great projects to kick off a New Year!