Summer Break
I have been surprisingly productive this summer break. There is a lot of time to reflect on the last quarter. I took a web theory course which focused mostly on design. However, I think I neglected the design aspect because I spent about 10% of my time designing and 90% of my time figuring out WordPress, which wasn’t a requirement for that class. I still did well in the class surprisingly. Fortunately, I found some projects to work on over summer break where I could focus more on improving my design skills. After watching 20 hours of illustrator training videos, this time I actually applied some of the Illustrator and Photoshop slicing techniques that was covered in class, rather than relying on just CSS3 to manage all of my design, which is not a good idea by the way due to browser compatibility issues (IE). Another useful thing I started using is the blueprint CSS framework. With this I was able to build the site structure for my last project within minutes. I also learned quite a bit about workflow. This time, I put in more effort into following a structured workflow rather than jumping into the code without completing a solid visual design. That probably saved me hours of redesigning the structure to fit a new visual design. Graphic design is fun.