Web 2011 @ Penn State
This year Penn State’s Web Conference needed a boost when it came to their information architecture, strategy, and design to better align the web site and other online resources with the overall conference experience. I worked closely with two team members to develop the information architecture, strategy, and site design. I implemented the final look-and-feel using a modification of the Zen theme for Drupal
Hayes Large Architects
I worked with Hayes Large Architects, LLP to move them away from an outdated, Cold Fusion web site with an administrative interface and Flash intro, to a clean, semantic, editable XHTML/CSS web site. The result is an up-to-date site that is clean and modern and puts their portfolio, people, and mission right into focus.
Green Laptops
In order to put together some concepts about “green” technologies for a client without mentioning brand names, I took some of their popular products and constructed images from photographs of leaves, trees, rocks, sky, etc. This image represents laptop computers that use more environmentally friendly components and manufacturing and power consumption.
Green Desktop Machines
In order to put together some concepts about “green” technologies for a client without mentioning brand names, I took some of their popular products and constructed images from photographs of leaves, trees, rocks, sky, etc. This image represents some desktop computers that are energy star rated and constructed from greener methods.
My Favorite New Tool
My favorite new tool is an automatic pencil sharpener. Yup that’s right, a pencil sharpener. It’s really not even new, as an invention or in terms of model, but it’s new to me. It’s vintage with a faux wood grain around the barrel that holds the mechanisms and batteries with a beautiful guilloches pattern on the top. The top is clear plastic and holds the shavings and houses the blade. Around the top part that spins and sharpens your pencil are the words,”Press Gently.” Words of wisdom both for the act of sharpening and for sketching.
An Open Letter to Technology
Dear technology,
I think that I don’t love you so much right now or more accurately for a while now. You see it’s my job to make things work and quite honestly a lot of you just don’t play that well together. You don’t. Admit it. People expect web-type things to work consistently on everything that they use. And they don’t care what it takes behind the scenes to actually make it happen. They want their web-type thing to work on a Mac, a PC, a tablet (not the Babylonian kind), a cell phone or smart phone, a notebook (not the paper kind), or whatever else that you create and send to the market that has the ability to access the Internet(s). I’m tired of all of the work-arounds and quirks.
Wishing for that Analog Feeling on a Graphics Tablet
First let me just say that I absolutely love using my graphics tablet for work and play. Using the digital pen instead of a mouse is absolutely ideal for the type of work that I do and because of my background in art it’s a "natural" fit. I have it mapped so that there is a one-to-one relationship between where I point the pen on the graphics tablet and where my cursor is on the screen. It is superior to the frustrating scrubbing that is so common with using a mouse.
The Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy
The Laboratory for Public Scholarship and Democracy is a program of Penn State’s Office of Undergraduate Education that facilitates public scholarship through its support and administration of the Intercollege Minor in Civic and Community Engagement, the Public Scholarship Associates, Public Scholarship Course Development Grants, Public Scholarship Seminars, and other initiatives, publications, and programs.
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The Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos
The Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC) is dedicated to fostering the highest quality education and research in cosmology, general relativity, gravitational wave astronomy, particle astrophysics, quantum gravity and string theory, focusing on the highest energy phenomena and fundamental issues in the Science of the Cosmos. The Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos wanted to update their Web pages both visually and technically, so that its centers could have common templates and be easy to update by staff members with knowledge of HTML.
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University Bulletin
The University Bulletin, which is comprised of the Bluebook and the Whitebook, is the official bulletin of The Pennsylvania State University. The Bluebook is the Undergraduate Degree Programs Bulletin and the Whitebook is the Graduate Degree Programs Bulletin. Penn State is no longer printing paper copies of the University Bulletin and this Web site serves as the up-to-date resource for course information and degree programs. The front-end uses XHTML templates and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the back-end is Adobe ColdFusion. My role concentrated solely on the front-end and a fellow team member entirely created the back-end functionality.
My Role
- Visual Design
- XHTML Templates
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- Static Content Organization