Category: design

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New WordPress Theme

Original BaseLayer theme
Original BaseLayer theme

I’ve been developing a new version of my wordpress theme for quite a while now and finally have it to a point that I like and have installed it on my site (you’re looking at it right now). There are a few artists using the theme already, and I worked with a design friend to come up with a nice, flexible overall layout. It has a stronger grid than my last design, and many more typography tools that are accessible within the WordPress admin area.

I’m giving away the theme for free and will be gradually updating the documentation to explain what it can do. For example, I personally don’t use pop-up galleries, but a lot of people use them so I have several versions of Colorbox built into the theme. Simply typing in the shortcode [gallery_colorbox] will create a default pop-up gallery. More info and downloads can be found here.

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Designers take the Meyer’s Brigg test

Thanks to Scott Hull for pointing me to this Fast Company article about what personality type makes the best designer. It seems to be inline with what I would expect, it also makes me wonder (beyond it’s incomprehensible design graphics). To see a trend, I would need to know how other professions would fare with the same criteria. I would think investment bankers would also be good at “intuiting”.

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Communication Arts Design Annual

The new CA Design Annual is out and I’m not sure if it’s just me not noticing before but I really like the new online format. They have a small motion graphics section and we can actually click to see the winning videos – for a price. Most of my reading is done online anymore, so I’m glad to see that there is an alternative to the way they used to show motion through a series of images. If Microsoft products were as nice as the ads they produce, we’d be in business!

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Data Visualization

This New York Times article has a good overview of the amount of data we are collectively generating. It is literally mountains of information, and the real problem is how do you make sense of the 40 billion photos on Facebook? Is it possible, is it useful? I hope to explore how to use Processing to visualize data in that way. I feel that as artists we have a unique ability to take complex ideas and fix them in a visual form.

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Site Design with Word Press

Today I have decided to start redesigning my site using Word Press. I have previously used Drupal, although mostly as a testing platform. I like WordPress because I think a blog format for my new site design makes the most sense and will allow me to easily update everything in one place.

One of my main goals in a new design is to integrate my exhibitions, images and documentation so that it is all easily accessible in multiple formats. I plan to have a PDF printable version of my CV page, as well as all of my documentation. I have already found that integrating WP plug-ins to be very enjoyable and productive. If you are viewing this on an iPhone, I have implemented the WPTouch plugin so that the page works like an iPhone App.

As I progress, I will talk about what I have done to create the design.