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Making Basic Patterns in Pixelmator

MAR 11th 2008 • 3 Comments

Textures and patterns are becoming more and more popular in web design today. It gives websites an almost physical characteristic that is lacking in solid colors. Real life is full of texture and different surfaces, why not make it part of the web too? Since websites are fluid and dynamic forms of design, it's almost essential to have a good pattern for any sort of repeating texture. I find that the best patterns are simply black and white pixels that can be played with in photoshop and applied to any layer. I'll show you one method I've been using a lot recently using Pixelmator
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posted in: Design | Tutorials |

New Design is Up!

MAR 2nd 2008 • 8 Comments

I'm finally done with my new blog design! This is probably one of the most ambitious designs I've ever done. I really wanted to experiment with lighting and shadows for this design. I think of interior design as an excellent example. If you took lighting away from an interior designer, it could have devastating consequences. You can have the greatest design, but if it's lit with fluorescent lights in the ceiling, it's not going to look nearly as good as it could with some well placed lighting. So I really tried to push that in this design.
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posted in: Design |

The Design of Nature

OCT 20th 2007 • 2 Comments

I just took this picture of these beautiful fall leaves in the woods behind our house. I can't help but admire the way oranges and yellows blend so perfectly with each other, and then there's the subtle contrast of the blue and green behind them. It's really awe inspiring in a simple sort of way. As a graphic designer, I could never in a million years come up with anything this beautiful. And no artist on Earth could create something as intricate and detailed as this. And this is just a static picture that I captured with a camera. In reality, this sight can be viewed in 3 dimensional high definition space!
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posted in: Design | God |

Dynamically Resizing CSS Picture Frame on Any Background

SEP 28th 2007 • 8 Comments

I've always hated the lack of interesting frames or borders on images on the web. Most picture frames on images have either had to have a fixed width (custom made for a particular image size) or they're simply part of the image being displayed. So I came up with a way of getting a dynamically sized border onto an image that works well on any background. All you have to worry about is the presentational markup required for it to work. So I put some JavaScript to Add Extra Markup Around a Tag together, to handle the presentation markup required, adding a layer of separation between the content and the presentation. The frame I'm using is made up of transparent PNGs to improve its look, but it could easily work with GIFs if designed appropriately.
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posted in: CSS | Design | Development |

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