I was looking for scripts for compact, on-page image galleries this morning and came across this great post on scripts for galleries and slideshows. Mostly I’m looking for a CSS version and there are a number of really good-looking ones here. I need something for a new photography client, but I’ll also want to use one of these for my web portfolio maybe on my new site.

Why are Republicans red and Democrats blue?

I stumbled upon this pretty good post today about why some colors become ‘legends’ and others don’t.  An interesting read.

While cleaning out a big stack of magazines recently, I came across this article in Print that I’d marked as potential blog fodder.

In part, this article is about the current proliferation of design tools that help non-designers create something all their own - a t-shirt, a set of thank-you notes, business cards, and web sites. It brings to mind a recent article in another magazine that discusses how a few small businesses built instant web sites using tools found on GoDaddy, Homestead, MSN and other services, and became overnight sensations.

I can see why this might be a scary trend for us professionals - giving the potential clients the opportunity to make something themselves for which they might otherwise hire one of us. The tools are better, more readily available and easier to use. They have ‘built in skill’ - the results can look pretty good, even without design expertise on the part of the client.

But think about it. These folks that utilize GoDaddy’s Website Tonight - are they creatiing something truly special? Is it unique? Or is it something that looks more or less identical to 5,000 other sites that used the same template? True, it’s inexpensive. But is it accessible? Is it search engine-friendly? Is it ‘good’ as in high-quality design?

Do non-designers know the difference between homemade design and professional work? I think that many do. Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes it’s not.

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Someone sent me a link to this addictive little background maker today.

I’ve written before that I work as a temp for The Creative Group, and that I was fortunate to be picked by an employer for the very first job that has kept me on since February on a part-time basis…

This week was a new record - I worked 20 hours doing banner ads, email ads, and specific content pages for online photo processing sites. I was on call with several managers toward the end of the week, and got a few good comments about the work I’m doing.

I like it - it’s mostly straight graphics with just a bit of HTML, kind of a nice change from what I usually do. And it’s nice to be involved with a company where the work is very fast-paced (things I do often go live the next day on 2000+ sites!) but people still manage to give kudos for hard work. That’s totally unlike my last full-time job prior to opening Parallax… Pretty refreshing.

A friend sent me this link to a color palette tool from Adobe called Kuler.

What a slick site. You can create a five-color custom palette starting from any combination from the color wheel. Well-executed, minimalist and quite striking visually.

I’ve posted a few of the color palettes from the layouts I made yesterday - my username is dac.

There was a nice article by Paul Chin in the latest issue of Dynamic Graphics magazine, urging graphic designers to expand their skill sets to include a basic knowledge of web technology.

He had some important things to say about web design that resonate very strongly with me. To quote: “Web design is a perfect marriage of form and function that originates from two distinct areas of expertise - the creativity of design, coming from the heart, and the science of technology, coming from the head. When the former is sparked within us, the latter allows us to realize it in material form. In web design you can’t separate one from the other.”

This is the definition of my calling as I have always seen it.

In junior high, our school was the first to get computers. I was in the first class, and all the other classes. I had never seen anything that fascinated me as much as those machines. I learned how to do graphics in BASIC - frightening but at the time I thought it was pretty cool.

Then I had a teacher in high school who was incredibly tough. This was 10th grade open world humanities GT, and in this class I failed my first test ever.

Every week we were required to create a project illustrating the balance of form and function in the context of making a presentation about something - it could be anything in the world, but the method of presenting had to be equally as compelling as the content.

This became an important weekly ritual that was at least as valuable to me, as a future designer, as the lessons I learned in my first two semesters of design studio in college.

‘Beautiful websites that work’ is one of my taglines. Achieving the sweet balance of form and function is one of my goals in everything I design. Thanks to Paul for his great article.

I’m an associate with The Creative Group, and have been working for the past month for a company in Boulder that makes a really nice interface for photofinishers.

I’ve been creating dozens of banner ads to run on vendor websites and on a series of emails. I’d never made a banner ad in my life until a month ago, but it’s fun. I don’t have to think too much when I’m selecting photos and writing blurbs for banners.

My supervisor wrote me today with kudos for the ads I made this week - and to tell me that they were going out in an email to 250,000 potential customers today. That’s really cool.