Andrew Maier: Affordances in Modern Web Design

You will rarely see a website that lacks interactivity and effects, almost all websites today are well designed and full of sophisticated functions and elements which sometimes makes it hard for the users to navigate and do what they’re supposed to do on that particular website. One topic which was discussed on the video was Over-design which I think is common and based on experience I think I can justify like being on a website that has too much content on one page and messy controls and navigation links well I know that it’s part of innovation but I think there is a fine line between well designed and over designed.

ME! - Using jQuery to Extend CSS

Watch video here

Despite the vast capability of CSS in manipulating the design of a web page their are certain things that it can’t do like adding interactivity in the design. The growing popularity of JavaScript libraries like jQuery, MooTools, Dojo toolkit, YUI, and many others have been a big help for web developers and web designers because they can easily develop interactive and well designed websites without writing lot of codes through JavaScript or by dealing with a lot of CSS which may not work the way it’s supposed to on different browsers. There’s no alternative for CSS but what we can do is integrate it with those JavaScript libraries so we can develop rich interactive web pages.

 

Jonathan Longnecker: Why ExpressionEngine is Great for Designers

Jonathan’s design shop FortySeven Media

uses ExpressionEngine as it’s CMS of choice. He dug into some real practical examples showing us how dynamic and flexible ExpressionEngine code can be. It was pretty clear Jonathan feels as strongly about EE as I do about WordPress. I definitely understand EE better and could see it being awesome in many

 

Watch video here

It was good watching this video because I learned something new, I didn’t know whatExpressionEngine is and what it actually does so I while was watching the video I’m already thinking “Is that a free software that I can easily download so I can try” but unfortunately after looking for it in google and I went to their website I can’t find find a link that says “Free download” or anything that is similar to “Download me now while it’s free”(hahahahaha). I checked the website and displayed in their homepage are names of company which I assume are using ExpressionEngine and I was surprised because big companies like Adobe, Apple, Sony, and Cisco are using ExpressionEngine to manage their websites.

 

Grant Friedman: Techniques for Creating and Using Design Resources

 

Grant Friedman is a designer, blogger, author, and teacher based in Louisville. He is also the founder of Colorburned - a website with brushes, patterns, vectors, tutorials and more!. His blog shares some amazing design related stuff and is growing every day.


It was a very interesting video to watch mainly because I have never thought of how those photoshop brushes are made and here in this video I learned that brushes are actually made through a real ink and paper. My idea was that brushes are made in the computer using a powerful software with an IDE that allows a graphic designer to create and design such photoshop brush that we can all use and apply to our own design. Despite the technology that we have today I think there are still things that we can do manually.

 

Fabio Sasso: Design Inspiration

 

You probably know Fabio from Abduzeedo.com.

The founder of Abduzeedo was Fabio in 2006. Fabio is a graphic designer, however He’s been working with internet and web design since 1999. That was the beginning of the internet here in Brazil. When  Abduzeedo was created there was an incident that his been robed on the year of 2006 Fabio didn’t have a backup for his files, he decided to create or make a blog that can backup files. He start Abduzeedo and thought 3 reasons, first and most important, to backup my files. Then to create more networks and then to promote his work, so he could get more work and buy a new laptop again. When it comes to web he think the most important thing is to understand what the client or user wants, and of course for hi, that’s the content. Web design is much more than the visual part of the site, it’s a clear and optimized code, it’s the usability.

His slides were beautifully designed, and flowed with the narrative of his fascinating story. He talked about everything from his personal story of rebuilding from losing everything to how Brazil and the 80′s heavily influence his current work. I think my favorite part was when he emphasized that in doing client work, you need to do what the clients’ clients need, not what the client wants.