Redroot Design Notes

Thinking Inside the Box: Plan Before You Design

The blank canvas is equal parts exhilarating and scary as hell for artists. Instead of freezing up or leaping off into the wrong direction, I now start my designs by answering important questions and then limiting the scope of the design. While the artistic itch to follow my gut may feel thwarted, I get the work done and meet my clients' needs faster.

Of course, I wasn't always so deliberate. I think a lot of artists are like I was when it comes to starting a new project: see the blank canvas, get a little twitchy, and then shoot from the hip until the chambers are empty. Then, when the smoke has cleared, wade through the results and try to edit it into something that works. And not until some hours into the editing process would I stop and begin to ask the important questions: What am I doing here? What are we trying to accomplish? How far from "there" are we?

This is designing in a vacuum, and it's like Tourette's for web designers. Whatever comes out, comes out. This process works well for some people and for some projects. Sometimes it worked for me. But more often, I ended up with a design or layout that I liked, but wasn't quite right for the client (or worse, for humans). Since I've begun working with clients, I've realized that I need to be a lot more structured in the beginning. Instead of savagely attacking the blank canvas, I need to start projects by first building a box, and then getting inside. Read Full Article →

jQuery Basics: Using the Malsup jQuery Cycle Plugin Pager

If jQuery is your Javascript Swiss army knife, then the Malsup Jquery Cycle Plugin is your primary blade. Or, at least, the screwdriver. In any case, not the tweezers. Definitely not the tweezers.

On the surface, the Cycle Plugin is useful for image slideshows, but with a fistful of options, you can achieve almost any kind of cycle effect. Take a look at the Effects Browser to see demos of each. Granted, a lot of these effects are cheesy, the web equivalent of the star wipe (thankfully, star wipe not actually included in the effects list). And the animation can have that javascript stiffness to it. However, if you want to avoid Flash (as I usually do) and you want to get creative, the Cycle Plugin has the capability to do some pretty crafty stuff with a minimum of javascript knowledge. Not that we aren’t well read up on our javascript (we all own Jeremy Keith’s book on Javascript basics of course). We’re just efficient, right? Read Full Article →