I think what caused the fuss wasn’t the actual content, but rather, the context it was sent in, i.e. by a developer to the whole company. It was seen as an insult, implying that the design team aren’t doing a good job, rather what it should have been, which was a comment on how we could all work better together. I do agree quite strongly that every designer should understand how websites are built. It can only be a good thing that the designer understands the capabilities of the tools to build websites, helping make best use of them to create a richer user experience.

On the other side of this though, the developer should also understand design. We can often battle against the belief that us designers are just styling. What we are really doing is attempting to create a good interactive user experience; considering a whole barrage of things, including content, structure, client brand, how to prioritise content and create visual cues, for example, by using contrasting or consistent colours and styles, using white space or even round corners to make it easier to distinguish between components.

Well, the list could go on and on, and I’ll hopefully get around to writing more on it another time, but the main thing to consider is that each member of a team has a role to play, and with good communication and understanding we would all create better websites.

It’s been a little hard going trying to keep my ideas fresh, but I’ve actually really enjoyed getting into creating the brand concepts for them. I’ve also been doing my emotional thinking, that I was talking about in my last post, to make sure that I’m doing something that users can identify with. Well, I still need to push myself in this way for all the design work I do, but it does feel nice that I’m progressing as a designer.

Without actually thinking about it I think most designers make emotional choices, whether it’s colour, styles or shapes. These help create a site that fits the brand and the intended purpose. Understanding what these emotional cues are will not only make it easier to make the correct decisions when creating a new design, but also allow us to be able to explain to the client exactly why the design should look as it does. This should help us communicate better with the client, and end up with a design that everyone is happy with.

I’d initially used CSS to replace text with images, this is quite an awkward solution as you have to create a new image for every item you want to replace. I did a bit more searching and discovered siFR 2. sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) allows you to replace text on a page with any font you want, using CSS, Javascript and Flash.

I’d struggled previously getting this version to work properly and behave the way I wanted it to. Mainly for each item in a navigational menu to look the same. So I was rather happy when I discovered there was actually a version 3. This version is incredibly easy to use. I love being able to apply CSS styles, as well as defining the font size.

Take a look here: sIFR 3

Set the variables for the file reference, file types to filter by and the url to send the image to:

var imagesFilter:FileFilter = new FileFilter("Images", "*.jpg;*.gif;*.png");
var fileReference:FileReference = new FileReference();
var uploadURL:URLRequest;
uploadURL = new URLRequest ("upload.php");

Select which file you want to upload to the server.

fileReference.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, selectHandler);
fileReference.browse([imagesFilter]);

Function to tell Flash what to do once you have selected your file.

function selectHandler (event:Event):void {
var file:FileReference = FileReference(event.target);
file.upload(uploadURL);
}

Then use the following PHP code in a file called upload.php.

<?PHP
// The folder where the image will be uploaded to
$target_path = "uploads/";
/* Then add the original filename to the target path.
Result is "uploads/filename.extension" */
$target_path = $target_path . basename( $_FILES['Filedata']['name']);
if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['Filedata']['tmp_name'], $target_path)) {
echo "The file ".  basename( $_FILES['Filedata']['name']).
" has been uploaded";
} else{
echo "There was an error uploading the file, please try again!";
}
?>

So, why wasn’t is working

So basically, this code wasn’t working, and I had no idea why. I kept getting the generic error [IOErrorEvent type="ioError" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text="Error #2038"].

A nice relaxing sleep later I did some more searching and discovered this wonderful post: Romantika.name | Flash Uploader Error. Which basically informed me that there can be a security issue with Flash trying to upload things to a server. I updated my .htaccess file and ta da….all worked perfectly.

So, around ten years later the idea of creating a brand for myself didn’t even cross my mind. When creating this site, I just naturally created a little ident that I was rather fond of, instead of spending hours thinking of what I wanted my logo to say to other people. Hence, I was rather surprised, and flattered, when David Pache contacted me to ask if he could include my website brand in part 3 of his 100 Brands of Interest.

This has gotten me thinking about my original love for brand identity and how I’ve never quite felt comfortable around it. I believe the time is now to re-examine it. I’ve enjoyed developing my illustration skills, and thanks to iStock’s new product, Logos : Logos come to istock, I have a great new avenue to help me rediscover my lost interest in logo design.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

Adding the default stylesheets to the HTML

I created one main CSS file, that held all the styles that will never change, as well as a four separate season CSS files for Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. I used the Summer css file as a default and added an id called season.

<link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link id="season" href="summer.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Javascript code to select the CSS

Firstly I get the date, then use an if statement to set a variable with the correct filename. So, between December and February it will show winter.css, March to May spring.css, June to August summer.css and September to November autumn.css.

Then I just set the href property of the element with id ’season’.

// Get CSS JavaScript Document
function getCSS()
{
datetoday = new Date();
themonth=datetoday.getMonth() + 1;

if (themonth == 12)
display = "winter.css";
else if (themonth <= 2)
display = "winter.css";
else if (themonth > 2 && themonth <=5 )
display = "spring.css";
else if (themonth > 5 && themonth <=8 )
display = "summer.css";
else if (themonth > 8 && themonth <=11 )
display = "autumn.css";

document.getElementById('season').href = display;
// End -->
}

Call the function

All that’s left to do is call the function in the<head> of the page.

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
getCSS();
</script>

Done!

Installed the Simple Captcha plugin. Very excellent so far!

Anyway – aside from that I do feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog for a while. Got a couple of things I’d like to write about – I’ll get to it soon.

Monday is going to be a productive day. I’m certain.

Well, for me it’s all down to research, brainstorming and hardwork.  I try to soak up as much as I can about the subject, target market, brand or whatever, then start doodling, writing and sketching whatever comes in to my head. It can also be really useful to sit down with a bunch of colleagues and just bounce ideas off each other. All you need is a few not too bad ideas, then just work on developing them. I think with that you’ll get there in the end, and sometimes it will even turn in to that genius idea you were looking for.