Technology for Artists & Writers Blog

Catherine's Website Draft

2009-02-18T17:40:00.000-08:00

Here's my page for now:

http://www.catherineharrell.com/tfaw/index.html

I'd like to try a CSS-based layout instead of a table, so maybe I'll give that a shot next week. I'd also like to learn a little more abut shadows and transparency, since it looks a little weird where the table meets the background.

Link to my online draft

2009-02-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.stanford.edu/~greenbur/TFAW/Index.html

I had trouble with getting lines between my images in the table, and I did set the table border to "0", so I don't know what happened.

Got a long way to go!

2009-02-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

Here are a splash page and a format page for all my links!

Mae's Website

2009-02-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

Alex Greenburg Photography

2009-02-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

site

2009-02-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

Website design

2009-02-11T18:20:00.000-08:00

here is my home page (to be edited, changed, warped, whatever-ed)... this i think will remain the general idea though. When the mouse rolls over the outline of one of my buildings, it will turn into its photographed image (maybe a rendered image if I am so lucky to get that far)! You can see the outline of two of my models in front but about 3-4 more will be added later.

Here is the basic idea for the next page. The photos will all be scattered, with the idea that a shadow box will pop up with a little description when someone double clicks on the thumbnail. A description of the entire project/process/ideas will be on the right.

Portfolio

2009-02-11T18:19:00.001-08:00

Woo!

2009-02-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

dan hirsch=web designger

2009-02-11T18:13:00.001-08:00

Catherine's Layouts

2009-02-11T18:12:00.000-08:00

Homepage

Interior Pages

website starts, landing page

2009-02-11T18:11:00.000-08:00

Starts of Jesse's Website

2009-02-11T18:10:00.000-08:00

Sad attempt at Photoshop

2009-02-11T16:12:00.001-08:00

Here is my (late) and a bit pathetic attempt at putting pictures together in Photoshop. Nothing too exciting, but it is a pretty big deal that I did not throw my computer out of the window in the process!

Photoshop User Awards

2009-02-10T22:30:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone - check out this year's Photoshop User awards. Pretty outstanding. (Also, note the nice use of ShadowBox-type image viewer?)

Site Maps

2009-02-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

Jesse

Dan

Wyatt

Phil

Mae

Laura

Jin

Jay

Corwin

Catherine

Bria

Ashling

Alex

Catherine's Factory Composite

2009-02-04T18:30:00.000-08:00

2009-02-04T18:27:00.000-08:00

2009-02-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

House

2009-02-04T18:20:00.001-08:00

Moonwalk

2009-02-04T16:59:00.000-08:00

messin' with the smudge tool.

2009-02-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

ocean/city mashup (bria)

2009-02-04T15:08:00.001-08:00

Yung Albert

2009-02-03T23:06:00.000-08:00

2009-02-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

Alice in Wonderland

Photoshop collage- images from abroad!

2009-02-03T22:05:00.000-08:00

2009-02-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

UFB: unidentified flying brunch

Photoshop wonders/CSS

2009-01-28T23:39:00.000-08:00

Here goes my post on the spectacularness that is photoshop.

This one absolutely cracked me up. I don't know how many of you may have seen this baby elsewhere, but its hilarious even without his shrek genetics. The superimposing of shrek onto a little chubby baby face is delightful (maybe this isn't what actually happened?). I suppose the person just colored the face and added the shreky ears. The vest is also a clear addition of photoshop, sadly its not blended quite as well as the face.

These stairs are really really cool. Hand-drawing something like this into a realistic photo might be a neat little addition to some people's stuff. I love the fantastical effect of it. It's as if there's some other alternate universe in our world, and photoshop is the key to uncovering it!! No? I'm really just way too excited about learning all this stuff...

______________________________________________________________

Aaaaand as for my belated CSS post.

This is Steven Holl's website (he's a really amazing architect, i loves him). The layout of his site is really crisp and powerful. The organization of the menu differs from most of the ones I've seen in its subtle asymmetrical, jumbled-yet-balanced type of look. I took a look at the code and found one interesting little chunk:

It's by no means life-changing. In fact, I imagine this menu wrap thing is pretty standard as some type of rollover (rollover: see detail. Move mouse off: detail gone). But seeing what the code actually looks like for this, and its relative simplicity, is encouraging! I definitely foresee stealing this little gem...

Referring to the post "Photoshop Action"

2009-01-28T17:11:00.000-08:00

Butterfly-Ray: This may not be the most complicated animal splicing picture on the blog, but it is nonetheless extremely clean and elegant. The layers and three dimensional effects involved in creating this are a bit beyond me at the moment, as is the magnificent lighting on the ocean floor. Even so, I can't imagine something like this being impossibly difficult after a bit of tinkering.

John Mccain: The eyelashes are my favorite in this picture. I feel like this isn't that complicated of a Photoshop job-- the touching up and blending around the lips could possibly be maddening without the most efficient tools. At any rate, Photoshop played no small part in the successful Obama campaign.

Wooooo!

2009-01-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

The characteristic of a photograph that always makes me question whether or not it was "photoshopped" is how clean it looks. There is almost a hyper-real quality to this image, which is conveyed by how smooth and perfect the figure is rendered. Even though I can tell it has been manipulated, there's a wonderful initial moment when you look at the photograph and are fooled for a second by the illusion.

The brilliance in this one is that the photographer observed the similarity in texture between a frog and an orange, and put the two together. Or maybe he just changed the texture of the frog in photoshop!? I think what makes a photoshop image work is establishing some level of beleivability, in this case the way the orange peel imitates the curving belly of the frog.

photoshopping

2009-01-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

A familiar roadside structure transformed into a fantastical object -- not too hard to photoshop, but visually exciting. I'm assuming he used either the stamp or bandage tool to get rid of the pole, either way he did a good job of perserving the detailed pattern of the trees below when he took out the pole. Sometimes with photoshop I think people can go a little over the top and the visual language gets cramped, but in this case I think the photo is improved and it brings up some interesting ideas about branding.

I never thought that people playing table football could have such a stark, end of the world feel to it. Neither of these images by themselves would have been impressive, but the strange combination really does it for me. The actual photoshopping is pretty impeccable as well. It's too small to see here, but all of the froth from the waves curves around their legs in such a realistic manner.

Ok I realize that this photo isn't photoshopped, but I think that this image could inspire some other really cool ideas. Gregory Scott, the photographer, once based his paintings on photographs, but has recently been working on reversing this relationship. The overlapping of realities could be an interesting avenue to explore for our upcoming websites. Just a thought...

photoshop inspiration

2009-01-27T00:59:00.001-08:00

I searched around a bunch of photoshop award blogs before I found this one. After wading through a lot of faces and spilched animals, I was impressed by the fluidity and simpleness of this one. I like that it looks "natural" enough, but it is still quite constructed. It seems like the reflected clouds in the water might have been natural to begin with, althoug stretching and skewing the reflection from the sky with some lighting changes wouldn't be that hard. I think that's the "ripple" effect, I think I've seen it before (on the water). The rocks would have had to been cut out and maybe even stacked like that from another photograph, and the water "splash" would have been taken also from the same lake but....bah now I'm a little confused. There's dfeinitely a good deal of blending goin on. I like the symmetry.
I really liked this example as an illustration of how photoshop is/can be used commercially for ad's. Obviously these flowers are taken form another image and multiplied and blended so that they merge with the foam form the champagne. The bottle is set against a fade background -- pretty simple, but cool. The scale change of the flowers makes them feel much closer to you. Sweet.

I like the a lot of the images I've seen out there that integrate illustrator, handdrawn, and photoshop elements to create a "multi-media" feel digitally.

(somehow I never pushed the publish button last night, apologies).

Photoshop Action

2009-01-26T23:15:00.000-08:00

Here are two pictures that are incontrovertibly photoshop. It is striking how smooth the modifications are.

DVD is sickkkk

2009-01-26T20:38:00.000-08:00

Arghh i'm lovin the DVD, i literally just spent the last 8 hours trawling through it and watching/trying everything.

but I'm pretty sure i'll explode if i hear Russell Brown say another word, and i give mad props to this kid who led a talk at an expo in the following getup. On the disk under Blend It --> Watch -> Mult

(his shirt is not photoshopped)

Photoshop Makes the World Go Round

2009-01-26T18:41:00.000-08:00

These are three obvious Photoshopped images that I found off of www.worth1000.com that truly caught my eye. I unfortunately do not really know enough about Photoshop to talk about how exactly these were accomplished – but I am really excited about beginning to understand! I think that all of the images are successful because of the subtlety married with the absurdity.

This one is my favorite

photoshop pop

2009-01-26T18:21:00.000-08:00

I found these two images while searching the web and what I like about them is how smooth the photoshop effects seem to go with the original images used. I think what makes these work is the similarity of the objects' shapes and textures that are being manipulated. In the first one, the artist mixes a mouse with a kiwi, and this combination is nice because both a mouse and kiwi are similarly shaped, and have a similar texture -- fuzz. This makes the image seem like it could be real -- an actual kimouse (kiwi-mouse), and makes for a nice photoshopped picture.

In the second picture, the color of the woman's hair matches that of the horses, and the artist uses the manes of the horses to blend in with the flowing hair.

Photoshopaholics

2009-01-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

These three images were definitely manipulated on Photoshop. As complex as the two images with the human figure are, I actually like the banana one the best for its simplicity. The zipper is so well integrated into the peel that I almost expect to find one of these sitting on my kitchen counter. I imagine the artist took a picture of a zipper, warped and rotated it to match the shape of the banana, and then did a whole lot of blending. The smudging on the back end seems a bit too messy for it to look real, however. The black and white graphic looks like it uses a lot of Illustrator vector art, and the bubble picture probably stacks several image layers and a lot of brush work. It'd take me days and days to pull off something like that!

Can you even do this stuff on Photoshop... or is this all Illustrator or other things!? I’m in desperate need of some video tutorial watching!

2009-01-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

As the title of this post indicates, I’m a little confused about the scope and range of Photoshop’s powers. Regardless, Here are some things I Stumbled Upon (a great resource for general web browsing and finding cool websites and lots of procrastination)...

Obviously this image has been manipulated a bit. It’s a cool composite of an actual photograph (likely to be touched up a bit... the light on the figure seems to be a bit accentuated, er something) with graphic elements composed on the computer. I like the sort of collage aesthetic taken to the extreme and the almost dichromatic color scheme behind him. I do think the balloons are kind of stupid though, and some of the sparkly flourishes strike me as a little bit dumb. But in general I like how the added graphic elements interact with the photo. You should check out the rest of this guy’s work. He’s a graphic designer with all sorts of kooky images.

I stumbled upon this image as well. Holy Cow. I assume this is a traditional image of a landscape at sunrise manipulated the hell out of in Photoshop. I think what’s kind of interesting is how it takes one already evocative, pretty image and applies one idea to it... But also, maybe a little cheesy... I mean “Hell’s Pit.” Also it looks like around the edges there is some digital interference or something to create that white edge. I imagine little imperfections like that are going to have to be something we watch out for as we delve into photoshop. For more images interesting and not, check out this web gallery.

Also, I couldn’t tell... How manipulated is this photo of Hong Kong!? Is it even a photograph at all or entirely digital illusion!?

Also, here’s a neat photo page/project that is way old school and has nothing to do with Photoshop.

photoshop goodness

2009-01-25T14:51:00.001-08:00

I got both of these images from deviantart.com, an online community for artists. finding images manipulated in photoshop is really easy on the site - they have an entire section for it. for some reason, there were more images of women in that section than any other subject matter, with nature as a close second. I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that, but I thought it was really interesting. I chose the two images below because of their contrast in form and how pictures have been manipulated.

I loved the composition of the photo above - and how light the entire image appeared. The use of photoshop is not immediately apparent - the same picture could have been taken in a studio with a cloud background and floor. However, I feel like those were the photoshopped elements. The artist may have also used photoshop to play with the lighting in the image as well, highlighting certain areas of the girl's legs, and darkening her shadow. More than anything, I enjoy the movement in the composition, and how a subtle use of photoshop has enhanced that feeling.

After looking through pages upon pages of "photomanipulations" on deviantart, I was struck at the number of darker compositions created using photoshop. For lack of a better term, many of the images were quite "emo" and I thought it was interesting how much people used photoshop to express their inner feelings. I thought this images was particularly interesting since it used multiple images to create an entirely new image, with a direct feminist message. It's a good example of the blank canvas that photoshop affords artists - a dynamic and potentially limitless canvas unlike any other in the art world. The composition is slightly disturbing, but I do enjoy the harmony of the colors and lighting effects. I also enjoy the artists' use of opacity between the image's layers. Indeed, the composition is highly interesting because it has so many layers (literally and figuratively... I hate to think how many layers are actually contained in the photoshop document).

Photoshop & Women

2009-01-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

The movie, fashion, magazine, game industries (and more I'm sure), take advantage of digital image editing for advertisement. Littlest manipulation can do a lot to change an image of a person. Take these girls for example (the left is before, right is after digital manipulation) and do click on them to see the details:

You could have the woman of your dream or become a goddess with a little bit of photoshop touch up. Smoothin up the skin, making fuller lips, bigger breasts and bottoms, etc. The individual changes are very minor and easy to do (healing tool to get rid of blemishes on face, airbrush to make smooth skin, and liquify tool to get a quick plastic surgey). Yet these little changes go a long way, and it just shows how much power we have over presentation.
The social implications of digital image manipulation is also something we cannot ignore. I like looking at attractive people. I guess I just have to realize that 90% of the images I see are just illusions. These articles below correspond to the pictures above. They discuss various issues in using digital manipulation in advertisement:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-552891/Magazines-face-restrictions-airbrushing-celebrities-promote-ultra-slim-ideal-beauty.html

http://neaat.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/real-amber-vs-photoshopped-amber/

http://www.psfk.com/2008/04/warning-airbrushing-kills.html

Photoshop Images

2009-01-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

These two landscapes come from digitalblasphemy.com, a website with tons of beautiful computer-generated desktops. They were made with Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, and a handful of other software goodies, using techniques that are completely over my head. The images demonstrate the artistic power of digital manipulation, especially in the realm of fantasy and magic. Photoshop has created amazing opportunities for artists to express themselves, from stylized cartoons to photorealistic scenes. With so many possibilities for artificial light, color, shading and detail, artists can use digital tools to create gorgeous pictures and to enhance what we see every day.

The above image uses luminescence and special light filters to create the eerie glow of the aurora. Also notice the fog in the background as the trees fade into the distance, and the translucent appearance of their reflection on the water. These are all really cool techniques that make the image seem real.

This landscape is another example of dramatic digital lighting. The image also plays with focus and softness to create a feeling of depth. Notice the bright orange trees in the foreground and the soft, dusky colors in the back; classical art techniques still apply in the digital world.

Of course, a far more important use for Photoshop is the creation of hilarious animals.

We all know God didn't make that tiny kitty.

Munch.

Finally, Photoshop is a big part of the advertising industry. Check out this video from Dove's beauty campaign.

yet one more cool site

2009-01-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

Well, the last thing any of us need now is to see more cool websites - but I just couldn't help it. This one, I think, is particularly good at establishing a personality - you feel like you really know this guy, and that he is or should be your very good pal. The friend who sent it to me is actually now quite interested in marrying him. Sigh. Well enjoy it. Make sure to drag the little side panels out from the left side.

mad photoshops

2009-01-23T00:36:00.001-08:00

i've been doing photoshop a fair while yet these are a little beyond me!

Source Code for Quirkybird

2009-01-21T17:47:00.000-08:00

I checked out the website of cartoonist Dylan Meconis. She uses simple html tables to lay out the page, which I found surprising for some reason...I thought the whole thing would have been some sort of complex Flash file. But once you break it down, it's pretty simple: one cell of a specified width, with her image in the middle. She creates a nice illusion of complexity by using graphics, instead of just text, for her links.

I was intrigued to see that instead of using individual images for each link, she uses a mapping technique to split up a larger image into linkable parts. I tried this method halfheartedly once -- for about five minutes before I decided it was too hard -- but it might be worth revisiting, as a relatively simple way to add some interactivity to a large, colorful image. It works nicely here.

Her portfolio page is also a fairly straightforward layout: a big table for the background image, and a 5x5 table inside to hold her images. The thumbnails link directly to separate webpages, and I'm not sure if I like that. I find it very distracting to have a new window open, and then to close it again in order to see the next picture. It makes a big difference to have an interactive portfolio you can click through to see one pic after the other.

Let's Get Meta

2009-01-21T16:23:00.000-08:00

Q: How can I get people to happen upon my site?

A: the meta tag baby

I revisited Seeqpod.com (which if you still haven't visited, you must!), and saw a funny looking tag in the source code. Next I found a website to explain it:

From http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/chap15.shtml :

"some search engines now support the META tags, which allow you to give keywords and a description to your page. This gives you more control over how your page will show up during a search, and will often cause more traffic to your page.

The META tag can be used for a few different purposes. Usually, you should place the META tag within the head tags at the beginning of your document. To improve search engine results, we will use two specific attributes within the meta tag. Here is an example:

meta name="description" content="description of page goes here"
meta name="keywords" content="keywords go here"

When a user searches a search engine that supports meta tags and they query a phrase (search for a keyword) related to your page, your page may show up in the list of results. Your page will be listed by its Title, and then underneath its title will be the first hundred or so characters of the description you placed in the meta tag. It is recommended that you keep the description content to no more than 200 characters. Although the keywords content is not seen by the user when searched, it is recommended to keep this less than 1000 characters, because if you have more the search engine will either ignore the rest or delete you from the index. (Commas are not needed to separate keywords)"

Site Map Examples

2009-01-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

Here are some examples of site maps. Whether you are a text or visual person, diagrams or text outlines work well. See the below site maps for www.momentrance.com for examples:

Source Codes

2009-01-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

Honestly I am pretty terrified by html and I really have no idea how to accurately read it. I went through a bunch of different websites trying to find some html that really caught my eye, but for the most part it just looks like gibberish to me. One of the things that I was interested in was the websites that looked complicated but then had fairly sparse code. This is an example from imeem.com which looks like a pretty complicated site to me but didn’t have too much on its source page…

Seeing the Codes

2009-01-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

After checking out the codes for the websites I admired, I realized that there were important issues to consider in terms of separating style and content. In almost any websites, the importance of accessibility and maintenance seems to get lost in the effort to make an website visually astounding and interactive.

Peter Chan's website, for example, is simple and clean. When I examined the site without the style, and saw that there was not much difference (except for the ugly frame scroll bars). In other words, the style and the content was written together. The html code looked cluttered and messy--maybe he was using a website making software, which does not always generate efficient codes.

I took a look at Magnivate, and with no style, nothing showed up. The html code showed that all it had to display was javascript and flash, which explains the empty page. In case like this, where the main goal is to have an aesthetically pleasing website via flash, it is pointless to try to separate the style and content. (How would someone go about separating those two anyway?) The positive side of this example is that with something like flash, the website designer can merge style and content into one component.

The two websites I mention above would not allow users to bookmark a particular section or a page of the website. This is sometimes very annoying for me, because I like to be able to find what I want to find immediately. In a completely flash based website like Magnivate where it is also tricky to navigate, a visitor can easily get frustrated.

I like the CSS Zen Garden a lot, particularly because there is a clear separation. As a web designer, I can imagine myself getting sick of my own design often and wanting to change it every now and then. It would be important for me to be able to change how the website looks without having to mess with the content.

html is cool

2009-01-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

I was checking out this site videoholic.tumblr.com and noticed the "search" feature on the right hand side, which has an empty space for the user to type text into. I did some research and found out these fields are called "forms" and they can be used to gather information from a site's user. I think it would be cool to have some sort of feedback section on the blog part of a site in order to get comments from viewers. I think to do a search requires some complicated coding but if you wanted to have the user submit their email address this would be easier to do.

Here's the code for the search function, with some extra quotation marks. Forms use the "form" tag, which is "<"form">" minus the quotes.

"<"form action="/search" method="get">
"<"input name="q" value="" type="text">
"<"/form">

code hunting

2009-01-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

I was checking out some photography sites and came across http://adamekberg.com/splash.html His stuff is pretty minimal and not particularly mind blowing, but I noticed something unusual in his source code...

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">

Apparently you can use Urchin Web Analytics to gain a deeper understanding of who is actually checking out your website. You can see how many first time visitors, returning visitors and frequency of use. According to their site it uses javacode and some other stuff that I don't quite understand to track users. If you're interested here's a link Urchin:

http://www.google.com/support/urchin45/bin/answer.py?answer=28307

searching for code

2009-01-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

So I started off wanting to examine the coolest website I've seen ever, re: my last post...

but this one involved a lot of javascript that wasn't totally useful...so I went and looked at one of the website's this company designed, which was interesting and baffling at the same time. It had this really cool fading screen with the tree changing seasons in the middle, with some sort of rollover buttons. It looks like the "fader" is a plug-in, per se, and that they have to reference where you can get the plug in:

(p.s. I don't know why I ended up on all german websites this time...)

/***********************************************
* Ultimate Fade-In Slideshow (v1.51): © Dynamic Drive (http://www.dynamicdrive.com)
* This notice MUST stay intact for legal use
* Visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ for this script and 100s more.
***********************************************/


They also had some simpler parts of the site that had added dimension because of the way the rotated the pictures --
a relatively simple trick, but one that seems effective.

a little intimidated, but excited.

HTML treasures

2009-01-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

I chose this webpage (www.speckdesign.com) because I'm looking to get inspired for ways of displaying products through a case study organization. I want to show the creative process behind each of my projects, in the same way this site tells the story/challenges/intentions associated with each of their showcased products. I especially liked the scrolling mechanism on the opening page, so the user could search through pictures of each case. The source code is hard to decipher for this part, but it looks like flash-- probably too difficult for someone who doesn't know anything about how that works. I've also discovered some mouse rollover code for the toolbar. I like the way the contents of each heading spread out horizontally instead of vertically; it's different. I'll definitely look into that onMouseOut/onMouseOver coding for my own website!

Laura

2009-01-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

This page is straight forward and maybe even a little overdone, but necessarily so for the purposes of looking at source code. Even so, it has a unique and professional look that restates the prominence of this string quartet in the music community. Looking at the source code, a few simple yet didactic points come up:

Pull Down Menus
I'm pretty sure most of the code was constructed using Java, which was made clear at the beginning of the code by typing the line script language = "JavaScript". From here, a new menu is created by typing menuName = newmenu. Then when the user passes over the menu with the mouse, the pull-downs are created by coding menuName.addMenuItem. Where each item links to is specified in parenthesis after this. Whether or not this will work with our pages in DreamWeaver I'm not sure.

Tables
The source code with regard to tables illustrates a lot of what goes into them. A table is composed of a width, a border thickness, cell padding, cell spacing, and valign. The last three I'm not sure about, but it's easy to see how effortlessly a table can be created, even if you are coding it by hand.

tr, td?

These appear all over the place in the page's code, and I'm not sure what they do syntactically, except that they refer to the table in some way. Maybe someone can help me out?

relatively lost in translation : cool source code

2009-01-18T23:12:00.001-08:00

www.artocracy.org

i'm glad i stumbled across this website for a number of reasons: 1) it's a cool concept -- i'm always supporting the art-for-all cause 2) i appreciate the interesting layout (definitely not a standard template) 3) i understood some (SOME) of the html.

here's what i gathered:

** i tried copying and pasting the code here... bad idea... weird things happened ... understandably so **

1) how do i make that cool banner with the constantly-changing photo letters?
javascript.


2) Layouts can be alllllll tables and they can be real complicated.
If you choose to open the source code yourself, you can see how extensive one table can be. For every cell, the designer
has to define so many attributes and elements. Borders, padding,  It can definitely get confusing!

3) Rollovers! * worth stealing *
I really like how this website collapses into its main menu, and I especially like the rollover highlight. I * think * I found the code for that..
But it's just a guess. I think I'll just have to try it out in dreamweaver and report back!

What I really want to steal is some of the javascript elements, so perhaps I'll figure that out.

: : over & out : :
ashling

Wonderful Websites...

2009-01-14T15:49:00.000-08:00

Jesse Bertke: Together my family runs a remote fishing lodge on the border of Denali National Park in Alaska (see picture) and I will spend the rest of my life trying to find any place in the world more incredible. I love to travel, take photos, and paint when I can – sadly that has not been as much since coming to Stanford but I am looking forward to more time to paint my landscapes in the future. I am a Political Science major with a minor in Art History(and don’t worry I have hated Sarah Palin since before it was in fashion). As far as plans for after I graduate I was thinking this would be a decent job… www.islandreefjob.com

The site www.visualthesaurus.com allows you to look up any word you are thinking of in a traditional thesaurus manner and then it presents you with a visual map of the word – from there you can explore the map and follow trails of words. What I really like about all of these websites is how clean and practical they all are. They provide a service of sorts but it is also a really entertaining experience.

http://www.thephotographicdictionary.org/ is pretty self-explanatory I just like the idea of adding a visual reference in addition to a definition. There are not too many words at this point but I think that it is expanding.

Etsy (www.etsy.com) is a website designed to allow individual artists and craftspeople the opportunity to share and sell their designs. I really like this website because there are lots of creative ways to search through the countless items. These are just two examples: one where you click on a color bubble and then the site suggests things that match & the other is a timeline thing where items that have recently been posted fly towards you and you can use your mouse to sort through them and throw them if you wish.

Phil!

2009-01-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

Phillip considers himself the only one to have actually put Nutella on anything. He is from Tucson, AZ, and if you were bad at small talk, you would probably mention the fact that this town might be mispronounced TUK-son, or that it is a very dry heat there. Neither one of these points interests him or is funny. He understands why people might like the hit TV show "House" but thinks it is overrated and redundant. He would like to go as far as possible with music, a little bit further, and then further still.

Websites

CourseRank

This website was created by a few Stanford CS students who absolutely put Axess to shame. Although it looks to be built on the facebook model, its functionality and navigability are top class. This website understands its audience, and adjusts its layout in order to cater to the student-on-the-go who needs to quickly look up information about a class. CourseRank was not a one-time project with a static design, but changes constantly to maintain a fresh look and meets the demands of its users. It is an absolutely model website built by our peer web designers. Google.com

This is a bit of an obscure website, but I think it works. The letters of its icon are unreasonably colored, but since these provide pretty much the only color on the screen, we can give the logo a pass. There are only two buttons to push. The first, "Google Search" is straight-forward, but raises questions of what the button actually searches for among those new to the site. The second button, "I'm feeling lucky," appeals to the addictive gambler inside us all, and users can get excited about using this button, even if they only ever use it once. The other options in the upper left hand corner such as "Images" and "Maps" are too plain and easily ignored by users. On the whole though, Google.com, given time, will likely take off.

JCrew

It makes sense that a company that prides itself on fashioney things should have a fashioney website. This is indeed the case with JCrew's website, which combines a simple layout with a simple color palette to produce an inviting effect. The pictures in the middle of the screen have a feature that is quite common now where the user can scroll instantaneously between several photos. When the user starts navigating the site, the same unoffensive color ideas are maintained, and incidentally might match the clothes on screen.

Jin's Bio & Nice Websites

2009-01-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

About Jin

I was born in Louisiana, went to South Korea, forgot English, came back when I turned 13 to get American education, started learning English (from ABCs; for about a week, I had nothing to say to anyone except "hi" and "hello") while living with host families, and came here to Stanford. I've pretty much settled on pursuing double major in Studio Art and Psychology (just need to get advisors). I like to sleep, draw, and eat. I hope to make a short graphic novel of my own sometime very soon! I have a 13 year old little sister who is also planning to come to America.

It makes me nervous.

The Websites

http://peterchanart.com/

Here is a website of an established artist, Peter Chan. His website is clean, simple, and easy to navigate. I think it helps the visitors to enjoy his artworks without being distracted by elaborate decorations, various animations or music. Although The "news" section of the menu shows his blog, which is an efficient way of updating his activities.

http://www.magnivate.com/

This is an Interactive Boutique Agency based on Jakarta, Indonesia. I have not been able to find out what exactly this company does, because I do not know what "Boutique Agency" means. What I like most about this website includes: style of art, cute animations, and the interactive quality. A visitor can customize a "traveler" to this wacky and whimsical world. He or she can send little messages flying out to the sky. For those who do not want to press the arrow button to see the little traveler walk around he globe, there is an easy menu that'll tell the space ship to send the traveler to a specific location. I personally wish that little menu bar could stand out more, but part of the fun is getting a little lost in this strange and adorable world. This is very close example of what my dream website looks like. The major downside is that the page takes too long to load.

http://tanko.carbonmade.com/

http://www.carbonmade.com/

I found out this website called "CarbonMade," which provides great image gallery frame work, similar to Lightbox and Flickr. I have not used any image gallery plug-ins in my websites yet, so I don't know what the ups and downs might be. One tiny detail that bothers me is that it seems like (from this website of an artist I found) I'd have to have a website with address that has "carbonmade.com" at the end. I'm sure I could create a dummy site to redirect it, so it shouldn't be too big of a problem. Nevertheless, this looks like a very promising tool for artists who like to show off their work in organized manner.

Crazy Delicious

2009-01-12T23:42:00.001-08:00

Nathaniel has been called many things by many people: Nathan, Nate, Nate-Dawg, Nathizzle, Than, Nathan (but put the emphasis on the first syllable), and Beau. These people are no longer around. Call him Nathaniel. Nathaniel hails from the great plains of South Dakota, where he recommends you never travel. He enjoys string cheese and Wheat Thins. He does not enjoy pickles. He loves theater, lightheartedness, and nearly everyone he meets. If you saw him on the street, you would likely think: puerile.

Let the good times roll.

www.girlsarepretty.com
"Because I need the poetry"

You wake up this morning and you decide that you want to foray into a world of Buick LeSabres and wise hookers. You sit at your computer and you type in the first words that come to your mind: girls are pretty. And rightly so- that they are. The new god of your universe, Bob Powers, materializes next to you and begins whispering sweet nothings into your ear. You turn around and an old man with soiled underpants in his mouth is begging you to punch him in the kidneys. Your superintendent calls you and asks you if he can cut your hair. Welcome to the world of Girls are Pretty, a delightful website which supplies you with a different reason to celebrate each day. What will tomorrow be? Perhaps it will be "Some Christmas Trees can Talk and Fight Terrorism Day!", or will it be "Unfrozen Fart Day!" Sadly, the author of this blog has discontinued posting in order to write books, but every grim and delightful peice of prose giving us reason to just be happy we're living is archived from five years back. Enough material to keep one occupied for the next five years, at least.

www.bringtheawesome.com
"Face it. You need the reassurance sometimes."

This site does nothing more than produce eight words on your screen. There's no design of which to speak, outside of the color choices. It has nothing clickable. Nothing moves on the page. The text isn't centered, nor is it consistently sized. Yet, this site is infinitely entertaining- to me, at least. This page compliments the viewer. Don't be mistaken, it doesn't generate compliments. It greets all its viewers with the same words: "You are awesome. And I like you." Who wouldn't want to be told that? For some reason, these words, presented in this manner and context, make people laugh. Simplicity can sometimes produce the most complex humor.

[timebeat]
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once"

Timebeat is a clock. That is all. It has no functionality other than that it keeps time. The method in which it displays the time, however, is rather interesting to look at. Timebeat is a cluster of web-like wheels of numbers. The numbers and webs are displayed in black, white, or grayscale colors. Every second is kept with the sound of a heartbeat. With Every heartbeat, the wheels rotate, tumble, and weave amongst one another to display the new time. It's very soothing, and, once again, simple.

Webbies

2009-01-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Hey kids

My current 3

Love: immersive visuals, clickable icons that look like what they represent. I've always wanted to create a site that looked something like this.

Hate: a little too busy, no real order, no sense of a "home" screen. Cluttered.

Love: clean, simple, elegant. Interesting formatting utilises horizontal scrolling, much more reminiscent of photos in a roll, than traditional web-based design, which scrolls up and down.

Hate: have to scroll all the way back to the front to navigate. A little too much flash, too?

Love: So simple. The tiny numbers root you in the the site, give you a firm grip in where you are -- you're 17 photos in. Easy to view all of portfolio. Compelling to do so. Clean as a model home in the suburbs

Hate: Boring as a model home in the suburbs. There's not much to hate here though -- it's the heart of what a portfolio is supposed to do: showcase good work. It doesn't pretend to be an immersive experience, it isn't one, and i reckon it's successful because of it.

A Handful of Cool Websites

2009-01-12T21:46:00.000-08:00

I've had these guys bookmarked for awhile. I had to do some digging through my "Inspiration" folder a bit to choose my favorites:

Alex Dukal (Illustrator)
http://www.circografico.com.ar/

The layout here is very simple: plain background, barebones navigation, not a whole lot of bells or whistles. But it works. Notice how all of the focus is placed on the images, which is precisely the intention of an illustrator's portfolio. Everything is designed to make the page as simple and functional as possible (with an artistic elegance too, of course), from the neutral gray background to make the colors pop, to the "News" and "Flickr" links placed just above the fold to encourage the user to scroll downwards. The paper effects of the book give the website a certain tactility, and they make you feel like you're actually thumbing through a children's book. The low-tech physicality of the page is perfectly suited for the type of work displayed on the page, and the artist manages to create a usable website that feels like just a regular old book.

Mindspace Advertising Agency
http://www.mindspace.net/

This website manages to pack in a great deal of information without cluttering the layout. My favorite part is the stark, easy-to-read navigation menu on the left side. Not flashy or imposing, but at the same time, unmistakable and intuitive to use. It's the kind of pretty you might find on an Apple Computer box. The "news" section drops down gently on the right side, and rather than dumping tons of information on the viewer at once, it provides several concise, well organized headlines in soft grays, neatly delineated with horizontal rules. And of course, the large photo sets the tone for the whole page. It's big, it's bright, and it's colorful, which is exactly the type of image this advertising agency wants to communicate. I think this highly visual layout could work well for an artist's portfolio. The extra edge comes from those barely-noticeable details along the border (notice the two shades of thin gray lines, with a faint shadow to create the impression of the page lifting off the screen). This is one of those understated websites that still manages to make you go "ooooh!"

Laurence Bergreen (Author)
http://www.laurencebergreen.com/

This author's website doesn't follow the traditional rules of web layout. A giant photograph dominates the space, setting up a unique experience. The panoramic image makes you feel as though you are stepping into the photograph and into the world of books. The navigation strip, rather than being located along the top of the screen or flush against the side, is deliberately laid across the bottom. Unusual, but effective. It's easy to see where to click, and the information pages have wide, spacious white backgrounds and easy-to-read text. Subtle ornamentation, like the shadow behind the navigation strip and the smooth animation as the menus slide up and down, give the website a polished, professional feel.

Catherine's Bio

2009-01-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

My family is like this: mom, dad, brother, sister, me, 2 bulldogs, 3 tortoises, 2 turtles, 6 chameleons, 4 pythons, a roomful of carnivorous plants, and 1 very grumpy snapping turtle. I bet you can see where I got my interest in science. I'm currently a senior majoring in Human Biology, with a concentration in the Neurobiology of Sensation and Perception...which is a fancy way of saying, I'm taking art classes in order to be a science major. It's a pretty sweet deal for somebody like me. I love children's illustration, graphic novels, and graphic design. I want to stay in school for a little longer and study interactive media and the brain, and then I'm crossing my fingers for an exciting, creative job in animation, advertising, or something similarly clever and fun.

Corwin's first blog post EVER

2009-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

Corwin is a junior majoring in architectural design, absolutely not quite ready to stop being a nerd and start living in the real world and looking into being a professional student for life. If she's learned anything so far in this world, it's that life is unpredictable, so just do what you love to do and never stop learning. Outside of spending many-a-late-nights in the studio, her interests include drinking tea, enjoying bright and beautiful mornings (witnessed only approximately 20 days out of the year), accomplishing to-do lists, drawing, and green tea ice cream.

http://www.thibaud.be/

This website presents a very original and intriguing layout while still managing to remain very straightforward. It is interactive but not overdone. They way that you can click and flip through the "paint samples" is reminiscent of flipping through an actual portfolio, which I think is extremely attractive in its connection to what is typically lost in the transition from print to electronic form. Very satisfying!

http://www.mac-design.org/macdesign.html

While I don't understand anything that's written here, the cycling of inspirational quotes is great and the up-beat music selection even greater. Music in the portfolio experience doesn't always fly, especially such prominent music like this jazzy, mariachi-ish number, but it somehow here I think Marco Rettore pulls it off. The layout is simple with the menu up top, very bold and effective. One negative is the personalized scroll bar on the side that doesn't allow for you to scroll by mouse or trackpad.

http://www.ericryananderson.com/

With this front page, the choice of one catchy photo is very effective rather than being ambushed with a thousand little thumbnails. What I appreciate the most is that because the viewer has to scroll to the right to view all the photos, Eric Ryan Anderson is able to compose an order to his photos in exactly the order he wants people to see them. A plus is that there's no thumbnail-clicking: everything's right there in really good quality for immediate viewing pleasure.

2009-01-12T21:36:00.000-08:00

ALEX GREENBURG

I am Alex Greenburg. Who is that? Good question.

I am a photographer. I keep my camera with me everywhere I go, as a reminder to never stop observing. I shoot color 35 mm chrome film, like the kind you use to watch sideshows at your grandparents.

I believe that the appreciation of beauty is a power great enough to set us free from living an uninspired, mundane existence. I wish to walk through life awake, not asleep. Awake, not asleep.

3 COOL WEBSITES

Pitchfork Media

Want intelligent tongue and cheek updates of what's going on in today's indie scene? Try sticking it to pitchfork media. With daily updates of the latest concerts, thoughtful album reviews, and logical organization of content, Pitchfork will turn you into a musical snob in no time.

Homestar Runner

What is inspiring about this website is its ease of navigation. There is no need to scroll down or sideways from the center frame that looks like a TV screen. Its interactive format encourages users to explore and laugh along the way on this magical journey!`

Seeqpod

The genius of seeqpod is its simplicity. Wouldn't it be nice to create a playlist of all your favorite songs on demand for free? I know. It's awesome.

Seeqpod gives users the opportunity to create and access playlists by logging into their account. Music will follow you wherever you go.

Dan Hirsch's turn

2009-01-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

Dan Hirsch is...

from Western Massachusetts
an American Studies Major
a producer for the Stanford Storytelling Project
a hopeful (though potentially not very optimistic) journalist
a fan and practitioner of fiction
a Pisces
the youngest of three
a proponent of trying new things and eating huge pieces of watermelon
thinking he may spend some time as truck driver

book

This website exhibits the collaboration between four artists. Over the course of 36 weeks they passed a book between the four of them and each alternated making a page a week. They were only allowed to see a little bit of the page before. Besides being really rich in content and beautifully displaying their work, this site does a nice job of a) telling a story b) applying digital techniques to make a physical object even more interesting.

I think the use of audio along with text for each page is great. So cool to hear their thought process in responding and making these pages. As you follow each page you get a sense of who these guys are as artists and collaborators. The human voice added to their work, makes the work so much more interesting for me and makes the website totally enriching and addictive.

Sonic Memorial Project

The Sonic Memorial Project is an open archive to memorialize and document the history of September 11, 2001 with collected sounds and recorded interviews. I picked this website specifically for its “Sonic Browser,” which displays and organizes links to sound files in really interesting and dynamic ways. Each floating line represents a different sound. When you scroll over the line a description of the sound pops up and starts playing and the line turns into an orange sound wave. It’s cool because it actively engages visitors to the website with media, rather than just having a list sounds. It’s also organized by tags to facilitate the browsing experience.

++Subway Life++

This is an online exhibit of Antonio Jorge Goncalves’s “Subway Life,” in which the artists traveled around the world drawing hundreds of people riding different city’s subway systems. Not only do I really like the drawings, I think how they’re organized is really great. I like how he steals the aesthetic of subway maps to display the works, and his use of sound makes for a more immersive experience.

mae and some neat websites

2009-01-12T19:22:00.000-08:00

mae is a senior majoring in architectural design and keeping up with photography whenever she can. when she's not huddled over a desk in the architecture studio, she can be found watching bad action movies, dabbling in outdoor activities (recently surfing, rock climbing and sky diving), traveling, road tripping back to the east coast, consuming unreasonable amounts of baked goods or wandering around san francisco. in a perfect world mae would travel the world while taking sweet photos or building sexy new buildings or both. for now, she'll just take whatever the job market will give her.

Neat Websites

www.big.dk

first off, before you enter the crazy flash realm, check out their manifesto. it's a little over the top perhaps, but i like their goals of exciting, avant garde pragmatism. ok now enter BIG. it seems pretty straight forward, but once you start clicking on alphabetical, programmatic and scale things get interesting. i love the dance of the icons as they reorganize themselves. the color choices also start to make more sense when you click on the programmatic tab. all in all it's pretty nifty and the work itself is beautiful.

http://www.f-o-a.net/
the colors of this website are just so lovely and saturated. besides the initial color draw, this site is filled with clever details. everything you drag over launches out in such a satisfying manner. just drag over the top tabs for a while and you'll see what i mean. they also have some pretty cool graphics going on--check out projects by region. one downside is the image moving by in the background. for some reason it makes me kind of dizzy--maybe that's just me.

http://www.labarchitecture.com/

yes, another architecture site, but there are a lot of good ones out there. the first time you enter the gong noise hits and little boxes start floating around. it's disarming at first, but once you start rolling over the boxes things start to make more sense. every box refers to a category of architecture and you'll start to notice that the letters in each category start to light up as you scroll over. also wait a bit for the nodes to connect to each letter. it's totally unnecessary, but a nice gimmick. overall, the site is a little harder to navigate than most, but homepage is pretty neat.

website picks + bio: bria long

2009-01-12T17:41:00.001-08:00

bria is a senior straddling the fields of (fuzzier) science and art, and preparing to go into the real world with two ideas: 1. anything is possible 2. art is necessary for life. She's a human biology major focusing in psycholinguistics, and has spent a large amount of time studying japanese and french, pretending to have multiple foreign aliases. Born with an ex-hippie piano teacher for her mother, she grew up playing excessive amounts of piano but has now turned to graphic design and large abstract paintings. Other favorites include tea, traveling, scarves, SOCA, candles, art nouveau, purple and green, running, camping, chick-fil-a, and straw hats. might or might not be from atlanta.

3 super sites:

I really started thinking about how diferent sites use the concept of space after digging around for a while. I had always conceptualized websites as essentially flat, 2-D objects with cool buttons, but these websites in particular exposed me to some new ideas.

http://intermissiondesign.com/

This first website for a design company allows you to move around what feels like...a very large screen that you can only see through your window of the internet browser. I.e., you press one button and it takes you to the top, another and all the way to the right, another and back down. It uses simple colors and typology, but the original layout really struck me as exciting.

http://www.2kilo.nl/grafisch_eng.htm

Wow. This website was the best I've seen in a long time. See that arrow pointing to the right? It allows you to scroll through what feels like a few rooms (that connect). They're showcasing all of their design products, and as you click on something on a "shelf," it pops up larger, without a seperate window, without deactivating the scrolling page behind it. I was so impressed by how just drawing a few, "pencil" lines onto the screen gave the website a whole new feel that I had never imagined before. The design is also quite efficient and not too busy, and has cool flash animations between screens.

http://jonesingfor.com/

This website is almost the opposite in terms of busyness, but still is highly effective in a different way. I've tended to lean towards "prettier" colors per se for some design projects, but really liked this stark combo of white, gray, and orange. The intro screen...

is really neat and the words move around on the page and scroll in and out of view. Just go look at it....it's hard to explain. Took me a while to capture a part where the orange is highlighting the current selection. Anyhow...effective use of vertical type, totally flat space, simplicity...props.

bio + 3 sites = sweet

2009-01-12T14:19:00.001-08:00

born 'n raised in nyc jay kilachand is a pizza fanatic. half-hinjew, half-amazing, he is a senior interested in filmmaking, rap music and taking long walks on the beach. some favorites include lil wayne, back to the future, halo 3 and making music videos. he also likes playing facebook games and surfing the web. check him out.

3 cool sites:

Jon Lajoie's portfolio

www.jonlajoie.com

Jon Lajolie is a comedian and I think the reason I like this site is because you really get a feel for his personality from the site's design. I like how crazy everything is and how its all organized (but appears not to be). Also the way each object animates and plays a sound when your mouse moves over it makes the interactions more enjoyable. The intro video is also pretty funny (the first time).

Caviar Content

www.caviarla.com

I like this site because the layout is so simple. This makes it easy to get around and there is not much loading time between pages. The site is also straight to the point in showing its content, which allows you to focus more on what this site is actually about.

Prattica Architecture & Design Studio

www.prattica.eu

This site is sick. It takes a little while to load, but the layout is really sleek. Aside from the small and stylish navbar in the corner, whats interesting is how in the projects section they incorporate the design of the site (the square pattern) into the way the site actually functions (turning the squares into pictures). The mouse over features are also really engaging and it becomes fun to just move your mouse around over the menus.

ashling & three splendid websites

2009-01-11T22:17:00.000-08:00

ashling mei lin loh-doyle is no ordinary half-irish, half-chinese-from-malaysia, paper-obsessed, typography-loving junior economics major from los angeles. some may say her quirk and character verges on insanity, but she believes that to be bit insane is to be more alive, and that life without passion (for... paper, or puffins cereal in her case) is a life not worth living. hoping one day to achieve her dreams of traditional/digital bliss by running some sort of hybrid stationery/graphicdesign/web development firm, she spends most of her present days running the dish, enjoying salmon and fage (pronounced fay-yeh), drinking a nice shiraz, and being the go-to-friend when one needs to identify a font. ashling blames her parents, an anal irishman with an acute aesthetic taste, and a fun-loving, terribly cute, chinese gem for her abnormalities... but would not have her life, or her brain wired any other way.

THREE SPLENDID WEBSITES:

www.houseind.com

I really like how this website is straight-forward, but it has a little quirk. I love how the pictures transition on the front page, the use of a font with a unique character, and I especially love how they've decided to crop images. All of these decorative elements, however, don't distract from the simplicity and intuitive navigation. Plus, I'm a huge fan of the AMPERSAND, and that glyph is all over the place.

http://www.contreforme.ch/en/project/

I really like how this website is so stark, yet it gives all the necessary information about this design firm. It's interesting that the home page is not a "splash" page, but it is one of three main subpages of the website. The website serves as a great showcase for their work because it is so simple, but there are little details here and there that show their design expertise, like the fixed contact information at the bottom of the page, that has a slightly faded top border. Plus, everything looks cooler in french. ; )

www.wefeelfine.org

I've always been so intrigued by this web project. Definitely click on this one if you've never been. The idea is simple - to catalog how people feel all over the world at a particular time - and yet, the possibilities are limitless. I especially like how they've archived their feelings, so you can see how people felt two hours ago, or two years ago. It's hard to describe in words, so seriously, just click. And, I'm especially fond of circles (much more of a circle person that a square person) so I appreciate their choice of shape.

3 Awesome Websites

2009-01-11T19:32:00.000-08:00

Laura Chang is a senior majoring in Product Design. She hopes to become involved with design for social change or sustainability. When not in the machine shop, she loves traveling, writing, good food (making it, eating it, dreaming up ideas for a future restaurant), painting & sketching, and going on adventures.
Chris Woods' Portfolio

www.chriswoods.ca

What's great about this website is that it's both simple and engaging. On one hand, everything is sleek and simple: black and white, rectangular, clean, and intuitive. At the same time, the site is an experience in itself: classy, jazzy music plays in the background as users can easily scroll over the collection to view each photograph in better detail. It feels like I've physically wandered into a hip art gallery. Of course, the sheer quality of Woods' work is a big reason why this site is so great, but the way he displays it is particularly effective.

Jesse Willmon's Portfolio

www.jessewillmon.com

One of my favorite parts of design is ideation and sketching, and I think this portfolio effectively captures the spirit of that process. I like how his language and sketches are straightforward, fun, and accessible, in a way that avoids the elaborate fussiness so common in portfolios. I'm really inspired by his integration of hand drawn images...it gives his site a refreshingly personal touch, as if he quickly put it together with pen and paper. I might have played around with the arrangement of images to make it look more unified, but the overall concept is great.

One Laptop Per Child

http://equation.laptop.org

I really like this website for its playful interactive elements, simplicity, and clear message for social change. The opening page's narration clearly defines the project's intent. To follow is a collection of user "equations" for a better world that pop up when you click on each child icon-- this way users can contribute meaningfully to the site and actually experience the value of community. I also really enjoy the musical element, as it's childlike and fun to play around with. The website's ability to engage the user is what makes it so wonderful.

TFAW Class Statements

2009-01-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

Megan, Tom, and Jeremy's Links

2009-01-07T17:44:00.000-08:00

Miranda July
Text, type and writing

Making of Lynda
The process of art documented

Zhang Huan
An established artist online

Creaktif
Breaking the rules

Momentrance
Multi-disciplinary portfolio

Jack Conte
Successful music on myspace
Martin Hsu

Tom is an Artist

2009-01-06T12:08:00.000-08:00

Hello World

2008-12-02T11:56:00.001-08:00

This class rocks! We are super excited.