Day: June 30, 2005

And another thing… Cutesy flash intros are not so very cute, especially those that force the visitor to solve a logic puzzle in order to enter the website. I tried accessing one site with three different browsers, thinking there was a coding incompatibility, when the real problem was that I was too damned stupid to figure out that I had to drag an object across the screen in order to enter the site. That’s a mean joke to play on people. Call me silly, but it seems to me that giving visitors a reason to turn away defeats the whole purpose of having a web presence. I’m just sayin’…

With the exception of Mr. and Mrs. B’s kick-ass Memorial Day on a Sunday party, I ended up spending the entirety of my mini-vacation working on the new website. Really. The Whole Thing. And, by “whole thing,” I mean 14 hours/day with very few breaks. I have two words to describe the experience: o ick. It’s tedious, nit-picky work. I’m pretty happy with the overall look and the layout, though. It’s visually crisp and simple.

I got to work early this ayem, so I spent some time cruising around, looking at other artists’ websites. What I saw made me glad that I listened to the Little Voice who told me to keep things minimal. She usually knows what she’s talking about. Most of the websites I looked at had a lot of visual junk going on, but most of it served no purpose but to clutter up the screen, eat bandwidth, and show off the author’s mAd c0d1nG Sk1LLz. Folks, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And that goes double for anything–and I mean a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g–that blinks, bounces, rotates, or does any other sort of virtual calisthenics. Enough, already!

I also spent far too much time re-scanning and re-photographing images. That’s almost as tedious as coding, but the results are proving to be well worth the effort–especially for work with 3D elements that didn’t scan well. Having a serviceable digital camera has made life ever so much easier.

Another thing I’m discovering–and this comes as a surprise to me–is that I have a bit of a disconnect between visual and written expression. I don’t have any illusions about being the author of the next Great American Novel, but I’d like to think that I express myself fairly well with words. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to switch back and forth between expressing myself in words and in images. Why is this relevant? Well, I’ve been researching and writing copy to go with much of the artwork for the website. It shouldn’t be rocket science, but I’m finding that changing gears between thinking visually and expressing verbally is not as easy as it once was. So, it’s taking more time and effort than I had anticipated.

Anyway, I still have a metric butt load of work to do, but I’m hoping to get things running in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here’s the graphic I’ll be using on my main page. There are few things as beautiful as a contentedly sleeping cat.

Pandora