Lawrence Siulagi

This is a website I designed for an environmentally-friendly painting service based here in Portland. I bartered for some interior painting – which is a good thing in these economic times.

I designed the site using WordPress and a modified K2 theme. The slow panning banner images use javascript and panoramas of the client’s work shot by the client.

For the animated image above, I used ScreenFlow to record a .mov file which I imported into Adobe ImageReady and exported as an animated GIF.

I just worked on a mockup using Fireworks CS4 and am in love with this prototyping tool. While I haven’t used Fireworks since it was owned by Macromedia, this is definitely not your father’s Fireworks.

With cool new collaborative features (albeit with other Adobe tools) and much needed enhancements like customizable assets in the common library and better text handling, Fireworks makes me want to use it for all all my design mockups.

I haven’t experimented with the CSS in the style panel, but from looking at the code I exported, it looks like it’s doing the job right. The PDF export is nice for more secure options and the software’s GUI is much improved using snap-to widgets.

But while there is an improvement in speed, I would still recommend using it with nothing less than an Intel Duo Core processor. Also, I’ve never really been a layer-slicing kind of designer but I’m keen to learn how others use this feature.

And alas, Photoshop, do not feel overlooked. You’re still my number one image editor. 0_x

On this day 44 years ago, Julie Andrews belted out The Sound of Music on the big screen.

It’s time to design my website. So far I’ve made a list in my head of what I don’t want but not a lot in the I Do Want column.

It is time to make Do. A deer. A female deer… okay, stop.

After reviewing a lot of websites yesterday – from flash-heavy to german minimalists – I woke up this morning with these thoughts.

While the Flash sites were – and I hate to use this term – cool, they were geared toward entertainment and not quite appropriate.

The German minimalists were nice with an overabundance of impact white, but they screamed minimalist, as in, “Look at me! I’m hardly wearing anything!”

What was great about both styles was the high usability factor. And while I lean toward minimalism, I don’t mind a little clutter – as long as the clutter is functional.

By functional I mean just that: serving a purpose. That purpose could be as dry as a menu flyout but it could also be an art form for an aesthetic enjoyment of space.

Picture a white couch on a wood floor with a white area rug, a coffee table and a lamp. While the elements and setting are functional and even pleasing to the eye, there needs to be a surprise. And I don’t mean a large Miro painting on the wall, but something that belongs, but altered in an organic way.

Huh? Let me explain.

Good quilters know that a good quilt design incorporates a single, cloth swatch which is different in pattern and/or color from the the other swatches. And not so completely that it distracts and not so subtle that it disappears entirely.

Which brings me back to TSOM. Remember that fly-in shot of Julie Andrews singing about those Bavarian hills? The song melody is the pattern, but the hills – or nature – are full of surprises: verdant greens, dandelion yellows, and lily blues.

So here it is. The first item in my I Do Want column is: I want a surprise on every page which is functional and in plain sight.