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Design Posts

I’m Joining RecoVend

RecoVend

This year at #heweb11 I was finally able to meet Kyle Judah in person. We shared the best BBQ in Texas with Michael Staton one night in Austin and talked about startups, the tech industry, how amazing the brisket was, and RecoVend – the new service Kyle was starting with Jason Woodward.

Kyle and I had some adventures with the likes of @sethodell, @mallorywood, and a couple of the Inigral guys and formed a quick bond.

When I got back from the conference, Kyle and Jason approached me to see if I would be interested in joining RecoVend as Creative Director. I’m excited to announce that I accepted and will be helping make this awesome service look as beautiful as it is brilliant. At the start, I’ll be helping out in a part-time capacity, working to hit some early goals while maintaining my current work at Trinity International University.

If you work in the education sector and haven’t signed up at RecoVend, head on over, register, and help us build the best resource possible for researching education products and services!

(I promise it will start looking amazing very soon.)

Site Redesign (Late Announcement)

Screenshot of this blog's design.

This site has been sporting this look since January. A full half-year. But I realized that a) I hadn’t really finished it; and b) I had never announced it officially.

So…. this ‘new’ WordPress theme is the first minimal theme I’ve ever been happy with. In fact, for a year I really wanted to do a minimal design for my site and just couldn’t settle on something I was happy with.

But then I had an idea last summer… the phonetic spelling of my name could be cool… and I had never seen anyone else do it. So I started playing around with it. The main typeface for my name (the serif) is Sorts Mill Goudy TT by Barry Schwartz. The sans-serif is good old Gill Sans (by Eric Gill, of course). These two fonts have been a staple in my personal branding for a few years. And I still love them. This allowed me to create a minimal, yet typographically charged design. 

Modern Linguist 2.0

Modern Linguist screenshot

Modern Linguist 2.5 is now out, with its shiny new dedicated site. http://modernlinguist.com

I’m happy to announce an update to my WordPress theme especially designed for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I created this theme in 2009 to not only show off my word count for the month, but to allow friends to register, login and read my writing along with me.

Today I am releasing version 2.0 of the Modern Linguist for your use. It is, of course free and licensed under Creative Commons and the GPL. Feel free to edit, tweak, share, modify, or totally rip off the theme (if you do any of that, I’d love to see it).

Changelog

Version 2.0

  • Now utilizes Google Fonts API and Directory for better, faster, more universal webfonts
  • Includes more font options.
  • Cleaned up various styles.
  • Revised a few minor styling issues.

Check out original post on Modern Linguist →

Redesign: Carry On

Carry On for WordPress

I did it. Pulled the trigger. The template is mostly done. I have a few special touches I want to add here and there and need to do a bit more bug testing and reformatting of the old content on this site.

But it’s pretty much there. The template is full on HTML5 and makes use of a ton of CSS3.  That being said, I’m not testing anything in Internet Explorer for this template. Some things will still work (there’s JS to make the HTML5 elements work in legacy browsers), but it’s not going to be as pretty or as as rich an experience as if you use a modern Webkit- or Gecko-based browser.

Encyclopaedic

Wayside Violet

Just announced, my wife’s site — waysideviolet.com — has a brand new design.

I started designing this yesterday and got it coded out today. I had a rough time nailing down the aesthetic for her site this time around. But after a few other ideas for other projects (that didn’t get used), I cobbled something together that I am pretty proud of.

I think the new template is pretty classy and sophisticated. And it still makes every photo Jess chooses stand out.

The template itself is built for WordPress 3.0 and makes use of the new Nav Menu manager and post thumbnails. I’ve also left it open for a later public release by having and interchangeable, dynamic header image as well as the image for the background.

The design also makes a lot of use of CSS3, so I recommend checking it out in an up-to-date version of Safari, Firefox or Chrome. Go let her know what you think! The template is titled Encyclopaedic.

Are You Media Literate?

Are You Media Literate?

The semester is ending (I’m excited about this), and that means that I have lots of homework and lots of projects — or at least I did, this past week. My favorite course this semester has been Media Literacy, and the final for this was a project to give an overview of what media literacy is. I decided to stick with my skills (as well as pick up a few new techniques) and create an interactive web piece.

It was fun! I’d love to hear what you think of it. You’ll need a modern browser (Safari, Firefox 3+, or Chrome) and I’d suggest a normal screen resolution with a minimum of 1024px wide.

Check it out.

Design on Hold

Yesterday @WordPress announced that WordPress 3.0 Beta 1 was available. Fantastic news! But the impending official release in probably about a month is giving me cause to hold off on launching my new site. Some of the new features will replace work around I was putting in place.

Specifically the custom post types have me excited. A central part to the new template is different display views in The Loop depending on the post type. The traditional way to do it is to modify the styling of the post by the category class. This works and requires a bunch of conditional PHP to get the different layout markup right — and that’s probably still the case, but at least it’ll be future proof.

In any case, I’ll feel good about being cutting-edge for the official 3.0 release and can hopefully launch on the day it’s announced.

So hang tight. This will get there soon. I’ve got a couple of other projects lined up in the meantime that won’t be waiting for 3.0.

Coming Soon.

Home Page Sneak Peek

I’ve been working on something that I like a lot. It’s a redesign of this of this blog and I’m hoping to have it done by Easter. I am coding the thing in HTML5 and throwing in a bunch of CSS3 styling and effects. So far the buildout has been going pretty well. I am learning a lot, using a bunch of new WordPress 2.9 functions, getting into HTML5 and unlearning old XHTML habits. Or at least trying to.

The new design will have a lot more focus on my portfolio, pushing toward getting some freelance projects moving. Not that I really have time right now with the new job and grad school – but I will need something at some point.

So anyway. Here’s a sneak peek.

Blog Sneak Peek

 

 

A Work Weekend

This week has been absolutely great. I received a lot of good news, had friends over for dinner, got a lot done at work, played LEGO Rock Band… And now I’m ready for a weekend of working for myself.

My first task this weekend is to get the tea@elevensies site up and running. It’s taken too long and I feel bad. But I did have a rough stretch the past six months or so that deterred me from getting it all wrapped up — still, not a good excuse. This weekend is the weekend, however, to bust out this site for Ashley and Char. And then probably see what Ash wants to change (she apparently is over her design now). But at least it will be another project down.

The second issue I’m going to try to wrap up is this site. I’ve got most of a new design mocked up and sitting in Photoshop, just waiting for me to bring it to life in HTML5 and CSS3. So this site will change in the near future. And for the better, I think.

Third, I need get started on redesigning Jessica’s blog. Her new branding is amazing and I want to get it up and running for her, as well as a complete graphics package for her Etsy shop.

It is nice to have some time to work on personal design and coding. Stress is gone, and that goes a long way toward the proper motivation in these sorts of situations. Things are exciting!

Free Theme: Modern Linguist

WPTypo

Hey! Version 2.5 was released on 9 July 2011. Check out modernlinguist.com to download it!

Modern Linguist is a WordPress template designed with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) participants in mind.  Based partially on Chris Coyier’s beautiful WPTypo theme, Modern Linguist is an all-typographic theme created with easy reading in mind.

The theme has several pretty cool things built in. First off, it’s custom options allow integration with the NaNoWriMo.org word count API, providing dynamic and automatic word count updates pulled directly from the user’s NaNoWriMo profile. The user enters their ID number and that’s it, instant word count updates.

The options page also provides space to enter in a story synopsis and the option to display that text on the front page of the WordPress site.

WordPress As A Manuscript

ATTN: Those who have read/are planning to read my novel this year:

Oh some things have changed. Yes, yes they have.

When I thought about how messy the whole noveling on my blog process was last year, I made a rash decision. A decision with so little thought put into it that it is awesome. Instead of noveling my progress here, I have set up a completely new site with a completely new theme with awesome features.

All NaNoWriMo noveling will take place here: nanowrimo.thegoodmanblog.com.

Oh but that’s not all. I have built an entire WordPress template especially for National Novel Writing Month – and more specifically for my fellow WriMos that post to WordPress.

Project Overload

This week has been absolutely nuts. I’m hoping I’m not heading toward burnout at work. I’m trying not to. It’s become super important for me to protect my time, otherwise I wouldn’t get anything done.

After a long day of talking to people and trying to explain to them what exactly it takes to provide them with the web stuff they are asking for, I come home and work on freelance stuff. The good part about that is that I should have a new project premiering later this week after a a couple months of work (sporadic, of course).

I have another WordPress template coming out in a couple of weeks. In fact, I completely redesigned said template because I wasn’t happy with the previous one.

Also found out at the beginning of the week I’ve got about $1300 worth of car repairs I need to take care of. Great. I need some more freelance jobs to pay for the fixes.

Couple other exciting things coming up including National Novel Writing Month in November. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMO, make sure you add me as a writing buddy!