There is a horrible disservice being perpetrated on young web designers and web design students: that learning Dreamweaver is anything but irrelevant to your needs. We are in a Web 2.0 world, where semantic CSS and clean xhtml are the standard. And yet university art and design departments continue to push Dreamweaver as some sort of useful skill. We see Dreamweaver knowledge listed at the top of a frighteningly large percentage of applications for web design positions at pingVision. (Personally, I'd rather receive an enthusiastic note about the ideas in Andy Clarke's Transcending CSS or William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler's Universal Principles of Design.)

pingVision has an immediate opening for a web designer for Drupal-powered websites. Terms are contract-to-hire, starting part-time and mostly virtual. Full-time position will be at our studios, so we're looking for people living in the Boulder area.

This position has been filled. Please check our job listings for other opportunities.

Responsibilities

• Web design for sites powered by Drupal and CivicSpace (and possibly other platforms).
• CSS styling.
• Light php coding within theme templates.
• Create user interface designs from wireframe layouts.
• Logo design.
• Client contact throughout design process.
• Work closely with web developers.

Knowledge, Skills, Experience

• Web design experience with dynamic website platforms. Experience with Drupal/CivicSpace preferred. Interest in learning more about the complexities, intricacies and power of designing for Drupal is a must.
• Experience with templating and creating "skins" for dynamic websites is required. (Please note that this is not Dreamweaver or other wysiwyg web design program work. Hands-on templating expertise and experience is required -- with Drupal preferred; experience theming for WordPress, MoveableType, Blogger or other "web 2.0" platforms are possible alternatives.)
• Expert knowledge of CSS, xhtml, web standards, as well as the non-standard hacks required for Internet Explorer is required.
• Knowledge of AJAX, Javascript, Java, PHP, MySQL, *nix, Apache, xml and/or Flash is a definite plus, but not required.
• Expert knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign is required. OmniGraffle is a plus.
• Strong written communication skills to write branding guidelines, as well as communicate with clients and vendors.
• Client relations skills for contact by phone, email and IM.
• Self-motivated and able to work independently, but also good at collaboration, taking direction and working with others.
• Proficency in the English language. (Multilingual is a plus!)

We're looking for creative and innovative designers. If you are not so strong in one or more of these areas, let us know. We are hiring team players, and your strengths may complement our needs.

They've been with us over a month already, so I offer this belated announcement of our latest hires who filled previously announced job openings. (We are still hiring.)

Valerie Gerry, Designer

With a BA, Cum Laude, in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College, and previous work as a graphic designer for the University of Colorado at Boulder, Valerie brings to the team that rare combination of a science background and artistic sensibility, with interests in working towards an understanding of behavior, design, art and movement. At the Dartmouth Center for Cognitive Neuroscience as well as at Yale University, she did computer programming and database management. She's also co-authored scientific research in the field, based on data she helped capture and analyze. When she's not in the office, she's working towards her MFA at CU Boulder.

Years ago I had a Palm. Back then I used it pretty much just as an organizer. Now I have replaced my mobile with a Palm 700p smartphone (which runs on old [deprecated] Palm software but has a very sharp and bright screen) so as to be able to get online while mobile, without having to drag along a laptop computer.

I've spent the last few days browsing the web, and learning some things — mainly that when viewing them on a handheld, the vast majority of websites out there not only look like (excuse me) crap but don't even work! On many sites, I would scroll all the way down through the page to the bottom, and never find the content. It was all off to the side, where (hello, Blazer designers!) the handheld's web browser will not scroll.

People can download it here (or use this direct link to the .tar.gz file.)

There probably will be a couple of betas after this, followed by a couple of release candidates before the official release of Drupal 5.0. Starting in the next couple of weeks, we'll start using Drupal 5.0 as the development foundation for new sites we develop that won't launch before December or January and don't depend heavily on the hundreds of the contributed modules in the Drupal community. For sites wanting a lot of those functions, we'll either work off of Drupal 4.7 or work module upgrades into the sites' development processes.