CSS

Interactive Designer (Web)

2008-10-09T18:46:59-05:00

pingVision is now accepting applications for the position of Interactive Designer for enterprise-level corporate and community websites and web applications.

We're looking for a talented, experienced, detail-oriented person with an understanding of user experience, user interface design and information architecture. Familiarity with the Drupal content management system is desired, but not required.

This is a full-time position. We're looking for people living in the Boulder/Denver area.

Adobe's Creative Suite for Web 1.0

2007-03-30T12:09:38-05:00

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.)

What's perhaps more disheartening is that we see such backward-looking thinking in the top-line offerings from the king of design software companies, Adobe.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Standard
The basic toolkit for web designers and developers, Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 Web Standard software features all-new versions of the fundamental tools for creating and maintaining interactive websites, applications, and mobile device content. Prototype your projects, design assets, and build and maintain professional web experiences. Work on your choice of Mac or Windows®.

Combines Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3, Flash® CS3 Professional, Fireworks® CS3, Contribute® CS3, Bridge CS3, Version Cue® CS3, and Device Central CS3.

As a web designer, I look at this offering and shrug with frustration. Aside from Bridge and perhaps Fireworks, I have no use for any of these applications. It's just not relevant to the requirements of web design these days.

When it comes to theming for Drupal or any other content management system or even basic blog system, what you need are decent graphic design tools (such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks...) and a proper text editor (BBEdit, TextWrangler, TextMate...).

If you're a student or just starting out in web design, my recommendation is to order the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard. Unless you're a Flash artist, the "Web Design" packages are just a waste of disk space.

Al Steffen joins pingVision

2007-03-21T14:24:41-05:00

Earlier this year, we had the distinct pleasure of bringing Al on board to take some of the theming work off the hands of yours truly.

Al's an experienced webmaster and designer who, before joining pingVision, worked in content management systems for Endoze, LLC.

Anime aficionados may note that Al's also now the webmaster of Denver’s Nan Desu Kan. As he's a computer animation graduate of the Art Institute of Colorado, it's a natural fit.

Drupal was new to Al when he started in January, but now he's getting to know where all the bones are buried -- no mean feat for such a rich CMS. We're all delighted to have Al on our team!

World Congress on Health Informatics (WCPI) 2007

2006-11-14T11:07:45-06:00

The WCPI '07 site was a quick one we put together for Health Informatics Society of Australia (whose site we're redesigning and Drupal-izing as well).

The instructions for the WCPI site were simple: They gave us a pdf brochure and said, Just make it look like this. So we did. That was fun. After all, it's not every day you get to design websites with kangaroos and wombats.

The site is running on Drupal 4.7.x. The theme is a CSS-only layout.