alan crissey | graphic + web designer

posted on
April 2nd, 2009

posted in
Design

comments
No Comments

Redesigning the Aging Newspaper

Is design more than just aesthetics?

I’ve become a bit of a Ted.com addict recently. I’m fascinated by some of the talks on there. If you have never checked it out, you owe it to your intellect to do so.

One of the most recent talks was with Jacek Utko. He is a former architect who has headed up the redesign of several European newspapers and the results have been phenomenal. His point is that if the newspaper industry is to survive, it must be redesigned on every level. It’s the visual appeal, efficiency of communication, quality of content, and layout, all working together. And all of these things working together are what design is really about.

share this

posted on
March 22nd, 2009

posted in
Freelancing

comments
4 Comments

New Business Cards

I have just gotten my own personal business cards printed. I had a bit of an ordeal finding a good printer that would print them at a reasonable price, but I found one - Printing Plus in Roswell. They did a great job.

The cards I designed are very simple, but I just wanted something eye catching that had some contact information. They only have my phone number, email address and website address on them. I left the living address off because I don’t want them to be made useless if I move, and I didn’t find having it on there to be necessary. I have posted some pictures below. Let me know what you think.

share this

posted on
March 3rd, 2009

posted in
Typography

comments
2 Comments

Helvetica. It works.

This
This is
This is my
This is my block
This is my block of
This is my block of Helvetica.

I just got through watching ‘Helvetica’, a documentary about the history and culture behind the font Helvetica. I actually learned quite a bit from the film. Some of the people interviewed I’ve heard of for so many years, such as Eric Spiekermann. And to see them talk about typography and graphic design was especially intimidating since many of them are German and Swiss and can speak better English than I can. But regardless, I will never look at the font the same again.

Even if you are not a graphic designer and you are reading this wondering what Helvetica is, or why you should care, it has had a major impact on Western culture. It is literally everywhere, for both good reasons and not so good reasons. It is a modern font and encompasses the modern age in its aesthetic and context. I have honestly not experimented with it that much. I’m not sure if that’s a sign of my immaturity as a designer or that I leaped ahead and am therefore more mature as a designer. I don’t know. But seeing the film and learning about this significant creation in my industry is making me think about revisiting it. And what may be more important than that would be for me to revisit typography in general. Maybe for my next website design, I will simplyl start with text only, and build around it. Such a simple idea, yet so mind altering. Maybe it’s just the refreshing change my approach needs.

A recommendation was given by one of the designers in the film for all of the inexperienced and/or bad designers out there. When in doubt, use Helvetica. At the worst, you will be using an aesthetically pleasing type face. I thought this was kind of funny, but then when I thought about all of the strip malls I had seen with signs loaded with logos using Papyrus and Comic Sans, I decided he was right. So yes - when in doubt, use Helvetica. But once you get the hang of it, expand and explore the use of other high quality fonts. That is, after you delete Papyrus and Comic Sans from your harddrive forever.

So if you want to see what I mean by Helvetica being completely ingrained in Western culture, go an entire day taking note of every time you see the Helvetica font used somewhere. Develop an opinion as to where you think it fits or doesn’t fit.

share this

posted on
January 7th, 2009

posted in
Freelancing, Website Building

comments
3 Comments

A New Year, A New Beginning

Yes it’s cliché, but in this case, there is no other way to say it.

We all have something new that we vow to do for the new year. For some it’s to exercise more. Others may decide to start flossing. I decided it was time to leave my job of four years at an ad agency to freelance full time.

It may seem like a crazy decision. The economy isn’t doing so great and people are being laid off. But I felt that I needed to spread my wings a little bit. Freelancing is a challenge, but I feel up to it. I’ve got some new tools under my belt and some exciting projects coming up. And there’s nothing like working from home. This has been a dream of mine for a while, and I’m confident that I can make it work.

If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed that I’ve revamped the site, hopefully for the better. It started off as an experiment, inspired by Jason Santa Maria, who is promoting the idea of treating dynamic web content more like printed media. This is tough to do. Designing for the web has its own set of challenges that make this a lot harder than it sounds. I had a lot of other ideas that I’ve had to scrap for technical reasons and time constraints, and I may gradually add some of them. But I had to say enough was enough, and go ahead with the launch.

You might be wondering why this is necessary. The truth is that print, especially magazines and newspapers, are in the middle of a mass migration to the web. This is being accelerated by the current economy. So the challenge for us designers is to learn how to make this transition, and make it a good one.

Like I said, this site is a bit of an experiment. I’ve used some techniques that I’ve never used before, and it may not display correctly in Internet Explorer. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. But the techniques and framework that I’ve implemented should allow me to create posts and pages that aren’t stuck in the traditional ‘post in left column, static links in right column’ layout. I can be a little more creative with the layout of my posts. So we’ll see where this goes.

share this

posted on
January 1st, 2009

posted in
Website Building

comments
No Comments

B.D. Andrews Photography

What I enjoy most about my projects is what I learn from them.

My friend Brandon is an excellent photographer. I built a simple website for him a while back but it proved to be very difficult to add his photography projects. All image sizing and uploading had to be handled manually through several complicated steps, as well as updating the code and navigation. So when we were discussing adding a blog to his site, I decided it was worth the extra effort to solve the photo handling problem, since displaying his photography was the purpose of the site to begin with.

B.D. Andrews Photography Site

We wanted to keep the design simple, clean and elegant. This was to show off his photography, and any textures or graphical flourishes seemed to take away from the impact of his images. The home page was where we wanted to showcase some of Brandon’s best work, and a slideshow, which can be edited any time by Brandon, does just that. Through a clever use of plugins and programming, I was able to put together a system where Brandon can upload a set of images and, through a few easy steps, thumbnails and resized images are generated along with an embedded watermark of his logo.

Brandon is also an iPhone user, and because the site is built on WordPress, he can update the site and even add photos from his iPhone from anywhere. This project turned out to be a great example of how far the Web has come in terms of usability and functionality. I can’t wait to use what I have learned in future projects. The site is now live and you can visit at www.bdandrews.com.

share this

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 →

alan crissey
graphic + web designer

recent posts

categories

Redesigning the Aging Newspaper

Is design more than just aesthetics?

New Business Cards

Helvetica. It works.

This
This is
This is my
This is my block
This is my block of
This is my block of Helvetica.

A New Year, A New Beginning

Yes it’s cliché, but in this case, there is no other way to say it.

B.D. Andrews Photography

What I enjoy most about my projects is what I learn from them.

alan crissey graphic + web designer

recent posts

categories

Redesigning the Aging Newspaper

Is design more than just aesthetics?

New Business Cards

Helvetica. It works.

This This is This is my This is my block This is my block of This is my block of Helvetica.

A New Year, A New Beginning

Yes it’s cliché, but in this case, there is no other way to say it.

B.D. Andrews Photography

What I enjoy most about my projects is what I learn from them.

alan crissey
graphic + web designer

This
This is
This is my
This is my block
This is my block of
This is my block of Helvetica.