Public Education Horizons

One of my current projects has been customizing a WordPress blog in conjunction with designing a book cover. Check out the project here:

Public Education Horizons - Citizens working together to nurture relevant and effective 21st Century public education systems...

It has been interesting thinking beyond the traditional images of education and trying to find something the melds the images of older industrial age model of education (to quote Katherine Wagner) with images that reflect newer, more innovative ideas.

Red Rocket Creative Strategies

Red Rocket Creative strategies has just created a few cool video that illustrates the creative process and markets their services at the same time:

Question, Research, Brainstorm

http://www.redrocketcreative.com/corporate_video.php

environmental font

Interesting idea - a font to create environmental awareness. The EcoFont was developed by SPRANQ and reportedly cuts ink usage by 15%. I can see using the font for posters where font sizes are large. I look forward to playing around with this new font.

A website costs as much as a car

I came across this great article today on the Newfangled Web Factory site about how much it costs to make a website.

Eric Holter makes a great analogy to that of buying a car. "It's possible to buy a decent used car for under $5,000 that should be perfectly adequate to get you where you need to go. Similarly, buying a new car can run the gamut from a bare bones Kia Rio for under $10,000 to a high end Porsche 911 for $80,000 plus. Beyond the desired car's look and style, there are many other considerations that will affect its cost like how many people fit in, how fast it goes, what options are included, etc."

To paraphrase Eric, the following aspects all have an influence on the end cost:

• Visual design (what are the look and feel requirements and how much graphic design will be involved?)
  
• Site size (how many pages will the site contain?)
  
• Functionality (search engine, databases, galleries, forms, shopping cart, etc.)
• Project scope (what type of information will the site pages contain?)
  
• Custom pieces (will there be the need for programming special new features specifically for this project?)
  
• Development timetable (what is the site's expected launch date?)
  

Great analogy Eric.

The Power of Imagery

I recently found 50 Free High-Quality and “New” (X)HTML/CSS Templates.

There are some beautiful templates that really illustrate the power of imagery when creating a website. The sites show how the graphic design can tie to the content and make an impact. Check them out.

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary

It is a very cool graphical tool that is part dictionary, part thesaurus. No membership required.

You enter a word and it creates a diagram of synonyms. Hover over the words for definitions. Click and drag, etc.

www.visuwords.com

Bill of treason from 1837 Rebellion discovered

THE CANADIAN PRESS

HAMILTON – A historical glimpse of Canadiana – a bill of treason connected to the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 – has been found among the archives at McMaster University.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/658912

Making it look Good

I love this article about how aesthetics play a large part in usability design. Too often the look and feel of an application is pushed aside in favour of just making it work.

In Defence of Eye Candy