Web Design and Me.

Jun 16 2010 3 comments Internet Life Personal Web Design

It’s funny how long I’ve been designing web design and the fact that over this period of time (10+ years) I don’t seem to have improved all that much. There is, of course, the base improvements I’ve made where content actually matters and I don’t have a page full of glitter graphics or random midis, but I still feel like everyone keeps moving forward in the design world and I lag behind.

That’s due in part to the fact that every time I get closer to a design I like I end up finding flaws in it and editing it down to basics, and end up hating it– or I overload it with fancy crap I just learned and want to dive off a cliff before it’s all over. I don’t know exactly what I’ve been doing wrong all these years, but I feel like I have a capability to learn better techniques, but I need a no-nonsense way of learning them, and at this point I lack in such tutelage.

What’s giving me most of my issue right now is the fact that I can’t get my head around coding a decent layout regularly, let alone figuring out how to convert that into the love that is WordPress– yes, folks, I would love to make a design of my own but I feel I lack the technical knowledge and ability to do so.

I have found a new tool to help me a bit with my sometimes stupidity in coding (closing tags and nesting them properly sometimes eludes me), and that is Aptana. There’s a lot more to it than I’d ever be able to explain, and there are probably some people who read my blog who might literally squee their pants off about the open-source yada and all that, but I’m completely oblivious to all that– I do know that it has plugins for me to test my layouts and helps me by reminding me to close tags and all that jazz. As demonstration, I used it today to design a new layout for Yasunori Mitsuda’s fanlisting. It came out all right, but I know I’m probably capable of better. Meh, I suck at this.

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Loveage:

• Hudson Dynamic Global - New Jersey Web Design
• Kalliste
• Drea

3 Yummy Comments | Leave one?

Nice Post! =)

Hudson Dynamic Global - New Jersey Web Design said on June 16, 2010 @ 10:51 pm

I know the feeling. I’ve been doing this for the same amount of time and have never been at the forefront or someone to look up too. I’m generally a step behind it is true.

My latest layout is the most out of my comfort zone I’ve been in a long time. While it isn’t wonderful it has allowed me to learn more about CSS and WordPress (widgets and the like). I’m currently making a new layout for my Bubble hosted site and haven’t even made it to the WP part yet. YIKES! it’s the first time I haven’t used a pre-made WP theme as a starting guide though so perhaps I’m learning

I guess we’ll find out when I finally finish it heh.

Kalliste said on June 18, 2010 @ 1:05 am

I don’t know that I have the skill or patience to sit through trying to learn how to code my own wordpress layout– I know it’d be much better if I did, because then I could have my own design up here, and things wouldn’t be as tweaked out, but honestly I’m not sure if I can learn it– my ADD is violently against things like that.

All in all, I don’t mind not being one of the best web-designers, because I don’t think I could stand up to the pressure of always having to make something beautiful, otherwise people look at you like “oh, what happened?” but I /do/ wish I had a bit more skill.

Drea said on June 18, 2010 @ 11:19 am

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