Archive for Topic: Design
We’ve all heard the story of the cobbler’s child who goes without shoes. Or the blacksmith who has a house with only wooden spoons and whose friend, the plumber, has a leaky faucet. At Manoverboard we plan, design, build and launch 8 to 15 client websites per year which doesn’t leave much room for “us time”.
Putting a little bit of effort into making your environment as pleasant as possible can go a long way. There’s obviously certain factors that might be out of your control, such as room size, natural light, artificial light quality, air quality, etc., but other factors are within your control. Here’s some of my advice on building a happy space.
In my over twelve years of living here, I have found that the country’s kindness and warmth abounds and that, despite the generally freaking cold geographical climate, its friendliness gets expressed in many different and distinct ways. Mostly it’s in the conversations, populated with a lot of sorries, sureness, and substance.
I’m learning that what sets designers apart is their attention to visual details. I remember the first time I noticed bad kerning between letters. Once the uneven spacing stood out to me, I could never read that word the same way. As a student studying design, I’m learning the importance of these details. I see that it takes a trained eye to pick up on the little things.
Have you ever noticed that many websites display a little icon in your browser’s URL bar and bookmarks? That’s a favicon (which is short for favorite icon). While often taken for granted, the favicon can be an outlet for creativity, and an opportunity for a web developer to put a “special touch” on a website. The smallest size of a favicon is 16×16 pixels (seen below). That’s really tiny!
Manoverboard celebrated its 15th anniversary in January. While I’m not big on celebrating business-focused events, I am well aware that this is a milestone. I’ve reflected upon this anniversary quite a bit, actually. Staying in business for a single year is hard. Doing it for 15 years somehow seems like defeating the odds.
With every new year we tend to assess the many facets of our lives and focus on the things that are not working. This seems to be common with every passing year, so I decided to see how I could curb the amount of time I spent staring into my phone. Even as I write this, I have already been interrupted by the urge to check it.
Three months ago we proudly launched Serving.Green, our web initiative designed to highlight the impact that the internet has on the environment, and what we can all do to reduce that impact. Now that the dust has settled a bit, I’d like to say a few words about what we did from a development standpoint to make the site as efficient as we could, given our design objectives.
A number of designers have recently posted their thoughts about how we should respond to the potential emergence of autocracy. I put together a few ground rules for protecting ourselves and advancing movements.
For the span of the past two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of working at Manoverboard as a result of Red River College’s work placement program for graphic design students. I’ve met some amazing people, and have learned a great deal from them during my time here.
