Changing the Theme

One mistake I made since the last blog was that I had said I was using the Twenty Ten theme, I was wrong… in the process of changing it I realised I was actually using the Twenty Eleven theme, there really wasn’t any obvious evidence of it (except for the footer). Well I’ll live with it.

I have developed a few other changes and began by changing my home page – which I think was my front page, I changed the picture which was just a matter of going into the appearance and changing the header picture, I just stuck my logo onto the picture in photoshop, saved it as a jpeg and loaded it as an image. Then I went into the text and changed it into stuff about me.

The next step was putting my folio in a tab – this involved not just changing the existing tab but deleting it and creating a new one, simple to do thanks to the fail proof guides and self explanatory links to click on, and nothing went wrong, here’s the screen shot:

I left the thumbnails in the middle of the page because it works for me and I also had a couple of choices about where to let the images open, I chose the new page option and am happy with that choice at the moment although if I want to change it, as I may when I have larger issues sorted it seems simple enough.

Next I added a swf file I had made showing photos of my packaging projects – this was important to me as I need to be able to display swf files, I had a few problems with it opening without getting a 404, after uploading and deleting it a few times it finally worked, I’m not sure if it was the file, the size or maybe a problem with our internet at the time as it jumps in and out occasionally.

I do realise I could of inserted it as a gallery/slideshow thing from WordPress but I did want to be able to construct the swf first then place it, I’m glad I persevered.

Next I want to add a contact me page, also some way to display all my awards and certificates etc which I would like to do in a different style but haven’t thought of yet. For the moment I’m having a couple of days off because my mum is visiting.

 

WordPress Themes

I have downloaded the WordPress download from my host and it was a simple as I suspected, just one click – if it’s any more trouble then that your host is not helping you enough. Of course there were a couple of questions & I had to password it but over all it was oh so simple!

I have decided to stay with the plainest theme so I can put more work into it myself and chose the default (Twenty ten). Now the tricky bit starts, making it my own – hopefully I can understand it and will be good at altering it. I have decided to take a few screen shots of it along the way so you will have a little appreciation for the small changes I make & I will be explaining the process as I progress. If I understand what I’ve done, the opening shot of just the Twenty Ten theme was a little boring – anyone can get that so I thought I would make the first screen shot of the page 1 with change number 1 – the name.

 

 

Beginning

I found a host, not telling who just in case they are really bad, but they seem pretty good if you can believe all the good things they have to say about themselves. I got me a new domain name too, I’m not sure if I needed to get a new one as the other one still has a few months to go on it I thought I might as well, it was a part of the deal anyhow. So now I’m RobynRandDesign.com I just have to go around & change all the links I have to myself, and I hope anyone else who has links to me changes too.

I’m not quite sure what to do next, I have a lot of help pages and beginner tutorials to watch & read before I start anything. I have to get my account verified before it will let me do anything so I guess there is no rush.

My plans are to begin with the most basic theme I can find, I decided this after looking at so many themes I was getting confused and frustrated at the fact that I couldn’t find a decent one that looked like a web page. The only suitable ones were the really expensive ones, then I realised that the whole purpose of me doing this was so I could learn how to create a WordPress web page myself. Maybe one day I will be the one creating themes for others, and damn it, I’ll make decent ones. There’s nothing worse then looking at a web page that looks like a cross between a blog & a my space page – instant retina ache material & there is so much of that out there.

So it’s the Twenty Ten theme for me, I hope to have it up and running so you can see the changes I make as I make them.

 

Finding a host

The host I want will have to be a WordPress friendly host, that is probably the most important bit to start with.  I have a short list of other things I would like from my host, I think I’d be lucky to find one that does everything I want but I don’t think I’m asking too much really.

• Space: I am assuming I don’t need to much as I will not need to put anything fancy in, just a portfolio, contact details and a bit about me. I really think 5GB will be plenty, I could even find something around 3GB and that would keep me happy – I just don’t know if they give sell you that little at a time, if I eventually need more will I be able to upgrade.
• Bandwidth: I am guessing again here but I guess I will need a very small amount 10 – 20 GB will do – but here I will settle for near enough is good enough, I will be the only one adding to it, and I will only be updating it a few times a year, but then what if things change – I will want to be able to upgrade. Yep that’s me… always prepared!
• Cost: I don’t want to pay too much and I am particularly poor at the moment, so if I could pay by the month for one or two months then change to yearly it would be great. I expect to pay around $10 per month, or around $100 for a full year.
• Apparently WordPress needs PHP version 5 or greater as well as MySQL version 5 or greater (learnt something – that is the database system that WordPress uses to store my data on) these are upgrading all the time but I’m pretty sure that is the latest version at the moment.
• I would like a one click installation as the whole manual install thing sounds a bit much when there are quick & easy options. All the more to go wrong if you ask me.
• I would also like to make my permalinks easy to remember and understand so if I can find someone that gives me access to the .htaccess file it would make me happy. Somebody told me that ‘Apache’ has a mod-rewrite module which makes adjusting the permalinks simple.
• I also expect to have FTP available as a part of the package, which I’m pretty sure everybody offers anyway… don’t they.

From that list and a whole lot of Googling I have a short list, which I wont publish here just in-case I get into some sort of trouble from someone. But they meet some of the things I wanted and 3 of them are Australian, which made me happy. I still have a bit more research before I find out half the things in my list, I may even have to contact them – which I hate doing but the information just doesn’t seem to be there.

If you have any suggestions, recommendations or helpful (or humorous) comments it will be fantastic to see them.

 

Discovering WordPress.org

The first thing I did, (which may seem basic but it took a bit to figure out that I had to do this) was to go to wordpress.org . That’s where I read that, even though I was doing it through WordPress I had to find myself a web host (honestly thought they did this for me). They make it easy & actually give a link that takes you to some of the “best & brightest” well the first one I clicked on had a few bad reviews but luckily they also give a link to those – no excuses for not doing research really.

Then I got impatient & decided there was really no need to get myself a host before I have a bit more idea of what I’m doing. So I downloaded the software – yep, the irresistible big blue button that invites us to download.

Reading a few different bits & pieces from others I found that I will be working with the self hosted version of WordPress which is what I am downloading (in just 5 minutes!) It has a CMS which I will be able to fully customise, which can not be done with WordPress.com (although I noticed it is now only $17 + $8 + whatever else they lump you with, for a year).

I am now getting a bit more excited about it all as I have found out that using the CMS I can include practically anything in my website. That’s right, things like e-commerce, forms, portfolio display, discussion forum, even a social forum. I can also interact directly with social media just with a plug-in. I was hoping to learn the e-commerce bit when I did the web design course but it was said to be to difficult at the time so I have been a bit let down by that for a while.

Also true to WordPress style there are more themes than I can poke a stick at available at the click of a mouse, very similar to WordPress.com by the sounds of it. I hope to eventually design my own theme so I’m not too concerned about that at the moment.

I do know there is more research to be done before I part with my pennies for a host that I approve of, I wonder if I can find an Australian? Not that it matters but I like to shop locally

 

2012

I have been thinking about making myself a website in WordPress – it certainly seems to be popular if you research it. The course I took last year (which I got a distinction in) was going to teach us how to do this but due to a class vote it was voted out and we only learned how to work with Dreamweaver, which was nice.

I have finally found some time and will be keeping track of what I do and how I do it along the way, I have only a basic working knowledge of WordPress blogs but desperately would like to learn how to create a  website as the blogging is so flexible and easy to use. So lets see if it’s all easy to use, I’ve been reading the home page of WordPress.org & apparently it is…

If you are working on the same sort of thing & notice this please leave feedback as I have a feeling I will need all the assistance I can muster.

 

Invitation ideas for our exhibition

The ideas I had for the exhibition invitation are above, the robot is something we can identify with, being personalised by having a face and a personality, a little like us. Being graphic design diploma students there are occasions that we work a little like robots and certainly feel that way when we leave class. The colour pallet chosen is a sort-of retro pallet, in the 40′s apparently there was a lot of tin toys which were coloured in the orange and green – they are also fresh and inspirational colours. The blue type on the back of the postcard is to represent pen or biro. The wording on the back of the postcard is in a casual fashion to make the reader feel like they are receiving a letter from a friend. On a website the robot will be flexible enough to be able to do many things as well as be animated or have it’s own noises and sounds. Each persons button on the robot can be active and lead to that persons work samples and links.

front                                                                                          back

 

 

 

 

… and just for luck, a promotional poster (with logos added of course)

 

 

 

Adobe CS5 Roadshow

The Adobe Roadshow to promote the new CS5 suite was in the city in Brisbane, another student and myself went along to see what they had to show for themselves. It was well presented and organised with all the speakers happy and working to a tight schedule. They kept us entertained by communication one on one with the audience and bribing us to join in by giving away many a rubics cube to people with good suggestions or correct answers. Of course the free coffee was great too, nothing like a room full of designers with free coffee, looking at more than 250 new features that are going to make their work of design, print and production easier, faster and more efficient.

The biggest news of the entire event, aside from all the small but important improvements, for Adobe would of been the release of the new Flash Catalyst which is intended to facilitate the work of designers with regard to creation of interactive content. “From now on designers will have possibility to create expressive Web application interfaces and design interaction without writing code.” It seems to be simple enough for designers familiar with photoshop, illustrator and indesign to transform their artwork and images created in these applications into interactive user interfaces in

 

TAFEworks brochure cover

With only a week to complete and so many other things to do this little project has sort of fallen right down to the bottom of the priority list, but I had a go anyhow. I have always been wanting to do something with typography and with so many words to be placed on the cover of the A5 booklet it was the perfect opportunity. At first I wanted to work on a grid-like design but with the final large list of words to include it would have looked a bit odd. Chris has a lovely tutorial on working with typography on his blog (found in my friends links) so I gave it a go and quite like the end result.

What do you think, have I chosen the best colours or should I of left the background white and the type dark?

 

Airline planes ‘n things

The airline is going up like a house on fire! It’s a fantastic feeling creating your very own airline, I strongly recommend everyone try it – not quite God-like but definitely Mark Zuckerberg-like.

This is the final logo –

I have been working on the colour swatches, stationery and just a few little things that every plane needs – like seats & wine glasses.

here’s just a bit:

 

Vanilla Green Tea

Vanilla Green Tea is the flavor I bought, I thought it was about time I tasted something to do with the tea I was packaging, and as we are packaging 3 ‘flavors’ plus a novelty package it’s about time I started drinking a bit of tea.

It is warm and tasty, just not the taste I appreciate. To be honest I am not entirely enjoying this drink, lucky I only bought 5 tea bags of the stuff, at least it’s good for me. Just how good for me is the question… back on with the white hat I go…

 

Tea Time

Being a lover of coffee I have found myself in a bit of hot water lately with the tea fans in our class while learning about our tea packaging project. I foolishly wondered out loud what the difference between the different types of tea was, to me there is was 3 types of tea – these being normal, floral & green. Well, during our assignment on tea packaging using de Bono’s 6 hats to help with the process (I have had to put on my white hat and research) I have discovered there is more than a thousand different types of tea from more than thirty countries!

This is getting fascinating so I’ll share just the amazing bits of my research with you:

 

Letterheads re-visited

You guessed it, I am still working on my letterheads and have yet another version to display. This happened quite by accident in Harry’s class when I had my business card ready to show him, just laying on the top of my letterhead and he liked the look of it. If Harry likes the look of something I have created I think it is then good enough for everyone else to see. I did have to agree with him when he pointed out the view he just saw, and once I applied it to the letterhead it immediately gave it life and lift.

 

Asia Pacific Triennial excursion

Wednesday 31st of March was the day the three design classes from Kingscliff TAFE ventured up to Brisbane to view The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of contemporary art,as well as Stephen Jones’ Hats collection and a fabulous display of butterflies and other insects from the Butterfly Man of Kuranda exhibition.

The Butterfly Man showed us the wonderful array of Queensland’s beautiful butterflies, beetles and moths as part of the International Year of Biodiversity. This exhibition was from the historic F.P. & A.P. Dodd Collection of Tropical Insects from Australia and New Guinea,  focusing on 28 beautifully arranged showcases from 1917 through to the 1960s.

The cover of the book, available from the museum shop

 

Business cards & letterheads

It’s sort of sad that, in our second year we have never really explored the whole business card/ letterhead thing. Logo’s are another that we have not yet really looked at – just something we gloss over on the way to something else, we have designed a lot of them but have we really been taught to design them? Does anyone ever get ‘taught’ how to design them, or is it just something that we just develop. Is there anything worth teaching or are those type of things just an accumulation of design skills combined to create something slightly useful and good to look at.

my letterhead so far:

 

uploading a flash file

Susan Charlotte just emailed me and was attempting to upload her flash file to her blog (see classmates links) but was having problems so I thought, that would be great to do. I’ll just have a go at uploading mine and see how it is not working, I have saved it in a variety of formats and will give it a go here.

 

business cards cont…3

Ok, I have just been researching how to prepare the double-sided business card for print.

Summing up all the information I have found so far into words I can understand:

1. decide on size (eg. 40 x 90 mm) and add 3mm bleed to each side so the document would be 46 x 96mm, be sure the settings are on 300 dpi and the colour is on cmyk.
2. name the file, place the guides, place the background adjusting the saturation if necessary.
3. export as a tiff file
4. In indesign open a two page document – 40 x 90mm plus the 3mm bleed on each side.
5. place the tiff files in the background, lining up with X & Y co-ordinates to get it exact then add any text needed.
6. once finished save as print ready PDF & select press quality. Be sure to check crop marks at .25pt and offset at 5mm, also check the use document bleed settings.

That’s it, it’s all too simple when it’s written out like that isn’t it. Now I might go back & reduce the saturation on the background of one of them then see how I go.

 

My business cards cont..(2)

Still thinking about them and working on the original idea which I have firmly decided to steer away from as I have been researching printers in this area (as well as on the internet) and, for die cutting with a small amount of cards it will turn out to be extremely expensive. I was also having a bit of trouble working out the whole bleed and cutting marks situation for a curve as well, I will leave that sort of thing for when I have a bit more experience under my belt.

 

my business cards cont.

This is what I’ve come up with so far, though I like the shape it could be 2 or 3mm bigger all around and the colour looks a bit dark, it is supposed to be grey. Also the orange line under my phone numbers on the back needs adjustment.

The top is the front and the 2nd is the back:

these are more the colours I want:

and I really like what I did with the RR’s in this, the colours are very soft and friendly too, nice but I’m not sure if that’s really me.

 

my business cards

One of our assignments given for over the Easter holiday was to design our own identity, business card, letterheads etc.. This has proven itself to be a bit trickier then I expected, all day I have been ‘soul searching’ to try to work out how I want to present myself to the rest of the world, some of the ideas I have come up with have been totally me – such as the “RR” in script. Ok, I have decided to make that a part of my identity, I have also decided to have it slim and hopefully rounded on one end (3mm off at corners?).

I feel as though if I did have some sort of image on it at all it would be a robin (of course), maybe a simple silhouette.

Ok, the colours…. I do enjoy the 40′s colour palettes but I decided I would like it either deep charcoal, dark chocolate-brown or old-paper-beige for the base colour, the other colours would be possibly green, cornflour-blue or soft purple with orange to contrast.

here are a few attractive colour palettes:

some inspirational cards I have collected: