RSS Feed
Tag Archive: web
Produced by the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University (my alma mater), and Harvard Medical School at Harvard University, the above infograph was built using over 300 million tweets and shows density-preserving cartograms for each hour of the day (EST), by U.S. state. According to this data, us New Englanders are indeed a cranky bunch, only tweeting happy things in the early morning and late at night! (It also kind of makes me want to drop everything and move to California.)
Download a high-resolution PDF here.
Hopefully you can all see the typographical changes I’ve made here to my site; it was really easy to do, and here’s how you can incorporate custom typefaces to your site.
Before we get into the how-to portion, here’s how the code will look on your stylesheet:
@font-face {
font-family: "Your typeface";
src: url("type/filename.eot");
src: local("Alternate name"), local("Alternatename"),
url("type/filename.woff") format("woff"),
url("type/filename.otf") format("opentype"),
url("type/filename.svg#filename") format("svg");
}
Simple enough- it’s basically assigning a name to your custom typeface, and telling your stylesheet where it’s located. You can duplicate this code and use as many typefaces as you wish, as long as you specify new names ("Your typeface") for each one.
Anyway, pick out the typeface you wish to use, then head on over to Font Squirrel’s @font-face generator. Upload your typefaces, download the kit that Font Squirrel generates, install the CSS code, and you’re all set!
A very helpful tutorial can also be found at Nice Web Type.
Me!
Gabrielle Hennessey at Brand-Yourself.com explains that there are three primary qualities that make up your personal brand: competencies (skills), personality (your goals, morals, and identity), and your value (what you can contribute to an organization).
With that said, I decided to write a short post here as a worksheet of what my three qualities consist of:
1.) Competencies:
- I am skilled in graphic and web design.
- I am skilled in the necessary computer programs that facilitate my design skills.
- I have a thorough understanding of color theory, typography, print process, and design.
- I have the ability to brainstorm design and strategize marketing/advertising plans, to be carried out across multiple types of media.
- I have strong written and verbal communication skills.
- I have an ability to carry projects through all phases of implementation including: concept, budgeting, design development, and resource allocation/ management.
2.) Personality:
- Honest
- Hard-working
- Loyal
- Organized
- Detail-oriented
3.) My Value:
- I can contribute my experience in building a marketing/design department from the ground up, as I have in my current position, over the course of four years while my company doubled in size.
Gabrielle also mentions not to put too much thought into a job title, and I couldn’t agree more. I’m a fan of those companies where you can pick your own title (Joe Ribaudo: Supreme Chancellor of Awesome), because really- do titles matter outside of the Human Resources department? If I’m looking to hire you, do I care if you were an Associate Vice President or an Assistant Vice President? I’ll be looking at how your three qualities match up against those of another applicant.
Perhaps this stems from the countless orders of business cards that I’ve had to design where the client made it a point to tell me that he was the “Regional Director of such-and-such”, not just a “Director”?
…getting back on topic, Gabrielle goes on to stress the importance of “getting your name out there.” As far as I’m concerned, you need to use any tools you can to brand yourself. This can come in a multitude of ways, but I’ve found that having this blog has been effective for me. I’ve also had business cards produced (for past job searches) with my personal “elevator speech” printed on them. Still, for others, it may be attending networking events, joining professional organizations, or volunteering for speaking engagements.
Last but not least, is consistency (employers love this). If you’re a blog owner, or have accounts with twitter, facebook, or LinkedIn, make sure that your personal brand is the same throughout- you never know where your next job offer may come from!
Via Gabrielle Hennessey at Brand-Yourself.com.
I’ve been trying to get to the HOW Conference for three years now, and I finally got the approval from my boss to go. Being that I’m the *entire* marketing department at my company, I’m responsible for everything from the design and execution of ad campaigns to requests for proposals on building facilities at new airports; my range of duties (and capabilities) in this position is very broad. I’m sort of a one-stop-shop, if you will.
The upside of being the *entire* marketing department is that things get done very quickly. There’s no bureaucracy, and there’s very little back-and-forth for approvals, re-writing copy, or re-formulating a campaign.
The downside (besides being stretched in ten different directions on any given day), is that I don’t have anyone in my department to bounce ideas off of, learn from (or teach), and sometimes I feel like my ideas are getting stale. Granted, I spend a lot of time on the Internet researching current trends, methods, and industry news, but there’s nothing like having a person (or a department full of people) to get that qualified feedback from.
As far as professional development goes, this will be my second such conference. I was sent out to Las Vegas a couple of years ago to attend the Exhibitor Conference… there were a few interesting classes that I attended, but it was basically a re-hashing of my first year being a marketing major. I feel like the HOW Conference will be a better fit for me, in that their seminar sessions are better suited to my current responsibilities at this company; sometimes being at a company for so long, your learning curve starts to flatten out (which causes job fatigue)- professional development seminars like this might be the fix.
The tagline on HOW’s website says it best, “Recognizing that graphic design is a business as well as an art.”
See you in Austin!
If all spam e-mails were in the form of nicely drawn cartoons, I might actually read them. Via Geekologie.
Yesterday I stumbled upon Penelope Trunk’s blog (of Brazen Careerist). One of her articles caught my eye, and before I knew it, I must have read at least a dozen of her posts; topics ranged from one’s likelihood of being promoted, to deciding if you need a therapist, to tips on navigating a quarter-life crisis.
In my reading, I became more aware that I’m not the only one who’s feeling like they’ve hit a learning curve plateau, or who may be in the middle of a quarter-life crisis. I got the impression from reading what she’s written, that she’s been through a lot more (career-wise) in her life than I have… it was just comforting to see how she has shared her experiences and given some really great advice on how to make it through similar situations.
Here are a few of my take-aways:
- “One of the contributions Generations X and Y have made to the workplace is the quarterlife crisis. It’s not the midlife crisis, typified by a baby boomer in a Porsche obsessively speeding. The quarterlife crisis happens in one’s twenties and more likely involves takeout pizza and obsessive IMing.”
- “Enlisting the help of a coach may seem like a high-risk move – after all, a bad coach is really bad. But you also take a risk by not getting help to address your weaknesses.”
- “The people who win are not necessarily the smartest people, but they’re the people who are able to sustain drive, commitment, passion and engagement…”
- “…each of us has three modes: Dynamo, loser and cruiser. The first two are when you are doing something – getting a lot accomplished or failing – and both are important for growth. We all cruise, too, but the trick is to have a system around you where you don’t let yourself cruise for too long… So how do you do that? Force yourself out of your comfort zone and try something new. Once you accept that success and failure are both worthy avenues of personal development, it’s easy to understand the importance of trying new things, and risking that they’ll be bad ideas.”
- “Another way to keep yourself from cruising is to always understand what gets you out of bed in the morning.”
- “Don’t ask young people to be patient. Why should they be patient? Who does that serve? As long as they deliver something to you every day, and they are not rude, leave them alone. Let them dream that they can achieve in one year what took you ten…”
Now, this is all just the tip of the iceberg… My biggest discovery- my “I KNOW!” moment- was that I need to start searching for a mentor, or a career coach. It’s not that I need my life be managed and directed in minutia; what I need is some guidance, on a macro scale. Just a nudge in the right direction, or some applicable advice when I’ve hit a wall.
So, maybe I’ll start searching for a career coach. I’d like to get a better understanding of what gets me out of bed- motivated- in the morning. I’m going to take a good, hard look at myself and understand my goals.
Smashing Magazine shares 10 not-so-great-to-hear truths about corporate websites. Company owners, take note, and take five minutes to read this post- your web guy will thank you.
Via Smashing Magazine.
This isn’t news to anyone, but I was trying to explain this to a client the other day and I couldn’t find the link. So, well, this one’s for me.
F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content:
Summary: Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
Recent Photos
recent comments