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- March 22, 2013
C2-11-15 The Week of Being Stuck
March 22, 2013Read moreThis whole week has felt like a struggle that I’ve lost. I say that not from a place of depression, but a place of clear-eyed assessment. I’m writing this entry to try to identify what contributes to the feeling; perhaps a solution will present itself.
- March 18, 2013
Production Prototypes: Emergent Task Planner Mini Notebook Coming Soon
March 18, 2013Read more
I picked up the production prototypes of the Mini-ETP Notebook this morning, which you might remember from Day 27 of last month’s Product-A-Day challenge.
They’re pretty awesome! I confirmed a run of 500 notebooks with the printer, and they’ll be hitting Amazon US sometime in early April if there are no snags.
The features of the Mini ETP Notebook were decided by the survey results; most popular in the US, according to my survey, was a vinyl cover ETP that was spiral bound in half-letter size. I modified those specifications to make the notebook 5.8 x 8.5 because it’s easier to slip a half-sheet of letter paper into the notebook and not have the edge stick out. Also, I went with double-wire loop instead of plastic spiral because it’s stronger and looks cleaner.
The cover is a black 16pt vinyl, which is not rigid but not too floppy either. You can see how the notebook bends in the middle photo above showing the thickness of two notebooks compared to my fountain pen.
It will be printed offset in 2-spot color process, on the same high-quality fountain pen friendly paper on the full-sized ETP pads. The prototype notebook, incidentally, was produced using paper on a digital press using a regular 4-color CMYK process. Here’s the difference that 2-color spot makes, versus 4-color process:
Click the image to see it bigger, otherwise you won’t see the difference. The sample on the left is 4-color process magnified using a macro lens, as it appears on the digital press prototype. 4-color CMYK is great for color photographs, but not so good on fine lines. For that, you need spot color, which is shown on the right. This sample is from a printed full-size ETP pad. You can see that the orange-colored details are SUPER SHARP, and even the half-toned blue lines are clean; a virtue of using a single halftone pattern as opposed to 4 of them. The ETP Notebook will use spot color and eliminate the halftones. It should look really, really sharp. The difference in clarity is, perhaps, imperceptible to the average user, but it does contribute to the sharpness of the product. Plus, I like knowing it is as clean as possible.
The notebooks will be available in April 2013, if everything goes smoothly! Much thanks to Papergraphics, my printer, for putting up with all my questions and sourcing everything to make this possible.
- March 18, 2013
C2-10-11 A Temporary Change in Course
March 18, 2013Read moreIt’s been two weeks (not including weekends) since I started this push to “fix the marketing” on my website on March 4. By that, I mean making the purpose and use of the website clearer to visitors who happen upon it, so they can find what they’re interested in as quickly as possible. Also, I want to make it clear what it is that people can BUY or DOWNLOAD from the website, while making a particular statement about myself and creativity.
This post is a review of the past 10 days as a sanity check. (more…)
- March 14, 2013
Website Progress, Slow Cooking, and Star Wars: The Old Republic
March 14, 2013Read more
This month has been quite a change from the excitement of the Product A Day Challenge, which I found to be relatively easy. I loved making something new every day, and I miss it. However, I’m forcing myself to take a good hard look at davidseah.com and redesign it so there’s room on the front page to more effectively show what I’m doing.
It’s been all-consuming, so I haven’t been writing as much. Here’s an update on what I’ve been working on recently. (more…)
- March 14, 2013
C2-07-09 From Abstract to Visual, Step 2
March 14, 2013Read moreFor the past three days I’ve been slugging-it-out with the tag cloud and the first pass layout, trying to bring them out of the abstract and into something tangible. This is the part I always find really difficult. I’ve been spending a couple hours a day on this, pushing past all my negative reactions to the design as it evolves to find the next visual idea.
The above graphic shows the progression from the first ugly step (A) just getting some image and text down. Compared to the original thumbnail sketch (which itself is a bit vague), there are some differences, but the general idea is the same:
- There’s a BIG IMAGE at the top, which will be “responsive” in that it always fills the space from edge-to-edge in a browser. The image is a placeholder; ideally it will be an image that visually supports what I’m about.
- There’s a DAVE IDENTITY somewhere within that image, or next to it. Since it’s near this big image, I don’t have to lead with my face/name alone. Maybe this is a cop-out, but it is personal preference.
Also within the header are opportunities for additional supporting links. Right now I have a “what’s new” and “what is creative independence”. The image area might become a slider that cycles through several backgrounds, or there might be a small menu on the right.
Below the header are the content areas, which I will be constraining to 960 pixels wide centered in the frame. As this is the front page, the content areas will be stacked on top of each other and then divided horizontally according to whatever grid system makes sense.
I’m trying to get away from my current blog design, which is constrained in a white rectangle. I’ve admired some other website designs that have a more open feel by eliminating the edges, instead implying them through alignment. The result is a layout that feels more open, which is how I want to feel.
I’m thinking that the stacked content areas will give me some flexibility in design. As the content area is 960 pixels wide, this divides cleanly into halves, thirds, or quarters. It also isn’t a bad basis, from what I can tell, for a responsive design that crunches down to fit any screen. I’m not planning on making the design responsive, however. Perhaps in the future, but not right now.
Anyway, I’m thinking there will be at most two stacked content areas. The top one will be a slider that covers the three or four main features on the website using mostly graphics and large type, serving as a lead-in to inner pages. The bottom one will be more text-y, showing recent stories and whatever. This is what I have to design next.
Also in the queue, after the content areas are done to a rough pass, will be to design the inner pages: the blog templates, page templates, and shopping templates. Next week I’ll have to think about the minimum I need to launch with new content areas + shopping areas. I’m thinking I’ll be VERY lucky if I can get this all done by April 4.
For the rest of this week I’ll be quite busy so I don’t know if I’ll make much progress, but I can at least do the daily 15M on this to keep it fresh in my mind.
About this Article Series
This series is about improving my website, thinking about it for 15 minutes a day first-thing in the morning. You can see the raw 15-minute text here. These posts are collected on The March 2013 Challenge Page.
