Jesse Schmidt » design

The Best CSS Feature

Jesse — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:58:54 +0000

I recently have been doing more and more research into CSS and all of the new (and old) features that it hides and recently came across the @font-face rule. This is probably one of the best features of CSS because it allows me to use non-standard fonts on sites without having to resort to sIFR or any other font replacement technique. The CSS technique to do this is fairly simple and is supported by a large number of browsers, including Internet Explorer*! The biggest problem of this is that not all fonts are licensed to be used on the web. Therein lies the problem, there are very few fonts that are freely licensed to be used on the web with this technique. However, that doesn’t mean that the fonts that are available are terrible. In fact, there is a wonderful list of fonts that are available to be used freely on the web! The list includes 10 good looking fonts, some of which I am using in some new designs. To view this list head over to OpenType.info.

*Internet Explorer supports @font-face but requires a specially formatted font file, the EOT file. Still, its better than nothing at all!

Android Home Screen Prototype

Jesse — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:32:35 +0000

Recently the touchscreen on my dumbphone took a dump and no longer registers touches… That being the case I have been looking at the new phones coming out within the next few months (preferably on Verizon) and have seen a few cool phones but I am still looking for something…. better. The guys over at LarvaLabs have developed a concept home screen for Android that looks clean and simple and pretty damn nice. Being a concept it obviously isn’t available on any shipping phones but it looks like it could be a good rival for HTC’s SenseUI which I think is absolutely awesome.

I have not really looked into Motorola’s MotoBlur UI for Android yet as I haven’t seen many previews on it. From what I have seen it looks pretty neat but also fairly cluttered. I will reserve final judgment until I see MotoBlur closer and see what hardware is coming for Verizon. Now I just need these phones to pop up on Verizon. The Touch Pro2 looks good but I really want a Hero-esque Android device. We will see… hopefully sooner rather than later!

Website Layout Designs

Jesse — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:35:18 +0000

I have spent some amount of time coming up with several designs for my new portfolio site. I have chosen the design that I have branded “Glow” to become my final site.

Website Flowcharts

Jesse — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:44:50 +0000

Below are some flowcharts for my HTML and Flash websites. They are pretty much the same except the Flash version will not show the blog in the Flash itself. These images are uploaded using the new Wordpress 2.5 gallery feature.

Flash Intro

Jesse — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:38:33 +0000

So I made a Flash intro… It has a dude on it that jumps around and such. I wanted this to be entertaining so I decided to do something with a stick man. I am bad at Flash animations even though I do know a fair bit of Flash over. I probably should have stuck with something more knowledgeable but I wanted to try my hand at animating a character. I think my animation isn’t terrible but it definitely is not up to what some people are capable of. But for my first try I would say I did fairly well.

Flash Intro

FLA File

Personal Identity and Logo (Part 4)

Jesse — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:00:20 +0000

Business card and a very odd brochure are part of my identity package. These two pieces compliment each other. The stronger piece is definitely the business card. With my brochure I was struggling to fill the space with some of the copy I had at hand so I got a little creative and used an area of the brochure as a business card holder. That way when someone grabs my brochure they are also get a quick reference in my business card.

My flash animations are fairly basic but leave themselves open to a lot of possiblities later. The fourth animation is one that I feel would work well with some other supporting, surrounding imagery in HTML. The first animation is a pretty good intro type animation.

Flash Animation 1
Flash Animation 2
Flash Animation 3
Flash Animation 4
Download FLAs as ZIP

Personal Identity and Logo (Part 3)

Jesse — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:23:35 +0000

Below is my final logo design. I chose this logo because of its simplicity and dual meaning. The logo is made of 2 copies of an abstract letter “J” which form an “S.” These two letters are my initials which help to tie the logo to myself without simply using my name.

With Name.
Without name.

Large Version Black on White | Large Version White on Black

Below are some links to sites that I like for their design, layout and implementation. Each of these sites incorporate clean design with some flair to make them very easy to use and visually exciting.

http://www.beyondis.co.uk/
http://cameron.io/
http://www.bittbox.com/
http://www.drewwilson.com/
http://revision3.com/
http://www.mezzoblue.com/
http://kuler.adobe.com/