dev front end

For the open source design repository I’ve been working on a mock-up/draft of the front end. I’m doing this before any back end as both a safety net and also a way to work out exactly how I want the website to function. Hopefully it will not be too impossible to get the backend in afterwards and actually have something working for the hand-in, but we will see. I think I have given up making a working vote system for the hand in because I’m finding it so hard. Anyhow…

This is the index page for a logged in user. Here they will see all the projects they belong to listed with recent changelog posts and a link to the project. [In time projects should be tagged and then it could have a possible interests section at the bottom or similar]

This is the project page. This would have all the changelog posts and resources as well as giving a description and the list of members/users on the project.

This is the settings page. I think at first the site won’t have too many options for user details. I also want to start off using real first names not usernames, but also include small avatars. I think that using first names might make the site feel more professional, but I guess in time people might add that feature or just use the First Name field for a username. No matter…

I think at first I am just going to make the site use links to externally hosted resources and also external images for avatars. That way I won’t have to worry too much about coding things for file upload and treatment. The website will mainly be users posting different kinds of content that is pulled together into the project pages. I think I should try and get it working a while before hand in and encourage other students to use it so that the site has some content.

I’m not totally sure the main index page. I think it will probably just have to be a list of most recent projects by title and description. Perhaps a lot of user avatars too…

working out the logic

So I’ve worked out [I think] the logic and database architecture for the vote system. It only took a quick chat with a MA tutor to figure out the database structure. Amazing how little 1-2-1 is took to make it pretty clear. If only this course had a strong link with this kind of activity. Sion tells me that the course is going to have OSX development classes [that me might teach] which is pretty wild. But solid MySQL/PHP teaching would be invaluable. Anyhow are is the workings out:

looks a bit weird like this

So I added 4 more listeners to the analyser thing and used them for R G B Alpha. However this is what happened. [also took strokes off the processing script] [The background yellow is still arbitry.] Though pretty cool I think that this wouldnt make a good series of record covers as the colour is not bold and primary enough. My ideas for the next step is to choose two colours like the previous prototypes had thru some kind of system then just use them. I want to keep the opacity somehow though but possibly with a bottom limit of 0.5 or something. I just had an idea to get two color values thru analysis of the name of the trak… but not sure how processing does that/ can do…

smoooootherrrrr

Mad good progress. I fliped the processing script into rendering a PDF. So smooth vectors trimuph over pixelation and I got ride of the outlines so the colour much more smoooooth. Can’t decide whether to make the artwork fully self contained or two just render the image then add the text after. I can do the former but the typography control is far from great. Maybe that is part of it tho?

Anyhoo wanted to pop this up cuz is bangs. Still yet to add more colour based significance and possibly some alpha layer variation in the circles.

Opensourcegraphicdesign.cc

So I’ve done some further drafting for this open source gd project repository. Still not sure if it is a great idea to start on now as it is another ambitious cakePHP project. However I think at core it is a lot more simple than the vote app as really it is just a groups plus a bit more system. Here is the paper work:

contraints book

So I have not really said much about this yet. But here is the progress on the constraints book as it is getting put together in indesign:

After a bit of deliberation the size is now A5 [which is good because it is pretty default] and the text is all in Liberation [because I'm into this open source thing and this book will probably be creative commons released] We are using the mono, serif and sans for different things. The mono is the collective voice, headers, and the like. The serif is my voice, and the sans is Carla’s. This works better than my original wish to use one type voice for both our writing.

We shot some good studio type images of the examples at Wills house [thanks]. Dun a bit of weird photoshop on it for fun.

The grid is pretty simple. 3 rows and 5 columns. On a baseline also durrr.

It is doing pretty well but of course the hardest bit is the writing. And that is going pretty well but there is still quite a bit left to do and still editing.

We are including other interesting but slightly unrelated stuff in big brackets like this.

So yeah…

photo project progress

I decided that for the photography masterpiece project I wanted to try and take a multi portrait. I wanted to take a photograph of my dad’s relationship with the land, my dad himself, the land itself & also something about man and the land. This is kinda puting a wide net but also rather ambitious so I am staying free to be flexible.

The decision to take this photograph came out of looking at all the photography I’ve done in the last few years. Dave had previously pushed this idea on me that I took images about people in landscape. Although I did somewhat agree I wasn’t sure that was going to be a kind of starting point for this project. However after some time in the doldrums not working on the reedit idea had and not having other ideas I revisited this core idea. I also looked at one of my favourite photographs that I’ve taken. This was a image of my father last autumn.

So I decided to try and almost retake this picture, something which is interesting in itself. A few weekends ago I followed him around a bit and took a few rolls of film. It’s very interesting as I’ve never really tried portraiture, even if this portraiture is almost pretending to be documentary. Here is a short list of good images.

photo dump from marquette building

it went really great and I had a lot of fun. tres DIY