Let me first start by saying, I am not a designer by trade, but I do enjoy reading about it and trying to understand it better. In general I know what looks good. Getting my own work to look good is the tougher part. I have 3 rules I follow to get the job done and it’s something I learned from a designer friend of mine.

It’s referred to the 3 C’s of design: Consistency, Conservation (Clutter-busting) and Contrast

The one I use the most every day is “consistency”. You can face design pretty darn well by just making sure your layout is consistent.

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“Alberto Cerriteño is a Mexican illustrator & designer who has lived in America; Portland for nearly four years now. Strongly inspired by urban vinyl toys, alternative cartoons, and the pop surrealism movement, Alberto Cerriteño has developed his own very personal technique and style, having always present a delicate hints of traditional Mexican artistic influences in his management of rich textures and decorative patterns. These contrast strikingly with the blending of desaturated colors and ink, sometimes featuring a vintage coffee finish. Alberto Cerriteño illustrations have been recognized by progressive art institutions such as Juxtapoz, Create, Drawn!, The Little Chimp Society, Computer Arts, Communication Arts and IDN among others. He has also been invited to participate in collaborative art projects all around the world and diverse solo and groupal gallery shows.”

http://albertocerriteno.com

OK, so I’m in the process of recoding the Win This! website. This time around I did everything on the site, The design, the HTML/CSS/JavaScript and I’m now busy doing the PHP integration from the back-end I built for the initial launch.

So here are some teaser images for what you can expect from the new site:

Check back soon to see the final product.

ScientificFeed.com is some sort of a landmark project for me. Its the 1st time that I did a whole site start to end where PHP was involved. (I’m currently still learning PHP and this was my 1st learning project) I came up with the idea, then designed the site, then coded the front-end (HTML/CSS/JS) and then coded all of the PHP for it.

The idea was simple. I would build a widget that people can put it on their site or blog and reach their visitors with fresh facts on every visit… while educating them in a fun way about science.

The facts are split into 6 categories (animals, plants, technology, space, medical and the human body). This is to make sure that you don’t force your visitors to read about tape worms on you astronomy site. The single view of a fact will also show you 3 related facts from the same category, for further browsing.

The site is sporting a custom back end that allows me to add/remove facts, track widget usage and check messages that was sent from the site’s contact form.

Check out the ScientificFeed site! (and maybe sign up for a widget too!)

“Fatoe.com is the creative portfolio of Los Angeles based artist & designer Mike Orduna.

Fatoe focuses on an application of mix-media by fusing illustration, spray paint & photography with digital art and output.

Mike has produced a wide range of work for clients in several industries, from new media companies / record labels / magazines / to snowboard & skate and grassroots.

Fatoe.com began in 1997 to showcase Mike’s illustration, graffiti & design experiments and eventually evolved into a design studio and online store that offers original exclusive artwork for collectors.”

http://www.fatoe.com/