I’ve been back from our family reunion for a week already, but haven’t had a chance to blog about it. I had been busy at work, preparing the syllabus for my teaching engagement, and hammering away with my final project.

In any rate, this year’s reunion was fantastic. It was a whole week filled love, laughter, food, and liquor. Between Saturday evening to Wednesday night, we emptied one Johnny Walker, one Rémy Martin V, one Grey Goose, one Hornitos, one Don Julio, six Patróns, and cases of beers.

This year’s spot was phenomenal. We rented a house right by the beach in Destin Florida. The water was clear and warm. The sand was white. A typical day for me was waking up early around 7AM, went running, and dived straight into the beach. Read or listened to music until my wife texted to tell me that the kids had woken up.

I headed back home, took a quick showered, got the kids ready to join the big family for breakfast. Depending on the kids, we would either go to the beach or mini golf and arcade. After lunch, we spent the rest of the day at the pool.

Everyone then gathered back into the big house for dinner. After dinner the men made more food for drinking. We ate some more, drank a whole lot, sang karaoke, and even danced. The kids also showed off their singing and beak-dancing skills. Đạo even performed two songs. Pour Đán who could barely made it to dinner. Because of all the water activities, he crashed before had a chance to finish his food.

We drove from Virginia to Florida and back. Each trip took us two days, but I enjoyed driving.

This year the reunion in Destin was much better than San Diego last year. Those couldn’t make it this year really missing out. We definitely should go back to Destin for a reunion in the future.

My book is featured on a German site: „Professional Web Typography“: Ratgeber für die perfekte Webtypografie. Thanks to Denis Potschien for covering it.

An essential guide to create effective advertising design. From the creative process to typography to layout, Blakeman provides the foundation for designers to build upon on their own. It’s a good reference if you can get past the Copperplate headers.

Concise writing and clear illustrations complemented with excellent real-world examples make this book a must-have reference on typographic elements for print and digital designers.

A good overview on the history of typography, legibility, and book design. More relevant to graphic than web designers, but it is still an informative read on typographic design.

Robyn Blakeman, The Bare Bones of Advertising Print Design, (p.44):

Effective use of white space is the key to an organized design that enhances readability and legibility. Readability is achieved when a viewer can read an ad at a glance. Legibility refers to whether, in that short look, they understood the message.

The Fall semester will be busy and exciting. I can’t wait to launch the final project for my MA. I will close out my chapter as a student and transform into teaching.

I will be teaching three different classes combined into one. Here’s the break down: 17 undergraduate students for Web Design and Usability (AVT 415), five graduate students for Web Design and Usability (AVT 519), and one graduate student for Advanced Web Design (AVT 619). With 23 students in three different classes seemed overwhelming, but I had figured out how to run the class after months of thinking and preparing for the course. I will have a teaching assistant to help me out so that will be good.

Because I have other things going on at work and in my personal life (more on that when the time comes), I asked to take off teaching in the fall, but they could not find a replacement. I didn’t want to see the class gets cancelled and let the students down; therefore, I decided to move forward with it. It will be a challenge, but I am looking forward to it.

Last Monday I woke up with a migraine. Đán woke up with a fever. Đạo woke up and didn’t have to go to camp. Since all three of us stayed home, I decided to take them out for some light activities so their mom could do some work and rest.

We went to the park and they could play mini golf. I still think golf is extremely boring, but enjoyed watching them played. Then we took the train ride. Something about sitting and holding my sons on both arms and feeling the breeze took away my migraine.

In several occasions, the train ride had released my stress even for just a short five minutes. In that short period, mind was so clear and focused. Life felt simple and I treasured every second with the kids. I just closed my eyes and held on to them slightly tight. Not because I were afraid that they would fall of the train, but I needed the affection.

If I were to have five minutes left in this world, that how I would spend my time.

Today Professional Web Typography completed its 90 days online. Nothing much happened except for the endorsement from the prominent web designer Andy Clarke. After he tweeted about the book, a few people had contributed $10 each according to his recommendation.

Truth be told, I have tremendous respect and admiration for Andy Clarke’s contribution to the web community. I reached out to him when this book was still in beta to get a quick blurb from him. Unfortunately, I never heard back; therefore, I thought he didn’t find the book useful or the time to read it.

I contacted him again after hearing that he would mention anything that related to web design on his podcast Unfinished Business. He responded this time with enthusiasm for the book; therefore, he must have missed the first contact I sent him.

The new dean has a new vision for the George Mason University School of Law: Learn. Challenge. Lead. In his letter to the staff, he wrote, “We want prospective students to know that they will receive an outstanding legal education (Learn), be taught to critically evaluate prevailing orthodoxy and pursue new ideas (Challenge), and, ultimately, be well prepared to distinguish themselves (Lead) in their chosen fields.”

To support the new mission, the website needed to be repositioned. The first step was to make the design bolder; therefore, the layout needed to expand to display larger graphics. The previous layout was designed on the 960 Grid System. Fortunately all the dimensions were measured in em units; therefore, the layout scaled accordingly when the width increased from 960 to 1140 pixels.

To showcase Mason Law’s exceptional location, faculty, community, and career services, a homepage slider is needed. After thorough research, I chose David DeSandro’s excellent Flickity, which loads fast, provides flexibilities, and works with responsive images (Picturefill). I highly recommend Flickity for responsive slideshow.

In addition to the slider, the new Mason Law homepage features larger type, richer colors, and bolder visual elements. The footer of the site incorporate the striking tagline: Learn. Challenge. Lead.

For typography, Myriad Pro is the only typeface chosen, but its extensive family gave the design tremendous flexibilities. The story pages (location, faculty, community, and career services), for example, use heavy weight to incorporate typography into photography. I enjoyed making editorial designs for these pages.

For the work behind the scene, I cleaned up the templates to simplify the design and make the layout more consistent. CSS is not as organized as I would have wanted, but I am glad that I wrote it from scratch; therefore, I knew exactly where to find things. Sass is a huge timesaver. Making changes to a large site like this could have been a nightmare if I were to rely on a CSS framework.

Giving the short timeline (less than a month) and the number of people involved, I am satisfied with the new changes for the website. The iterations were small, but they made a big impact. Everyone on the committee, including the new dean, is pleased with the repositioning.