Hi, I am Donny and I run a small web studio called Visualgui.com.

Five years ago, a fiction writer named Kristin Bair O’Keeffe contacted me and asked if I would be interested in creating a web site to promote her upcoming first novel titled Thirsty. I jumped to the opportunity because it sounded like a fantastic project.

Before I even started to think about the design, I asked Kristin if I could read the novel first. She sent me the entire unedited manuscript. I read the whole book and it gave me everything I needed to design the site.

The story is about a Croatian woman who fell in love with an American. After they got married, she migrated to a steel town in Pittsburg where her husband lived and worked. He turned out to an abusive husband. It’s a dark, powerful and hopeful novel and I wanted to convey those elements right on the homepage.

Out of all if the images Kristin sent me, I chose the steel plant for the background. For the title of the book, I selected Baskerville, which is a transitional typeface to signify the woman’s transition from Croatia to America. The image of the butterfly, which suggested hope, was used throughout the book; therefore, I incorporated it into the design as well. For the secondary pages, I kept the dark header, but reverted the main content area to white for readability.

I mocked up a homepage, a secondary page and shared with Kristin my design process and she loved it immediately.

One of the things that I loved working with Kristin was that she cared deeply about her content. She had almost everything together before she even contacted me.

Once we launched the site, she asked me if I wanted to make a trailer for the book. With the storyboard she wrote and a musical score her friend created, I put together a short clip using Flash.

In a coincidence, her second novel, The Art of Floating, is also released today and she contacted me several months ago to create and landing page for it. I gave the page a responsive design to be displayed on multiple devices. Go check it out and get the book.

Evans and Thomas’s comprehensive textbook explains the core principles of design. In addition to learning the basics of typography, color and imagery, the book touched upon design management, research and portfolio presentation. Definitely a must-read for anyone who is starting out with graphic design even if you’re not a student.

Late last year, Dinh Cuong’s son who I worked with on his dad’s web site referred me to a local Vietnamese client on a web development job. The guy would design the site in Photoshop and hand the mockups over to me to develop in HTML, CSS and content management system. This is not an ideal position because it is very hard to code someone else’s design, especially of the design has no web experience.

I knew the challenge of taking on the gig, but it’s a fairly small project and I wanted to use the opportunity to learn a new database-free CMS. As I had expected, the designer wanted me to code up exactly like he designed in Photoshop. He thought of it as a print piece and put no consideration into user experience. The navigation, which is the most important element of a web site, weren’t available until the users get through three clicks. I had to meet with him to go over why his design wouldn’t work for the web. He had some resistance at first, but willing to compromise.

The first time I met at his town house, the place was very nice. His deck is facing a small pond. You can walk into a deck and put your feet into the water. Inside his house, he has minimal decoration, very Japanese inspired. The second time I met with him again to show some of the design I modified to be more user friendly, but he insisted that he still wanted the homepage to be just a paragraph of texts and nothing else, sort of like a splash page.

When I arrived at his place for the second time, the entire place was a huge mess. He had things all over the place. One of the pipes in his basement busted. The meeting didn’t went too well. I was going to have sign up for domain name and hosting, but I thought we should wait.

A few days later, which was early February, I sent him two new mockups in HTML and I stayed as close to his design as I could. I only changed a few details to make the site responsive. He hadn’t responded back to me even though the pages looked very closed to his designs. I reminded him, but he said that he was dealing with the basement and I completely understand.

With school projects and work, I temporarily checked out of the project until he comes back to me. The momentum is definitely lost, but I’ll pick it back up again. Since I won’t be responsible for the contents, I’ll get the site into the CMS and hand it over. I am not sure when that time will come. He does have legitimate reason with the basement.

My last project with another Vietnamese didn’t go too well either. I ended up cancelled the project after many months stalling and without responses after several reminders. I felt that her heart was not into it since she didn’t paid for it and I didn’t want to waste our time and her friend’s money.

Left my project folder at the Copy Center. The lady called me to let me know. I came to pick up the folder and left my iPhone. I came back and she already handed over to the police. The combination of way too much coffee and lacking of sleep is making me lose my mind. I need to get home and crash. Next week is going to be even more hectic.

Sáng nay Đạo mang theo một ảnh của mẹ và một ảnh ông bà ngoại để chia sẽ cùng cô và bạn bè trong lớp. Nhìn hình ông bà, tôi hỏi nó, “Ông bà ngoại đang ở đâu vậy? Có phải ở biển không?” Đạo trả lời, “Không, ông ngoại ở trên trời. Bà ngoại ở nhà bác Huy.” Tôi mỉm cười đáp, “Đúng rồi.” Nó hỏi lại tôi, “Where did ông ngoại move to? (Ông ngoại đã dọn đi đâu?)” Tôi trả lời, “Ông ngoại ở thiên đường.”

khi đến lớp Đán thì cô Ali đã có mặt. Đán hớn hỡ chạy đến khoe với cô đôi giày mới. Được cô khen đẹp nó dậm chân khoe cô giày có đèn. Khi tôi và Đạo đi ra khỏi lớp thì nó lại mếu. Cô Ali nhanh nhẹn bảo nó cho bạn Rebecca xem đèn thì nó nín khóc và dậm thêm một cái nữa. Khi rời lớp tôi nhìn lại thấy cô tặng cho nó một nụ hôm và không còn khóc nữa. Bữa nào vào lớp có cô Ali thì tôi rất vui vì không bị níu kéo.

Wednesday night, I stayed up until 2 am to put together a temporary form for Poplar Springs. Creating a form in MODX was quite easy, but it took time. The great thing about MODX is that I had total control of the fields. I am still very happy that I chose MODX for the site.

Earlier this year, the owner emailed me to let me know that Poplar Spring had been auctioned, sold and closed down. I feel a bit sad because we worked on the site only a year ago. One of his employees who knew how to update the web site using MODX had moved on. The new owner is working around the clock trying to reopen the business in late May or early June and wanted me help out with the site. Even though my schedule is quite hectic, I do all that I could. Poplar Spring was one of the most rewarding projects I worked on.

Kristin Bair O’Keeffe is also busy promoting her second novel, The Art of Floating, which releases on April 1st, and needed me to do some updates for her web site. It has been busy time in the past few weeks at work and school projects too. I can’t wait for the summer.

Linh:

That night he never drove home, and I suddenly found myself with a guy whom I had barely known for 2 months who suddenly took out his bleeding heart & soul for me to see what was bottling up inside, who told me about the love of his life and how it ended. All the intimate details, the drama, the ugly, the beauty, all rolled into one nice big mess in my brain.

She’s about to make another grown man cry.

The teacher appreciation committee at our sons’ daycare asked parents to bring in a thank-you note for their teachers. So I decided to do some typographic notes for each teacher and printed them on the Southworth’s Corners Paper. I bought the paper for my resume project in a class on professional design practices. Even though the paper is beautiful, I only used one piece for the class project. Since I rarely use printed resume nowadays, I could use it for something else. Check out the teacher appreciation notes I posted on Pinterest.

Update

When I handed the notes out, one of the teachers asked,”Are you a professional graphic designer?” I nodded and she went on, “I thought so because this doesn’t look like an average design.” That made me smile. She’s also a really awesome teacher. Our little Dan loves her.

Caught a few standup comedies on Netflix.

Tom Segura: Completely Normal

Segura delivered many quick, witty shots. While he landed punches, I wish he covered less topics and more details.

Anjelah Johnson: The Homecoming Show

Remember Johnson? The Mexican chick who made terrible Vietnamese accent. Her recent show, however, was not so bad. Unlike most standup comedians, Johnson didn’t use one curse word. If you could get past her slightly annoying pitch, Johnson could be enjoyable. Her jokes were lighter and her charisma carried through. Thank goodness that she didn’t try the Vietnamese imitation.

Jasper Redd: Jazz Talk

Out of the three, Redd stood out the most. His metaphors were brilliant. So many great lines in his routine, but the one stuck in my mind was on racism: Before you do your laundry, you have to separate the white from the color because the color will fuck up the white. His perspective made even mundane things sounded interested. Try to explain to your kids how the Whopper Jr. was made. I am sure Burger King didn’t think of it when they came up with the mini version of the Whopper.

David Jury answers the question in three parts: The role of typography, its characteristics and professional examples. The handbook is a gentle intro to typography. Without delving too much into technical details, it’s a quick, easy read for people who are curious about the subject.