More proof that i am in fact a designer: Grand View University’s new web site went up earlier this week, and the original design was done by none other than yours truly.
On this project i was temporarily filling in for the other designer here at Spindustry, Jeff, and so once i completed a home page design it was handed off to him and he’s the one who built the site and fleshed out the design. So, to be fair, here are both screenshots:
The original design, as it looked when it left my hands
Go check it out! 
Even though i’ve been a designer for years and was an artist for years before that, i’ve never been all that fond of color. I was more interested in value, i guess; i thought shades of gray were perfectly nice-looking and suitable for any application. In high school i had a purple room and drove a teal car, but i’ve always worn a lot of black and even avoided using color in certain design projects in college.
However, something about scouring the web for the perfect color palette for our wedding has made me totally smitten with color. This is somewhat odd considering that the primary colors of our wedding will be black and white and that a wedding is probably the one event where that palette is appropriate, but searching for the perfect accent color has really opened my eyes to all the subtly-different millions of colors out there and how certain combinations of them can change the way a person feels. I’ve even been buying more colorful clothing lately. It’s such a wonderful thing – who knew??
There’s a website called COLOURLovers that i’ve been using for several years as a source for color palettes, but i never created an account or started creating my own until now. I’m getting off to a slow start in terms of popularity, but i’m having a lot of fun creating color palettes from photographs. For example, the palette you’re seeing to the right is one i created from this photo:
…Which, by the way, i have forgotten the source of. I didn’t take the photo and i can’t remember where i found it, so if you know its origin please let me know!
And – designer friends – you should really consider trying this site out; it’s a lot of fun despite the fact that i have no idea why you can love a palette, follow a palette or a person, send love notes to a person or (i think?) a palette and yet can’t really go back and find the colors you loved/followed/left notes for. I wanna see what colors make you swoon.
Today marks the first time since i became a professional web designer THREE YEARS AGO that a website i designed and don’t dislike has gone live. I created the design of maybe half a dozen websites that are out there already, but this is the first one i’m proud enough of to actually put a link to on this blog.
I give you IowaCASA:
Check it out! This is one of Spindustry’s less-customized sites, so it isn’t my absolute best work but i think it looks pretty nice.
You’ve probably noticed by now that the site is looking a little different (unless, of course, you’re only viewing the feed). I designed this theme a year ago and have only now gotten around to actually building it. I know it’s very simple and not terribly exciting, but i just wanted a change. I’ve got a wedding website to attend to, so i probably won’t get to design a new theme for this blog for at least another year, at which time i will *hopefully* be migrating to a new domain anyhow (stephanieafink.com?).
The archives have been moved to their own page and i’ve added a search bar, which was a long time coming. I’ve also added avatars back to the comments, so you WordPress users will be able to show me your lovely faces. My blog matches my portfolio website now, which i think is nice.
I don’t want to clutter up the sidebar, but i think it probably needs something. An RSS icon? A blogroll, perhaps? I’ve been learning some cool WordPress stuff at work, so the blog may be evolving over the course of the next few weeks. By and by i should be able to post some new websites that i’ve designed as well. Stay tuned.
I’ve been uploading my run data first to nikeplus.com and then to runnerplus.com because i heard that Runner+ was more accurate and detailed, and i wanted to compare. I wouldn’t say it’s more detailed, but i guess it’s slightly more accurate. Here’s a comparison of the exact same run – yesterday’s – graphed on both sites:
The graphs are completely different. Here’s what i actually did: jog 90 seconds, walk 90 seconds, jog 3 minutes, walk three minutes, jog 90 seconds, walk 2 minutes, jog 3 minutes. I’m sure that’s hard to follow, but there should be three low-lying bars on the graph representing the three times i walked. Nike+ only shows two.
So i guess Runner+ wins for accuracy, although it still looks wonky to me. I also appreciate the fact that Runner+ is not a flash-based site. I HATE flash-based sites, and i’m glad to say that Nike+ is the only one i have to use on a regular basis. I think it’s also possible to do challenges on Runner+. It’s not as pretty, and you can’t make a little mini of yourself like you can on Nike+, but still i’m starting to think it may be the more preferable site to use.