I always love designs before they go to the higher ups.   Usually it means designs are cleaner more cutting edge and more marketing focused.   At this point designers have free reign over what it should look like and what it should sell.  The design process is slightly ignorant to the legal issues or information that needs to be supplemented that drags it more back toward center.   The greatest dream for designers right at this point is to “WOW”.  If the designer can make a statement the design will be a benchmark that will win confidence that the marketing is heading in the right direction.  If the designer and design win this crucial battle the client is  more comfortable to leave you with the freedoms you have started with and the gravity of “center” will not affect the project.   I proudly present the early designs for IBIS.

Below are some comps from the website and flash application that explains the IBIS – Integrated Building Information Services.  In general it is a complicated sell that when I was brought on  took 2 guys, 3 PowerPoint presentations, and a few hours to explain to me.  We have bottle the concept into this.  “It is a way to know about a  faculty which includes building, people and assets from conception to renovation.”  The flash application  combines of data visualizations with default GUI presentations of technologies explains how IBIS can help simplify the complexity of 1000+ occupancy buildings.

Here is the old Mark Center Advantage Design:

So here is the SH#$@T we threw at the walls.

7085-13_cityvistabanner_expand1

I find now that meet more and more coders we are all driven by a very similar goal.  The main goal that fuels most coders is to be as lazy as possible. This doesn’t mean we don’t try or put effort in but if it came down to it coders in my experience will work smarter and not longer every day. I don’t know if it is just we want to get back to our video games, or beds but if there is a way we can do something cool without needing to continually update or type in every different element the better.

Make it so I don’t have to type so much

There are many types of ways to remove redundancy in PHP.  One of the great tools is the looping logic I will get into this with my post for the basics of code. But for now it is a way to loop through items that are similar so you can execute a task on a list of things.

One of the other things that make less typing is the concept of functions.  Functions are a set of actions that can be retriggered every time you need to use them.  Functions are great from calculations, or validation of forms and really your imagination is the limit.

Make it flexible so I don’t have to write another page

Making a thing think is really where I get excited about code. I don’t know if it is because I love logic or it is great to see something interact with somewhat complicated reactions with a set of very basic rules.  Later I will talk about conditionals but right now it is broken into the simple thoughts of “If this then do that” or  “do something else.”

Make it easier to update

Anyone who has written a website can tell you that the concept of includes are the greatest thing since sliced bread.  The wonder of writing an element that shows up in multiple places but only has to be altered once is just fantastic.  Many web designers are already familiar with this concept because this is used in CSS.  You write a single document to decorate your pages site wide.   Be careful with this one though. It is dangerous to “include” too many parts of a single page because it is complicated to keep it all-straight.  I shoot for 4 included elements in a page more then that I start loosing where a div ends and starts.  But “including ” is used right it is a great tool to centralize elements that are reused and would be complicated to correct over many pages.

A bit about me.

When I look at my experience with code I can say I went about it all-wrong.  My first mistake is that I never took a class in code, code theory, or computer technology. In truth I am illustrator who loves to interact with my audience.  Where I did go right was I have always interacted with computers, my parents taught me how to think, and learned to love math problems. I have always had computers in my life because first coding book was “Weird Computer Games” for the Commodore 64, I was 7. I have learned to think because one of my moms favorite pass times was challenging me with logic puzzles, they were MENSA level. And my love of math came to be true when I was doing my sisters Algebra and Geometry home work, she was three years older then I was and I had never taken an algebra class yet.

So now I am an Art Director and the Technical Director  for Merrick Towle Communications and I have been doing my best to master things I have never touched and then teach others how to deal with these languages that now live breath and influence everything you see in the web.

I have gotten good at speaking laymen because of clients, and co-workers who need answers, or quick knowledge about how to use language.

My learning style:

I have three ways of learning. I buy books which gloss over the basics or that key to making it clear why we do things one way vs another.  The tubes are a great reference, youTube, blogs, help documents, and forums have lots of info. And some of the info you find there, if you understand it, can get you very far. The last is trial and error, we all do it I have been getting less error the longer I do it, but I still do the trial every time I do something new. So I hope I can take a little bit of all of my experience and help you understand in simple terms what you don’t know already.

The code that is called PHP (first known as Personal Home Page)

PHP is the language you might use the most because it is open source, simple(for code) and it is free. If you ever thought about doing content management on your personal site you will be using something like wordpress, jumla, or drupal and they all use php.  Thank god you really don’t need to know how they work, and that they have some great documentation.  So I am here just to explain to you how you can edit templates and pull off some cool tricks with some easy basic knowledge of the language and structure. It is like to you are going to Spain for two days it would be better if you were fluent but it is not needed.

Cool Iris at http://www.cooliris.com/ right now it is just for Firefox but wow it is fun.  This program looks for certain tags in your page and then implements the gallery if it is found. There are some major sites that have it already integrated so you can visit there sites and then turn on the plug in.  After turning it on sit back and enjoy the stunning display of the images.  It makes a virtual wall of the imagery which you can walk down the hall looking at the images and then looking closer at them. It also has some great search features so you can look for things in Google Image Search, or browse your favorite artist in Deviant art.

Here are some screen shots.

Cool Iris in Image

Expanded Mode

Cool Iris in Wall Mode

Color Iris in Walking Mode.

If you are going to install it here are some great links to follow to see some great things.

My Deviant Page

Google Search for Marilyn Monroe

and Flickr for Flowers

This building tour had some interesting challenges. The three biggest challenges where.

• 10 unique keyplans (floors of the building)
• over 50 unique floor plans (designs of the rooms)
• and 400+ Units in the building.

The 50 unique floor plans was a problem because the informational feed of data could only hold 25 floor plans so we had to re-edit the information after it came into the system.  It was a great challenge and I am proud of it considering it is one the the first building tours I built for Merrick Towle.

The Met Gramercy Building Tour – Located in Pentagon City, Virginia

Landing Page

Loading Screen

Level Selection

Unit Selection

Zoom Feature (Considering the size of the building and the usable space that was alotted for the flash application I had to build in a zoom feature to give the visitor a proper viewing of the key plan)

So for all of you who have been here since the beginning I have been working on my own theme for word press.  Like most I started with a little help and cannibalize another theme to start.  So most of you might have seen my Notepad 1.0

But ever since I started with the theme I have found short comings.  Css code that caused more problems then it solved.  Errors in the php code and other such limitations. I have now been learning more about wordpress for a couple of months and I have learned what I should have been doing from the beginning.  I have tried to alter the theme I started with for the last couple of weeks but now I have decided to give up on the old crappy antiquated Php code from the old theme and decided to start all over. Here it is the new version of the theme NotePad 2.0 and with it I have added some really nice new looks including:

1. A New  Footer
2. Simplifying the Section Navigation
3. Killing the Top Navigation and only having a right Nav
4. Redesigning the Look and Feel of the Side Nav
5. Adding much more Texture and Depth to the design
6. Utilizing new Rollover Css Tricks I have been learning at work.

I hope you all enjoy the new Matt Watier Children Book Section.

Soon to  Come are:

• The Code Section
• Art Section,
• The Main Page Section
• Landing Page of the Book Section
• And Art Galleries