Mark Wyner’s journal

Find me at Bunker

I like to talk endlessly about anything related to the design and development of websites and mobile apps, technology, and the creative industry, which may tickle your fancy.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Client Thank-You Note

In its entirety:

Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!!!

You’re welcome.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

This Portlandia trailer is blissfully awesome because:

  1. I am a Portland Timbers fan
  2. I live in Portland
  3. I am a creative professional with years of experience with clients
  4. I said so

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

CSS Trickery to Simplify Content Management for Clients

Some clients are savvy with graphics programs and/or interface programming languages, while others can barely get through a review cycle in their browser. And irrespective of their savviness they all inherit our carefully-crafted websites, web applications, and mobile apps. So we craft solutions/techniques to help clients keep their websites looking slick and working smoothly.

I’m working on a website for a client with some templates which employ duotone photos with rounded corners:

Screenshot of CSS-styled image in a website interface

Without having a web professional on hand this kind of image isn’t easy to reproduce. Some basic knowledge of a graphic-editing application makes the duotone only a minor challenge, but the rounded corners add a level of complexity. Or at least create an scenario begging for inconsistency.

My solution to simplify content management for my client was to use CSS for the duotone and the rounded corners. So my client can simply export grayscale images at the right dimensions and CSS would handle the rest for them.

The HTML looks like this:

<aside><img src=”/img/section-ph-01.jpg” width=”960” height=”130” alt=”FPO” /></aside>

And the CSS looks like this:

aside {
  background: #125687;
}
aside img {
  opacity: 0.5;
  -moz-opacity: 0.5;
  filter:alpha(opacity=50);
}
  aside,
  aside img {
  -moz-border-radius: 0 0 10px 10px;
  -o-border-radius: 0 0 10px 10px;
  -webkit-border-radius: 0 0 10px 10px;
  border-radius: 0 0 10px 10px;
}

So it’s as simple as making the image semi-opaque which in turn allows the background color to create a pseudotone*. And applying the rounded corners to both the image and it’s container makes a browser happy.

*Yes, I just made up the word “pseudotone.” And I’m granting use of it under a creative commons license. Clever? Maybe. Appropriate? Abso-frickin-lutely.

Monday, October 18, 2010

I Receive Some Strange Emails

Over the years, I have received some really strange emails from people. No, I’m not talking about “enlarge your penis” or “Nigerian bank account” spams. I’m talking about inquiries from people who need websites published. Or, at least people and/or robots acting like people who need websites published.

Following, are a few gems, unedited, in their entirety…

From one Mr. Gatti who believes I am part of some design-studio, delinquent-payment ring. (Subject line: Samples ORIGINES/ Mandy Gray):

Dear Mister,

I work for the Origines office in Paris and I try to contact Mr William Sturm about his client Mandy Gray in Hong Kong. I sent samples of our items for this client but we haven’t received the payment.

Best Regards,

Emmanuel Gatti
galerie@origines.fr

Mr. Sethi lulls me into a flattery-induced serenity, then hits me with an implied request to surrender the code for my site. I told him he had my permission to “view source.”

Hi,

I am a graphic designer, I have seen all sites in your portfolio which are designed by you and I found that you done amazing work in graphics as well as in coding. I need code of your site because, I want to design my own site with similar code. Kindly send me the code of your site at given email id.

Thanks and Regards
Prashant Sethi

I replied to “JA” with an estimate totaling $6.8 trillion US, but did not agree to an eight-week schedule. (Subject line: Quote):

www.broalcan.com
Check for reference quote for entire creation of web.

Thanks
JA

Kahlid sent me two, one-word greetings. One in Arabic, the other in French. (Subject line: Maroc):

salam ; salut

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Be Brave. It’s Just a Client.

My words of wisdom for today. The next time you’re nervous about facing a client, remember Jessica Watson of Australia. She is the youngest person ever to sail around the globe non-stop, unassisted. She was 16 years of age when she sailed into port at her finish line this past May.