April Sides, Graphic/Web Designer

 

Has it really been two months since my last posting? I have been quite busy. This morning I finished the programming for an alumni resources area for centerformassage.com. I am quite pleased with how it turned out and so was the client. The project was completed at record speed in three weeks. Not so much the three weeks that is impressive, more that it was the three weeks before Christmas.

I guess the other big project I completed since my last posting was the restructuring and optimizing of breedloveproperties.com. This project was added to my portfolio with details and examples.

It's time to go home for the holidays. Plenty of food, family, and escape are calling my name. I may be working on a site over the holidays and I have two projects lined up for January. Stay tuned...

Chances are I won't be posting anything here until next year...which is less than two weeks away. Hope that the new year brings great things for you. My new year's resolutions: Take a little time to work on some personal projects and take a non-working vacation! 'Til next time...

I found online presentations and podcasts from the Web Essentials 05 conference in Sydney, Australia through a Sitepoint blog. Some of the presentations are very well done and highly useful. They cover CSS, accessibility, usability, and workflow. Big names in CSS like Tantek Çelik, Jeffrey Veen, and Eric Meyer were among the speakers. I highly suggest checking it out at http://we05.com/podcast/.

I also discovered an online tool for testing CSS typesetting. For designers who wish they could control text on the web as easily as print, this site is a good place to play with settings and gain more control over online typesetting.

That's all for now. I am busily working on a new home page for the site. Don't worry, my not-so-famous blog will still be a part of the site...

I know it's been a while since my last entry. I've been busy making the transition from employee at Estella Design to freelance designer. I just finished my first big project in my new endeavor. I restructured centerformassage.com, a site I worked on at Estella Design.

The goal was to keep the same basic design, but optimize the code for search engines and fast load speeds. We also consolidated a graphic-rich site and a text-only site into one site so that updates only have to be made to one page. I am interested in seeing what sort of difference it makes in search engine ranking and referrals by search engines. I am going to track the difference in a month and if it is significant, I will post it in the project notes in my portfolio.

The project is in my portfolio now. I have examples of the old pages and new pages and the load times for each. Check it out when you get a chance.

Off to Catamount Country for a football game and a visit with my bro. Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Estella Design will be officially closed on August 31, 2005.

It's been quite a journey. I started as an intern in January of 2003. When I graduated from college, the owner offered me a part-time job, my first design job. We worked in a small office the size of a closet with one other employee. A couple months later we moved the company into the Biltmore building overlooking Pack Square. The office has one of the best views of downtown Asheville.

In some ways I'm glad to see things come to an end. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to begin my career as a designer.

"When one door closes another door opens." - Alexander Graham Bell

I am still recovering from a 72-hour work week. I don't have much time to relax these days, however. I am currently slammed with work at both of my jobs and at the same time constantly thinking about how to plan for life after August 31st. Soap opera life wasn't meant for people who plan.

The short version of today's episode is that Estella Design, my morning job, will most likely be closing for good on August 31st. At that point I will be faced with life decisions that will enable me to make up for the lost income. Of course for this to be a soap opera there must be a twist. The twist would be that I don't know, for a fact, that the company will be closing...

There are more twists in the storyline than you could imagine, but that intelligence has been classified as confidential by the SBI. I don't know what the future holds, which is exciting and overwhelmingly stressful at the same time. Things have always seemed to work out in the past so I am hoping for the best. I feel my design skills reaching a higher level every day and I am nearing the completion of my first completed database-driven website from scratch (in which the client is very impressed by).

Be on the lookout for some new portfolio pieces in the next month. If you need a designer... freelance... part-time... full-time... shout me a holla! Possible locations of availability include: Asheville, NC, Charlotte, NC, Greensboro, NC, and Chicago, IL.

That's all for today's episode. Stay tuned to see the story unfold. Confidential information may be declassified in the future.

I made some promised updates to the site today...or yesterday...its like 1 AM. There are now PDF samples of print items in my portfolio and a new "Favorites" page with some of my favorite industry related links. I've decided to also include a "Bio" page with some information about myself, which you may or may not be interested in. That is still under development...

Lot of stuff going on right now. Work's picking up at both of my jobs and I am working on some things at home as well. So to prevent burn out, I'm going to bed before I fall asleep at the mouse. In the words of Texas Governor Rick Perry, "Adios, Mofo".

I just got back from my trip to Chitown. I had a lot of fun adventures in the big city and the workshop I attended was insightful and inspiring. It was hosted by Dynamic Graphics and taught by Alexa Nosal of Parsons. I would recommend attending their workshops, but I think the company was just bought by JupiterImages and all of their workshops have been cancelled. Oh well...

I hope to make some updates to the site soon. I've been busy catching up at work and tidying my apartment. Stay tuned...

I have made plans to attend a two-day workshop in Chicago during the first week of June entitled "Typography and Design." It seems like it will be an interesting event to attend. I'm excited to take an adventure to the big city.

I will probably be making some updates to my portfolio and resume before I leave. I also plan on posting a downloadable PDF with a larger, more detailed view of some of my work.

This site is a personal showcase of my talents as both a graphic designer and web designer.

If you are wondering where the name "weekbeforenext" came from, I believe it hit me as a sort of quirky mix up of the common phrase "the week after next." I really never use the phrase, but for some reason I was thinking aloud and I said "the week before next" instead. It struck me as odd because I had just referred to...now.

At the time I was a senior in college and had been on a quest to discover the perfect domain name for my site once I graduated. I took an Internet art class that year and had discovered the crazy, interesting, and unique domain names of the web design world like my professor's, lab404.com. I was on a mission to find "the perfect URL."

I thought "weekbeforenext" rolls off the tongue, but it makes people stop for a second to realize that it really means now. It could be used to say that I can be your designer or provide design for you now. I had found my perfect URL.

So, that's the story of my domain name...in case you were wondering. If you had no interest in the origins of this site, then I apologize for boring you with my geek obsession of the perfect domain name. Please take some time to explore my site and if you are interested in my talents, shoot me an email.

 

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