Well, that was… interesting. What does it mean when the new year comes in with a fizzle? We drove home from Seattle in the midst of a huge storm. It has been raining constantly in the Pacific Northwest for a couple of weeks now, which is no surprise. But add to that a few days of torrential downpour, and you end up with floods, mudslides, trees down all over the place, and tons of road closures. Eureka/Arcata in particular becomes an island, since there is no way in or out of here without driving through one of several mountain passes,...… →

Well, I am off for the holidays. I am going to spend them in Seattle with my newlywed sister and her hubby, along with my parents. I think this is the first time in my life that I have looked forward to a 12-hour car ride as a much needed break. I would take car sickness over this craziness any day. My mind is swirling with ideas and I don’t have enough hours in the day to do them. A forced break from it all is what I need to put things in perspective. I’m also looking forward to being...… →

In the tradition of Good Riddance 2003, I’d like to take some time to point out the things I would like to just end already with the end of 2005. Here we go: Stupid little icons. I’m sick of web sites that rely on icons. Just do it with the typography already. Bright plasticy looking design elements. It’s been taken far enough. Giant headers. If you can’t fill up the space, just don’t post. University sites designed using the school colors. I know this will never go away, but come on— there’s no way to make that look good. Wicked...… →

My newest work project has just gone live: the Humboldt State University Web Office site. The most interesting part for anyone not at HSU is that the site has an “Articles” section where I will be posting information targeted toward beginning web developers. Articles will be focusing on accessibility, web standards, CSS, SEO, tools to help you make good sites, techniques, etc. There will be some link blogging— pointing out good articles by others that are useful for beginners with a short post— which is something I don’t really like to do here. There will also be original stuff by...… →

I have spent the better part of the last couple of weeks looking at every university or college home page in the US. I did this as research for a new direction we’re thinking of taking the HSU site. It has been a year and 1/2 since our last redesign, and by the time I’ll be able to get something new up it will have been two years. …

As I looked over my projects at work the other day, I realized that I am working on close to 25 redesign projects. They are in various stages of the process, but a good chunk of them are stalled while the stakeholders deal with the site’s content. It may seem like content should come first— that the content should be the driving force behind the project. But in the university web site setting, I am finding that the motivation for these redesigns is often not content-driven. I am finding that when folks ask for a “redesign” of their site, this...… →