Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category

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Changes for Key Theory coming September 2010

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Well if you haven’t heard by now, I have decided to part ways with my former informer On Ideas and am proceeding to launch Key Theory to full time status. This has been a long time coming but the switch was finally pulled on a whim last week so I’m in the process of getting things polished up in August for a strong fall season. {including a site upgrade for Key Theory}

I’m also in the process of networking and making connections with agencies, design shops, web shops, graphic designers, web designers, copywriters, photographers and social media strategists.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about me and discuss what opportunities we may have to network together drop me a line at kenny@keytheory.

I’m focusing on:

  • Web Design
  • Digital Strategy
  • FaceBook Development

Also if you haven’t liked http://facebook.com/keytheory do it. It’s going to be getting a major update as well.

And THANK YOU, for all those who’ve supported me and help me get to this step in my career.

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Tips for getting a job in graphic design / web design

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Defining your target

One of the first things you should do be for setting out to find a job in graphic design or web design is figure out:

  • your strengths, weaknesses, interests and talents
  • what separates you from everybody else
  • what type of work you’re looking for
  • what’s available in your area / industry

Defining who you are and where you want to go will help you take the right steps towards getting there. You shouldn’t apply to all the possible jobs around, focus on the ones you’d really want first and let them know why they should hire you.

Where would you like to work?

Identify the design offices, corporations, or individuals with whom you’d like to interview with. Contact some of these shops that you’d really would like to work at and make plans to visit them. See if you can intern or volunteer your services for a tester project.

Do your homework on work on the shop before visiting and perhaps even pitch an idea or solution that would serve one of their clients. If you go above and beyond it WILL get noticed OR you wouldn’t want to work for a place like that anyway.

Network, Socialize and be Vocal

Networking and getting involved in different organizations AIGA / JAMA will definitely increase your contacts. There are groups you could get involved with in your area, a quick search on Meetup.com or Google could point you to groups in your area. Don’t be shy there are a lot of talented people out there that no one knows about.

Create a great portfolio

In your portfolio only show your strongest work and make sure you practice presenting it. Employers don’t want to see everything you ever done and if you aren’t excited about your work they wont be either.

Résumé

You should create a resume that lists out your education, skill sets and experience. You can create a hard copy and feature a digital copy online and on sites like Linked In. If you don’t think you have experience enough for a resume, dig further as you must have gained some experience getting the skills to apply for a graphic design or web design job.

Be real & be professional

Be yourself but also make sure to follow professional protocols when getting an interview or a job offer. Be sure to research any offers you get to make sure what you’ve been offered before accepting.

Be persistent

It may take some time to get your foot in the door but persistence will pay off.

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Consistancy is crucial for online success

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Ok so this is a quick post to get back on my posting schedule. Seems as though I dropped off during April. It wasn’t from lack of efforts just lack of time. I work at an advertising agency On Ideas and run my own LLC with my father… this keeps me busy. Using social media, keeps me busy. Keeping up with current development trends keeps me busy… But to say I don’t have the time. That’s a cop out. I didn’t make the time.

The point is the web is constantly spinning and it’s good to take self assessments at times to figure out what is working for you and prioritize. Consistency is crucial online, you don’t want to go stagnant for long or you will dry up. As busy as I am I need to schedule a small block of time to continue with my on-line efforts or hire someone to keep them up if I’m busy with client work. If one puts all their time into working and stops promoting themselves eventually work may run out.

Now some people out there could make time but it may not be in there best interest to use their own time, perhaps they should hire a professional to help with their on-line efforts. A professional could probably do it quicker and get better results. This is why I have my car serviced, I could service my own car but it would take more time and effort than it costs to get it done professionally.

Bottom line, reassess your goals and make efforts to improve your efforts. If you do fall behind, get back on track and put forth efforts to avoid getting off track in the future.

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Jacksonville JDRF Walk 2010 – a great benefit to be a part of.

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Jacksonville JDRF Walk 2010

Well I am going to participate in Jacksonville’s JDRF walk 2010 held April 10th.

Key Theory has sponsored group “Endure for the Cure”. Proceeds will go to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

For more information about JDRF walks visit http://walk.jdrf.org/.

Special thanks to the people who sponsored me in no order:

From On Ideas:

  • Claire Jackson
  • Justin Dennis
  • Patricia Dipietro
  • Tommy Hobin
  • Judy Long
  • Chris Claxton
  • Deonna Carver
  • Judi Herring

And other charitable contributors:

I’d also like to thank

  • my wife Kathy Harper for her love and support
  • my sister Sarah Harper for her efforts in putting the team together
  • TshirtBordello for donating shirts to the cause

Enough talkin’ let’s get walkin. Show your support by a Re-tweet or FaceBook Share.

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Crash Course in Web Design – Part 2 Linking Web Files

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Linking Web Files

Ok so if you’ve followed along with part one you should be familiar with HTML tags and the basics of an HTML page. If you’re not go back and read part 1, download the code and watch the videos http://keytheory.com/crash-course-in-web-design-part-1-basic-html-tags/.

There are three things I want you to take away from Part 2.

  1. Absolute vs Relative Links
  2. Linking pages to each other pages, files or sites
  3. Bringing in images from other directories, or sites

Absolute vs. Relative Links

Absolute URL

An absolute URL is a full path in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to a exact destination or file. examples:

  • http://domain-name.com
  • http://domain-name.com/directory/
  • http://domain-name.com/directory/sub-directory/file.extention

You’d use absolute links if you were:

  • linking to web site
  • linking to a file on web site
  • theming a CMS that requires absolute links

Relative URL

A relative URL is a path to a destination or file relative to the location that the link is being called from. examples:

  • /directory/
  • /directory/file.extention
  • /images/logo.gif

You’d use a relative link if you were:

  • linking to files with in your site
  • linking to pages with in your site

Linking pages to each other pages, files or sites

Okay so now you’ve got the difference between absolute and relative you just need to apply it with HTML to get it working in action.

If you recall the tag for links <a href=”destination-here”>Text Here</a>

What this is doing is opening an anchor tag <a></a>, giving it a destination href=, and telling what the anchor text will be. Anchor text is the actual text making up the link, it can be an image as well. For SEO purposes use keywords when creating anchor text.

Examples using HTML Links:

Link to the another site:
<a href=”http://twitter.com/kennywharper”>View my Twitter</a>

Link to a file located in the same directory:
<a href=”myfile.doc”>Check out this document</a>

Link to another site and open another tab/window:
<a href=”http://youtube.com/keytheory/” target=”_blank”>My YouTube Page</a>

Link to another page in a directory (named chocolates) on the same site:
<a href=”chocolates/myfile.htm”>My YouTube Page</a>

“/” will take you to the root directory:
<a href=”/”>Go to index</a>

“../” will take you to a directory higher.
<a href=”../”>Go to directory above</a>

Check out the source code for more examples.

Bringing in images from other directories or sites.

At this point you should get how to link to other files but what about getting images into your document?

Recall the image tag: <img src=”mypicture.jpg” />

Img stands for image, src for source, you can also put other attributes such as an alt tag or size dimensions:
<img src=”mypicture.jpg” alt=”Description of image for seo & vision impaired” border=”0″ />

This technique is used code images into your HTML page, different mark up is used for embedding Flash, Videos or Scripts and will be looked at later. * Note you can also use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to bring images into your web design. Using CSS is best practice when building a site, this will be covered later.

Examples coding images into HTML pages:

Now to get an image into your page from somewhere else you just need to determine the source.

Code in image from another site: (absolute)
<img src=”http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/3066/ss35450qf7.jpg” />

Code in image from the directory named “images” located in the same directory: (relative)
<img src=”images/myimage.jpg” />

Assignment 2:

  • Download the source files
  • There are two folders in the zip: “cc-2-start” & “cc-2-finish”
  • Open the file “index.htm” within “cc-2-start” in a text editor and follow the instructions
  • Check your code against the index file located in “cc-2-finish”
  • Open up both files in a browser to see how they render

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Posted in Crash Course in Web Design, Web Design | 1 Comment »

Crash Course 1.5 – Assignment Review

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Well, after getting feedback on Part 1 of the crash course I realized a few things which sent me back to the drawing board to make some changes to my plan for the course.

First to tackle, a better break down of the assignments for those who are really in the dark on the web and HTML. So below is a new assignment if you couldn’t follow assignment 1.

Assignment 1.5:

  1. Download Source Files
  2. Open cc1-5-start.htm in a text editor and format the page as noted in the document
  3. Search the internet and find three new tags to use
  4. Check your code against cc1-5-finish.htm & Test in a browser

Assignment 1.5 Breakdown:

1) Download Source files
In the last assignment the goal was to create an HTML page named “index.htm”. You can use a editing program like Notepad or TextEdit to create a text document. And if you save the document with a “.htm” or “.html” it will be rendered as HTML in a browser.

For our purposes you can  download Download Source 1.5 Files and use cc1-5-start.htm.

2) Format the page as noted in the document
If you download the zip file you will find cc1-5-start.htm which contains the text content to be formatted. And a file cc1-5-finish.htm that contains the finished document.

You can open the HTML documents in a text editing program such as Notepad or TextEdit.

Note, the start document has pieces of text wrapped in <p> paragraph tags. Look to the cc1-5-finish.htm to see how different things are handled and be sure to understand how they work.

3) Search the internet and find three new tags to use
After reading the first post you should know what HTML tags are. Here we want to use a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, to find new HTML tags that weren’t mentioned in the first post. For example, I did a quick search and after looking at a few sites I found the “small” tag.

<small>Small Tags makes text small</small> = Small Tags makes text small

4) Test your document by opening it in a browser
Open a browser such as Firefox or Safari and click “File > Open” or Open File (depending on the browser), find the document you want to preview in the browser and click open. This should open the document in the browser and render it as HTML.

Download Source 1.5 Files

Moving forward I aim to make the assignments more thorough with source files to follow. Feel free to provide feedback on this post and let me know if there are any things that still need addressing.

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Crash Course in Web Design – a free web design course

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Well among all the other things I manage to get myself into, I’m starting a web design crash course that is aimed teach those interested in learning the basics about web design. There are a lot of other web design tutorials out there but most are geared for people who want to be web designers and are very detailed which can be overwhelming to someone who wants to learn how to get up and rolling in a short time. That’s what I aim to do.

What is this crash course in web design?

  • A web design course for those  looking to gain the basics of web design in a speedy crash course fashion

What web skills will you learn?

  • XHTML & CSS Basics
  • SEO Basics
  • Social Media Techniques
  • Resources

What does it cost?
This course is free.  The only thing I ask is help me promote it.

  • Post it on FaceBook
  • Tweet it
  • E-mail it to a friend

Making it interesting:

To make it interesting I’ve gathered up a group of graphic designers that will help me test out this course and promote this crash course.

I also have arranged for a few other professional web designers to contribute some additional lessons.

Feel free to participate and submit your feedback and suggestions.

To follow the course, become a fan of Key Theory at Facebook.com/keytheory or follow my RSS feed.

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Syntax Highlighter is a great tool for highlighting & formatting code.

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Syntax Highligher is a Javascript code that formats and highlights code in an easy to read format. It is free and easy to install http://alexgorbatchev.com/wiki/SyntaxHighlighter.

I’m in the process of gearing up for a web design course that I’m offering to fellow graphic designers from here in Jacksonville, Florida to out in Los Angeles, Califorinia. They are looking to learn the basics of web design and I am looking to help them out. By using the syntax highlighter I’ll be able to share snippets of code with others. Stay tuned, more to come in the upcoming days.

Test of Syntax Highlighter

/**
* SyntaxHighlighter
*/
function foo()
{
if (counter & lt;= 10)
   return;
  // it works!
}

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Tips for Creating a Personal Brand.

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

JAMA Building your brand event.

JAMA, the American Marketing Association of Jacksonville had a great event in Jacksonville today about creating and managing your personal brand. JAMA puts on monthly events that are geared toward networking and developing skill sets in the marketing industry. You don’t have to be a member to go to an event but it is encouraged.

Marylin Feldstein, of Career Choices Unlimited, put on the presentation which was a refresher course on branding and focusing on one’s self image. I personally can relate to the topic, in fact it’s exactly what I am currently working on in 2010. In the past several years I focused so much on my clients and their projects and put my own personal brand on the back-burner. That’s one reason my site is still “under construction“. I have developed award winning projects but my own site does not reflect that… doh! But it’s never too late to start re-defining or re-branding yourself.

Your brand = your image + how people perceive you +  your essence

If you want Marylin’s branding tips you’ll have to track her down. Below are my thoughts.

My top 10 tips for defining your personal brand.

  1. Determine what makes you special. If you possess unique skills or charachteristics use them to your advantage.
  2. Be yourself. If you’re a little edgy that’s ok there is a market for just about all kinds of personalities.
  3. Network. Social media is great but noting is like meeting someone in person. If you build a rapport it will go noticed.
  4. Research. See what others have done that have worked… see what others have done that have failed.
  5. Develop goals towards re-branding yourself, set objectives and try to schedule a time-line. There is no rush but you’ve got to keep on it.
  6. Get feedback from multiple sources. Typically friends aren’t always the best to ask as they aren’t always objective.
  7. Get professional help. If you aren’t a marketing pro, perhaps you should consult with one before creating an identity, logo or branded messaging.
  8. Don’t be overly critical. Although your brand is extremely important, you don’t need to achieve perfection as it doesn’t really exist.
  9. Know your audience and who you’re trying to sell yourself to, you can’t please all parties. If you have fans, you’ll have haters.
  10. Continue to grow & re-evaluate where you are and push towards refining yourself to where you want to go. Defining your own brand can take quite some time and isn’t usually hit right the very first time. Ah hem…

While you’re here if you’re not a Fan of Key Theory on Facebook. Take a quick sec and check it out. http://facebook.com/keytheory

Natalie Halpern & Tom Brennemen

Natalie Halpern & Tom Brenneman

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How to Create and Manage Your Personal Brand

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Branding yourself

JAMA Event:

How to Create and Manage Your Personal Brand

  • Jacksonville, Florida
  • Thursday, January 28
  • 7:30am – 9:00am
  • Fairfield Inn & Suites, Jacksonville Butler Blvd
  • Breakfast via Panera Bread
  • Click here to register (http://jamajan2010.eventbrite.com)

Eat, Learn and Network

Marilyn Feldstein, certified professional coach, CEO of Career Choices, Unlimited will be sharing tips on how to create and manage your personal brand.

Even if you are aware of branding sometimes it’s good to get a recharge and networking with others interested in doing the same can help your efforts.

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