Design – Page 15 – all said and done

Published February 20, 2009 by Rebecca Matheson

Coffee Table

skid-coffee-table-marie-claire For the past while I have been shopping around for a coffee table. I’s feel unethical spending $1,000+ on a table as well as finding it somewhat ridiculous and am still hesitant to spluge even $500. I’ll pay $300 but thus far to no avail – I am after something fairly light in colour, real wood and wouldn’t mind a magazine shelf. I am getting sick of furniture shops, and I like furniture shops! So this is my next solution. Anyone have a spare pallet lying around? Or at least another idea?

…gosh it’s mad, I really do want one. I’ll buy a proper one when I’m old, loaded and forgetful of my conscience.

*Idea from Eco-DIY

Ah! And here is another one… slightly more refined.

Design Experiments

Published February 19, 2009 by Rebecca Matheson

WordPress building

There is quite a reasonable and comprehensively linked post over on Design Tech about builiding and customising WordPress Themes.

The bain of my existence at the moment is degbugging WP Themes for the various ugly versons of Internet Explorer. I have been working on a site for work as well as my own personal theme and have consquently learnt a lot in the past little while. The work related one is much more CMS (Content Management System ie. normal website) based and so it’s learning how to get plugins to work effectively for you, using php and wordpress codex to modify what the loop outputs and creating all kinds of member protected areas etc. A marvellous exercise really because all the things it has forced me to investigate. I will share the link once I get it running smoothly in IE. However,

An honorary mention must be given to:

WordPress Download Monitor Plugin – Very useful for cutting out a step and keeping things somewhat organised for those uploading pdf’s (and other) that members can access. It has some limits – in that I can’t get the formatting to work when it populates a list via category – but it’s not half bad. WordPress still lacks a really good free document management plugin.

*Wordpress Download Manager – Seems to a be a far better option than Download Monitor. Organise, upload and output categorical (or otherwise) lists of pdfs and other such uploads. Formatting works a charm. I cannot at this stage get the search to work for me, but one thing at a time.

How to use WordPress as a Member Directory – This article got me both started and then back on the right track. I tried a couple of things but this was the closest and that which worked best. Again there are a few things – that if I knew php better I would alter and it’s a bit of a pain that it leans on two plugins and there isn’t just something that will do it all for you, but hey there’s some scope for some handy programmer out there.

Blogging Design Web Design

Published February 18, 2009 by Rebecca Matheson

Ampersand

I am in two minds about the ampersand, they are incredibly beautiful, curvy, interesting, and can feature alone, but on the other hand, they are a quite a lazy character. They rip the letters A N D off and they are often used at inappropriate moments. It’s the & of the headline and not the and of the story.

If you don’t take the metaphor too far, you could say that this blog has progressed (or degressed) from:

All Said and Done

All Said & Done

The blog might have grown up or at very least aged, but it has certainly gotten more lazy, it is less about the story. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but more reflective of how All Said & Done fits into my life as opposed to a few years ago.

Aside:

I do quite like the ampersand. And the one sitting on my desk makes me quite happy as it really does serve no purpose whatsoever.

This guy is even mesmerised by them.

Blogging Design Life

& All Said & Done ampersand Blogging Design

Published February 6, 2009 by Rebecca Matheson

Effective Communication and the Web

grantham_toast_in_the_sky_j Smashing Magazine – of which I am quite a fan, has recently written a ripper post on: Clear and Effective Communication in Web Design. It was interesting enough that I let my toast go cold. So if the web is your arena or your playground, then do yourself a favour and get over there.

What I love about Smashing articles is the wealth of information that comes with each post. They, (Un-surprisingly really) use the web as it was intended to be used – to network information. This is certainly something I could do better on this blog. However as it’s purpose waxes and wanes so must it’s content. After all, All Said & Done began as a personal blog and needs in many ways to remain the same.

On that note, my new blog theme is almost operational, although I’m still in the process of dreaming up all the extra fun things I can implement before I go live. That and I am also intending to write up a second theme for www.becmatheson.com to match – despite serving very different purposes, and I as yet haven’t decided if they should come independent of eachother… that and I’ve just read an article that’s gotten me thinking.

image source

Blogging Create Design Post of the Day Technology Web Design

Blogging theme design web design

Published January 28, 2009 by Rebecca Matheson