Hello and welcome to the first blog post of my new blog.
To kick things off here is a little about my schooling and a creative project I have been working on for the past half year.
The last three years have been a roller coaster ride to say the least. I am a husband, father of 4 children, a church man with callings in the LDS faith and a full time Graphic designer at the Deseret News. So when I chose to return to school to finish up my Bachelor's degree at the University of Utah, I added one more heap-load of responsibilities to the pile. The challenge of finishing my schooling was daunting. I was a man being pulled in five different directions at once. At times I felt stuck as I took classes that I felt, at the time, were completely useless to my future. You know how it feels to to move through water–
slow motion. That is about how 60% of the classes felt at the U. The bright exceptions were classes having to do with design and graphics. Those classes seemed to fly.
University has some fun classes
Most enjoyable were the classes involving web design. I gained an incredible beginners working knowledge of how to code and design a responsive web site. My teachers had years of industry experience and genuinely cared about whether we succeeded in learning the code and principles in designing a site. I was in no way the best student in these classes, but I learned enough to get jump-started on a project I have been meaning to get to for a long time.
The Old Site
Beginning August of last year I began redesigning my personal web site. The old site used 1990s methods of html structuring. (Tables, GASP!). Essentially it was a store front for my art, Static and not all that great. On top of this I didn't have the first clue about CSS when I designed and put it together. I used a wizzy wig open source site-designer called
Kompozer. Never looked at the code too closely, but I'm pretty sure all the CSS was integrated with the HTML. Yah, wasn't much of a coder back in the mid 2000s. Not saying I'm that great now, but you can compare the old and new site's code– Like night and day.
