There are a couple things coming up that I am looking forward to. On March 18th I am giving an introductory workshop on Web 2.0 and Content Management Systems for ADAC (Art Directors and Artist Club). The workshop will take place at the American River College in Sacramento at 1:30 pm on the 18th. I have been preparing my materials for a week or so, and I think it will be a quite exciting and dynamic workshop. Also, in preparation for this, I am going to be adding a new “projects” section to this web site to handle the materials of this and other projects I am involved with. So stay tuned!

The second event that I am excited about is the OSCMS Summit coming up on March 23 and 24th. If the acronym is just so much alphabet soup to you, here is the full title: Open Source Content Management System Summit. It is a mouthful no matter which way you say it. I am looking forward to hearing a lot of people smarter than me give great presentations over those two days. The summit is going to be held on the Yahoo campus and a friend from Boston is flying out to join me for the adventure.

George Mandler has been great to work with, and as I am finishing up work on his site, my next project is already under way. This is a web site for a very good friend of many years. Cora Fox is a professor at Arizona State University in the English Department. She is a Renaissance specialist and needs a web site for a variety of reasons.

This particular site has been really fun to design. Cora pointed me to several resources on the web for images related to the Renaissance era. She found this fantastic paper that makes up the edges of the pages. The paintings at the top directly relate to topics that Cora studies and teaches. I am really pleased with the look and feel of this web site, and I look forward to helping Cora put up content and get used to uploading information herself.

If you need a professional web site, please do not hesitate to contact me. Also, if you get a chance, check out Cora’s web site.

For the past few weeks I have been working with George Mandler to create a new website for his nutrition, accupuncture and oriental medicine business called Nourishing Balance. He has been a pleasure to work with. One the things I really admire about George during this project is his attention to detail. If he brings this sort of focus to his business, (and I am sure he does!) then he must be an incredible clinician.

The web site has been built with WordPress, which continues to improve with a new version out recently. I have to say, I have come to really love WordPress. It is just a fantastic tool that empowers ordinary people to take control of their own web sites. Once the site has been built, you can use WordPress to post news and information easily.

Well it has been a little over a week since I went to MacWorld and I have gone through all my handouts and looked through the various demo disks to see what is really worth pursuing further. The one thing that really stands out for me is an interesting tool called Memory Miner. Be sure to watch this video to get a sense of what it does. (more…)

So, if you have not heard about the new iphone, I am probably not the one to tell you about it. I have been looking forward to MacWorld for the last few months but I have to say I am a little disappointed about the announcements from Apple. It is not that the phone lacks that certain Apple “gotta-have-it-ness” - it has it in spades! But really I like cool tools for making stuff. I took this picture of everyone taking pictures of the iPhone, displayed Mona Lisa style behind glass. (more…)

Well, it is a work in progress, but I have had a lot of fun setting up and training my friends at MSLA how to use Joomla to run their new web site. There have been some interesting challenges and I am sure we will do a lot more for the site in the future.

Well, this is it.  I have moved MeadDesign.net off of Blogger and into Wordpress.  I lost a few images on old posts along the way, but on the whole the move has been pretty smooth.  I still love blogger. I think it is a fantastic tool for free.  However, I had been meaning to make the switch for a while. It is really part of a grander plan for me in terms of my web sites and what I want to do on the web. (more…)

At the end of October 2006 the Massachusetts School Library Association unveiled their new logo. They changed their name, dropping the “M” from MSLMA (the second “M” was for Media). As the designer, I lead a process for about ten people on a committee to come up with this new logo. We never met physically - all our work was done remotely via email and the web!

I am very proud of the process we went though, and I am thrilled to have had the experience of not only leading such a process, but also doing it all electronically. At the start, I was not sure how that would work. However, we had a great group of people and the ideas really coalesced as we went along. Essentially the process consisted of three rounds of twenty or so sketches each round as we narrowed in on a final set of ideas. Then we had a fourth round where we worked out colors and other details for the design.

We are all really proud of the final design, and it made a big splash at the MSLA Annual Conference when it was unveiled. I have also been designing their annual news letter, as well as a new web site for MSLA built in Joomla. More on those later!

Abbey is the kind of client I love to have. She wants to take control of her site and is willing to ask questions and try new things. Wordpress is not perfect yet for the non-technical person. There are times when you have to do a little bit of light tagging, but for the most part, you can create a good looking site and maintain it without having to become a web designer. Abbey has proven that to be true.

Abbey is an Acupuncturist in Manhattan, New York, and came to me with a list of questions about how her web site should work and a lot of ideas about what she wanted from it. I designed the template for wordpress and we worked through the details to meet her requirements. What we came up with is pretty cool. Check it out!….. www.abbeyfromkin.com

I am sorry to note the passing of my client Ray Pasley. I did not know him for a long time, but he was a kind and thoughtful man and I think about him often. Currently his web site is down and I am thinking about a way of setting up a page that is dedicated to Ray that he would appreciate.