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Mead.Design

March 10th, 2018

On Friday, March 9th 2018 the Sacramento Advertising Club hosted a Galla event to celebrate and award local winning entries to the national American Advertising Federation’s annual Addys competition. The event was well attended by students, faculty and staff from the Art Institute of California, where students from the school swept every student category they entered. Continue reading this article »

Education

December 19th, 2017

Prototyping tools have really hit their stride in the past few years. InvisionApp along with Sketch have been favorites for designers for a while now, but there is a lot of development in this area recently, and it will be interesting to see if InvisionApp can keep it’s hard earned crown. I have been using InvisionApp and using it with students since it’s earliest days, and it has been great to watch the tool mature and lots of designers get on board with using it in the past few years. Continue reading this article »

Education

October 15th, 2017

In the summer of 2016 I taught a course on interaction design with an exceptional group of students who were really hungry to dig deeper into JavaScript and the kinds of interactions that can be created to make user’s experiences with products more delightful. Articles about microinteractions and conference talks on the topic were popping up all over the place, so as a final project, students created a mini portfolio of microinteractions. Continue reading this article »

Education

September 25th, 2017

This is another great example from one of my Intermediate Web Design sections by Juan Sarmiento. I have been teaching this course for a long time and it has evolved a lot over the years. In the early years, I remember having to teach students about how to deal with Internet Explorer 6 bugs, and then later how to use the HTML5 shiv. Neither of these techniques, or a long list of other ones need to be in this course anymore. However new techniques emerge to take their places, and that remains one of my favorite things about teaching this course. Continue reading this article »

Education

September 11th, 2017

One of the projects I have done in the Design for Mobile course I teach is to have students design and build responsive restaurant websites. Responsive design has been around since 2010, and really picked up steam as mobile use of the web started to surpass desktop use of the web towards the end of 2013. However, restaurant websites often lag behind. Continue reading this article »

Education

September 1st, 2017

This project, created by my student, Marco Vasquez, is from a few years ago, but it remains in my list of favorites. In the Intermediate Web Design class at Art Institute, students dig further into designing for the web and learning the HTML and CSS necessary to produce those designs. Continue reading this article »

Education

November 8th, 2016

It has been almost two weeks since we wrapped up our second WordCamp Sacramento conference, and I am still thinking about it and basking in warmth of an awesome WordPress community here in Sacramento. It was an amazing event, and such a great opportunity to connect with so many current and former students and Art Institute faculty in a powerful educational setting. Continue reading this article »

Education

September 25th, 2016

Assessment in the classroom is one of the more prickly tasks new educators face. It is something educators have given a lot of thought about, myself included, and it’s a topic I have been thinking and writing about for the past few years. I started this blog in the summer of 2016 partly as a place to express these and other ideas about design, education and web development. Continue reading this article »

Education

August 8th, 2016

Real Deadlines

“In the real world…” is frequently heard at the start of a college instructor’s tirade, but students are not in the real world, they are in school. Yes, there are times when it is a good idea to simulate a real working environment, but too often, this statement is simply used as an opportunity for teachers to complain about students’ shortcomings. Continue reading this article »

Education

August 1st, 2016

Watch for Students Gaming the System

The system I have described in my previous posts on this subject works well for most students, most of the time. However, it comes with some gotchas to watch out for. Continue reading this article »

Education

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    About William Mead…

    William Mead Photo

    This site shows some of my front-end design and development work and shows how I use these projects to teach students about those same topics.

    Find me on these networks

    Professional Qualities

    • Enthusiastic about teaching, learning, managing projects and building products for the web.
    • Deeply creative and always playful. Frequently engrossed in solving complex puzzles.
    • Thoroughly engaged in the design and web development industries.
    • A visual learner with an analytical mind.
    • Introspective and always striving for improvement.

    Skills

    I am particularly good at bending CSS to do my bidding, and I really enjoy creating custom interactivity with JavaScript. I am always excited about new problems that need to be tackled.

    Contact Me…

    I look forward to hearing from you. Please contact me using the form or directly by email or phone.

    bill@meaddesign.net
    530-219-8998

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