design

Better star ratings? A sketch in a few words

by vlado on Wed, 2012-01-25 01:19

5 stars are a very popular metaphor for visualising, very often sparkline-like, the popular opinion about an item. The values themselves usually come from voting, reviews and the like. The are popular because they show in a bar-graph like fashion what is the rating, and you can visually compare items. The downside is that as bar-graphs are quite crude, because they are one dimentional. It is not possible to judge if there is a consesus, or there are controversial opinions about the item in question. No idea about the distribution of data.

The design of dikini.net

by vlado on Fri, 2009-10-02 15:17

This website is built on drupal - a content management system extraordinaire. Until the start October 2009 it used to be based on a modded version 4.6, but I upgraded it to the latest release, as part of my 'looking for a job and pimping my assets' project. Now it is just a vanilla Drupal with a custom theme. A variation of the theme I created for the South Wales Linux User Group as currently seen on http://beta.swlug.org

the new look theme

It is based around a grid "theory", to enforce some regularity and rhythm. The base for maintaining the vertical rhythm is 12px font/18px line height. The horisontal grid is organised around 6px (0.5em) units and is currently split into 12 columns. This gives enough room to play with in the future. It is a simple two (8/4) column design.

new season, new mood, new design, new look

by vlado on Fri, 2006-04-28 13:59

I finally came about to changing the look of this blog. It is a new css-based design. It might get heavyish on some machines+browsers, but to be honest I can't care less about it.

This design is kind of a proof for the themability of drupal. It took me about 20 minutes to convert this from a plain html with embedded stylesheet to page.tpl.php+css.

If I can do it, any monkey should be able to.

Update: thanks to rkerr & |gatsby| I've fugured out that I have a slight problem in IE - unreadable. The bloody boxes and png transparency problems. Now it should be much better.

Thanks guys

x|s|p expressions mixing

by vlado on Fri, 2006-04-28 07:16

To continue my random ramblings on the programmable web let's get into the other side. Theming.

These days it is a common place to have a theme engine available in almost any respectable web application. It's the result of the spearation of concerns mantra and the desire to get designers and arty types off your back, give them the freedom to do almost anything they want, while not bothirng yourself (as a developr/admin) with too much unnessesary support requests. Theme engines and ideas how to build them are plenty. They differ a lot. But let's try and dissect what are they doing, or more likely what should they do.

Laura's exhibition posters

by vlado on Fri, 2005-12-09 10:38

They are done. I like them. The could possibly be improved, but I don't really want to overdo it. So I stop here.

Oh, and visit the exhibition- shot in the dark, city road, cardiff, december 16,2005-february 16,2005

The files are linked to below, so if you want to print flyers or posters and do some propaganda, go for it. I have perpped a cd with that, but couldn't burn it, my laptop's drive is borked. So use the web. And no nasty comments, or I'll shoot.

modular drupal css theme

by vlado on Fri, 2005-11-04 15:21

I continued working on the current dikini.net theme. It is an intresting exercise. So here is what I aim for:

  1. modular stylesheets: typography.css, framing.css, colors.css & friends
  2. page.tpl.php should allow for a multicolumn design, with arbitrary column order
  3. vertical positioning of elements within columns
  4. no faux columns
  5. a series of variation themes(styles), based on different layouts and colour schemes

    6. Status:
    1 - complete, including an unofficial, experimental split of drupal.css
    2,3,4 - half there
    5 - have a couple of

warholesque drupal panel

by vlado on Tue, 2005-09-20 12:22
drupal in london t-shirt designIt seems I'm in a drawing mood. Inspired by Robert's Warhol drupal@linuxworld, here is an warholesque drupal panel - could be used in t-shirts, posters and other propaganda materials. OK, it is an overused, abused and non-original, but I personally like it. If you do too, feel free to use it. Just drop me a line or a photo if you do, please.
 

fat tap entry for the drupal design contest - london 2005 LinuxWorld

by vlado on Tue, 2005-09-20 08:18
drupal in london t-shirt design This is my own entry for the Drupal London LinuxWorld t-shirt design context. It is kind of British, Drupalish, and there is a hidden tux. Hope my tupence helps. This entry is based on my earlier fat tap drupal t-shirt design, which still remains largely unpublished. It needs more work. I modified it a bit to suit the occasion. What do you think? Where is the penguin?
 
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