BlueHatDesign – Eugene, Oregon Web Design

MSRPO (Min­ne­sota Sea­so­nal Rec­rea­tio­nal Pro­perty Owners) Coa­li­tion speaks for rec­rea­tio­nal pro­perty owners at the State Capi­tol, see­king tax fair­ness, and grea­ter sup­port for fami­lies that own cabins, lake-shore, hun­ting shacks and sea­so­nal pro­perty in Min­ne­sota. In order to effec­ti­vely carry out this mis­sion, it is para­mount that they are able to com­mu­ni­cate effec­ti­vely with their cons­ti­tuents. (more…)

The 10th anni­ver­sary of Web­Vi­sions, a nationally-recognized con­fe­rence that explo­res the future of Web design, tech­no­logy, user expe­rience and busi­ness stra­tegy was held in at the Port­land Con­fe­rence Cen­ter this past week. I have to con­gra­tu­late exe­cu­tive direc­tor Brad Smith, the great staff, and an ama­zing crew of volun­teers for put­ting on a fan­tas­tic conference.

The line up of spea­kers was top-notch as always. Topics ran­ged from Luke Williams’ “How to Spark Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion” (ope­ning key­note), to Shashi Bellamkonda’s “Per­so­nal Bran­ding”, to nuts and bolts stuff like “Desig­ning Our Way Through Web Forms” with Kim­berly Bles­sing and Chris­topher Schmitt.

I came away from this con­fe­rence smar­ter, more con­nec­ted and more ins­pi­red to keep lear­ning, and keep buil­ding awe­some stuff for the web!

(photo by Shashi Bellam­konda)

Mood boards are a way to get the client acti­vely invol­ved in the pro­cess early-on in a web pro­ject. This allows them to feel that they are being inc­lu­ded and kept in the loop. It even gives them a way to par­ti­ci­pate in the design process.

I am a fairly linear per­son, espe­cially con­si­de­ring that I’m a desig­ner (we tend to lean toward the crea­tive and quirky). It has been my habit to want to jump in on a new design pro­ject, open Pho­toshop and bang out the design tem­plate straight away. I have a pretty good idea up front what will work in HTML/CSS and what wont, so I usually feel con­fi­dent that I can come up with a good, usa­ble design on the first cou­ple of attempts. This approach has wor­ked well for me for the most part, up to this point. (more…)

It’s not always easy for free­lan­cers to get good qua­lity, cons­truc­tive cri­ti­cism on a new con­cept.  We can always ask friends and family mem­bers, but we’re not likely to get a cri­ti­que that is based on solid design prac­ti­ces and con­cepts. Asking in online com­mu­ni­ties can often lead to caus­tic, unhelp­ful com­ments.  Con­cept Feed­back is an online app that attempts to bridge that gap. Here’s what they say about their concept:

Desig­ned spe­ci­fi­cally for small and medium busi­ness mar­ke­ters, graphic desig­ners, and web deve­lo­pers, Con­cept Feed­back pro­vi­des a sim­ple tool to get qua­lity feed­back on mar­ke­ting con­cepts. Best of all, it’s 100% FREE!

There is a full review at Fuel Your Creativity.

We’ve all been there. You’re star­ting a brand new pro­ject. You’ve out­li­ned the requi­re­ments and lis­ted the fea­tu­res in various ways. You’re sit­ting and sta­ring at a blank docu­ment in Pho­toshop, or a blank page in your sketch­book, and your mind is also com­ple­tely blank.

Crea­tive bur­nout hap­pens to all of us. As a crea­ture of habit, I tend to get into a rou­tine and stick to it. After seve­ral weeks of sit­ting in the same chair (more…)

Wel­come to the new BlueHat­De­sign blog.

As you can see above, my name is Jack Whee­ler and I’m a free-lance web desig­ner loca­ted in Eugene, Ore­gon. My skills are weigh­ted toward graphic front-end design, xhtml and css;  howe­ver, I also do quite a bit of ASP.Net pro­gram­ming. I am very pas­sio­nate about web stan­dards and accessibility.

In the blog, I hope to write about current trends and events per­tai­ning to web design and deve­lop­ment as well as some artic­les tar­ge­ted toward web site owners.

This new re-design of the BlueHat­De­sign site will inc­lude a more up-to-date port­fo­lio and a more per­so­nal approach to my work.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!