260 articles
Over the course of my career I have helped hundreds of churches with their web and graphic design. I have seen all the pitfalls, all the cliches, and all the different ways we boldly declare to the world “there is no commercial graphic artist in our midst!” I also have seen the path to vastly […]
I was recently interviewed on The Gospel Driven Entrepreneur Podcast by P.J. Simmons. It was a fun conversation. We talked about: How I got into Web design and why I started Mere Agency Fears I had when starting the business My biggest failures and successes in running the business How the gospel drives what I […]
(Illustration by L. Chylinski, CMI, Inc.) Across the street from Mere‘s office, the Ames Public Library is undergoing a massive renovation. Lasting an estimated 18 months, the building is being rehauled from the ground up to better serve the community. Costing around $20 million dollars, the project will more than double the space inside the […]
Last week’s rant about professionalism in Web design was supposed to be a short intro to this post. Basically my point was going to be that the profession of Web design and development has leveled up many times over the last decade, and it looks like some great industry standard practices are starting to settle […]
(Note that this post has been festering for a few years now, and is not inspired by actual, recent events. This wasn’t supposed to be a rant. It was supposed to be a post linking to some really cool new tools, with a brief intro. Oh, well. I’ll do that later.) One of the things […]
Last week, Jay Younts asked me to be a pinch hitter guest on his radio show. Â We had a great chat about the Internet and it’s use for God’s mission, some notes on the theology of vocation, a bit on the importance of excellence and usability in Web design. We even get a bit into […]
I”m excited to announce the launch of the new Gospel Coalition mobile Web site that I was honored to help work on. The mobile site puts the best of their fresh content (blogs, articles, book reviews, videos, etc) at your fingertips. My role was to create the front end code, including HTML, styles, and javascript […]
Last week, I heard about a brand new HTML & CSS book called, appropriately “HTML & CSS“. Preview images teased a gorgeously designed book, so I bought it. I was not disappointed. GET THIS BOOK.
It’s coming. I have some renewed energy and incentive to finally get this site in shape. In case you haven’t been playing along, this Summer, I undertook the reconstruction of my Web site live and in public. Well, I underestimated the impact on life that a third child would have and so lost steam. But […]
I got tired of looking at the black, white, and system blue, so I decided to ruin everything by putting some color and initial graphical treatment into play. So, here you have about 50% of the “visual design” in play: layout, most of the type treatment (some refinement to come), colors picked, etc. More work […]
Phase 2 of my boneheaded idea to rebuild my site live is “complete”. This phase was about layout rough-in and beginnings of typography. The horizontal lines are for reference only, they will (probably) go away. Here’s a cheat sheet I put together for the various widths, sizes, etc for my “responsive” site design. It probably […]
In Chapter 2 of Erin Kissane‘s new book, “The Elements of Content Strategy” she gives a dead-on illustration: > In effective museum and gallery installations, visitors are usually invited to spend time being with art – or artifacts or other content. Curators and exhibition designers understand that people require certain things to have concentrated experiences: […]