Link to Version 4

Today was the final day of working on Periscope Digital’s website with my teammates Blaine and Jose. Coding up to the very minute before presentations, my last touches to the website was the alt tags and some portfolio images put that were almost forgotten about. My team truly worked together to make this site something that I cherish and often visit for a little mood boost. Jose’s eye for photography with Blaine’s elegant triangle design, this site stands out as being something with a real vision. It wasn’t easy getting here.

I mentioned in the presentation that I used components of 3 frameworks to create this beast. It was a different world when designing for desktop. Something like this wouldn’t have been a dastardly task. The way the triangle code was conceived (using css transistions) they are absolutely positioned, which means as coder, I told each shape where to go three different times (desktop, tablet and phone). And, to add, the text is on a fluid grid which means that the boxes containing them are governed by percentage widths rather than fixed pixel-widths. Next time, if I am considering a static page layout like this, I would choose less all the way and then never pay mind to the spacing that occurs on devices in between the sets that I’ve created in code.

We spent a while making sure that everyone understood the brand, Periscope Digital and developing photoshop comps. I think this led to an easier implementation, feeling confident with our concept through the coding process.

Project management was adequate. I tend not to judge methods that worked. We had fluid deadlines and took the time we needed to make something solid and once. Not to say there wasn’t a few changes along the way.

Websites are not like paintings. They are finicky and  sometimes seem to fall apart when you’re not looking. I had a few issues with media queries. For most of this last weekend either but not both tablet and phone styles would work. This was very frustrating. Erik Fadiman said that he tried figuring it out by changing the background colors to bold primary colors to see immediately which css styles were operating. In every project, it seems like there’s a point to switch to a clean framework or relink something by copy-pasting functioning code. I did that yesterday when I added LESS media queries.

As for other websites this final season, I’ve enjoyed the interesting play that comes with exploring a medium for the first time. This notion that we are the upcoming makers of the internet isn’t so crazy anymore. Check out this website by Emily Eagle and Scott Richardson: Field and this one by Pete Brand, Krispijn Larrison and Brandy Collins:  SHFT.

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)