Indianapolis Web Design Blog

OK, It’s been a few weeks, but If you haven’t, head over and check out Indy’s own FAB Crew, the gentlemen behind some of the city’s more masterful urban artwork.

I know Ben and Dan are great designers as well, and they have come up with a simple, cool and creative design for the FAB Crew website.

From the website:

Indianapolis-based artists Ben Long & Dan Thomson started the graffiti mural crew FAB (Fantastic Aerosol Brothers) in 1998. They have been working together and separately since. Their site presents their collaborative work and their strengths as individuals.

Pay them a visit, drop them a line, send them some love.

Technorati Tags: aerosol, artwork, fab_crew, graffiti, Indianapolis, web_design

Yesterday I took a tour of the local auto industry - driving around town getting estimates for a paint job.

Stepping out of my clean and organized world of validating XHTML, CSS, and good design, I entered a world where it just didn’t matter. Before stopping by several shops, I went online and hit every website I could find. I found that roughly 50% or less of the companies I went to see has websites; and the ones who did, were terrible things; old table-based layouts using templates that may have been designed 10 years ago. Content was sparse, uninformative, and out of date.

Of course my eyes lit up as they always do at the opportunity - all of these companies in need of what I provide.

My outlook quickly changed however, as I stopped by each business. These independent business owners looked up at my arrival like I was bothering them, turned me away because they were heavily backlogged, or paid scant attention to me at all.

A well-designed and smooth-running website was the last thing on these people’s minds. Validating XHTML? They don’t need it. Their websites, where they exist, were like a discharged fire extinguisher sitting in the corner. They thought they needed it once, may have a nagging suspicion that it’s still important, but over the years they’ve done just fine without it.

I suspect this is pretty normal for much of the service industry.

Technorati Tags: web_design, service_industry, perspective

I’m please to announce that I’m a part of the “Cultural Trail Advisory Committee for Online Communications.” Over time the online buzz around Indy concerning the Trail has been increasing, and our goal is to develop the best way to move forward with growing the community involvement. We had our first chat today and it went well- there’s a lot of really good minds involved. I’m excited to see where it will lead.

I’m a part of the group primarily for my involvement in the web design and development, but also because I love what it will do for our city - our greenways are really world class.

Indianapolis Cultural Trail Website

Smaller Indiana Indianapolis Cultural Trail group

Technorati Tags: ict, indianapolis-cultural-trail, indy, indy-cultural-trail

I think Google’s street view is the cat’s meow- and It’s great that Indy has been in the most recent batch of cities added.

I find a few things interesting in exploring these new street view locations:
1) The few people who I told about this weren’t like “Wow, that’s cool” but rather “Thanks a lot, big brother. Quit looking at my house” or “That’s a downside of living in a big city.”

2) The Google photo vehicle visited Columbus, Bloomington, and other small towns… and get this, super-tiny places like North Vernon and Seymour, IN. Even though I know people in Seymour, I find it amusing to see Seymour in the context of being interesting enough to view online.

Technorati Tags: big_brother, columbus, indianapolis, google_photo, indiana, indy, seymour, street_view

A writeup appeared today on Drupal’s website reporting that the Indianapolis Museum or Art’s new website was built using mostly unmodified Drupal 5, development by “Palantir” of Evanston, IL and “Studio Blue” of Chicago, IL.

The website is chock-full of “Web 2.0″ goodness - if you can find your way around it.
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N-vent related news:

Tonight I finally got around to updating my design portfolio, adding 5 new web designs. I’ve been blessed with a lot of work this summer and fall, and therefore have hardly had time for my own site updates due to the workload. My freelance brethren out there can attest to this.

I’ve been very happy with some of the websites I’ve had the opportunity to work on. It’s great to end up with a project that goes down successfully and is something worth showing in the portfolio. I’m pretty strict about the projects that make it to the portfolio page. Things that typically remove a design’s chance of making the portfolio are 1) design by committee, 2) excessive changes that result in a watered-down or less cohesive end product.
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Only once in a great while does a piece of software come along that does it’s job very well. Today I am going to write about a content management system that I use daily.

This is my “Is it good?” software test:

1. Does it do the job, as opposed to just not working?
2. Does it do the job well, as opposed to doing it sorta well, or not very well?
3. Do I enjoy using it, as opposed to being a frustrating experience?
4. Is the learning curve easy, as opposed to being very difficult?
5. Do I keep using it, as opposed to doggedly searching for something better?

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Interesting data from W3C Schools and and commentary from Douglas Karr over at the Marketing Technology Blog.
Check it out, its worth a read. Read the rest of this entry »

The Art Institute of Indianapolis says it is adding a bachelor’s degree for media arts and animation. This is the seventh degree program the school has added in the past 18 months. The program will prepare students for careers as animation artists, special effects artists and broadcast graphics designers.

The Media Arts & Animation program prepares graduates for entry-level careers as animation artists, special effects artists, broadcast graphics designers and video post-production editors. The Bachelor’s degree program offers students the practical experience and education needed to produce digital illustrations and special effects for booming markets such as film, television and gaming.

Read more at Inside Indianapolis Business

Only once a year can you find such a group of work in Indianapolis. The second Annual SubSurface gallery opening will feature recent work from returning artists as well as new. Participants are from cities including Chicago, Cincinnati, Kansas City MO and Indianapolis.The range of styles, techniques, media and subject matter are as varied as the cities from which they hail.
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