Page 9 of 33 (323 total articles)
  • January 21, 2009 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Intro to Web Design (Part 1): Grasping the Core Concepts

    If you're a regular reader of Mirificam Press you know that most of my articles dealing with the mechanics of web design tend to focus in on very specific issues. And most of the time the issues I write about are geared toward intermediate or advanced web designers. As I recently began grouping sets of past articles together into related series, this characteristic came to the forefront. I realized that on Mirificam Press there is a lack of articles relating the core concepts and techniques of web design. With the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants nature of our unique vocation I think its important that I present a cohesive primer on the technical concepts that form the foundation of web design.

  • January 16, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (1/16/09 Edition)

    If you visited Mirificam Press this week you may have noticed some changes. The graphics and layout have been updated and improved but the big change is the new "study path mode". After a year of advertising a soon-to-come web design study course, I finally got serious and finished it. The study path mode transforms the website to feature the current study series and make it easier for those following the series to navigated around the related articles. Every three or four months, I'll be switching out the design on the study path mode and starting a new focus series. You can try it out by clicking the button next to the logo. The site mode can be easily toggled on and off. And now this week's 5 for Friday:

  • January 14, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

    The Fallen Designer: What Good Can Come from a Shipwrecked Soul?

    The question of the current state of humanity is one which penetrates to the heart of a person's worldview. Understand, when I say "current state of humanity" I'm not referring to of the current state of human affairs in time (who's fighting who, the world economy, etc.); rather I'm speaking of the natural condition into which all humans are born. Our understanding of this state is inextricably tied to the second of three foundational worldview questions: how did we get here? what went wrong? and how do we fix it? In this article I'm going to deal primarily with the question "what went wrong?" and explain how the fallen state of humanity affects designers today. Of course, I'll be focusing primarily on the the classic Christian perspective on this topic, but along the way I'll briefly discuss some other views from pop culture for the purpose of contrast.

  • January 9, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (1/9/09 Edition)

    With feet now firmly planted in the new year, I think it's time to hint at some upcoming changes to Mirificam Press. In the next few weeks I'll be unveiling a new design and layout. My gosh, the current one's been up for almost nine months now; It's practically a dinosaur. Of course, when the switch happens I'll post an article explaining the changes and new features. For now, here's this week's 5 for Friday:

  • January 7, 2009 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Beautiful CSS: Organizing Your Stylesheets

    When I first took the plunge into CSS several years ago, one of my biggest frustrations was stylesheet organization. I scoured source code from popular sites trying to figure how they accomplished various layout effects. But tracking back and forth from stylesheets to HTML proved to be a difficult task. Unfortunately , that separation of style and content that makes CSS so awesome can also make it difficult to understand. Adding to that difficulty is the fact that each designer may have a different way of organizing stylesheets. If you inherit someone else's site, this can cause some problems. In a perfect world everyone's CSS would be well-organized, easy to scale, and easy to understand. We may not be able to attain such CSS Nirvana but we can at least make it easier on ourselves and those we work with by following this set of guidelines.

  • January 2, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (1/2/09 Edition)

    Well, we can cross out 2008 and look forward to great new year for web design. Despite some of the bad happenings in this last year, I feel that it's been one of my greatest years of growth and maturity in my vocation as well as life in general. Mirificam Press has come a long way from being practically a vanity press to a blog with a respectable ranking and almost 900 subscribers. I'd like to take a quick line to thank everyone who reads and comments on Mirificam Press. And I'd like to thank God for his grace and provision in 2008. Here's the first 5 for Friday of 2009:

  • December 31, 2008 in Design Inspiration

    The Confession Project

    In an article a few weeks ago I mentioned that it would be interesting to see how creative design could enhance classic Christian confessions and creeds. Around that time I also happened to be doing a lot of running which can be very dangerous for me. Any time I have extended periods of uninterrupted contemplation, I inevitably launch into a series of non-income-producing projects. Case in point: The Confession Project.

  • December 25, 2008 in Mirificam Press News

    Merry Christmas 2008

    This week I'm taking a blog break for the Christmas holiday, but I wanted to wish all of the Mirificam Press readers a merry Christmas from my family to yours. I'm so thankful that the original designer saw fit to become flesh and blood so that I could be reconciled to God and design to his glory. His name is Emanuel—God with us. He reigns now and of his kingdom there will be no end. Merry Christmas! [Griffin Family Photo]

  • December 19, 2008 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (12/19/08 Edition)

    For some time now I've been meaning to write and article about typography on the web. So far, I haven't gotten around to it but you can expect something in the next couple months. In the meantime, though, Web Designer Wall has a great introductory article that discusses some of the ins and outs. If you're only going to read one article on this week's 5 for Friday, I recommend that one. And now, the links:

  • December 17, 2008 in Web Design Worldview

    WARNING! Pragmatic Designers Keep to the Shallow End

    Our culture is obsessed with practical advice. We have seven habits of this and ten rules for that. Everywhere we look, we're being given steps for how to accomplish something. I don't think I can argue that all practical advice is bad. After all, practical advice is simply the outworking of principles. But while we wallow in the shallow end of practical advice, we would do well to remember that it's the principle shapers in the deep end who are telling us what the rules of the game are. They choose generic words like "effective" and "best" to describe the goals they throw at us. Who wouldn't want to be an effective person or live their best life? But without an object, words like effective and best have no meaning. These words are beach balls intended to focus our effort; to steer us to an end; to bring us to passively accept an someone's idea of what effectiveness and best life are.

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