Scrolling websites
I’ve been having this discussion with my brother recently about usability in web design. I know…a bit of a geeky conversation, but since my brother and I have overlapped in some areas of our careers, it was just another thing that we talked about. It all started out when he sent me a pretty cool collection of CSS scrolling websites. This type of technique has been around a while now, but the effect in combination with some of the newer HTML5/CSS stuff involving parallax effects makes some pretty fun things happen. Now my argument...
read moreOsaka water display
I won’t say it. NO! I won’t say how jealous I am that there are amazing giant futuristic mysterious water jet displays out there in the world, and I never get to see it because I’m stuck on an island. I’m going to get the inevitable, “Well why don’t you just move then” remark. “Bitch, get me some cash to go then” would be my auto-response. Again I talk to myself. But I digress! This fountain in Osaka is impressive! (via Gizmodo)
read more10th anniversary
Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since September 11th, 2001. I hadn’t blogged or kept any record of my experiences back then…but if I had, I clearly would have had difficulty expressing my thoughts on that day. All I remember was waking up early that day getting ready for work and then having my mom call and ask me to turn on the TV. “There’s a plane that hit a building in New York” she said. I turned on the TV and it was all over the news. It didn’t become “real” until that first tower...
read moreDesign is everywhere
In the late 70’s my father had a crazy job over in the 1 year we spent in Australia. I think he spent MONTHs behind one of those giant desktop magnifying glasses, hand-engraving a seamless texture pattern that was eventually applied on the handles of a ski pole. Think about that…one tiny random pattern at a time was custom hand-engraved one little shape at a time with the sole purpose of making a single piece of recreational equipment look nicer without really being noticed. I’m pretty sure he still has a sample of this ski...
read morePicture orders
Ordered Kingston’s photos last week? It came back looking pretty sweet. I might end up doing the full set of 12 of these and have them hung down one wall of my living room. Hmm…then again, I think having these picture tiles within reach of a 2 year old will mean I’ll get little cubes pulled off the walls and tossed at my head whenever he pulls a little Hulk tantrum.
read moreForce of the Universe
It has to happen. There’s some invisible force in the Universe that dictates as soon as you stop pursuing something it happens. This Summer it got really busy for me with work opportunities. Now the new college semester started and I’ve picked up teaching again too. (new upper level class this year). Now all of a sudden clients that I’ve had that have been “dormant” for months, years even, have had to reach me to do all kinds of tasks. Not small little changes either. We’re talking everything from needing...
read moreIlluminated books
File this under the this-is-cool-but-there’s-no-way-I-have-the-time-to-do-something-like-this category. (via Toxel)
read moreWeb Accessibility for Designers
A good list of things to think about when creating a new website. Over the years I’ve done my share of mistakes creating sites that were not as accessible as they should be (e.g., removing underlines from links anyone?). But I see a comeback of these rules now with more control of CSS. (via WebAIM)
read moreZombie Picnic
When you think about it…why aren’t more wedding/engagement photos more creative like this series done by photog Amanda Rynda? I think my wife would have been game to doing something like this back in the day if we had considered this an option. Then again, I’m not sure our Chinese relatives would have understood the humor in bringing dead people into a wedding situation. Took us long enough to just find a date that wasn’t associated to one bad superstition or another.
read moreHere we go…time to teach again.
I start teaching again this week. I’m a bit nervous this time around because I have a new upper-level web design course to teach. It’s supposed to be “easy” to teach because by this time around the students are well-trained and self-motivated so I’m really acting as more of a guide than a lecturer. But without having experienced it, I still anticipate some stumbling around and bad pacing for the semester. We’ll make the best of it I suppose…it’s not like I haven’t acted as a project...
read more
LoweStudio Inc was founded by me, Raphael Lowe, a Honolulu based illustrator and web designer. I presently design and manage a few dozen commercial websites, but my main focus these days is acting as the head developer for Kapiolani Community College and teaching