Month: February 2010

Talking about redesign

Syllie

When we started with verysimpledesigns.com last December, we did things low profile as we were frantically going through our designs to decide what could be used for download, what could be turned into a tutorial and we were not really sure what direction to take yet.

Thing is that we design stuff from logos to stationery and fabrics, but also create illustrations and digital art and as we are both techies, we do website design (front-end and back-end) as well.

I am quite familiar with CMS systems, but when we decided to use Joomla for verysimpledesigns.com, I had to learn a lot of new things. And as we just wanted to get the site going, we decided to use a freeware template, install some plugins and that was that. No big publishing campaign, so not a lot of visitors, which gave us a lot of time to sort things out and add some content to the site. We had some plans for reworking the design, but sofar it has just been plans. Today we started to talk about actually changing things.

We like the current layout. It is distiguishly different than most other websites – that conveniently use 2.0 to indicate their style, but we all know that again is just a buzz word. I like many of those layouts, but somehow one looks like the next and the next again. We do however need to redesign the website, to allow for more modules, get the breadcrumbs working properly, depend less on plugins, and optimize the site further for SEO. The site is quite easily found by most search engines, especially now all our image are slowly being indexed, but we sure could use a few more proper links. We are considering a link exchange page too (realizing that we are not that interesting yet, but at least we can support the sites that we consider to be cool).

So template design for Joomla, we keep the purple but I do not know where it will take us next. We also will finally implement forums so we can create better interaction with our users.

Lots of plans that will keep us busy for a while again.

Pfft.. what a week…

Syllie

Our cute cat

Most weeks life goes by in a nice reasonably predictable way and the days sorta smoothly roll over from one into another. Other weeks things happen like wild water rafting. This was such a week. Worst thing that happened was that our cute cat got hit by a car and passed away. Some people might say a cat is a cat, others say it was just a pet, and others may cry for him. Truth is that this little cutie was very important to me. When I moved continents I had to leave my cats behind with new friendly owners. And when I arrived in Oz, this cat was waiting for me, rescued by someone that cared about the cat but had no idea how to take care of him. He was about 8 months then, kept indoors and as a young male in puberty very wild. So I was greeted by a strong cat piss odour and a cat that attacked upon each opportunity given. Oh, and they fed him dog food (as the cat ignored cat food). It took me a few weeks to straighten the cat out, train him to use the cat door and be happy with proper cat bits for food and little snacks of tuna or chicken whenever he was behaving particularly well. The cat turned out to be very socialized and a real cutie and he made it a lot easier to get used to my new home. This week I had to say goodbye as someone took him away from us. I feel very very sad.

New Inkscape tutorials

This event also slowed down some designs I was working on. I made a cute paisley motif a while ago for some custom stationery. I figured it would make a good Inkscape tutorial. When I started to write however, the tutorial became unbelievable long. This is mostly due to the fact that I try to write them for beginner Inkscape artists. So lots of hints and tips, while I describe each step. I am still very fortunate that my mate is not good in vectoring, and that he is still trying to learn Inkscape. That makes him the ideal guinea pig. I only mention new tutorials on the homepage of verysimpledesigns.com when they passed his test.

In the end the simple paisley motif appeared to be useful for 3 new tutorials, where each one focusses on a different aspect of pattern creation. The tutorials are published and we are awaiting feedback.

Inkscape Tutorial: Fancy Borders
Inkscape Tutorial: Fancy Borders
Inkscape Tutorial: Floral Motif
Inkscape Tutorial: Floral Motif
Inkscape Tutorial: Paisley Motif
Inkscape Tutorial: Paisley Motif

Working on a Valentine themed tutorial

Syllie

I wrote a tutorial on abstract designs in Inkscape, such as used for wallpapers, website banners and sigs.

Abstract Wallpaper - Australia
Abstract Wallpaper - Australia

Tutorial Series: Abstract Wallpaper

As Inkscape had many cool features for creating abstract designs without effort, I figured that just one tutorial would only show the tip of the iceberg, and that a series of tutorials would probably better. So I made a few mockups and made a first selection of techniques to be covered.

Abstract Wallpaper - Valentine
Abstract Wallpaper - Valentine

The first tutorial is published and features an abstract design of Australia in cool blues. Right now I am working on a warm hearted tutorial in red for Valentines. I expect the tutorial to available tomorrow, after some further testing by my Inkscape guinea pig.

How a simple tutorial becomes very popular

Syllie
Inkscape tutorial to create flowing spiro swirls
Inkscape tutorial to create flowing spiro swirls

A while back I created a simple video tutorial on how to create Spiro Swirls in Inkscape. It is aimed at beginning Inkscape artists and even without any prior Inkscape knowledge it should be easy to follow.

Spiro curves (Cornu spirals) were introduced to the design world by Raph Levien, and the feature is included in the latest release of Inkscape, version 0.47.

Spiro curves are awesome. They were originally created to support font design, and creating smooth flowing swirls is easily done.

My tutorial demonstrates the basics of Spiro curves in Inkscape at a slow pace and use it to create smooth flowing swirls.

For some reason this tutorial is the most popular page on verysimpledesigns.com, and it gets more visitors than the front page. How awesome is that?