Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

So to follow up to my previous post which was taken the wrong way by some...I guess you'd have to be on the same page as me (or be talking/following my theories and thinking) to understand that the right way...

I wanted to post some examples of quality. Some sites that are more positive and hopeful. See, I'm not always negative =)

My point was more to the affect of how things in general are falling apart. It's just the way of the world. I mean again, I don't mean to be negative. So...check out some of these great sites for inspiration if you also are feeling like things are looking gloomy.

Phirebrush - A great site that features wonderful work done by artists/designers/photographers/writers/etc. (also linked on the left of my blog because I really support this site, and have for years).

Deviantart - Always that classic site.

CSS Beauty - A great site that showcases some good design with CSS. 

FWA - Of course, as mentioned by some angry fellow on my other post. Shows off a lot of Flash stuff.

The Webby Awards - Been around for a while, good contest. 

Some non web things:

SPD - Publication diesgn annuals...available at Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc. If you're into magazines, LOOK at these. Been around for a long time.

Of course there's also other really good design annuals, shows, competitions, etc. that come out from the ADC, AIGA, TDC, etc. Also great magazines that show off great talent like HOW, Print, eye, I.D., and more.

So there is good stuff out there. REAL good stuff...I wasn't trying to be too negative, but we do have to accept the fact and realize that there is this infiltration of poor quality going around. Is it from people who want to hop on the bandwagon of design? Is it from the increasing number of tools that make it easier? I can't imagine how designers felt when computers first started to be used in the design industry. Who knows. I just hope it goes away. It's just this attitude I guess. It goes right along with Apple. Sure there's nothing wrong with Apple, good products...sure I think overpriced, but that's beside the point...my point is the few people who buy these products and then declare themselves special. If you own a Mac laptop...it doesn't mean you know how to design. It's that misconception. It's that fake image. 

It's disgusting. I'm disgusted. It almost makes me want to jump and find a completely different career. The quality in the graphic design (web and print at least) is absolutely horrible. I'm sorry, but I take pride in what I do. It's not just some job. I went to the best college I could find and I'm still paying for it. It wasn't easy. I have loans and I sucked it up. I did what I had to do. I taught myself a ton of additional information to do what I need to do for my job and do it right.

So, my question is...why can't others? I never fault anyone for not knowing something. I'm not trying to say people are stupid. I'm saying people are lazy. Everyone makes mistakes too, but not caring and being lazy is just completely different.

I just saw a meetup group for Drupal. Ha. First off, this isn't saying anything negative about Drupal...though I could go on for hours about my issues with Drupal, all in all it is a good CMS. It's just not able to do what I need it to do and it's not the right choice for the project I'm working on with it...and no I didn't choose it. Anyway, the point here is they mention about some topics they were giong to cover that include the Google Blueprint API for CSS...Sound familiar? It should, scroll down a little bit.  1. It's not Google's (it's merely hosted on Google Code) and 2. It's not an API...it's a (self proclaimed) framework. It really is just CSS. Nothing fancy. It's not an API. Now. This is a group of "professionals" making this kind of mistake. Come on. Really? ...Worst of all, they probably make money and get paid for web design.

Ok, like I said, we make mistakes. It's not hard at all to confuse the verbiage on things. Especially for those using canned CMS', I'm not really going to be surprised at all. It's just part of a point I'm trying to make.

Another great example would be different materials that design firms produce. Take a close look. We often give some people or firms too much credit because of popularity, connections, etc. The truth is, they have absoultely no clue what they are doing. The only reason why they are successful is because of their connections and because they've been fortunate enough to sell to those who also don't know what their doing. That's not hard to do of course because if their clients did know what they were doing, they woudln't be hiring a firm, now would they?

So it's a really rough deal. It's like going to a doctor and getting poor treatment. You easily might not know.

I know this won't stop and it's around in any industry...but what I'm more concerned about here is that in the design industry, we have these attitudes. People start getting all cocky about their iPods and Mac laptops and how "good" they are. Give me a break. It gets so rediculous that people assume you "need" a Mac or an iPod to be a designer. What? How can you design on a PC? How can you be a graphic designer if you don't have an iPod?? That's just impossible.

So I guess I'm just venting here...but what really disgusts me is how these people and firms get away with it and make all the money, while I'm still sitting here working my ass off for next to nothing. Sure, I like my job and the pay is good...but it doesn't make things easier when there's all this poor quality out there. People start to actually believe that this poor quality work is good...and that REALLY makes my job harder.

Of course my design isn't the most amazing stuff out there, but at least it's technically correct. Ok, minus some of the kerning on the titles for my blog posts...Sadly that wasn't able to be helped due to limitations of technology. Still looking for a solution. So there's one example of how it's different...but if I made actual graphics for the titles manually -- there'd be no excuse.

So when will it just stop?? I'd almost like to start a web site that showcases poor work...but I don't want to just blatantly insult people...especially if they don't know better...I just want to make it a little bit more fair for the honest hard working professionals out there that just get overlooked.

So oddly RSS in CakePHP 1.2 came up a lot one night recently in the Cake IRC channel. There's a really good article on the Bakery about it, but that's for CakePHP 1.1. In 1.2 it's MUCH easier to do, there's less code. So here's a short how-to, though I'm sure it's published elsewhere, the more places one can find from Google the better.

First in your /app/config/routes.php file you need to setup the routing to handle the rss extension. So just add this line:

Router::parseExtensions('rss');

Then you'll need to make some changes and add a method in your controller.

// make sure you have text and time helper, the rest are whatever else you need
var $helpers = array('Html', 'Form', 'Javascript', 'Text', 'Time');
// example method i have here, but your find methods and model will be different of course
function latest() {
       // shows latest posts
       // So the first thing here checks to see if a .rss has been requested...
       // if so get what we need for the feed
      $isFeed = ife($this->RequestHandler->prefers('rss') == 'rss', true, false);
      if ($isFeed) {
            $this->pageTitle = 'Latest Posts Feed';
            $this->set('channel', array('description' => 'Latest posts'));
        }
       $limit = 10;
       $this->set('posts', $this->Post->findAll(null, null, 'date desc', $limit, null, -1));
    }

Then we'll go over to our view template.

// this file is located under /views/posts/rss/latest.ctp
items($posts, 'transformRSS');

function transformRSS($data) {
        return array(
                'title' => $data['Post']['title'],
                'link'  => 'view/'.$data['Post']['lid'],
                'guid' => 'view/'.$data['Post']['lid'],
                'description'  => $data['Post']['body'],
                'author' => $data['Post']['author'],
                'pubDate' => $data['Post']['date']
        );
}
?>

Just take note that your model and fields will differ from what I've output in the feed. "lid" is something I created for the link id...which is part of a friendly url system I have setup for example. Everything should explain itself here, but the most important note is the location of the template file. It should not only be the name of the method (like usual) but should be located under the /rss/ directory under the model's view directory where the other templates are.

That's pretty much all there is to it. RSS is quite simple to setup compared to what you neede to do with CakePHP 1.1. The main difference is a lot of the setup and creation of the xml document is built into 1.2 for you.

You can see this specific example in action on my media blog latest post feed.

I always write about CakePHP and love it. I give it mad respect because the guys behind that project not only deserve it, but without it I'd be stuck in the dark ages. Perhaps I'd move to Zend or Symfony, but I'm glad there's CakePHP. However, there's a bunch of other web frameworks that aren't well known (not that any of them really are in the big picture), they include CSS, Actionscript, JavaScript/AJAX, and more...but I'm just going to talk about the two most important of the current tools in my shed.

CakePHP

CakePHP is (obviously) a PHP framework that was inspired by Ruby on Rails...but thank god it's not using Ruby. Despite the fact that Ruby is now available on more and more web hosts...I just believe PHP to be a more popular and better choice. Not to get involved in a whole which language is better situation, but for WEB APPLICATION development, I prefer PHP over .NET, ASP, Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, and whatever else I'm missing. I find it a very friendly, popular, fast growing, flexible, and stable language for internet use.

What CakePHP really does at heart is gives you a structured approach to development. It keeps everything well organized (or helps...you can still make things messy), it keeps things secure (unless you go and break it), it keeps things moving along quickly, and it does all this efficiently and helps you work with databases very efficiently. This is why I use CakePHP. I couldn't possibly develop something (large) more efficiently without it. I'd be making too many database queries or I'd have confusing code that wasn't re-usable.

Granted for small scripts I won't use CakePHP, the overhead and number of files doens't make sense. An example here would be a simple form...However, if I wanted to make a larger application that served up a variety of forms that would change all the time...then I'd use CakePHP.

I feel CakePHP is the best choice to build a CMS with. WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal -- I've used them all. I know now that I can do better and make better applications. Those were created a "long" time ago and didn't get to benefit from all the technology we have now. The creators of those projects couldn't abandon their original code because it would be too hard on the communities that they established. People wouldn't know what's going on, they wouldn't be able to upgrade their sites, etc. Mass chaos. So they are stuck. This is also my theory for things like Myspace. In my eyes, that site is the biggest pile of garbage on the internet. I know it could be done better, but it grew too fast and too large. God only knows the server power required to run that. God only knows how much more efficient it could be...but EVERYONE knows how ugly it looks and the design wasn't well thought out. So facebook looks like the victor there...but I'm not going into that stuff.

My point here is CakePHP requires upgrading as well, but it's not mandatory. You could have a very nice application on an older version of CakePHP and not ever need to upgrade. Not that upgrading is too difficult, the core files sit outside your application so it's easier than say upgrading a modified Joomla! or Drupal site. However, it's your code that is the real thing to improve upon when building an application with CakePHP.

With CakePHP, you could build a blog application in a day. So happens the one I'm working on is not just your average blog and I don't have a lot of time to work on it...so it's taking a while. However, I have build a custom CMS for a site with CakePHP within 10 hours. It allows the user to update their site (almost entirely) and it's well done. It makes far less queries to the database than WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla!, and has less overhead. That would the solution if not for CakePHP too. Use some pre-existing CMS to get the job done. That kind of thinking is so wrong. It actually takes LONGER to modify Drupal, Joomla!, etc. to get it to work exactly how you need in most cases. Now, if you want a site that works exactly how these other CMS' work, then use them. Then it's faster. However, that's just not the case for most sites.

Blueprint CSS

I've rambled on enough the backend efficiency and code of the site. CakePHP is perfect for making a lean and mean site. However, what about the looks? Sure, the new 1.2 version of CakePHP starts you off with the ability to cleanly theme your applications so you can easily switch out designs and keep all your visual code yet again seperated out and well organized...but how about CSS?

Well, I found out about CSS frameworks...Huh? Sounds bizarre right? Well, I guess anything that follows rules and such is considered a framework. It does, there's a paradigm here to follow and guess what? It comes out looking REAL nice.

Blueprint CSS, like CakePHP will let you build EXTREMELY fast. It also has compressed css files to help speed things up. Again though...if you're looking for a small site or just a page, you should skip out on Blueprint because it'll be too much overhead for something so simple. Knowing when to use these tools is so extremely important and so is using them properly. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of mess and even wasted time -- the exact opposite of what you were after in the first place.

So. What does Blueprint do? How's it work? It keeps your CSS clean and working across multiple web browser and it works off a grid system. So things end up looking the same (for real) on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safri, Netscape, Opera, etc. You don't even have to think about it. That's the best part of all. Before, one could spend hours trying to hunt down compatibility issues and aras where one browser rendered something perfectly, but the next rendered it a different way and it broke things. Now, those issues are far far less and are super easy to identify and fix.

This also gets print design closer to web design. Grid systems are extremely important in design and before we only had a loose system for the web. One would have to make that themself and it would be hard to stick to it. Blueprint works off a great grid system that's already there for you to customize and it's easy to stick with because you pretty much have to.

With Blueprint, I've been able to convert Photoshop design comps to web sites faster than ever before and with less errors across browsers. Like CakePHP, it is a power tool that you should not miss out on.

Conclusion

With thes two powerful tools, one could make a very beautiful web site/application and quick. The most important thing to note with both of these frameworks is their flexibility and their ability for customization. You can override these frameworks and make them work the way you need. You can do so without modifying core files...so you can always upgrade (if neeeded) and you can re-use code with greater ease. So you're never stuck.

It's a very exciting time to be building dynamic web sites. There's a learning curve and I'd always reccommend learning how to make things "the old" way or the long way first. It helps you understand these tools better. It also allows you to appreciate them. It's just like setting type and designing on a computer, versus hand drawn and older photographic methods of design. It's super important to understand the history behind all of these creative mediums.

You should also choose the framework(s) that you're most comfortable with. There are others. Check them out. Frameworks I didn't dicuss, but are worth looking into include; Flex (for Actionscript), Symfony, Zend (PHP), Ruby on Rails (Ruby), jQuery, Mootools, YUI, Scriptculous, Aflax (Javascript - some of these also just considered libraries, but speed your development along - Prototype would be the "framework" for many things), and more. Check them out, they can really help you with some complex tasks and make your life easier.

So I've made a little bit of progress on my media blog. I'm off a deadline of mine for final beta, but I hope to finish up with that really soon. I have started to figure out how I'm going to release it though. There was some debate in my mind about setting up a social/community site with it much like a blend between flickr, youtube, blogger...but I am putting that on hold. Still researching other sites out there that would come close to the features I would be offering. I'm wondering if I'm trying to cover too much. Maybe, maybe not. The application is very well organized and very easy (and quick) to use. The number one reason why I'm not making a social site/app out of this is due to legal issues, investments and initial required capital. What people don't realize is that it's actually quite easy these days to make a site like facebook, myspace, etc. actually it's even possible to make a better and more efficient site than those. Minerva of course runs off the CakePHP framework...now it could have run off Zend or Symfony or whatever, but I liked CakePHP best and chose to learn that...and I didn't like Ruby on Rails.

So that said, here we are. Some new progress and basically I've setup a demo to show off how a blog could look. It shows how collections (or galleries) can be pulled into articles. Either a video gallery, photo gallery, or an audio collection. In the future, there will be the opportunity for mixed media galleries as well. For now, I'm sticking to the "keep it simple stupid" plan.

Tagging is coming. Rating is coming. So everything you see on that other media blog out there that shall go unnamed, will be possible. In fact, I could reskin mine to look exactly like it just to prove a point - but I won't.

The thing that is really going to set Minerva blog apart from the crowd is how efficient, scalable, easy to use, and easy to theme or skin it is. The theming will work close to how one would make themes for WordPress. If you don't make a file to override the default, the default will be used. I'm keeping the code very clean, xhtml valid, and 100% css. You will see no tables. Variables will be easy to print out and clear about what they do. So making themes will be a breeze. Later on there will be some remoting methods and provisions setup so that one can make Flash/Flex themes as well. So I guess we really can be like that other media blog out there huh? =)

Again back to my original point. It's not very difficult (in my opinion) to do these things. Working nights and weekends I've been able to setup this wonderful blog and with a little bit of planning and thought - I truly believe it will be the best one out there.

I'll go over some more tech specs in a later post, but if you're familiar with CakePHP, then you know how well this blog can perform and trust me I'm taking every step I can to ensure it will run like an efficient CakePHP app should. Add on top of that the easy ability for load balanced servers, clustered databases (again, the benefits of CakePHP) and some heads should start turning. 

So check out the little demo of Minerva media blog I've set up. I am also trying to see if I can get any of these spam bots over there hammering on my captcha and other little tricks.