Author Archive
Posted on October 18, 2011 - by CDS
Corvus is Expanding!
We’re excited to announce we’ll be opening two new offices in San Francisco, California and Southern Utah/Las Vegas area. Can’t reveal too much more at the moment, but we’re very excited to start working with new clients in these areas within the next few months!
Posted on August 31, 2011 - by CDS
Digging into Wordpress, the Book
Digging into Wordpress is both a tutorial blog and recently released book, both by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. I’ve been the occasional fan of the site, and decided to give the book a try. I suppose it was mostly the sleek and beautiful design of the book itself that drew my attention, with its aqueous pages and spiral spine. This is definitely not your average reference book, and right away it’s obvious that a lot of time and thought went into the functionality and usability of this book.
The design and organization of the book makes it an easy-to-use reference that actually stays open on your desk (a nice touch). The chapters are well organized, and the color coding makes it super simple to find what you’re looking for. Another design bonus is the lovely typography.
I won’t give a whole synopsis of the book, as that can be found on the website (Digging into Wordpress). But I will give my brief opinion. I would say the book is definitely for web professionals wanting to dig deeper into the inner workings of Wordpress, and those who are interested in developing advanced Wordpress themes. Although the book starts off a little on the elementary side, describing what hosting and domain names are, it makes a sharp turn into the technical that would leave a novice developer clueless. I found that a little uneven, but was grateful for the shift. As a seasoned developer, I certainly don’t need a $75 brush up on the most fundamental aspects of websites. I understand including this basic information for completeness, but honestly I think it could do without it if the book were intended specifically for web professionals.
Aside from the somewhat slow start, the book speeds up and offers a ton of valuable information, from secure installation practices to creating Wordpress CMS applications. If you’ve ever looked at a Wordpress site and said to yourself, “I want to know how they did that”, it can probably be found in this book.
Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone designing and developing with Wordpress. I am glad I shelled out the $75. Oh, and you can purchase the PDF version instead for just $27.
More info/purchase: Digging into Wordpress Book
Posted on August 28, 2011 - by CDS
Shopify No More
In light of the growing number of rip off reports and tales of peeved Shopify customers blazing across the internet, we’ve decided to cut all ties with Shopify, effective immediately. We started offering customized Shopify online stores as an alternative to Miva Merchant because of its appeal to highly non-techy shop owners. However, Shopify’s increasingly negative reputation has us very concerned.
Our PSD Design Shop was created with Shopify, but we decided to switch to Wordpress a few weeks ago. When I cancelled the Shopify web store, I was told it was successfully cancelled, but was subsequently charged the monthly fee after cancellation. When several inquiries requesting a refund went unanswered, I started looking around on the internet to see if this is some sort of scam. Unfortunately, I found several other accounts stating the exact same thing. I thought it was an honest mistake at first, until I read the other accounts. We simply cannot stand behind such questionable practices, and so cannot endorse their product or company any longer.
From this point on, we will be working only with WordPress and Miva Merchant for online shops. And if you’re missing our popular PSD Design Shop, no need to worry, we’re in the process of redeveloping and enhancing the shop with WordPress. We’ll have the shop back up very soon!
We will also continue to provide full support for the many clients who are already using Shopify.
Update: After publishing this post, I finally received an answer to the inquiries I sent requesting a refund. They apologized, said is was an honest mistake, and said to have refunded the unauthorized charge. I don’t know if it was this article that prompted them to finally reply to my communications, or if it’s just a timing coincidence. But it doesn’t matter, the damage has been done. The other reports of similar cases are still lingering out there in cyberspace, causing me to remain too suspicious of Shopify to work with them again. As such, we’re still disassociating completely with Shopify, effective immediately.
Posted on August 10, 2011 - by CDS
Rerun Productions Redesign
We just completed a revamp and upgrade of Rerun Productions, one of our very first clients. We’ve worked with Rerun for years and just adore their whole idea of functional art made from recycled items. Anyway, we upgraded their previous flash site to a simpler Wordpress site with more emphasis on search engine optimization, networking and traffic generation. This new site is also a complete CMS with video integration, Ajax features, automatic photo resizing, lightbox popup, built-in “simple forms”, and more. The idea was to create something minimal, simple, user-friendly that just shows the artwork, plain and simple. I’m a huge fan of the grid/masonry layout and was very excited to create this automatic-resizing masonry site. We’ll eventually be developing an integrated Wordpress online store, too.
Take a look at www.rerunproductions.com, and feel free to tell the folks at Rerun how much you love their creations via the comment forms!
Posted on June 14, 2011 - by CDS
How to get those awesome fonts on your website
Tired of Arial and Times New Roman? Yeah, we were too. There are a couple super simple solutions that we use on our projects that allow the use of a wider range of fonts, without the viewer having to install the font itself. Although there are several solutions, we prefer Google Webfonts and TypeKit. Both solutions are standards compliant, and work about the same way: a script call is added to the header of the site, and the font formatted in CSS.
Google Webfonts are free, which is really nice. They only encourage donations to the font designers. We are using Google Webfonts on this site (Old Standard, Quattrocentro, and Rock Salt). Google Webfonts library is growing, and they’ve got a nice selection of serifs, sans-serifs, handwriting, etc. A little of everything. So far the I haven’t experienced a browser the fonts won’t display the fonts. I’ve tested Firefox 3.0+, IE 7.0+, and Safari.
Typekit is generally a paid service. They do offer a limited usage free option, but with the requirement that a “Typekit Badge” be displayed on the website. It’s a small, innocuous badge that won’t deter from any website. But the free service does not allow access to all of their fonts. Since their prices are very reasonable, from $24.99 to $99.00 per year, you wouldn’t be out much to jump in and try out their more expanded packages. Typekit’s greatest asset is its large font library and language options. It’s well worth the small amount of dough.
They also limit the number of page views, font access, and number of fonts you can use at one time. To clarify about the page views; they are guidelines and the company won’t shut off the fonts if you go over, they’ll just ask you to upgrade to the appropriate page view bracket. Seems fair to me. You’re using their bandwidth when you use the service, and as everyone knows, bandwidth isn’t free. All restrictions aside, Typekit blows the competition away with their large font library, and notably comprehensive language selections.
Both options are a great tool for any web designer. For years, we’ve had to use boring fonts to conform to all the browsers out there. Now there’s a really simple solution to maintain maximum SEO and still have a lovely typeset.
Posted on March 9, 2011 - by CDS
9 Unique Web Design Galleries
There are quite a few inspirational galleries and award websites out there today. We even have our own, The Design Gene. Most all of them are collections of what the moderator feels are worthy of listing in his/her gallery based on overall design. There are a few, however, that focus on specific elements of the website, such as its platform, color scheme, coding, style, etc. Below I’ve compiled a list of some of these element-centric galleries that I find especially useful when seeking very specific inspiration.
Colorgorize, http://colorgorize.com
Categorizes websites based on color scheme and provides a color chart for every website. Very useful to find ideas when selecting color schemes for projects. Users can search by adjusting a hue and saturation range, which I find especially neat.
Footer Fetish, http://footerfetish.com
Clever name and clever concept. This is a gallery of great footers. The footer is often overlooked in design, but it doesn’t have to be.
Type Inspire, http://typeinspire.com
Showcase of inspiring and unique typography in web design. Lots of awesome designs that invoke all sorts of ideas for text effects.
Blog Design Heroes, http://blogdesignheroes.com
Gallery of great blog designs. Categorized by platform, and includes Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress and even some of the newer and less commonly used platforms.
Cart Frenzy, http://cartfrenzy.com
Showcase of outstanding ecommerce websites. Categorized by shopping cart software. Great website to get ideas for shopping cart features and layouts.
Illustration Toolbox, http://illustrationtoolbox.com/category/websites
Showcase of illustrated websites. Also includes an illustration showcase, tutorials, freebies, articles and more resources.
Folio Focus, http://foliofocus.com
Gallery of portfolio websites. Mostly web designers. Good place to get some ideas for creating galleries and portfolio type websites.
Minimal Exhibit, http://minimalexhibit.com
Minimalist type websites, lots of negative space and uber clean designs.
We Love WP, http://welovewp.com
Collection of sites powered by WordPress. Not just blogs, but CMS sites as well.
Posted on December 6, 2010 - by CDS
Welcoming Sarah Bledsoe to CDS
We’re happy to announce that the talented Miss Sarah Bledsoe has accepted a design position with Corvus Design Studio. She will be temporarily heading up the design dept while I am away on personal leave. Sarah comes from a long line of artists, from many disciplines. She is the first to venture into graphic design, and her work can be found gracing the pages of websites of some very notable companies, including Rolling Stone, Sony, Apple, Interview, and Reebok, to name a few. We’re very happy to have her aboard. She tells it better, so here are a few words from Sarah:
“I’m so happy to have the opportunity to work with a design studio of Corvus’s prestige. Yeah, I know that sounds snooty, but when you land your dream job, you just feel so special. I am very excited to have joined Jessica as the two designers that make up Corvus’s creative and technical team. And I can’t wait to get to work landscaping the web, as I like to say!”
Posted on December 6, 2010 - by CDS
Latest Project: Midstate SWR
Midstate Solid Waste and Recycling is the third website at the same location (see previous two posts). Offering cargo containers, roll off boxes and bin rentals, Midstate Solid Waste and Recycling’s fleet of yellow and white trucks are a regular site in Paso and Templeton. The facility is shared with North County Compost and North County Recycling, where local green waste is turned into compost and woodchips, and collected recyclables are processed. This site is a standard XHTML/CSS, with Flash elements, a WordPress blog and a SimplePie blog feed on the homepage.
Posted on December 6, 2010 - by CDS
Latest Project: North County Recycling
North County Recycling is the second of three websites for the same location. NCR is a unique recycling center, specializing in demolition and construction recycling. Perfect for our many local real estate development, construction, and restoration companies. This site is standard XHTML/CSS, with some Flash elements and a matching WordPress blog.
Posted on October 21, 2010 - by CDS
Latest Project: North County Compost
North County Compost is one of a set of three related projects (owned by the same client). North County Compost is the first to launch, and one of my favorite designs thus far. Check out the site at www.northcountycompost.com. Being that the Central Coast is a tight knit community, keep in mind that NCC offers high quality soil/compost from local sources. And they’re right here in Paso Robles.
