Plant-inspired architecture
Nov 30 ’06
Blogfolio
Long live the Swiss
Aug 30 ’06
When I was a kid my family lived in Geneva for 5 years. It was a formative time in my life, and I still think very fond thoughts of the Swiss. I've always thought of them as a rather typical European country, but smaller, more quaint and with a much more closed and provincial mind-set. However, over the years I've learned that they have a rather interesting sense of art and design, one that is much more prominent than in many countries. Their influnence on graphic design is unmeasurable: take Helvetica, for instance. The Swiss really helped make modernism.
Ready or not, here I(E7) come(s)
Aug 23 ’06
Whether or not you're ready for it, IE7 is coming. And it's coming soon. It's coming as an automatic update, although the IE7 blog folks have been a little shy about specifying a date.
This is great news!
Wait a minute. Let's try that again.
This should be great news! Read the rest …
Ruby on Rails has the same appeal as the MacOS
Aug 05 ’06
Why do people flip out over RoR? Primarily, because it's fast. It's so fast to develop new applications in RoR. But why? What separates RoR from any of the other frameworks out there? The approach that defines RoR is "convention over configuration," and that's where much of the speed comes from. I had an epiphany this morning: "convention over configuration" sounds familliar. That's why I use a Mac. Read the rest …
New portfolio site: Goleta Valley Holistic Health Care
Jul 16 ’06
Another client site went live recently: Goleta Valley Holistic Health Care. I've put a page in my portfolio about it. I wish them the best of luck with their new business.
Marionberries make everything better
Jul 16 ’06
Yesterday Sally and I went to Sauvie Island Farms to pick marionberries, and what a bountiful harvest it was. After a few hours with only a couple of minor scratches (those things have thorns!), we weighed in with 23 and a quarter pounds of gorgeous marionberries. When they are super fresh off the plant, and are warmed by the sun, they have a wonderful musky spiciness to them that I had never quite experienced like this. To date my marionberry consumption, though non-trivial, has been through farmer's market berries, which are usually picked a day or two before they are sold. As good as those have been, freshly picked is better.Read the rest …
New site in my portfolio: JessicaReichman.com
May 26 ’06
I've just completed a new site for a local artist named Jessica Reichman. She approached me with a pre-existing web site that had gotten beaten with an ugly stick and then left unfinished. It failed to highlight her personality or her work. The new design does both. You can see my little writeup in my portfolio or you can just go visit the site to see what it looks like.
I'm officially moving
May 15 ’06
It looks like the career switch is now official. I was up in Portland, Oregon last week finding an apartment and a job, and thanks to the power of Craigslist, I got me both. The job is a web job that's big and corporate, but not super interesting coding. The upside of the job, though, is that at 5:00 it's done, and the job stays at work. It doesn't come home. That will leave me with plenty of time to do some freelancing on the side, to continue playing with Ruby, and do all of the more fun aspects of web design.
New site design: Aeonium
Apr 11 ’06
There's a new site design! If you look just underneath the search box in the sidebar, you'll now find a pair of links, titled "Banksia" and "Aeonium." These allow you to switch between the Banksia and Aeonium layouts. I think that the newer Aeonium layout is more successful, but I love the colors of Banksia and so I couldn't let it disappear. The new layout is named after the genus Aeonium, which graces the banner, and was inspired by both the geometric regularity of that species and a Japanese aesthetic of simplicity. Let me know what you think!
About the author
Brent Miller is the owner and principal web designer of Foliosus Web Design LLC in Portland, Oregon. He enjoys food, plants, and the color green. If you are interested in hiring him for web work, please contact him.
Categories
Plant of the day
Rhizophora mangle (Rhizophoraceae); Tapche or red mangrove
